My first job at age 16 was a summer job working at a food processing plant. I worked in the box room and all I did all summer was staple the bottom of boxes and stack them up for the production line.

Each day a different product was being packed. I’d get prep sheets with the proposed production volume and I’d have to figure out how many boxes I need to assemble. After that I’d have to go to the warehouse and get pallets of flattened boxes of the proper size and wheel those over to the box room.

The first few weeks I was the helper. I’d get the boxes from the pallet and fold it to shape and hand it to the guy running the stapler. Then I’d take the stapled box and stack it up before grabbing another flat one and handing it off. Eventually you’d get a rhythm going and you could really get going.

One day, a few weeks after I started, the guy running the staple machine mis-timed and drove a staple though his hand. Oops. After some downtime to get him to the hospital and get all the blood cleaned up we were back in action — I’d just been promoted to run the staple machine and one of the production line guys filled in as my helper so we could finish the day’s production run. The next day I had a new full-time helper to train.

The work was fast moving and you had to keep up or they’d have to shut the production line down. You didn’t want that.

One day we were really going and were able to get way ahead of the production line. We filled up every square foot of room we had with boxes ready to go. With no more room available we took off a few hours early, which was normal when we got ahead of production and had more boxes than needed for the day. But somehow my count was off and I got a very irate call from the plant manager asking why we left when there wasn’t enough boxes. Oops again.

Being a food processing plant it was cold on the production floor. The box room was right off that so it was cold there, too. It might be a hundred degrees outside but inside it was around 40-degrees so we always had to dress warmly, keeping in mind the nature of the machinery and keeping loose clothing away from those. And you’d have layers since you warmed up once you got going.

The worst days were those when the food prep room next to us was a bunch of folks peeling onions and tossing those into 55-gallon drums for some food product. Even with good ventilation all those onion fumes got to you. And you still had to operate that staple machine to keep the boxes flowing.

I came back the next summer and found out I had been replaced with automation. Now the production line just took a stack of cardboard and made the boxes on the fly, doing all the folding and taping the bottom instead of stapling.

I spent the rest of that summer opening one-gallon cans of Van Camps Pork and Beans and straining the beans out. I guess this was the cheapest way for them to get the beans for their "Made in Louisiana-Style Baked Beans" product.