Picking up from yesterday –
It was time to get to work. Basically, the entire day was just filled with taking food out of really, really big containers and putting them in much smaller containers so they could be sent to various food banks all around the city.
I know yesterday I admitted I didn’t realize that was a thing – one central food bank. But don’t you think it’s a nice idea? They get food from everybody! Various grocery stores, even the USDA – everybody gives food to this place. So, big chains and governmental agencies and such don’t need to worry about finding all these little places to give food. They just boom it all out to the one central location.
Then the LA Regional Food Bank then figures out the rest of the process – getting it to food pantries and various places with need around Los Angeles.
As we’re taking food from huge boxes on palettes and putting them into small boxes, I see people doing it a bit haphazardly, dropping carrots. (We had oh so many carrots on the floor.) I thought to myself, “I shall not be a carrot-waster! This is precious food that people desperately need. We can’t just waste carrots!”
I made it so long without dropping a single carrot. But alas, *sighs, slides down in chair*… I hate to admit this, but I did in fact drop one carrot on the floor… It was a small one! (I know I’m just justifying it to myself…) So, I was bummed. Then I thought, “well, if I just give them a dollar, that’s 4 meals. So, maybe this can make up for this poor carrot on the floor business.”
Anyway, we have to move on. I know it’s very upsetting that I didn’t hit my “save every single carrot, by golly” goal. But we must let it go, okay?
It was a bit of a free-for-all, with people taking boxes off and putting them on our conveyor belt. (So, nothing made it to the end of the belt, which negated the point of the belt since people were doing lots of lifting).
The place was set up in a great way meant for efficiency. But different people went at different rates, and it seemed like peak efficiency went out the window pretty quickly. Oh well. No one seemed to mind. One guy who was an architect (so, I’d assume smart, thoughtful, and good at plans) made a go at trying to get an actual system going… but it just didn’t work out.
Even still, we got all the food sorted before the original ending time of the day. So, overall, I’d call it a success. Thumbs up, and on to number 10!