Worst Job Ever

The summer before my sophomore year in college, I got a job at a frozen pie factory called Rich's in Saugatuck, MI. The previous two summers I had worked at a couple restaurants where my family summered on Lake Michigan. The first went bankrupt; the second I abruptly quit and spent the rest of August on the beach before I went back to school. This new job sucked, and I kind of had that figured out on the first day. We had to wear all white... white shirt, white pants, white shoes and white hard hat over a hair net. It was an assembly line where the dough was formed over metal dishes, the fruit was measured out and dumped in, another layer of dough added and smoothed down. The work was utterly monotonous and soul crushing. Because I was in college, I was also a bit of a pariah since, I'm guessing, very few of the other people working there ever went. I mean, how else would you end up in a frozen pie factory? My second day, I was on the line after the fruit was dumped in the pie shells when I noticed one of the metal dishes didn't have a pie shell so I went to pull the tin out. Only the next section on the line was a round metal disk that came down and smoothed the fruit out, and the tip of my thumb was crushed between the two pieces of metal. This is the gross part. Immediately after it happened, I quickly stepped away from the line and ripped off my plastic glove. Just thinking about that kind of makes me queasy. The secretary had to take me to the hospital where the doctor removed the bit of nail that was still hanging on and stitched my thumb up. The very next day I went back to work, but because I was injured, I had to do something relatively easy. For the next month and a half, I stood beside a conveyer belt, looking for bits of dirt in the dough to remove. I've never had a Rich's frozen pie and never will. Because, somewhere, out there was a pie with a piece of my nail in it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my Worst Job Ever.