@serendipitousramblings sorry it took me a few days to get back to you on this!!
So, I have a part-time seasonal job as weekend outdoor attendant at A___ Orchards in S___, Massachusetts. I work in and around the farm store but sometimes help carry in crates of fruit from the loading dock or drive garbage and recycling to a series of dumpsters elsewhere on the farm. A___ is a mid-sized orchard that does both wholesale and retail; it has a great local reputation and is known for fantastic long-distance views, since it’s on a hilltop. It grows mostly apples and peaches, with some plums and apricots, some pumpkins, some Christmas trees (my stepdad and I got our tree there at the last minute last year, and they remembered me from then when I did my interview), and so forth.
My main duty is directing cars during the farm store’s busier hours, and at some point I’ll be furnished with a clicker to count how many people visit us each day, but I have other things I do as well. A typical day starts with cleaning the bathrooms in the store, checking the garbage, and doing various sweepings and hosings-down; a typical day ends with much the same set of tasks, although it depends on how busy the day was. But for a good three to five hours each day I’m standing out in the sun waving my arms around. It’s not dictionary-definition manual labor in the sense that, like, factory work or the trades are, but so far it’s given me sunburns and blisters so I think it counts!
I wanted a manual job because I’ve spent most of the past decade in school and haven’t really worked before (which indicates immense class privilege on my part, although I flatter myself by thinking I’m culturally less of a product of post-industrial coastal affluence than my family’s current finances would indicate). I thought it would be spiritually beneficial to inhabit my body and live in my own skin, so to speak, more than I have in a long time, and I thought it would be politically illuminating to do some menial work without much in the way of workplace protections. I was entirely right about both of these things; I like the people I’m working for as people, and I’m enjoying actually doing the job itself, but in terms of pay and security it’s (at least on paper) sort of shit. (My main benefit is that I get to take home half a peck of peach or apple seconds every week; I’ve decided to think of this as a sort of old-school “payment in kind” on top of my wages.)
Four or five incidents with customers have been particularly instructive. Two or three are just instances of aging assholes in polo shirts making snide comments about ~how hard my job must be~; in each case I’ve just smiled what I hope is a pained, polite smile and told them it’s harder than it looks. Two have been more positive:
Two middle-aged butch lesbians roll up in a Subaru Forester with their black lab mix (the phrase “life imitates archetype” comes to mind). They hang around the orchard for a good chunk of the day and thank me profusely for my help as they leave.
An older man in a Harley-Davidson t-shirt with a walrus moustache and a gruff voice walks past me and the following exchange happens:
He: They should give you a chair! Give you something to sit down on.
I: That would be nice, but if you sit down people think you’re not working.
He [in a tone of utmost empathy]: That is true. That is so true.
Turns out, if you relate to people who seem very unlike you as fellow workers, you can find common ground pretty quickly! Who knew?
It gives such a great cross-section of humanity in general. I also ran into somebody who teaches civil engineering at my alma mater and has had extensive dealings in East Asia. His wife is Chinese but the woman he was with at the time was apparently Nepali. I hope there’s no intrigue there; probably she was just a friend. In any case we made good conversation for a few minutes before I had to wave some more cars in.
I do sort of wish I was doing more with the fruit itself, either picking it or packing it; then I’d be more comfortable saying that I have “an agricultural job,” the ability to say which is part of why I went for this job since I believe that agricultural is both a perennially relevant part of the economy and a place of great cultural and religious meaning. I’m also torn between wishing they’d give me more hours and thinking that the amount of this kind of work that I’m currently doing is about all I can stand (for the time being!). Those are my only complaints so far.
