On my assembly line job I work next to Larry. We talk and joke around when we can to help us survive when the job gets monotonous and time starts slowing down. Last Monday at the beginning of the day and the new work week time really slowed down because of the inevitable fact that we had merely begun the 40 hours. Larry began telling me about a job he once had in 1996. He had gotten it through Express Personnel in the tiny town of Stillwell. They told him they only had one job available. It was at a chicken plant owned by Tyson foods. I like their slogan, "We're chicken." I suppose they are, especially after I heard Larry's story.

His job started at 8 am. Before he got near the chickens the first thing he had to do was shower and put on a loose fitting jumpsuit which would protect him from head to toe. Larry said the place was very well kept. He said it was a state of the art chicken coop. They were very cautious to keep it sanitary and clean. The building was divided into four different sections. Each section had different ages of chickens. In Larry's section it was divided in half by a fence. All the chickens in the area needed to inoculated. There were hundreds of chickens not yet injected. Larry would need to catch the chickens and take them to get their shots. This would be his job along with a few others all day long. So, basically, you had to run after chickens until you caught them. If you were an expert at doing this, you had developed the ability to grab three sets of chicken legs and grasp them between your fingers in each hand! Larry said he never managed to reach this high level of performance. The most he could get was 2 sets of legs held in his fingers. Sometimes the chickens would bunch up. Larry said they were really dumb. They would gather in a corner and get so packed together some would end up getting smothered. I asked him what would happen if you accidentally broke a wing while you were catching one. He said they would take it and quickly incinerate it. Sometimes the chickens would get scared when you caught them that's why you wore the jumpsuit that covered your entire body. By the end of the day Larry had a lot of chicken mess all over him. Everyone also took showers after the workday was over. When you caught your chickens you took them to the person with the inoculations and they would shoot it in the chicken's behind. Then you would take your chickens and put them on the other side of the fence. It was a job with a simple concept but annoying process.

Larry braved these conditions for two days, eight hours each. That's the only amount of time the company needed him. He also did it because he needed money for his family. He didn't return to Express Personnel after that job instead he found another on his own. I know this for sure, he definitely went on to bigger and better things.