[marktwain]

Loading live chickens onto a semi for shipment to market. It was a job with some club while in high school 44 years ago. I think we got paid $5 for the night. The workplace was a large quonset hut in the middle of the night, probably 80 by 300 feet long. It was lit with dim red bulbs so the chickens couldn't see, but the workers could, barely. The chickens were thick on the floor, which was also inch deep in dried chicken poop, which soon hung in the air in a thick poop dusk cloud. This was early summer so it was hot in the hut. The semi trucks were lined up in the middle of the hut from end to end. We were given a paper mask to try, ineffectively, to keep the dried chicken poop dust out of our nose, mouth and lungs. The heat was so bad that you sweated copiously and the dried chicken poop mixed with the sweat to insure that you had a liberal coating of poop mud by the end of the night.

In this nasty scene, we groped for chickens legs as they stood, blind and helpless in the dim red light. As we grabbed three full grown chickens in each hand, they struggled and beat their wings in an attempt to get free. Rarely, as you lifted the struggling birds above your head to pass them to the person on the truck who put them in the cages, you could feel/hear a leg bone snap.

The chickens weighed about 8 pounds each, so even this scrawny farmboy’s muscles were soon burning and aching with the effort of lifting nearly 50 pounds of struggling chicken above my head to pass to the truck loader every minute or so.

The combination of brutally physical work in the debilitating heat and noxious conditions made this the worst job ever for me.

The beauty of these nasty jobs is that they teach you to want something better.

[truthkeeper]

The beauty of these nasty jobs is that they teach you to want something better.

Kudos to you for your optimism. Thanks for reminding me why I love this place.

[Eepsy]

You might appreciate this....

http://gizmodo.com/5832367/this-insane-machine-sucks-up-living-chickens