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Food, food everywhere
Jun. 2nd, 2006 01:40 pmSo, yeah. Yesterday.
Some background, first. I don't know how common this is in the corporate world, but at Citi, each employee is given the opportunity to take one day each year with pay to do volunteer work. My team has organized to send team members in groups to assist with a variety of charities around town.
Yesterday I, along with two of my co-workers, was given the chance to assist at the Harvest food bank in Toronto. Originally, we were going to be assigned to paint a bathroom, but they instead just had us sorting food. Which is a fascinating experience, let me tell you.
The method of sorting food at the food bank, at least in this one, is as such. You take an item out of a food bank bin (the one you find at your local grocery store). Then, you figure out what category it's in. There's some very broad categories (such as "snacks") and narrower categories ("Seafood and fish", which is all fish in a can, as opposed to "can meat" which is all other meats in a can). Apparently people think that people who go to the food bank like Spam.
It was weird. We spent the whole afternoon sorting, boxing and stacking. It never got repetitive because you always had to check the food to make sure it was not spoiled or past its expiry date or open or dented excessively (even pristine cans get dinged in the food bank bins), then you had to sort it (Jell-O is a baking good! Stew is a canned meat, as it chili, unless it's vegetarian!). Then, when a box was full or weighed over 35 pounds, you wrapped it up and put it on another skid.
There's little worse than the smell that accompanies an applesauce container that's broken open and decomposed for a couple days in a warehouse. Unless it's the fruit flies that flock to it. Every item was a sign of human goodness, when you think about it. A gift from one person to another. You couldn't tell who was giving what, although there were some strange donations. We found a can of Jenny Craig chicken salad in one bin. Another had a couple dozen bottles of peanut butter, which took the PB box from empty to full. Peanut Butter gets its own box, probably owing to the fact it's apparently the single most common donation item.
One bag just broke my heart. It had half a bag of rice, tied up (which we had to throw out as we couldn't accept any food that was opened), several small items of candy, and several individual boxes of cereal. It was sort of like an old widow's offering in the poorbox. You got the sensation it took more for whoever donate that stuff than it took for whoever donated the President's Choice marinade.
The low point was that the warehouse we were working in was, well, a warehouse, with the attendant lack of any sort of circulation or a/c. So it got hot, and we got sweaty and smelly. By the end of our shift (a short shift, only 3 hours, but we managed to empty most of three donation bins) I was in such malodorous shape that I decided to spare my fellow players and bow out of game.
A good day. As I said to my co-workers, at no point in the afternoon did anyone insult us or yell at us, which we enjoyed.
Some background, first. I don't know how common this is in the corporate world, but at Citi, each employee is given the opportunity to take one day each year with pay to do volunteer work. My team has organized to send team members in groups to assist with a variety of charities around town.
Yesterday I, along with two of my co-workers, was given the chance to assist at the Harvest food bank in Toronto. Originally, we were going to be assigned to paint a bathroom, but they instead just had us sorting food. Which is a fascinating experience, let me tell you.
The method of sorting food at the food bank, at least in this one, is as such. You take an item out of a food bank bin (the one you find at your local grocery store). Then, you figure out what category it's in. There's some very broad categories (such as "snacks") and narrower categories ("Seafood and fish", which is all fish in a can, as opposed to "can meat" which is all other meats in a can). Apparently people think that people who go to the food bank like Spam.
It was weird. We spent the whole afternoon sorting, boxing and stacking. It never got repetitive because you always had to check the food to make sure it was not spoiled or past its expiry date or open or dented excessively (even pristine cans get dinged in the food bank bins), then you had to sort it (Jell-O is a baking good! Stew is a canned meat, as it chili, unless it's vegetarian!). Then, when a box was full or weighed over 35 pounds, you wrapped it up and put it on another skid.
There's little worse than the smell that accompanies an applesauce container that's broken open and decomposed for a couple days in a warehouse. Unless it's the fruit flies that flock to it. Every item was a sign of human goodness, when you think about it. A gift from one person to another. You couldn't tell who was giving what, although there were some strange donations. We found a can of Jenny Craig chicken salad in one bin. Another had a couple dozen bottles of peanut butter, which took the PB box from empty to full. Peanut Butter gets its own box, probably owing to the fact it's apparently the single most common donation item.
One bag just broke my heart. It had half a bag of rice, tied up (which we had to throw out as we couldn't accept any food that was opened), several small items of candy, and several individual boxes of cereal. It was sort of like an old widow's offering in the poorbox. You got the sensation it took more for whoever donate that stuff than it took for whoever donated the President's Choice marinade.
The low point was that the warehouse we were working in was, well, a warehouse, with the attendant lack of any sort of circulation or a/c. So it got hot, and we got sweaty and smelly. By the end of our shift (a short shift, only 3 hours, but we managed to empty most of three donation bins) I was in such malodorous shape that I decided to spare my fellow players and bow out of game.
A good day. As I said to my co-workers, at no point in the afternoon did anyone insult us or yell at us, which we enjoyed.
