I volunteered at our church's cannery yesterday, which is always a good reminder that my job isn't so bad. Not that I minded processing pears for four hours, especially with the free samples. But it was also a lesson in how difficult it can be to operate a facility like that on volunteer labor.
After coring, peeling, and splitting, the pears come down onto a long conveyor belt. Workers stand alond both sides, armed with specialized knives, inspecting the pears and removing any residual peels, core, or bruised spots. If there are equal numbers on both sides it probably works fairly well. Unfortunately our side operated with maybe half the number that were on the other side.
This meant that someone had to manually channel more pears to the other side than to our side to compensate. Then one of the people on our side took a break (bad back), and two more just left. I and the other remaining guy tried to keep up, but we failed. The lead worker tried to channel more pears to the other side, but they couldn't keep up, either.
To make matters worse, the quality of the pears dropped significantly about then, too. They were overripe, which meant we needed to cut away quite a bit of mushy pear. Spending more time trimming more pears meant slower processing times. They finally had to stop the line until we caught up.
Anyway, it was a good experience, and I'm glad I went. I've been there before when they processed apricots, and was the lead guy. In that situation my job was more to remove pits, but next time if I work that spot I'll know to be aware of how the flow is divided. If I volunteer enough perhaps I'll understand the entire process and be really effective.
Not exactly high on my list of goals, but you never know when information like that might be helpful.
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