Not to be rude, but I HATE hearing people complain about retail. Here is how I have spent my last two summer and winter breaks: working at an egg processing plant. Yes, that is what I said. You all have probably heard of Egg Beaters-the no-cholesterol egg product that comes in cute little cartons? Well, those eggs have to be cleaned and broken by someone, and that someone is me! If you have read my other posts, you know I'm from Southern Illinois, where basically you can work at WalMart or wait tables for people who think $3 is a generous tip. Riiiiiiiiight.
I get up at 5:30 Monday-Friday and shlep in that slop for 8 hours a day (or 9, plus 6-11 on Saturdays if we get a rush order), five (or six) days a week. And for $7/hour. And no employee discount to show for it.
There are three jobs that I do (we rotate-there are three people on a machine and we switch every 15 minutes to prevent repetitive motion injury...).
1-take stacks of trays of eggs (180 or 210 at a time-about 20 lb. each) and put them on a ramp, put the pallet on a stack when it's empty, dump buckets of inedible eggs (this is egg from shells that break during the cleaning process, or eggs that have blood in them-ewwww), etc.
2-move to the other end of the ramp and take the trays of eggs one at a time and put them on a conveyor belt that takes them into a cleaning machine
3-stand at the other end of the cleaning machine and pick off the eggs that didn't get all the crap (and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word...these are from chickens, you know...) washed off in the first pass, or have blood in them (they roll over a light and you can see through the shell for this)
Oh, and in this process, I get raw egg splashed all over me-you can't begin to realize what this smells like. In my hair, on my skin, you get the picture.
The only thing that makes the job bearable is that my best friend since 6th grade works on the same machine. And it is a 4 minute drive from home, as opposed to the waitressing jobs, which are half an hour.
The Gap doesn't sound so bad now, does it?