JOBS ILLEGALS WOULDN'T DO
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In December of 1971 I got out of the Army after seven years active duty and three months Reserve. The "New Action Army" was to be made up of all volunteers. And a lot of the traditional controls and routines were being cast aside in favor of a more comfortable Army...comfortable for the pogues that drifted into it...not for those responsible for herding them. But that is grist for another mill. We left Fort Hood, Texas and moved to Phoenix, AZ. I am not sure what I expected, but it sure wasn't what I got.
My first job was as an instructor at the Arizona School of Driving. The school offered a 15-hour course of instruction. But not contracted; a student could quit at any time. It was the instructor's responsibility to keep selling the course so the student got the "full benefit" of it. Most people can pass a driving test after six or seven hours and see no need to do more. The school kept the first 23 1/2 hours of each week's take and the instructor got the rest. When you consider the scheduling difficulties, cancellations, and drop-outs, you could spend sixty or seventy hours trying to get your 23.5 hours in...and not earn a dime, either. Instructors learned to overbook and double-up and other techniques the school strictly forbade. It sucked. Inside of six months I became a senior instructor...a trainer...and the recipient of all the hard cases no one else wanted to train. I gave the school forty hours a week for nothing but kept everything I made on students beyond forty. Some deal, huh? It was like I was earning my living in my spare time.
I left there and went to work at Associated Grocers...a Co-Op warehouse operation that serviced Fry's, Lucky's, Smitty's and several other food sellers in the Valley of the Sun. I was a loading dock worker; a "temporary" non-union filler. I could only work three weeks out of a month without joining the Union, and only a select few were allowed to join. The pay was only about 3/4s of the union scale but it was still better than the driving school. It was beyond measure the hardest work I ever did in my life.
Every morning the boxcars would roll in on the railroad spur. Usually all but three or four of them would fit inside the warehouse. The rest would sit out in the sun. The dock extended out far enough that we could have easy access to them, but by nine o'clock the outside temperature would be closing in on triple digits and inside the boxcars that were out there the temperatures were unbelievable. Guess which cars the temporary dock workers got? We got on the clock at 7:00 am and almost ran to the outside cars in order to get them unloaded before the sun did its nasty work.
The job consisted of placing a pallet on the ground in front of the door of the boxcar, then stacking the boxes or bags that were in the boxcar onto the pallet. No space was wasted. Everything was packed tight. We had to pry the first row of boxes out; after that it usually went pretty smoothly. Kraft and Morton Salt cars were the absolute worst. The Kraft boxes were filled with commercial-sized jars of mayonaise, ketchup, and mustard. Or relish or pickles. The boxes were HEAVY... and in them days the jars were all glass...no dropsies. The Morton Salt cars were...well...heavy bags of salt. A bag of salt a little larger than your old-fashioned brown paper bag from the grocery store would weigh about fifty pounds. You had to start by reaching up high to grab a heavy box or bag, then bend over and place it on the pallet. And not just any old way, either. Each product had to be stacked a specific way...arranged on the pallet so as to "lock" the stack in place. You couldn't go above a certain height on each pallet. So learning to lock five bags and stacking them in four layers translates into a "five-tie four high"...or "eight-tie three high"...etc, etc, etc. Each layer had to be laid out the opposite of the layer below; that is how they "tied" together. Most of the products you could stack as many as three pallets high. So we started off lifting product from the top; after a little bit we were lifting and shifting at about the same level. Then as we worked to the bottom we were lifting from the floor of the boxcar and stacking above shoulder level on the pallet. We usually put two pallets next to each other and built them both up to the start of the second pallet, then used one as a step up to the other. When that one got to its full level a forklift would take it inside and we put another in its place, building one and then another that way until the car was empty. Every five minutes or so some jerk came by and yelled at us to go faster...threatening to fire us if we didn't step it up.
This was real "man's" work. I never heard OSHA mentioned in those days; there was no such thing as a "two-man lift" or "70 lbs max". I never saw a back-brace belt. If you couldn't lift a hundred-pound bag of salt or rice over your head, you need not apply. We could get into a rhythm and shuffle product pretty quickly once we got warmed up. And warming up didn't take long in those outside boxcars. If we were still working on the outside cars after nine am, life became a real misery...the inside temperature could reach 150 degrees.
My first day on the job wore me down pretty hard. I had salt-rime all over my shirt; and my boots, stylish Easy-Rider boots with the cool straps and rings and all, were not ideal for working on your feet all day. I barely made it through a shower and dinner before flopping on the bed. The next morning was unbelievable hell. Every joint and muscle was on fire. My feet were swollen and painful and I was barely able to get my boots on. I could hardly walk. But I went to work. It took an hour or more to work the aches and kinks out of the muscles and joints but the feet were not getting better. Walking was pure misery and lifting and shifting caused the fire to spread up my legs. That night I was even slower to the shower and bed. The third day I wasn't sure I would be able to get up at all. The boots were the worst part; the wrestling match to get them on caused so much pain I was afraid I would pass out. But they were the only hard shoes I owned and we weren't allowed to wear "tennies". The heat was unbearable; the days went on forever. The breaks - fifteen minutes in the morning and afternoon - were too short, lunchtime too long in coming and too soon over, and driving home too little of a relief.
Monday of the second week was almost like starting all over again, but by noon I was feeling pretty good. My feet hadn't started off swollen; the weekend had calmed that down and I was actually able to jump around on the pallets without tears. Surprisingly, Tuesday I was able to get up and get going without the moans and groans. On Wednesday I actually took part in the lunchtime discussion of the Summer Olympics, got curious enough to watch that night, and my family got hooked on the coverage. The third week I was finally getting in condition...feet, joints, muscles. I still came home sweated-out and sore. I still woke up hurting and tight. But not like the first week. The end of the third week they let me go. "Term Limits" for non-union temps. They told me I did okay, but they would not hire me back on for at least three weeks. So I went in search of something new.
I think that the job at Associated Grocers would qualify today as one of those that sympathizers would say "white people" won't do...so we need an illegal to do it. Funny thing was, there wasn't a single Hispanic person on that crew. In those days, Phoenix was not covered on every corner with a dozen off-the-books "day workers" (illegals). Every time ICE raids a company and runs off a dozen or a hundred or three hundred illegals, the jobs are almost immediately filled by legal Americans who want to work. RoseinArizona's post about the cost of illegals has some sobering dollar amounts, especially in the area of labor. I don't think there are any jobs Americans won't do...I know I have had my share of jobs that I really didn't want to do but all those littlies were addicted to food. I would dare to say that I have had a few jobs the illegals wouldn't do. The argument is not valid.
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