That is some HOT salsa!

One of the stranger jobs I did was assembly line for a food processing plant. This was straight out of college, while I was teaching night school English, and trying to cover the rent on my first apartment. It was walking distance from the apartment, and it was something different to do from the other temp jobs.

The company made bottled marinades and salsa under their own imprint, which are still available throughout Maine. The first day I put tops on the marinade bottles, which basically meant just slapping a cap on them - no automation for a lot of the system then. Mind-numbingly boring, but not too hard.

The second day I was put on salsa jar duty. I was handed a pair of heavy rubber gloves, and told that what I had to do was put a cover on a jar of salsa within seven seconds. So from when the salsa was poured into the jar, I was to slowly count to seven and get the top on. If I didn't get it on within the seven seconds, then the salsa would have cooled enough to possibly be "contaminated", so I would set that jar aside. And please don't set aside too many.

I did okay for the first half hour, and then I noticed my left thumb was really starting to hurt. After another fifteen minutes I could barely hold on to the jar, and I went on cigarette break to see what the damage was.

There was a blister about and inch long and a half inch high on my thumb. I had calluses on the rest of my left hand fingers from guitar, so they were only a bit red, but this was an angry painful blistering burn. Throbbing.

"Son of a..." I said as I headed out and joined the pair of women smoking out back.

"Oh yeah - you're the new guy." One of them pointed to the medical kit. "Just drain it and throw a gauze pad on it - band-aids will just melt if you use those."

I bit the end, drained it, and put on the pad. It felt like it was on fire, but the bottle of anti-burn cream was long gone, so I just went with the pad.

The women were still out there when I went out again. "How do you put on the jar tops without getting burned?"

They laughed. "Ya don't. Eventually you just build up the calluses till you don't feel it anymore, and then that's okay. Once you get the calluses you won't ever lose a single jar. Ruthie knows that, and she'll cut you some slack the first couple of weeks while you build them up."

The one woman checked her watch. "Well, time to go back in." She took a last puff on her cigarette, and then crushed it out on her left thumb. "See? Just takes time."

I quit three days later when I got the convenience store job. It took my thumb two solid weeks to heal.