Most kids get their career breaks on a pleasant paper round or in Daddy’s organic kitchen. I earnt mine through the hard graft labour of a greengrocer’s warehouse. Not the comfortable air conditioned shop front; the dingy warehouse.
Despite my people skills and dazzling smile they didn’t like us to see the customers. The only human being we saw was a middle aged frump who insisted on getting her fruit from the back and molesting the peaches. Instead they had us packing boxes, lugging crates and dodging crazed forklift drivers.
Romance was hard enough for a teenager living in a country village with a gay population of 4, but with the addition of a greengrocer’s uniform and a pungent smell of cabbages it became near impossible. Not even Gaga could make a tabard and fleece sexy.
There was still lots of fun to be had: De-eyeing potatoes, removing brown grapes and hiding slugs in lettuces. The only vaguely exciting task I remember was taking the trashed plastic and cardboard up into the hillside and burning it. Looking back, that was possibly a cheeky way of dodging refuse costs and most certainly illegal.
The workforce was a mix of young and old, which lent itself to plenty of pranks and joshing. I spent my 6 weeks of summer bantering with burly, dart playing, chain smoking grafters who revelled in their ‘plank of the day award’; a trophy given to whomever contributed the stupidest comment. They quite possibly only enjoyed the reward, beating the winner with the plank, more. Learning to defend myself against the jovial and daily digs of my co-workers, I believe, gave me the strength and character to tackle worse comments as my sexuality developed in my late teens.
We may have been paid a measly £3.01 an hour but the social development it provided was invaluable. Plus, an inexhaustable supply of fresh fruit and vegetables did wonders for my skin.
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