When I was a teenager, I worked for the Green Giant canning plant in our home town. At my age, I was doing the scutwork, of course, but I have rarely seen anyplace where quality and cleanliness were more important. One of my jobs was before the plant opened for the season, and we grunts had to go in and clean it. And I mean CLEAN it. Every exposed surface got scrubbed, rust got scraped off, and spiderwebs got whipped away. If you've ever seen the interior of a complex factory, you can just imagine what the words "every exposed surface" implies. There was a stern group of "white hats" watching us and checking everything.

During the operation of the plant, employees were stationed at every point watching for quality, debris, and junk that tends to sneak in when you haul stuff in from an open field. Employees got bonuses for finding stuff and catching problems.

The most boring job I had was shoving leaves that dropped out of husking machines into a moving belt in a trench. 12-hour shifts. Most annoying job was scooping little white onions into the machine that inserted them into cans of peas that had onions. They came from a big plastic barrel, floating in brine, and believe me, when you were done for the day, you had a serious stench about you.