Modern Marvels

I am sitting here working on my notes for a wedding that I am officiating on New Year's day, so I decided to turn the TV on for some background noise. I flipped through to the history channel which normally has something moderately interesting on it. I have found that the history channel often has programs that make you look up every 3-5 minutes, but can't keep your attention for 30 minutes straight. Of course there are exceptions, and tonight was an exception.

It was a Modern Marvels show, which can be quite interesting. For instance, I watched one of Thanksgiving Break about Hoover Dam. This one happened to be on a Turkey Factory. Normally this type of show would cause me to turn it, but something piqued my interest. They were showing a Turkey farm and how they take the eggs from these tens of thousands of turkeys and incubate them in large heaters , on shelves like the ones they bake the bread in at Panera, until they hatch. Then in a little over 38 days they transform from 1 ounce babes into 10 pound birds. Not natural.

From the farm they went to the processing plant and this is what grabbed my attention. I was watching the workers do their portion of the assembly line; cutting the top, cutting off the wings, etc. Finally it came to this man standing at a station in the assembly line. A bird came to him every five seconds. At this point it is only the torso and legs left. He takes it off the hooks and places it on a conveyor belt that then brings it into an automated process that takes off the legs and moves the torso on. They paused on this man for an extended amount of time as they explained this part of the process and over a couple minutes I saw him continually doing this repetitive motion and I felt so sad.

I thought about that job and why it was created and why he may have applied for it and how he is probably a hard worker who is providing for his family the best that he can. I was thinking about how a job like that would possibly drive me insane, but that sometimes in life you just have to do things that seemingly may drive you insane, because in the end you need a job and you need to provide for your family.

Tonight we had some new friends over, Brody and Emily (Rhoton) Boggs and their kids. We were sharing about our current jobs and what led us here. One thing I shared was that I felt this need to do something where I could directly see how I was positively impacting other people's lives and "making a difference". Brody shared this same need and motivation for him to pursue his current job, working with mentally handicapped people. Watching that show I realized that everyone may not have that same need or motivation that Brody and I do. I realized that if we all did there would be a lot of jobs that would be hard to fill. I realized that a lot of our society is built on those types of jobs that potentially wouldn't be filled (which leads to another post altogether about industrialization). I remembered that many people would never want my job. They wouldn't want the stress. They wouldn't like the need to be creative, to think outside the box, to look for process improvements. They wouldn't want the awkward conversations, the need to confront at times, the need to back off at times. They wouldn't want any of it.

I am glad God made us different. I hope that God always provides a job for me that fits how he made me. I am thankful he opened this door, and put me on the path I am currently walking on. I don't know what I am really trying to say, other than, watching that guy repeatedly move turkeys, and thinking about doing that for 8 hours a day really disturbed me. I think I hurt for him, but perhaps I was mourning the idea of every having to do something like that myself. Or maybe both. I think part of it is that I just wanted more for him... which may lead me back to that other post about Industrialization... which I will probably never get to writing.


I also saw how Turkey Bacon is made... I may never eat it again.