WDM, IA - From Supervisor to Dock Worker in a Day

Once a year, a group called Meals From the Heartland organizes a huge food packaging event in Des Moines and sends 1,000,000+ meals out to needy families throughout the world. Meals From the Heartland coordinates both the food donations, recruiting the volunteers and arranging the venue for the drive. In 2009, over 15,000 people volunteered over 4 days in what is called the nation’s largest food packaging event.

The volunteers come in as 7 - 10 member teams from churches, schools and from many local businesses. Most of them come in with team t-shirts, have cheers worked out and are on company time. Many have done this in previous years but many are new recruits. Each team then works a table filling bags with enough to feed 4 people. One person holds the bag beneath a large funnel, then 4 others put these ingredients in:

        vitamin supplements
        dried vegetables
        soy protein
        rice

in that order, another team member weighs the bags which must be between 390 and 393 grams, then another seals the bags and finally, one counts out 36 bags which will fill a box, fills the box and places it on a pallet which holds 55 boxes in 5 layers.

In the picture above, you can see the large funnel surrounded by boxes of the ingredients. Further back you can see the sealer and the empty boxes under the table.

Other volunteers, using forklifts, firstly move all the 4’ x 4’ x 4’ white bags of rice and 4’ 4’ x 4’ boxes of soy protein into place between the tables to be used by the teams (the dried vegetables and vitamin mix are lighter and kept in boxes under the tables) and then move the filled pallets into trucks waiting outside. Quite an operation and planned to the Nth degree. Here’s a picture of a team at their table. And, guess what? They get to keep those neato green hair nets as a souvenier.

The meals packaged during the event have been sent to malnourished children and families living in Haiti, Jamaica, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico and Israel. Support has also been provided to New Mexico and homeless shelters in Iowa.

That’s the background and I decided that I wanted to be a part of this event. I called Wednesday morning to work that day but wasn’t called back until later in the day so didn’t work until Thursday. Now, I have never been to the event, never seen the event nor been a member of a team packaging the food so - they made me a supervisor. Actually, since most people come in as teams, those people who come in as singles, as I did, get other positions. One position is ‘Supervisor’ which meant that I supervised 8 tables and thus 8 teams. I organized them as they arrived, explained the process and kept them supplied with food, bags, boxes and other supplies. Great job for a person who had never done this, huh?

As I walked to the event which was held in Hy-Vee Hall (a large trade show hall named after a local grocery store) I was able to look down into the hall and see the 11 sections of 8 tables each lined up in the hall. I also could see the large bags of rice and boxes of soy protein ready to be moved into place. Note the trailer and the chairs at the top of the picture. These can help you get a perspective of how large those bags of rice and boxes of soy protein are.

Actually, it all worked pretty smoothly and, once the teams were working, there wasn’t much for me to do. Stupid me. I looked around and realized that people in my teams were running out of the rice and the soy protein pretty fast. Being the knucklehead that I am, I grabbed a Home Depot 5 gallon paint can and began scooping these two things out for my teams. And, my teams were really going through these. After about an hour, I went for a smaller pail that I saw and felt much better about my arms surviving this exercise. That was fine for the 3 hours in the morning I was there. This new position is called ‘Dock Worker.’ I’ve gone from being “Supervisor’ to ‘Dock Worker.’

I went for lunch with an old friend from Wells Fargo (and she’ll come after me for using the word ‘old’ but I only mean that I worked with her for a long time).

Then, since I had nothing better scheduled for the afternoon (except cleaning the house and I’ll do almost anything to avoid that) I went back to the Hy-Vee Hall where the event was being held and volunteered to be a ‘Dock Worker’ for the afternoon. But, I’ll tell you, along about 3:30 I was a tired puppy: scooping the rice and the soy gets to be hard work. My bucket loads were getting a wee bit smaller, my pace was a wee bit slower and my knees a wee bit weaker. Luckily, my shift ended at 4:00.

Another job for the Dock Workers was to combine rice bags so it is easier to get the rice out. A forklift picks one bag up by some handles on it and moves it over another bag. Here are two of my compatriots who have untied the rope at the bottom of the top bag and are now guiding it so that the rice can fall into the bottom bag.

However, the whole experience was wonderful and I’ll do it again - as a Dock Worker. Everyone was happy and working fast. Smiles were all around as we all knew we were doing a grand good deed and working towards a purpose.

But, I’ll sleep well tonight.