Teen's First Job: Monsanto Corn Research Facility

"At age sixteen my parents decided that I needed to get a job. I was forced to work at Monsanto corn research facility in Gothenburg, Nebraska. On my first day there I was flat out irritated. I didn't want to work at all, much less outdoors in the hot sun with only one of my friends. I was excited for getting money, but the means by which I would have to do this was not appealing to in the slightest. Even from the start we all knew how awful it was going to be.

Lunch time seemed like it would never come. We had been doing one activity the entire time. Shoot bagging, a droning boring activity. It was getting increasingly hotter and the sun was beating down trying its hardest to make us all combust, or just burn really bad.

After lunch, time seemed to go even slower if possible. We turned to harder, more strenuous jobs. Work became more painful. Now it was just torture. The lucky underage kids were sent home due to child labor laws, leaving everyone sixteen and older in the field. 

By this time we had worked three hours longer than they had told us we would have to, so we were all frustrated. Despite these dreadful ideas, eventually we were told to head back to the bus. Six o'clock is when were finally let off on our first day of work. Our ears, faces and necks would never be the same due to extreme sun burn. A cold shower would never feel better. Eight dollars an hour just didn't seem like it was enough. I swore to myself that I would never return to this forsaken place. 

However, it occurred to me that many farmers had to work like that every day and they probably didn't complain like this. In the end, I decided that if they could do it so could I, and so began the hardest three weeks of my life."

Asset ID #7182