Tyson's

Sister Patsy wrote about Bill Webb passing away. It reminded me I worked at Tyson two times and for only a few months.

The first time was the summer of my SR year in High School.
I worked in the packing room. I think that is what it was called. That year they put a lot of young girls to work back there.

The Boss was a little strutting Bantam rooster of a man called Tex. He always wore cowboy boots and flirted , and I suppose much worse things, with all of the young girls.

Tex would climb up on the conveyor line that was full of fresh cut up chicken pieces and walk up and down the line. We worked the line in pairs. One gal, and we were all women, would grab several pieces of chicken parts to weigh within a certain range and then hand it off to another gal to shrink wrap. All the while Tex was walking up and down the conveyor belt on the metal sides of the belt, yelling at everyone to hurry up and shouting ugliness.. Sometimes his foot would slip and he would step on the belt with his dirty boots.

Most of us girls did not say much to Tex because he was an overbearing little rooster and we were very young. But there was one older woman that dished it back to him all of the time. Her name was Helen Norris. Every time Tex would say something ugly she would come back with something just as ugly to him. She always used her ace in the hole, that so many minutes ago she saw him touch his cowboy boot on the chicken....This of course was a big no-no. I do not remember Tex firing anyone just yelling. I was thankful I worked along side Helen Norris many days. I had nothing to worry about and was never yelled at.

The next time I worked at Tyson I was married and had a baby. I worked under Connie Webb and along side Barbara Rudd. This time I cut hearts and livers.You would grab the heat and liver off the chicken and snip them close to the root and throw the scraps in the water trough and the heart and liver pieces in a ben.

Some people took 2 cuts, one for the heart and one for the liver but it was faster to wrap them around your pointer finger, hold it tight and then make one snip and cut the heart and liver off at the same time. The down side of this method was many people would cut their knuckle, often.... Well believe me, I never had that problem.

I always left a good portion of the heart and liver on the waste but I never snipped my knuckle at all.

One day Connie Webb was watching the trough and saw a lot of liver and heart waste going down into the water. She asked who was doing that and I fessed right up right away. I certainly did not want anyone getting in trouble on account of me.

Connie told me to snip them closer and even jumped in beside me to show me how again....I continued to cut them the way I had always done it and she mentioned it again to me a couple of times...My answer always was, 'I'm doing the best I can.' I guess she thought I was because she never rode me or was ugly to me in the least. I'm sure she thought I was stupid...But I never even nicked my fingers...I only worked there about six months but cut hearts and livers the entire time. Which was an easy job.