The first day of work was finally here. It was a high time – we needed to stretch our limbs, make some money, and sober up. We spent the last two weeks or so drinking in the camp, not doing much else. We met with two young guys who also worked the same job as we did, who lived in the same camp, and had a car. They agreed to take us to work everyday.
Once there, our boss, Stanislas, explained the work and split us into groups of seven. Our group leader was a crazy guy, who knew when to work hard, and when to not work at all. This proved useful during the following weeks, as we always did less than others, without any serious repercussions.
The work was simple, in principle. A big field of corn, countless rows of the same plant over and over again. Each fifth row is male plants, rest is female. Males are growing big phalluses – soon to be flowers – and it was our job to pull them out, and throw them on the ground. You walk from one end of the field to the other, the whole day. Simple enough, right?
Well, not if you’re a perfectionist. And not if you don’t know that you will pass the same line at least thrice throughout the season. It wasn’t the goal to get rid of every single one of the flowers. Not at once, that is.
The ground and the plants were wet in the morning, and we were soaked to the bone after just a few minutes in the field. We advanced slowly compared to others. Not our team, only me and K. We wanted to do our job properly. While others did two rows, we barely managed to do one.
At noon, we were on the brink of tears. As we finished our task, and got out of the field, the others were already on the lunch break. Well, the lunch break was already nearing the end. The boss told us to rest a little, and look him up after. We would do a different job. This time, we were not going to castrate the male plants, but break those that were too big, essentially killing them. This is done in order to normalize the quality and quantity of the corn. Nice change of a pace. The problem was that we didn’t know which plants were too big. We examined every single plant thoroughly, and broke it if it was just a bit longer than the others. We only found out at the end of the row, when the boss caught up with us, screaming: “Not that one, that one is okay! Look here, this is a big one!” Well, you’re welcome.
The workday was finally over by that point, and the weekend was ahead of us. Yes, the first day of work was Friday. The season doesn’t always pick Monday to start. When we met with our friends in front of the car, they asked:
“How did you like the work?”
“We want to get drunk,” we replied.
They laughed, but understood. We went to a nearby supermarket and bought a big bottle of booze. Two of them, actually. We were drinking hard in camp, again, the whole weekend, as to forget that the same corn nightmare waited for us again, and again…
In the end, we didn’t even earn that much. The season ended abruptly one day, and some ridiculous six hundred Euros were wired to our accounts. We went to France to make money. Now I know that’s not what you do, especially not on a corn job.