Mya Garza

As a materials handler my duty is to work fast and accurately. Every morning my team is split into groups, I work with different people every day. On this list is a number of ‘batches’ we do. Each batch has a number of pallets, quantity, and the cost of the batch. Each person scans a number of product into their gun and puts each product into its own spot. This job requires the ability to be on your feet all day, a good memory as you’ll be dealing with numbers all day, decent strength as product can be heavy, and an ability to work with all types of people.

as a lab tech we verified all product during production and before the product went out. we would test the chip defects, if they were too high, the load was not verified to go out, which started the whole process of failing the load, if the sample was in, we’d put it in the system after carefully looking at the information given to us, as putting the load in incorrectly affects all production. we would test the seasoning, nitrogen, and air fill in the bags to make sure it was in according to our supervisor, if it wasn’t, we’d contact the seasoners to send a retest or go down or up on the seasoning, for the nitrogen and air fill we’d contact the pmos who tended to the machines downstairs. we would test the oils to make sure they weren’t too high so they wouldn’t affect the chips flavor, and etcetera, which we would then contact the kettle operators about. if i could not contact the kettle operators, pmos, or seasoners, i’d have to contact the production supervisor or lead so they could then contact their staff. i also hosted meetings every two hours to make sure production was running fine. this job was very social and required a lot of multitasking, my shifts were 12 hour shifts from 7pm to 7am.

i mainly packed chips into a box, labeled them, and stacked the boxes onto a palette. at the end of the day, we cleaned our area for the packer on the next shift, but occasionally when there was a changeover in chip flavor we would go up to the machines and help the seasoners clean the machines out before quality assurance went and tested it to verify the changeover. we would also come in while production was down to clean the building, which happened every once in awhile. another thing we did every so often, our supervisor would pick a few of our production staff to help the floaters, which meant we would refill the packers boxes, tend to the packers timely breaks, along with bathroom breaks, and help any packers that got behind in their line, and of course, and finally take the palettes out to the production floor which the forklifters would then take away. my shifts were 8 hours, from 4:00pm to 12:00am.