Pack That Meat, White Boy

The summer after I graduated from high school, I got a job working at a meat packing plant. I was one of 3 white people. The other two were 40-year-old women. The remainder of the 400+ employees were Mexican. One of my best friends was from Mexico, and I spoke fluent Spanish. My co-workers had no knowledge of this, and continually talked shit about me to each other while standing right next to me. Which was fun.

At the beginning, they just called me "Guero" (prounounced weh-roh), which translates roughly to "White Boy". I guess I was OK with that, considering, ya know, it's true.

There was one older woman there, El Puma (The Cougar), who took a shine to me. She called me her Sancho, which is the man a woman wants to cheat on her husband with. I was honored, to say the least. However, she looked a little too much like a wood tick for my liking, and I spurned her advances.

The next day, everyone started calling me "Guero Joto", or "Gay White Boy", because clearly anyone who doesn't want to sleep with a married, middle-aged arachnid must be gay.

After a few more months of employment, I worked my way into the hearts or my Mexi-friends (see what I did there?), and Güero Joto became a term of endearment...I guess.

One day, while on my lunch break, I passed the fuck out. I had been sitting with my knee curled up under me and when I straightened it, it popped and I saw stars. The next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor with people gathered all around me. I've had this happen before after bouts of intense pain. When I was little, a doctor said they were called Vasovagal Episodes. This would surely prove to my coworkers how manly I am!

Anyway.

I had to sit in the manager's office until an ambulance could come. Yes, a fucking ambulance! Apparently it's company policy. I called my mom (she'll know what to do!) and she told me that under no circumstances was I to board that ambulance. Shit's expensive (I paraphrased there a bit).

My mom came to pick me up and bring me to the hospital for my employer-mandated drug test. In an excessive show of aversion to lawsuits, they forced me to be rolled out in a stretcher while all my coworkers watched.

I could hear there whispers. "!Dios mio! Es Guero Joto." They were concerned.

After waiting 3 days for my drug test results to inexplicably come back clean, I was cleared to go back to work, at which point I was merely "Guero" again. They must have felt bad for me and decided that I was straight. Which was nice. Two weeks later, I left for college.

I learned a lot that summer. Mostly, that I don't want to work in a meat packing plant ever again.

I've got plenty of stories about that place. Buy me a beer sometime and ask me about it.