As a job seeker who wishes to retire in one year, I stuck my thumb into the Temp/Gig pie and quickly pulled out a plum. Starting last week, and with luck through the rest of our fire season, I am part of a crew supplying lunches to firefighters curbing conflagration.

“Disaster catering” turns out to be a thing. The catering company supplies staff, kitchen, food, and supplies to make cooked meals at the fire sites, and also trucks in the bag lunches we create in Santa Cruz Country. Our deliverable is a box of five lunches, each containing a fresh sandwich along with other items. We’re not talking bologna either: the meat sandwiches contain salami, pastrami, roast beef, ham, or turkey, with 4-9 slices of meat plus two of Swiss or Cheddar cheese per each, depending on the type. We also offer cheese-only for the vegetarians with a meat:cheese-only ratio of about 700/100.

Sandwich-making takes place inside a refrigerated cargo container with ample food preparation space for 15-20 people working at once, either assembling sandwiches, wrapping them, or keeping the supplies of bread, meat, and cheese flowing.

Five lunch bags, each containing a condiment pack, go into each box, and another task for us is to assemble these items. We can fit 36 boxes onto a pallet, six layers of six boxes each.

Even a generous sandwich needs sides, so there are a lot of pre-packaged items to separate and dump into large totes, such as organic salads, nuts, raisins, various dessert items, fruit cups, and beef jerky. Every lunch also gets a fresh apple or orange and a set of plastic cutlery.

Once we have roughly 4-5 pallets of boxes, 800 sandwiches, and ten totes filled with side items, all hands convene to form an assembly line along a roller conveyor in an open warehouse space. Each person on the line is responsible for loading two items into each of the five paper bags in each box then rolling the box to the next person. At the very end, people seal each paper bag with a sticker then close and stack the full boxes on the newly-emptied pallets. If a supply tote runs low, we can signal for someone to move another one in place so we don’t have to stop.

It takes 50-75 minutes to run 160 boxes through, an intense time during which everyone is standing and constantly moving, though within a small area. We each set our own pace, but we all strive to keep the line moving. There is a great sense of accomplishment when the last box rolls by.

The conveyor makes a mechanical noise when the upstream person rolls a box toward me, a noise that evokes in me something akin to that small thrill one feels when, after a long wait in line, your car pulls up, and it’s time to subject yourself to defiance of gravity, or in this case, rapid and precise bag-filling.

Interesting things about this include the highly industrial environment, with lots of machinery, loud noises, and opportunities for injury if you aren’t careful; the extreme physical challenge, especially near the end of an eight-hour day; and the wide variety of life experiences and outlooks of the team members, who nonetheless bond quickly, expend effort willingly, and support each other.

This is not exactly doing the lord’s work. California taxpayers pay $250/box, or $50 per lunch.

I still hope the fires are quenched sooner rather than later! Gigs there are a-plenty.