Our first adventure with the Oregon Food Bank was Thursday, March 26.
First impressions:
- Really impressive facility! They have a very nice lobby with classrooms where they teach cooking and food budgeting and then more rooms we didn't even see, in addition to their warehouse and sorting rooms.
- Utter cha
os! We were told before we came that these re-packing nights can accommodate as many as 80 people. I don't think there were that many there with us on Thursday, but there were many, many and they were everywhere! - Food recalls are no good. Normally on these nights we would be taking food from very large totes and repackaging it into manageable sized parcels for regional food banks and food pantries. Thursday we were instead sorting through food gathered from food drives and scanning it for peanut products marked "Danger" due to the recall this year. We were also on the look-out for broken food containers, food out of its packaging or not marked for commercial sale, and soap products that could leak and contaminate the other food.
- Fun people! There were high school kids who were racing each other to finish pall
ets, fun strangers who would whisk boxes out of your way before you even knew you needed them to be gone, box cutters, tape rippers and pallet movers keeping the whole thing going. The chaos really came into play here, but you just had to go with it. - Aerobic workout! No matter what your job, the pace of these evenings seems to be very, very fast. I think of it as a charitable alternative for going to the gym.
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