A Day in the Life of the Ice Slinger

After a great amount of admonition, I weave my way of words once again.


I have been employed in an industry for two summers now. And, in my most humble opinion, the general population depend on this industry during the summer more than any other business. And that industry (drum roll, please) is the Ice industry. (Bah-dum ching!)


You may or may not have noticed, but people buy quite literally a ton of ice during the summer. It's almost as if they think it's hot outside or some crazy thing like that. But all I know is that it makes the average work day an interesting experience. And that makes every summer an adventure.


To give those of you "ice illiterates" an idea of what exactly an average work day is like for me, allow me to outline what basically happens each day.


The day begins when I arrive at the Ice Palace. That is the "in" term for the factory where the ice is made. I normally walk right in, sit right down, and then buy a gatorade from the vending machine. Roughly in that order. Sometimes I get a doughnut. Only sometimes though.

In order to understand what normally happens next, you have to understand the layout of the factory: Right in front is the office, through a door to the west is the loading dock where semi trucks either bring stuff in or take stuff out. Then to the south of the dock is a very large freezer door. Through said door is a gigantic industrial freezer that is mind-bogglingly cold. I think the official temperature is -20 degrees farenheit.

So that being understood, one of four things happen when I come in first thing in the morning:

1) I make my way around the back of the factory to a large machine where the ice is made to put it in bags and throw it on a conveyor belt into the freezer

2) I bundle up like an eskimo and go into the freezer to stack bags of ice that someone else is throwing through

3) I load up a truck with ice and go around town, filling up the ice merchandisers in convienience stores and other related foodstuffs providers.

4) I go into the freezer just long enough to get a doughnut and then microwave and eat it. But I only do that sometimes.

On the holiday weeks, I can go through each one of those steps up to three times a day for as much as four hours at a time. Except for the doughnut step; I only do that sometimes.

Needless to say, July 4th is my least favorite holiday of the year.

And July 24th.

And Labor Day.

And county fairs.

So there you have it. A small taste of what it's like to work at an Ice Palace. Let me conclude with a bit of advice: If you are getting gas or simply buying a corndog at your local convienience store, DO NOT park in front of the exterior ice box. While I myself am a calm, civilized sort of human, a few of my co-workers would find joy and indeed great satisfaction from parking the ice truck in a way that would prevent you from moving from that spot until we are done filling up the merchandiser. And that could take anywhere from ten minutes to two hours. Not a risk worth taking, I'd say.