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The meat cutter
By Tina Griego
I've been in the meat business for a good 28 years. I started right after I got out of high school. At that time, there were lots of packing houses, at least six or seven in town. I had to start from the bottom, of course. Being a laborer, stacking meat. That's how I got started, from the bottom down. The bottom down means you gotta start very low. I mean, you're packing meat. Then you have to take all the trash, the garbage, the fat and everything out at the end of the day. They call you a laborer, but you're kind of a gofer. Gofer this. Gofer that type of deal. The next step after laborer is training to be a boner. Basically, you take the bone out of the beef. You gotta know what you're doing with the knife. And, of course, the only way you become good with the knife is by experience. You have somebody teach you. I had good teachers along the way. Then you start slicing cutting portions, different kinds of steaks, New York strips, tenderloins, ribeye steaks. It took me a good six months before I knew what to do with the knife. A lot of people say you can get it in a couple weeks, well ... but to work this long at it and to try to make it perfect, it takes awhile 'cause you don't want to miscut stuff. I would say ribs are my specialty. I can take a rib out, and I try to get the cut the customer wants without any complaints. Some people who take them out, they just grab anything instead of sorting through and getting what the customer likes. They just pick anything, and, of course, you know, the customers, you don't want them getting mad at you. You can lose an account that way. So you try to please them the best way you can. So they call me "Rib Man" 'cause they know I pretty much know what I'm doing on ribs. My day starts at four o'clock in the morning to about eight at night. I clean the plant, too, after work. My wife helps me with that. I get up about 2:30 in the morning. I really like what I do. I enjoy taking a piece of meat and turning it into a masterpiece. You know, I cut it just as I like to see it, if I was a customer and looking at that piece of meat. Some customers will come down, shake my hand, thank me for it. I got a few cuts. There's some scars. We wear mesh gloves. Well, not all of us do. I don't. The mesh glove, it's steel, and with the cold, it makes your hand a little stiff. The room's anywhere from 35 to 38 degrees. Yeah, it's tough. I think many people don't want to be meat cutters. They want to be computer programmers and this and that, where they don't have to really work physical. It's just something I like. There's not much more I can say about that. July 25, 1999
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