Working at ConAgra

My Job.

It's been 4 weeks at my new job as a food scientist on ConAgra foods... here in Omaha, NE. The people I work with seem pretty cool. We got a new research technician named Jen who is my age... which is excellent because she's cool...like myself. ha There's been this huge reorganization in the department (Research, Quality, and Innovation) so things have been a bit crazy. I had a pretty cool boss, and now I'm getting a new boss, who doesn't start for like another 2 weeks. So, work has kinda sucked because I'm just hanging there... wondering what the heck I'm supposed to be doing. I don't really have an tasks to complete, besides all the corporate mumbo jumbo like getting company credit cards and figuring out how to travel expense reports by reading 200 pages... I guess this is what I get for working for a huge company. ha. Hopefully things will speed up a little bit soon. I'm sure in a couple months I'll be wishing I had nothing to do at work. Out of the 9 hours at work each day, I literally think I do about 3 hours of productivity. Definitely wish I could just come home for the rest of the 6. ha

I did have a super long week last week. We had pudding plant trials up in Menomonie, Wisconsin. I love saying the name of the town. Basically this is the plant that makes a lot of the Snack Packs and Swiss Miss puddings. We fly into Minneapolis and then drive an hour or so into Wisconsin... it was a pretty drive. Anyway...

So here's the thing about my job. Well, first of all it's 20-25% travel... So marketing tells food scientists (me) "this is what consumers want, now make it". So we have to try to figure out how to make it and make it taste good. We do a bunch of "bench top" work... think making food on a giant counter. We kinda mock up the process that they would do in a plant. After the prototype gets approved, it's time for a "plant trial." Plant trials are to see if the product will actually work on the thousands of feet of equipment used to make your product. So the product we were running last week is a new one and actually the 8th plant trial... this one was just to see how the density holds up throughout elapsed time in the surge tank (where the product gets held before it gets moved to the fillers -- the pipes that put the pudding in the cups!)

So anyways... the Wednesday trial wasn't too bad as i worked from 7am-8:30pm. But the Thursday trial we reported at 10am and didnt' get done til 2am. the plant runs 24/7 and things always go wrong... like one time we lost sterility in the machine that puts the pudding lids on, and that's no good cuz that's how you get bugs in....but, it takes 2 hours to clean out the system and get it up and running again...so there were a lot of systems and machines messing up. We had to weigh 3000 pudding cups... my thumbs hurt so bad from ripping off those lids... but hey, it's all part of the job.

On a super happy note though... the CEO announced wednesday that if you work under 10 years at Conagra you get 3 weeks vacation (mine had only been 2 weeks)..... so YIPPIE Skippie!!!! We can then also get a week of unpaid vacation. Definitely brightened up that week at the plant trial.

Okie doke... more to come... the rib is healing and I'm getting ready to test out my lungs on my bicycle.

Smile :)