Job Shadow Narrative
Since I’m interesting in the agricultural field, I decided to job shadow someone in that field. The person I chose was Vanessa Cabrera, a fruit inspector for the California Department of Food and Agriculture(CDFA). The day we both agreed to see each other for the job shadow was on March 7, 2016. What I liked about the job shadow was that she didn’t take me to an office or building, she actually made me do hand-on work just if I were in her position.
Since her job requires her to drive around and visit packing warehouses, she asked if it were okay for her to pick me up from my house around 5:50 am. The first thing we did was she just gave me a brief introduction on what she does while on her shift; therefore we headed to the first packing warehouse. As we entered the warehouse, we introduced ourselves and explained how I’m job shadowing her, but they didn’t seem to mind. Next thing we did was go into the warehouse and inspect all the orange-filled bins that the warehouse was going to process. We would just check if they were processed in the proper manner. For example we checked if they were washed properly, if there was any spoiled oranges, and if leaves were still attached. We went to about 7 other packing warehouses and off the top of my head I can say we inspected approximately around over 500 hundred bins that day.
Something I learned from my job shadow experience is how fruit is inspected before they are processed. I used to think that after the fruit was picked, they would just ship the it to its buyer, but now I know that it’s not a simple process. Something I liked about that job is how it’s not difficult at all, I mean inspecting the fruit is time consuming, but other then that we just drove around from warehouse to warehouse. There was something I disliked about the job; it was the long hour shifts. On the day I went with her, we worked a 10 hour shift. She said the schedule she worked are weekdays from 6 am to 4:30 pm. Plus she’s also attending college, so she said work and school cause a huge amount of stress in her personal life.
If I were to be offered this job, I would still accept it even though what I experienced that day. It’s not a hard job, the only contradiction about it are the hours, but I think that’s something I would be able to manage. Other than that the job has a good pay, plus since it’s a job where you work for the state, you receive benefits and you get holidays off.
Since her job requires her to drive around and visit packing warehouses, she asked if it were okay for her to pick me up from my house around 5:50 am. The first thing we did was she just gave me a brief introduction on what she does while on her shift; therefore we headed to the first packing warehouse. As we entered the warehouse, we introduced ourselves and explained how I’m job shadowing her, but they didn’t seem to mind. Next thing we did was go into the warehouse and inspect all the orange-filled bins that the warehouse was going to process. We would just check if they were processed in the proper manner. For example we checked if they were washed properly, if there was any spoiled oranges, and if leaves were still attached. We went to about 7 other packing warehouses and off the top of my head I can say we inspected approximately around over 500 hundred bins that day.
Something I learned from my job shadow experience is how fruit is inspected before they are processed. I used to think that after the fruit was picked, they would just ship the it to its buyer, but now I know that it’s not a simple process. Something I liked about that job is how it’s not difficult at all, I mean inspecting the fruit is time consuming, but other then that we just drove around from warehouse to warehouse. There was something I disliked about the job; it was the long hour shifts. On the day I went with her, we worked a 10 hour shift. She said the schedule she worked are weekdays from 6 am to 4:30 pm. Plus she’s also attending college, so she said work and school cause a huge amount of stress in her personal life.
If I were to be offered this job, I would still accept it even though what I experienced that day. It’s not a hard job, the only contradiction about it are the hours, but I think that’s something I would be able to manage. Other than that the job has a good pay, plus since it’s a job where you work for the state, you receive benefits and you get holidays off.