Do you know where your soap has been?

The first job I ever had, at age 16, was for a small "factory". It was a sub-contractor for Bath and Body Works. The warehouse was set up into several different stations, and basically we put all of B & B's gift baskets together.

One station was to stuff the baskets with the filler, usually consisting of a base layer of crumpled paper, followed by paper grass or straw, in various colors. Station two was where the bottles of product were hot-glued together into little rows ranging between 3-5 small bottles of lotion, shampoo, bodywash, body spray, or oil. Station three was where the basket was packed with the goodies, the little glued bottles of product, usually a cellophane wrapped soap or two, and maybe a little gift item like a loofah sponge, hair brush, or votive candle, among other things. Station four was the shrink warap station, you artistically covered the basket with the shrink wrap then used a small hair dryer to heat the plastic so it would shrink around the basket set. Sation 5 was the finishing station, A sticker or tag with a basket content descritpion, price tag, and finishing embellishment (bow, twine, ornament, etc) was added. Fun times. It was almost all women or girls most either 16 and it being their first job, or retired grandmothers, just wanting to get out and do something while earning a few extra bucks. For all of these wonderful duties, I made a whopping $5 an hour. Those were the days, I tell ya. Those. Were. The. Days.