A day in the life... at the Brother's Market Meat Department

I achieved a “Day in the Life” milestone on Friday afternoon at Brother’s Market: for the first time in the four-installment history of the series, I actually got to do something that the person I was job shadowing does on a daily basis. I cut meat!
 
Boneless pork chops, to be exact. So if you bought any over the weekend, there’s a decent chance I cut them, and I’m pretty sure I did an okay job. One of the lessons I learned, along with many others, during my time there, however, was that there’s a science to cutting meat in one fluid motion: diagonally down and back across. This takes more practice than the average spectator might assume, but it keeps the meat as tender and presentable as possible.
 
But enough about myself. I spent the afternoon with Meat Manager Joel Johnson and meat cutter Leon Abels (full disclosure: his wife Brenda works with me at The Grundy Register), and as it was Leon’s last day before he heads back to Wellsburg to run the golf course with his son Brian, Joel was sure to give him plenty of good natured ribbing as he moved on to a new journey. Leon worked at Brother’s for almost a year after a long career as the public works director in Wellsburg, but the career change actually made a lot of sense: right out of high school, he worked for the now-defunct Gene’s Meat Locker in Holland.
 
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