Sunday, September 28, 2014

A New Chapter Starts...

A little over two weeks ago I quit my job as a web designer and now I'm heading into a new chapter of my life.  I will be working as a taste tester (the official title is "sensory panelist") for a huge well-known food production corporation near our house. Right now I haven't heard a start date but it should be any day now. When we do start, I'm going to have approximately three months of training and then a year of tasting product coming off the production line.  Unfortunately I will be working only two to three half days per week and it doesn't pay the big bucks, so once the schedule is figured out I'm going to see about finding a second part-time job to fill in more of my time since I think I will go nuts being at home all the time. I actually like working.  

It was hard walking away from a good paying salary job for a hourly position, I haven't had that since I was in college. But I'm totally in love with the idea of working in the food industry, food is my passion. And I'm really interested in what they'll teach us about tasting. It'll probably be a lot of getting in tune with your palate and being aware of what you're tasting. 

I found the job on a Craigslist posting and I was determined to get it, so I kept contacting the people involved until they contacted me back or told me the job was already filled.  I had a three-hour taste evaluation in a group of about 30 people. The first half was easy with basic taste checks, but the second half was really difficult. Here's an example of what we did -- taste four samples of ham and put them into matching pairs... but they all tasted like ham, seemed like no differences at all!  We went through three or four sets of ham samples and then the last group was saltine crackers. I must have done pretty good though since they asked me to join them. 

People have asked me if I'll spend more time with Sonny D but he'll stay at preschool like usual. I will pick him up earlier on my off days and do fun things like visit the children's museum, hit the big downtown library, make treats together, etc.  I also signed up for a year membership at the workout room at the community center and I'm planning to do weight lifting for strength training. It's something I haven't done before but I'd like to try it out.  


Wanna Chat?

I turned off the 'leave a comment' feature, so if you want to share what you're thinking about this or anything else, drop me an email at jhk1013 (at) gmail.com. It's so much more cozy than a comment, plus we can have a real conversation!