‘IT’S COTT TO BE GOOD’
Andy Riga, reporter
I distinctly remember the end of the first day of my first summer job. I got home at 4 p.m. and collapsed on my bed. I didn’t get up until I was awoken for Day 2, at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m.
My parents were amused by my exhaustion. Italian immigrants, they both worked tough factory jobs for decades — my mother as a seamstress on Chabanel St., my father as a machine operator for a bottling company.
It was June 1983 and I was a gangly 16 year old but a Teamster nonetheless, working on the shop floor at the Cott Beverages factory on Chomedey Blvd. in Laval. (You might remember the slogan: “It’s Cott to be good.”)
My shift: 6:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m., with a half-hour for lunch. From the parking lot, a blast of a canteen truck’s horn would announce the two coffee breaks.
I’m not sure what the deal was — if it was in the contract or just an informal understanding — but the sons of workers seemed to have first dibs on summer jobs.
We the sons were given menial tasks — sweeping up, sorting returned bottles by size and colour, moving cases from one pallet to another. On good days, we’d be placed along a production line, watching for broken bottles; it was a reprieve from the bending, twisting and hoisting.
I don’t remember how many weeks I worked but I made an astronomical amount that summer: $1,146.72
My parents wanted me to start making and saving money (spending it wasn’t really an option). I suspect they also had an ulterior motive: to make me understand what it meant to work and to realize that I didn’t want to end up in a tiring, monotonous factory job.
Lessons learned, though I did spend a summer two years later in a West Island factory, installing seat belts on cars imported from the Eastern Bloc. But that’s another story.