There were three piles of meat, frozen, raw and of unidentifiable origin. Left by the butcher I had never met were three sticky notes penciled “Extra Lean,” “Lean,” and “Regular.” 

It was the cold room of the local IGA, a grocery business that evidence would say no longer exists. This particular location, in St. Catharines where I grew up, is now the palace of cost-savings known as Dollarama. The cold room is the meat locker, and its entrance was several feet from bulk candy bins that were 12 years earlier my first foray into thievery. (Kids, idle hands, candy, come on!)

This same supermarket employed me now, every Sunday morning one summer, to perform one of its nastiest roles. Three piles of meat, frigid temperatures, solitude, silence – but complete control of ground meat prices for one day. 

In July I pulled on a toque, slipped the white butcher’s apron over my fleece jacket, and slipped on rubber gloves. I couldn’t use winter gloves because I needed the full, intricate motion of my two hands.  With those previously warm hands, I gathered the ice meat and proceeded to grind the Extra Lean (mostly red), Lean (glimpses of white throughout) and Regular (equal parts flesh and fat).

The butcher hacked off ragged chunks for me. To transform it into hamburger, I had to continually muscle the petrified livestock through the grinder. It didn’t slide in by itself. It would take two or three pieces before I could no longer feel my hands. And there were at least a hundred ragged chunks. 

I exhaled arctic breath on my hands to warm them up. I had to unclog the grinder every five pieces or so, necessitating further physical contact with the polar carcasses. I cursed the IGA and the overall need for meat to be kept frozen. It was the worst four-hour shift in the history of employment, I thought. I knew. I wished everyone enjoyed their Sunday barbecue, made possible through my suffering, while I dreamt of simply putting my hands in the summer sun and thawing them out. 

When the glacial grinding work was over and I had separated out mounds of Extra Lean, Lean and Regular ground beef, I proceeded to do the equally cold task of slapping them into piles, molding them into an aesthetic oval shape on a bed of Styrofoam and shrink-wrapping it. Oh the shrink-wrap I wasted due to my gelid palms! I couldn’t have cared and it probably cost the IGA more than the three jube-jubes I had previously become accustomed to lifting each week when my mother and the bakery lady were preoccupied.

When the meat was done, the scale spat out a sticker with a price and I would whack each wrapped mound of meat hard with it. Take that, $6.78 Regular bastard! Eat it, $14.45 Extra Lean wench (that I’d probably overstuffed)! When assembling them in the fridge, as the first customers started to trickle in, I would put a few upside-down, tasting the treacherous joy of chicanery.

But really, my hands. I cannot find a legitimate trace from my IGA meat experience to my current status as vegetarian. But the psyche is deep and troubled so perhaps someone with a couple of degrees can draw a connection.