I work part time in a grocery store in the produce or bakery department.
When I work produce, I work away from customer and inside a large cooled room propping veggies and fruits. Always in the corner of this large 50 degree-ish chilled room is a pallet of bananas. They usually come in green and then wait until they are at the right shade of yellow to put out on the floor.
Yesterday, a vendor from Chiquita came in and said she was the Banana Inspector. Really. This made me giggle and I retreated to my happy place for the remainder of her brief time with us.
After she did whatever it is that banana inspectors do and left without me knowing, I turned to ask as empty room, " So, how does one become a banana inspector?"
I don’t know if this is on or off topic, but someone I know used to be an engineer for an insurance company of some sort. They helped design fire and explosion protection systems for industrial and commercial applications such as designing the fire suppression systems for skyscrapers. One of the things they had to do was design rooms where bananas were ripened. Apparently, the gasses that the bananas give off are explosive and the rooms had to have specially designed walls to contain an explosion. I don’t know if this was larger scale warehouses than where you worked, though, like at the Chiquita factory or something.
I promise that I’ll find out for sure, but I am reasonably sure that she was employed by a marketing company part time. She checked the bananas at stores but she would also go to places like Target where they have those CD displays with the song samples on them and make sure they were set up correctly and working and other jobs like that.
I went with her once when she checked the bananas. We still poke fun at her to this day. Craziest job ever.
Terry Gross had a guy on Fresh Air a few weeks ago who described himself as a “banana historian”. He was quite interesting actually, having written a book on the history of the banana.
But every time they said “banana history” or “banana historian” I had to pause it and laugh.
My uncle is a historian, so I asked him if there were historians of other foods. He suggested that as part of the guy’s graduate work he did papers on radishes and onions to work his way up.