Beneath the Orleans Garage, Charles Carter spends his days slicing turkey, roast beef and other meats and cheeses for prepared deli sandwiches, salads and other menu items for The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s cafeteria and patient meals.
Carter says his title is assistant cook, but he tells people he’s the “meat cutter.” On that particular day, he was slicing 300 pounds of turkey, or 20 turkeys weighing about 18 pounds each. On an average day, he processes anywhere from 800 to 1,000 pounds of meat, and also prepares the cheese. He explains the process: “You have cheeses cut first: cheddar, Swiss. The machine is cleaned, and then I did turkey, smoked turkey. Cleaned it, and did corned beef, cleaned it, then roast beef.”
He says many people don’t understand all that is involved when preparing hospital food. “Some people have to learn to eat again, so they [need it] pureed. If a person can’t have salt in his diet and gets something that’s salty, he’ll be sick,” he says. “You don’t want to come to the hospital and get sick. That’s why we spend so much time on safety cleaning.”
Before he started working at The Johns Hopkins Hospital 27 years ago, Carter never held a job for more than a year. “Early on, a lot of the people I met taught me how to work and stay employed. When I started here, I was 33. Twenty-seven years ago…I started out working in the storeroom. Then for unseen reasons, I started slicing meat.”
He says the benefits of the job outweigh the physical demands, which include standing for long periods of time and working in cold conditions. “The process of cleaning machines, carrying boxes, cases of meat, loading them up, bringing them back; it’s a lot of work. One reason I took the job is because it offered all holidays and weekends off. That was really inviting.”
He lives by the words his father used to say about working hard. “My father said whatever you can be, be the best at it. That’s what I try to do. You can tell by way I talk, I enjoy it. It’s a good job, you get the bills paid. I don’t go hungry. Plus, you eat pretty good when you’re working here. I met a lot of good people and good friends coming here.”
Carter is proud to work for the “prestigious” Johns Hopkins. “When people ask about certain things, I say: Johns Hopkins doesn’t owe me anything. They really don’t, because I came here not knowing anything, and look what I gained. I got a trade I can take anywhere in the world.”
