One job Adam had on the mainland was with a food company. He says, "I worked there four weeks. They knew I couldn't read. I had to read the instructions on a piece of paper, about how to make the food and all that. We were making hot chocolate, iced tea, hot noodles in a cup, maple syrup. Everything had numbers, like a fellow told me. 'Just go by the numbers,' he said. 'You don't have to read.' It was hard when I didn't know how to read it. They used to tell me to go down and pick up a skid of maple syrup. There would be 20 and 30 skids of all different kinds of stuff. I had to look through it for maple syrup. Maple syrup was like Dutch to me, because I didn't know how to read it. There was only me making that food. When the food comes out it gets tasted for quality control before it goes out of the factory. They caught on, because I made a few mistakes. The boss said, 'We're going to have to let you go because you don't know how to read.' That's when it hurt. I cried that day."

"Three years ago I said, 'I got to find a trade or something.' I done a bit of welding here and there, so I said I'd try for a welding course. I said I'd go down and do the test. I went down and done two questions on the test and had to give it up. I couldn't read it."

Adam came back to school to work on his reading problem. He gets up at six-thirty every morning during the week. The drive to school takes 75 minutes. He gets back home at six-thirty in the evening. "It's paying off for me," says Adam. "In September I'm going to do welding. So far, I got my Class 9 air brakes, my Class 3 permit to drive a dump truck, and a Class 1 to drive a tractor-trailer, all because of my reading. I had to write tests. So, it turned out pretty good."

Question:

1. What was Adam's main problem related to work?
PREVIOUS PAGE TABLE OF CONTENTS NEXT PAGE