Forty-two years and a few months.
Published at 10:00 a.m.
That's how long Jocelyn Plante has been with Krispy Kernels (yes, the brand of nuts and other snacks).
It ended Friday: 42 years at the Sainte-Foy factory, avenue Watts. Retirement, finally. I say finally because Jocelyn has been talking about it for a long time, about her retirement. Like Dominique Michel and his Bye byeJocelyn always ended up stretching out the pleasure, come on, another six months, another year…
And then, on December 20, 2024, it became true. Jocelyn Plante, after having done everything at Krispy Kernels (shipping, packaging, sanitation), finally retired. He hung up his “caped” shoes.
We say it like that, “42 years”, but what's in 42 years of service in the same place, at the same factory?
His son Yann made calculations, to embody what is hidden in these 42 years, like a pistachio hides in its shell…
That’s 13,440 days of work.
It's also 465,000 kilometers traveled, from house to factory, from factory to house (there are 384,000 kilometers between the Earth and the Moon).
That's also (roughly) 17,500 slices of white bread, if you count four ham sandwiches per week. Yann: “I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Gailuron or Mr. Gadoua sent him a golden loaf to thank him for his loyalty to sliced bread! »
Yann Langlais-Plante wrote to me to tell me about his father, but also to tell me about the place of work in our lives.
“We get up, we make our lunch. We eat our toast, we jump in our car, we work our eight hours (in his case, often more), we get back in our tank, we pick up the children, we jump in the shower, we have dinner and we fall asleep during the intermission between the 2e and the 3e period (sometimes, between the 1re and the 2e)…And we start again the next day. »
Pinottes began on April 29, 1982. A few months later, a baby on the horizon, Yann. Another, Maxime, in 1989. Life passing, the years too, those of the calendar and those of seniority…
Two mouths to feed, hence the sandwiches at lunchtime, because you have to dress them, the little ones, feed them, pay for baseball and buy little ones to carry everyone around…
In front of Jocelyn's life story told by her son, I think of this Pink Floyd song, Timeabout the passing of time, which we never catch up with, no matter how much we run, run very fast, we never catch up with the sun which always rises behind us…
Five years at Krispy Kernels, at the factory, then ten, then fifteen. On the sidelines of that, of the factory, there is life, which is never a long quiet river, there is the couple who fade away, the oldest who leaves the house, life, what, the life that sends you headwinds…
“Through the storms,” notes Yann, “the work feels like a certainty. »
To celebrate Jocelyn Plante's 35th anniversary at the factory, a gift certificate from St-Hubert. It's a change from Gadoua bread, the flattened bread from Quebecers' favorite rotisserie…
The idea of retirement begins to infiltrate Jocelyn Plante's cortex, slowly but surely. But this fear, all the same: “What am I going to do, Yann, if I don’t work? »
Then something clicked, not long ago, it was on the plane, returning from a trip to Japan. Jocelyn decided that December 20 would be over. Retirement.
For his son, this retirement, this 42-year career for the same employer, at the same factory, is also a page turning. Her father always worked at Krispy Kernels. In a way, nuts are also part of his identity.
We say it like that, “42 years”, and it makes you dizzy, 42 years, it's a lifetime, it's long, it's a lease, we can think that it's something like eternity …
It's the opposite, however. The more we advance, the more life speeds up…
As Jocelyn once said to Yann: “It goes by quickly. »
You betthink about it, you will recognize yourself: one day in April 1982, you return to the factory, new job, then, boom, 42 years, 8 months and 20 days pass like that, life which seems so slow when you look in the windshield, it goes at lightning speed when you look in the rearview mirror…
Yann looks back on his father's 42 years, for the same employer. Did Jocelyn think, on April 29, 1982, that he would spend a life there, a large part of his life? Probably not.
The son looks in the rearview mirror, he too, he speaks without saying it in as many words about the dignity of work when he says, about this life of his father spent in the nuts: “You always put something to eat on the table, in the sweat of your brow. We didn't lack anything, even if it was tight, sometimes, nothing that was essential…”
Happy retirement, Jocelyn Plante.
