As Paris Palmer tells it, the dates were the worst.
While working at a North Carolina production facility for Ann’s House of Nuts, Palmer measured and mixed different types of food to create trail mix — this many pails of cashews, that many pails of peanuts — but the dates arrived in a clump and required deconstruction.
“They came as a brick of dates, and you had to break it up,” said Palmer, a Penn State offensive lineman. “That was very annoying because our gloves would get cut.”
Palmer worked in the factory after he tore his anterior cruciate ligament following his high school football senior season, after he created his own highlight reel.