Archive for the ‘Warehouse Blues’ Category

At morning break today…

Greg, whose first language is Spanish, was browsing one of the food vending machines in the breakroom. It’s a pretty big machine, almost half automat, with buttons that let you spin the whole interior rack around to view the paltry samples of out-of-date $3 sandwiches, little cartons of milk, or cans of cran-grape juice.

Lawrence, who is about 6 foot, 115 pound and smokes like a chimney, strode in hungry and nicotine-starved. It’s people like Lawrence who make me think about getting into vending. He eats one item out of the vendomat at morning break, two items for lunch, and another item at afternoon break. Then there’s all the Dr Pepper he consumes. He must spend at least $10 a day in the breakroom.

Lawrence leaned against the edge of the machine and watched Greg whirl the shelves. Whrrr. Whrrr. Lawrence looked like he was getting hungry enough to eat Greg.

Finally, Lawrence asked, “You looking for a burrito?”

“What deed you say?” said Greg.

By now Lawrence was grinning. “Are you looking for a burrito?”

Greg raised his voice. “You looking for CRACKERS? I think I saw some in this machine.” He slapped the smaller vending machine next to the vendomat.

Berck is in Delaware for the next two nights. It’s cold in the apartment without him. I turned on the heat for the first time. It’s supposed to get in the 20’s tonight. It was that cold when I took Berck to the airport on the way to work this morning.

We worked till 5. I pulled product from the time the pullers arrived an hour after we did to quitting time. I’ve been pulling for the last two weeks straight. I don’t mind. In-checkers aren’t evaluated on their times weekly like the pullers are. So instead of choosing runs that I know I can do quickly, I pick runs that are fun.

What would make one department more fun than another? For me it’s all about finding the most efficient use of space in the tubs as possible…thus neat little rectangles. My favorites are books. But those departments tend to be pretty popular…books are fast. So I end up pulling Bibles all day.

No one likes pulling Bibles. The standard time requirement for them is ridiculously high. They tend to be bulky and heavy, so you can’t hold a bunch and then put them in the tub. And if your pull large at all, your cart will be full in no time, and you’ve got to go switch it out with a new cart full of empty tubs (this eats a lot of time). But since I don’t have to worry about fighting the clock, I get to play with the nice neat rectangles.

In other news, I saw three meteors last night, all of them big and bright and traveling slowly across half the sky. I didn’t stay awake for the peak of the shower.

There’s a sign on the washroom door at work that says, “EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK,” the sort of placard restaurants are required to put up. I’m not sure why we have to wash our hands. I mean, sure, it’s a good idea and all. But we don’t deal with food, and two minutes back out in the warehouse gets anyone’s hands visibly covered in dirt and dust again.

Just this week appeared above this sign a laminated computer graphicked sheet of paper that has these words imposed over the picture of a house.

Your not in this house alone!

Set an example

*Consider others
*Care for others
*Keep things clean

Do the right thing.

So I have to wonder. Would it be considerate to point out the grammatical mistake? Or would it be uncaring to nitpick about homonyms?

And is this a warning that someone is watching to see whether or not I use soap?

So today I took action. I pulled my trusty marker out of my back pocket and added an E and an apostrophe.

I think I did the right thing.