Warehouse Warrior

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, another day of unemployment awaited me as I stretched out knotted muscles and still tired limbs. I pissed, dressed and went downstairs to roll cigarette after cigarette and drink coffee after coffee. A quick stop to switch on the computer - without which my day of wanton pornography and live free web cams could not take place. I stood at the back door reading emails on my phone, checking Facebook and sucking back cigarettes and caffeine. “Find a job! Find a job today!” my wife had demanded before leaving for work some three hours earlier. Find a job... I’d already failed four interviews in as many weeks, and the job centre were no help at all. I phoned agencies in the local area, got an appointment at one and went over to see them with all my documentation and what not.

The walk into town took seven minutes and forty-nine seconds and was as uneventful as this passage.

I sat opposite the woman - all blond hair and painted on smile. “What’re you looking for?”

“Anything - just need anything whilst I get my shit together.”

“Interested in warehouse work?”

“I’ll take whatever.” She gave me a form to fill in and sent me to the corner to write my name, take a test and hand over my bank details.

“Are you free this afternoon?”

“I guess so.”

“Two fifteen - meet me here,” she said and handed me an address. Not too far, I thought to myself.

“What’s the wage?”

“Six-fifty.”

“Really?”

“It’s the best we can do - minimum wage is all they pay.”

“Shit.... I’ll do it.”

So I walked back home, threw on some porno - watched a fat chick getting plowed at both ends, masturbated and drank some coffee and smoked a few cigarettes. Shit. I called the wife, told her I’d not be home for dinner, I had a job to go to.

I drove to the warehouse, leaving at one-forty-five, it was only ten minutes away but traffic could be hell. I arrived early, buzzed in through the gate, parked up and walked in.

The entrance room was grand, shiny, clean. A bank of computers sat against the walls with posters on warning employee’s not to blog about the working conditions or even mention the name of the warehouse and who it was owned by and who it supplied to. It was a little over the top and to be honest it was just the local distribution centre for a nationwide chain of superstores owned by a big American company. You were free to use the computers though for anything you liked - just don’t mention the warehouse company name.

Several other people sat around on the chairs, I took a guess they were waiting for the same person. None of us made eye contact - none of us spoke. Then the lady from the agency arrived - she was shorter than she looked at her desk, long body, short legs, no tits and very little arse.

“Welcome. OK, shift starts at three so we’ve got fourty-five minutes to show you around. Follow me.” We walked in a loose group, didn’t want to get close to each other in case someone bit, and she showed us the canteen, the cloak room, the toilets. I imagined feeling her up, grabbing what little there was of her tits. She talked us through the procedure for turning money into credits to buy things, said that the trainers would show us proper once we’d been inducted. This was going to be an... inconvenience on my coffee, porn and cigarette regime. OK, pull yourself together - you need the money, the bills won’t pay themselves.

We took a stroll through the warehouse proper, the shelving stood eleven metres high all around us. Small vehicles drove around at an OK pace and larger reach trucks trundled around with dead-eyed drivers who seemed to give a damn.

Once the tour was complete we settled into a cosy little room and the instructors took us through two days of health and safety talk, taught us to drive the LLOPs - the aforementioned little vehicles - and how to program the headsets and use them to pick the goods onto the pallets. I’m not afraid or ashamed to admit that out of everyone in the group I found it hardest to drive the LLOP, crashing several times and swearing loudly.

So I’d had three days of this and it was time to do the job. Three P.M till eleven P.M. the target was sixteen-hundred picks a day. Didn’t seem too complicated. For the first few days it was a breeze, just drive up and down the aisles, pick the goods - beer, Nappy's, Christmas trees, tinned fruit, etc. and put them on the pallets. Once the pallet was complete you wrapped it in cling film (industrial strength) and took it to the bay as instructed by the print out.

The headsets were another matter. You had to wear this half set of headphones and the computer voice told you where to go, what to pick and how many you needed. It told you when the pallet was complete, how many pallets you’d need and didn’t understand a word I said to it. It misunderstood two as six, six as eight, three and eight and for eight it just seemed to pick a random number and tell me I’d picked too many or too few.
I could stuck the job till Christmas, I had to, there was no choice. Well, there was always a choice, but money and food won out over not working. The days grew more tiresome though, I missed my sleep and getting up at five in the morning was no fun - no matter how many times I did it my body clock just would not adjust. And then I snapped. Let me explain.

I’d gone into work on the Tuesday morning, just a few days before Christmas. As was my usual routine I arrived at six-thirty, put on my bump-cap and fluorescent vest, rolled a cigarette and, after signing in, went to sit in the smoke shed. At just before seven I went into the canteen, filled my water bottle and listened to the managers explain the targets for the day, the number of units we had to shift and which of the permanent staff were doing which jobs. I got my headset, little computer box thing, key fob and chose a LLOP. Almost dead battery, so that was an extra fifteen minutes sat in the battery bay waiting for a fresh one. My first pick was four cases, my second was one-hundred and ninety-eight. My third was three hundred and took in the mile and a half of racking that consisted the beers and wine section. An easy, if long winded, pick. Mid way through the pick, at pick one hundred and sixty-three, the whole lot came crashing down. Beer and wine and spirits pissed everywhere through broken glass and exploded cans. I was covered in it, the floor was covered in it and any passers by were too. I started kicking the broken boxes, cans and bottles, started just throwing that shit around - grabbed an unbroken bottle of vodka, ripped off the top and poured it over my face, down my throat, over my hair, in my eyes, and just started running, I just ran and ran up and down the aisles, knocking shit over and breaking as much as I could. This job was the end, this was not going to be my end - dead eyed and soulless that was the way they wanted you - the way they manipulated you, but not me. I ran and crashed and banged and then they cornered me. I bit one fucker, bit him real hard his blood gushed into my mouth. I pulled away and tripped over a pallet. Fuck, they had me. I was bundled up, picked up and carried off and dropped into a room. They locked the door and I guess called the police. I was fucked. Into custody I went - a nice warm cell and nothing much to do.