Warehousing my career

I had to cut through the warehouse at work today to use their men’s room while the white-collar facilities were being cleaned. I don’t mind this occasional mingling with the pickers and packers; in fact, it’s a good reminder of where I easily could be if not for a little education and a lot of luck. And if I run out of the luck sooner than later, as this economic downturn turns downer and downer, I could find myself working in a similar facility as I tread water toward retirement.

It’s an unpleasant job better-suited to younger and stronger backs than mine. Our warehouse workforce – comprised almost entirely of folks from a temporary agency – may spend as much as 12 hours a day on their feet, in summer heat tempered only by ear-shattering fans, selecting papers, packets and boxes from shelves and shoving them into things (mostly envelopes though occasionally into each other when a fight breaks out). I’ve spent some warehouse time sorting good materials from bad earlier in my career when I worked in the “quality” department, and I can tell you it’s exhausting work.

My comfortable air-conditioned and internet-equipped office is right next door to this huge, sweaty operation. When the warehouse doesn’t have work, the temps are simply told not to come in. When we have no work, as increasingly is the case, we get to worry about when it’s finally going to occur to management that we computer operators could probably pick and pack with the best of them.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented. During the previous recession, they even went so far as to buy us steel-toed shoes to have at the ready should we be needed in the Land of Pickpack. A few of us were actually called to duty. Somehow, I avoided the draft and my shoes sit unused in the locker we got about the same time, which I also don’t use. Even if we claimed to have lost the shoes this time around, they have these steel-toed booties on a large hanging shoerack for the occasional guests in the warehouse. There’s even a nice wooden park bench where you can sit while you put on your booties.

That bench is probably the homiest thing in the entire 50,000-square-foot expanse of industrially decorated interior space. Amidst the towering shelves, speeding forklifts and belly-high tables there winds a parallel set of yellow lines that represent the safety zone for those whose feet aren’t steel-encased. This is the path I was taking to the men’s room earlier today. Part of the pathway includes now-faded yellow block lettering that represented an earlier manager’s attempt to recognize exceptional work with a “walk of fame”. Each entry included the person’s name and the date that name was memorialized into the floor. We stopped doing this about six years ago, as someone finally realized there were few opportunities for excellence when it came to envelope-stuffing.

I stay mostly between the lines as I make my way around several corners on the way to the restroom/breakroom suite. (If I’m feeling a little peeved on a particular day, I might actually cut a corner or two, just to spite my corporate masters.) Along the way, I pass a small caged area that allows delivery men and the ever-changing temporary workforce to enter the building and page for assistance without compromising security. I’m always afraid someone will be caged there as I’m walking by and will call out to me for assistance. I’m not authorized to do anything to help them, and it’s just a little too tempting to want to throw peanuts at them and watch their antics. I keep my head down and hustle by the cage as quickly as possible.

When I finally get to the facilities, I find that it’s every bit as hygienic as the one I usually patronize. The main difference in the men’s room for the warehouse is that there’s a framed notice on the wall with bullet-pointed suggestions and rules of use. Most are the usual stuff you might expect – notify your supervisor if the toilet paper runs out, don’t let the sink area become too splattered with water, etc. – but one point instructs users “don’t put your feet on the wall”. Is that really a problem? What goes on in here? It never would’ve occurred to me to scuff the wall with my pathetic normal-toed shoes, but when I see this note, I can’t help but back up and give it a good scuff.

When their restroom is being cleaned and the picker/packers have to come use our facility, there’s always a great uproar especially from the women in my office about how our lavatory is abused. Of course I don’t see it, but I sure get to hear about it. “There are paper towels on the floor,” someone will say. “The flower vase on the sink was turned over,” notes another. Animals!

I think it’s just a knee-jerk resentment that represents a minor class struggle between the white collars and the blues. We don’t like it when they dare come onto our middle-class turf to pee into our bowls and put popcorn into our microwaves (or the other way around, to hear one person describe it). Some of the resentment may be deserved, I guess. They do have a nicer breakroom than we do, not to mention one additional vending machine and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the parking lot.

But I think it might be attributable to the online safety course we’re required to take because their manual labor jobs are in the same facility as our knowledge work. Once a year, we have to read through these improbably hilarious scenarios that spell out how to work safely, then take a multiple-choice exam at the end. (One favorite question is “Who should you notify before you enter an electrified or enclosed space? A. Your supervisor; B. the CEO; or C. your family”). If the exercise weren’t so laughable, you’d be tempted to haul out those steely boots and kick your computer monitor.

But I know where they’d send me if I tried that, so I’m staying out of the warehouse as much as I can.