Gonna start this off by saying I'm not from america, but Europe. I applied for this courier service's workplace, I will be a warehouse worker. And from what I've seen in videos, I guess this job would have been a thing I liked doing….not.
There were so many red flags with it, but like I said in the title – First job, I didn't want to disappoint my dad. The interview was a joke, I got a call to go to the warehouse where I'd talk with the manager guy in-person, and I did. The thing was….There weren't any fancy questions, I was somewhat prepared to say a joke, give a good answer to some commonly asked questions, like the “Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?” question.
But no. It wasn't anything like that. “Wanna work?” “Where have you worked until now?” and “Do you lift?” once I answered those, it was a simple “We will go through the other candidates, thanks for coming” and that was it. Five minutes, literally.
A few days later, I got a call from the manager again and he started the conversation with “When are you ready to start working?” so I'm thinking to myself “Oh shit, I finally get to start working!”. The dude listed the documents I needed, but I asked if I can call him back in a few hours so I can note down the stuff I need so there's no missing documents on my first day.
That was done, then I had to go hand them in. And that's where the red flags started clearly showing themselves:
- The job offer said 5 working days. The manager (different guy this time) says 6 working days. I told him “But the offer said 5?” and the manager asked me “Do you want to continue?” and me being a naive idiot who wanted a first job just agreed and moved on…
- No mention of pay anywhere, the offer had no info, the managers also didn't disclose any information.
- No mention of what my shifts will be. Offer said “Dynamic work environment”, the manager tells me 1 week of day shifts, 1 week of night shifts.
- No mention of what I will be exactly doing.
And despite all of this, I didn't have enough time to think about it on the spot and was worried of saying “No”, so I still signed the contract.
I go back home and I'm telling myself that I fucked up, there were too many red flags that I ignored.
I had to start with the night shifts, I thought those wouldn't be hard to do at all! …Turns out I was hella fuckin wrong. The first shift I was able to tank through, but after I was done with it and was at home, that's where things started to really go to shit: I couldn't fall asleep in broad daylight despite being absolutely deprived of sleep.
I napped for like…2 hours (and mind you, I couldn't get any sleep before the first shift. The difference was 2-3 hours of sleep vs none, so I'd go to work the way I currently am) after which I tried to play a videogame and I just couldn't. My eyes were actively fighting the will to keep my mind awake, but it was to no avail. So I tried to nap some more at like 5pm, but it didn't happen.
I forgot to mention: My first night shift was at 3am. After I was done with my shift, I was told to come at 1am the next shift. How fucking brutal. So I go to sleep at like 8pm like some kind of vampire, and wake up at 12am.
I was absolutely destroyed mentally. I felt so sick, nausea had taken control of me. My dad drove me to work this time because I couldn't, and while waiting at a local ferry spot (for a quicker route to work), hallucinations started to kick in. I thought that the car was slowly rolling into the water, and at times I wanted to pull the handbrake, but I knew it was my mind playing tricks on me. The one time I actually instinctively went for the handbrake again, turns out that my dad pulled it since he parked on the spot.
The work shift went as the last one, pretty much. I got no idea what to do, where to go in order to get this thing that my coworker asked me to get….no idea where to drag the empty cages (which had packages), struggling to work with the manual forklift cart, and also being so sleep deprived that I almost got hit a bunch of times by other coworkers dragging cages full of packages into the working area.
I had enough, I said I was going to quit and not even work my 1 month leave. Unless I only get to work day shifts, I would. But I was told that there's just 1 week of day and 1 week of night shifts again, so I just dropped it. A bunch of days getting woken up at 8am to go sign one document later, I was….out. Thankfully I didn't get into any trouble for my stupid leave, but my God I was absolutely destroyed 2 days in.
Please value your sleep and wellbeing, don't work night shifts and don't be as naive as I was with my first job.