Here's the shot- you bust your ass working for a warehousing temp agency, unloading bullshit containers just above minimum wage, in the slim hope that whoever company you're assigned to takes you in. It finally happened after a year and a half- within 3 days of a new assignment, the manager of this place hired me on (well, promised that he would after I got my required temp hours in, which I did)
It's a very small warehouse, only 6 dock doors, 2 forklifts, and 1 reach truck. Here's some highlights from when I started:
-Super messy bulk, that was mixed together with impromptu pick locations. You had to parkour on top of double stacked pallets to get to certain items in the bulk area.
-If the reach truck driver mishandled product in the racking, causing it to fall on top of said racking, the manager would make said reach driver lift him & a separate guy up in a steel cage (with no harness) to individually grab all the product that fell off.
-The main guys who were hired on would regularly have water pistol battles and play hide & seek on the warehouse floor. One of those guys would regularly call out without notice 2-3 times every week, and the manager gave him the OK every time. I wouldn't of cared if there was someone to cover for him, which there wasn't.
Anyway, I learn & excel in all the functions, whether it be by picking at top-rate and unloading 3-4 containers per day on average. Higher management from Company HQ came down one day to observe- they fire all the main guys except me and my “trainer” Andrew, who they kept since he wasn't doing any weird shit like what the other guys were doing. I just thought he sucked ass (he's one of those people that think they own you because they bought you food/gifts).
They put me and Andrew through the wringer- 10 hour days, 7 days a week, one day off per month that me and a separate HQ supervisor begged the Operations Manager for (some of them couldn't take it either). The shift scheduling I could tolerate, since I never got that much OT money before. What sucked is that we had to re-organize the entire warehouse from scratch, since we had lots of pick locations in the top racks, and bulk with partial & damaged pallets up the asshole. Andrew quit after 3 weeks with the new schedule. I endured the whole way through.
Company HQ was so impressed that they offered to make me the new main reach truck driver (I learned as an emergency measure after the main guys got fired, but it wasn't official until they offered). I declined since I wasn't fully comfortable driving at the time, so they hired a new guy through Indeed named Jesse to take up the mantle. Jesse sucked. On multiple occasions, he got uncomfortably close to putting a hole through the roof (our pallets were tall) or denting a light fixture. After he got fired, I told my boss “I can't let this happen again, put me on that reach”.
Company HQ did good at organizing pick locations while they were here, but there was still other things I could do. Now that I was on the reach, I went out of my way to move pick pallets around, re-organize the bulk area, anything I could do to make it so everyone could remember where all this shit was (everything was picked manually with paper and pen, if you didn't know where something was in your head, you're shit outta luck). Ofc, this is always cut short whenever containers arrived, since on top of managing inventory, organizing pallets, being the fastest picker in the WH, being the primary pick restocker, impromptu lead, keeping tabs on damages, and E-Commerce picker, it was also my responsibility to lead container unloads. In spite of all that, I still managed to make the racks and bulk align with my vision after 6 months of upkeep.
Everyone saw me as “The Machine”. That's what they called me. Which I was, since I only took 4 days off in the 3 years I worked there. That nickname gave me the credibility to take a day off without question if I wanted, but to be perfectly honest, at the core, this warehouse is a house of cards: the moment you look away, it falls apart, and you have to build it back up again.
2 years pass. I get high of the praise from being “The Machine”, trying to sweep the over-reliance under the rug, since I never felt this “needed” at everywhere else I worked, otherwise I would've quit by now. Someone from Company HQ (name was Stephen) comes down and despises how everyone on the floor at the time is “taking advantage” of my abilities, even though I engineered it to be this way since the company isn't great at facilitating a team effort, and less errors were made the more I did stuff solo. He literally said that he'd rather have clones of me over them, right to their faces during an end-of-day meeting. They all walked out during lunch the day after.
Even though Stephen hired 2 temps, it didn't change the fact that I was the only normal WH worker left. He got demoted by the regional manager for contributing to the walk-out, whom does some desperation hires and brings in 3 genuinely toxic shitheads whom shall remain unnamed. The only good thing Stephen did was promote me to Lead, but those 3 guys sapped all my confidence away. One damaged equipment on the daily, the 2nd regularly harassed office personnel, and the 3rd would throw a fit if someone “moved his equipment”. I wish I turned down the position, I was not equipped for it.
2 of the 3 got fired within the next three months, but the damage was done. I never saw the place in the same light again. These guys were worse than the people who “took advantage” of me.
There's light at the end of the tunnel though. We got a very experienced temp come in named Brett, who we ended up hiring on full-time. This guy was my battle-buddy- after I taught him all the functions, he was fully independent. He even got promoted to backup manager. None of this would've happened without my support though, since I had to re-assure him multiple times that Company HQ would pull us some favors if our supervisor was phoning it in, so to speak. If only the pay was better, than maybe he could've stayed longer (the supervisor at the time got on our nerves a lot about trivial shit- it was enough to get him to quit)
I was alone in this position after he left. 3 months go by. On my birthday, I end up testing positive for Covid. I decided, then and there, that I would send in my resignation letter over email, and work somewhere else.
I listed Brett as a reference in my new resume (very convenient, since we became friends (which gave me lots of legroom) and got this new job that pays over $5 an hour more.
I'm not sure how good I was at explaining all this, I'm just glad I'll never have to go back there ever again.