A bit less than 3 weeks ago, I was moved from the department that I’d started in at my company and made to join a new one where someone had quit without notice. I wasn’t told this, and instead was told that I had ‘talents that had been noticed that made me suited to the new role’.
This new role is far more physically demanding than the previous one, requiring me to lift heavy boxes throughout my entire shift. After seeing the nature of the work, I voiced my concerns that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the physicality the new position, but I was told that “I shouldn’t feel like I would just be able to return to my old department if this didn’t work out.”
And then on my first day there was almost an accident.
It was while showing me how pallets of boxes were loaded onto the truck. The process was for them to be pushed down a ramp that causes them to ‘jolt’ halfway, and requires someone to stand in front of them to stop them from just rolling and slamming into the back of the truck.
The stacks are secured with cling-wrap, but our department doesn’t have a wrapping machine, so we have to do it by hand, which given the mismatched nature of the boxes sometimes leads to a weak wrap or a wobbly stack.
It was during that ‘jolt’ on the ramp that a stack that ‘only’ went up to my neck broke open as I was standing a few feet behind it. I’d estimate it weighed maybe 400 pounds total or about half of normal. It freaked me out a bit. Especially when my coworker told me that a full sized one had very nearly fallen on top of her a couple of days prior.
I’ve seen it happen maybe two or three times more in the couple of weeks since I’ve been there, each a near miss, but the worst happened when my department head was helping to move some out of the truck, I was standing behind my coworker, who was behind the pallet, pushing up and out of the truck, when one of the boxes at the top came free and started sliding towards her. I saw it was heading for her head/neck, so I reached up to stop it, only to find it was way heavier than I’d imagined, so I could only kinda guide it so it fell off to the side of her. It was a car break hub or something, idk car parts, but it was heavy enough to brain her, and I’ve no doubt it would have if I hadn’t been there.
And then this last Friday it happened again. Whole stack split in half and I had to jump out of the way to avoid being under it, so I complained again and got sneered at by my boss for asking if we could record the incident, and got told 'just don't do it then if you feel so unsafe' which is basically impossible because it'd mean my coworker and basically the boss when he's not around getting pissed at me.
I'm honestly at the end of my rope.
Is there anything I can do? I know just quitting renders me intelligible for unemployment, and I don't have the means to support myself long term while I find another job.