About thirteen hours ago I quit my job of three years at a warehouse for a retail store. I'm twenty four and this has been my second job, my first real job that was full time to say. I don't have anything to fall back on career wise, but I'll be looking for a new job in the coming days.
To be honest I'm really nervous, and I found myself sitting and staring into the void lost in thought the rest of the day. I guess you can say I'm scared for the future?
The company I worked for didn't put any money into new equipment so everything was, “ghetto rigged” as my other coworkers said. We worked on a quota system having to reach 80% every review, unfortunately I stopped reaching my goal each week and was moved to close-outs which was a small team who threw seasonal boxes in a smaller tucked away warehouse that didnt run on the quota system. I appreciated the main warehouse manager keeping me when he could have thrown me out on my ass since I failed my goals.
So I ended up in close-outs with a new manager. Went alright for a while till I started realizing that there was one coworker who was this new managers favorite. He would get to go home early; even an hour or two earlier just because they were buddy buddy. All of the other workers in close-outs including me despised this manager favorite because he was never sent to the other buildings to assist and he always went home early. I was sent often to assist in the main warehouse because I knew how to operate one of those story shelf pickers, I think they are called, “cherry pickers”? I told my boss many times I don't feel comfortable going up in the air because I'm afraid of heights; it's even worse when you have to grab a small box at the very back of a pallet shelf. I've even had to monkey climb into the racks itself because a pallet would get stuck on the sliding bars and not pull out fully.
Essentially how it ended was they sent me to the central warehouse and I refused, I gave the current close-our manager my headset, locker keys and clock in/out card after swiping out and told them I quit there and then. I drove home a bit shook because I've never done something like this and never would have thought I'd just give up like that. I guess it was just the boiling point and that was the last straw for me.
This was a very toxic work environment too, I've had reported a specific coworker about three times to my manager over physical threats and harassment; nothing had ever been done about it, this was paperwork complaints even. I've had many thoughts of suicide and venting over everything with my partner. The company had very high turnover, new workers would quit after 1-2 weeks because they experienced the awfulness of that place, which usually lead to skeleton crewing the warehouse and doing lots of mandatory overtime. (While I did complain because we worked a ton, it was still some nice extra overtime pay). I've almost had my foot/leg crushed by a not very observant or careful lead on a dockloader. (Thank God he had a good reaction time though as soon as I screamed out in pain, while nothing was broken it was severe bruising afterwards. Once I felt the tire digging into my leg I pretty much accepted the fact I was going to have something broken that day, but thankfully not!) We sadly had someone pass away in the hospital one shift because a careless first shifter ran over one of our coworkers. This lead to the company blaming the victim for his death and that made a lot of good workers either quit on the spot or put in their two weeks. That accident is what forced the company to put a speed checkpoint and stopping signs all over the place, including us to start wearing safety vests at all times on company property.
I apologize for all the extra rambling in this vent, I'm unsure if my job or I'm the one at fault or if I did the right thing by quitting on the spot, especially since I didn't put my two weeks in or had another job lined up. While I do have a very weird feeling inside of me I feel a bit happier knowing I don't have to experience that place anymore.