Warehouse Characters (Part 1): “Howard”

I've been working for the same warehouse for over two years now, and for over a year, I was working on the warehouse floor (now I am a warehouse clerk, someday I should write a post about the bizarre and senseless things I have seen truckers do).

Though I don’t miss the working conditions that I had to deal with, and the pain I had to deal with spending part of that time as a case picker, it could be fun being around various types of people, and the joking around that would often go on to make the time pass by faster.

When I worked the warehouse floor, I was on night shift, and our evening and night shifts had the reputation of being more relaxed, more light hearted, so long as the work was getting done, no one really cared.

At the time, the management we had didn’t venture out of the “front office” as it is still known as, where all of the people above the level of shift supervisor had their offices, during day shift that often, and forget about them even checking up on the night and evening crew. They liked being 9 to 5’ers. Go in, do their jobs, leave to go home to be with family, that’s what they were content with.

When I started, I kept getting stuck in the cask pick division. For those not familiar with warehouses, sometimes an entire pallet of a certain product isn’t necessary for an order, so people known as case pickers (or in some companies “order pickers), go around assembling a pallet made up cases of various products. 5 cases of this product, 10 of this, etc.

The pallets are stored on racks, and you either drive around on a stand up forklift, which is made to go in and out of tight spaces in a warehouse, or a pallet jack (we had motorized ones that were usually referred to as “walkies”, some buildings, you’re stuck with a manual pallet jack, lugging it around), picking the appropriate cases off of open pallets until either the pallet can contain no more cases (then you drop off that pallet, and start the process over again), or your order is done.

It’s repetitive, it’s tedious, and will wear on your arms, wrists, and back.

What was making it more annoying at first was this guy I’ll call “Howard” (I’ll explain that one later), who was a part time employee on evenings and nights that on most days was doing what we called “wrap and run”, putting the case pick pallets when done into a wrapping machine, and then carting them off in a propane forklift to aisles known as stage lanes, where they will wait until they are loaded into a trailer.

I had been asking people at the warehouse what Howard’s problem was, he didn’t seem to like me at all, and was always complaining and nit picking at everything I did, this wasn’t right, that wasn’t right.

It was annoying, both his behavior (I was wondering if he was an arrogant guy that thought he was going to become a shift supervisor someday), and the fact that I was trying to get things done right, I needed this job if I was ever going to have any hope of escaping the living hell I was dealing with at home. I’m always the kind of person who likes to doubt themselves all the time and I was beginning to wonder if I actually was doing anything right. It didn’t help that I’m rather obsessive, and either care too much about detail, or don’t care at all.