Warehouse Woes

25 11 2021

It’s late summer and my back is on the verge of giving out.

Ten months into the warehouse job and the pain is plenty. It was bound to happen.

“I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long,” my buddy Zac said over our weekly brew pub outing. Zac arrived in Portland shortly after I took the warehouse job. We worked together at Glacier. The older I get the more I recognize how great those park gigs were.

Pain began pulsing up and through my shoulders last week. Maybe I should be warming up and stretching more before engaging in the heavy push, pull, reach, bend and climbing that is this warehouse job. But who has time for stretches when you gotta make rate and stay on task?

After studying some cloud computing — on my own time mind you — I’ve come to the conclusion this site is a design to fail situation. On top of the chaos with COVID, during which management was still pushing pre-COVID lofty rates as bodies continued to drop, a construction project was launched inside the warehouse which appeared to counter the current operational methods.

Project Tornado

And then vaccine wars started. The company took a laissez-faire approach at first, so we had to go off-site in search of the vaccine. Testing continued on-site where the number of positive cases topped the state for private commercial employers.

Before COVID, this warehouse was one of the company’s leaders in injury rates.

I tried to bring dangerous situations to the attention of management but soon learned retaliation was a consequence of whistle blowing: A flat tire in the parking lot. Pallets deliberately dropped on the floor creating loud, gun shot like bangs while your back is turned. That sort of thing.

“It’s the culture here,” a process assistant told me. Likely a reflection of Portland’s failed leadership.

A culture of anarchary in the streets with strict virus protocols from the state is a deadly mix.

Those of us who got the vaccine were allowed to work unmasked, which in the swealtering summer heat was a relief, while those who refused the vaccine were required to keep masking. This policy produced division, resentment and gang-like behavior.

While waiting for station assignments one day, I turned to ask a young co-worker if he had considered getting vaccinated and his reaction was an emotional detonation.

“Don’t talk to me!,” he said. “I don’t like you!”

When I brought this up to human resources, their response was, “John, nobody is required to speak to you and you cannot ask anyone their vaccination status.” For the record, I asked if he had “considered” getting vaccinated.

People not talking to each other in this warehouse was one of the first things that struck me as odd. Workers walk around like their dog just got run over. No eye contact. The robots have more personality. Sadness permeates throughout the miles long facility, which measures the length of four football fields. Some sit on the toilet for long periods of time to escape having to go back on to the noisy and treacherous floor.

Conditions are so bad now I shudder to think what it was like before the virus hit. It’s obvious there is not enough suckers desperate enough to risk their health to keep the company’s speed driven model on a sustainable path. The average warehouse worker lasts three days on the job, I’m told. Enforce the rules too much and they quit and then no one gets their Christmas gifts. Oh vey.

When I first started I imagined that someone — David, T or even Pete Buttigieg — would walk in, sweep me up and take me outta there a la An Officer and a Gentleman. That fantasy quickly turned into the harsh reality that no writer should ever romantize this kind of work.

This has been a hard, demoralizing job. I have never watched a clock or schemed how long I could take refilling a water bottle or walking to the bathroom. We’re all back to wearing masks again and yet somehow the anti-vaxxers have managed to keep their roles as training and learning ambassadors. This is ridiculous on so many levels. A global company where vaccinations are required to travel employs people who deny science to train new hires? What is wrong with this picture?

I could reveal so much more, but I think I have found the 21st century version of Upton Sinclair’s Jungle. Now the challenge is to accept what I cannot change and muster the courage — and smile — to change the things I can.


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Prologue

26 12 2020

In Ulysses, the great Irish writer James Joyce wrote “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

And so it is, I stood on the street corner that cold, rainy October day. Emotionally naked, I watched her drive away for the last time. Little did I know, though there were hints, but T would go on to ghost me. Not a word from her since. She was irritated with my stagnant life choices. My decision to take an entry level warehouse job had particularly annoyed her.

“Have you thought about starting your own company?” she asked at our last breakfast together.

Weeks later, I would find myself inside that warehouse working amid a coronavirus outbreak. Masked, gloved and trying to learn at a distance as noisy conveyor belts, alarms and honking forklifts sounded throughout the long, hard overnight shift. My world had changed drastically.

I was severely depressed and paralyzed by fear. All I did was work and sleep. My marriage was over, but unraveling its entanglements so that we could both exit without too much financial hardship was the challenge. An old bus driving buddy from Glacier moved into the area and reached out which got me out of bed on my off days.

The virus had taken its toll on the country and in the Democratically-run Pacific Northwest, restrictions were harsh. The election, thank God, is over, but a bitter divide remains. At the warehouse outside the city limits to the east, I find more diverse opinions expressed than at the hipster grocery store in the city’s affluent northwestern hills. The lack of enthusiasm here is striking and I sense a backlash brewing among some of the workers.

T — ever beautiful — still shows up in my dreams and the more I ponder our affair the more it seemed as if I had been looking in the mirror. She complained about her back hurting right before she dropped me off on that street corner. A couple months later, just days before Christmas I sat in the warehouse breakroom — its tables and chairs separated by plastic partitions with masked workers lumbering exhaustingly in and out. On the walls were words from the corporation’s list of leadership principles. This one hit home for me:

Have Backbone. Disagree and Commit.


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Finishing Strong

21 09 2014

A long, hard and arduous summer has come to an end.

There were times when I felt that I had bitten off more than I could chew. The entire experience at Lake McDonald Lodge reminded me of the summer of 2010 and my ill-fated campaign for public office. Too many people were watching and depending on me and no matter how hard the going was, I simply could not quit.

I quit an important position before and vowed never to do that again.

So this summer was indeed a journey of perseverance, but I leave Montana with a new skill set and a hardened exterior.

St. Mary Lake

St. Mary Lake

Much like that race for the Florida House, I began this Glacier project cautiously, scared, intimidated at times and trying to please all while maintaining that “nice guy” image.

But some people take advantage of kindness. Others do not know the meaning of the word. This I have learned the hard way.

Saying “No” is hard. Getting people to accept “No” as your final answer is harder. And perhaps the hardest of all is understanding why we — as human beings — cannot do certain things.

There is no doubt I have changed because of my five months in Glacier National Park — enforcing federal regulations, interpreting nature’s wonders and, above all, keeping my cool during day-to-day operations at the lodge. As much as I would have enjoyed going out with guys and gals and drinking the night away, responsibility prevented that. Someone had to rise at 6 a.m. to get this show on the road.

And, make no mistake, this show was a profitable one.

The park experienced record numbers in visitation, prompting our superintendent to remark how “intense” a summer season it was. At the lodge, revenue exceeded projections and as I type tourists are still streaming in to see the changing colors of autumn.

The change in me is obvious. My first foray into project management has led to a great deal of personal growth. In September, I commanded our bus fleet with an authority that was no where to be found when I stepped off the plane last May in Missoula. I came here in search of answers to my station in life. What I found was a mountain’s worth of confidence.

“What happened to that cheerful guy?,” one of our drivers commented after he observed me forcefully explaining, once again, the Going-To-The-Sun Road was closed due to a snow and ice storm.

“He adapted,” I replied.

I certainly realize what I am capable of after this summer. I am on another level career-wise and, perhaps, future employers will recognize such as I return to my home state in hopes of putting these new skills to good use. We’ll see what offers come my way, but already I am feeling nostaglic for what I went through.

All of the drivers and their quirks, demanding and often dehumanizing tourists, the isolation, the shitty food — it all makes me laugh now even though, privately, in July, I would drive across the park and suddenly burst into tears of stress for what the day had brought.

Above all, it is important to remember the majestic beauty of our national parks. It is, first and foremost, why I am here. And to that end, I think I did a damn good job of preserving and protecting Glacier National Park.

Check that … I know I did.

 

 

 

 

 


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Categories : Confidence, Glacier, Montana, Work