Here's What I Learned Working at a Warehouse

Warning: I open up about drugs, firearms, misogyny, rodents, crime, shame, homelessness, and sweaty straphangers.

My first job has a story, but I’m gonna skip it and tell you about my second job, which has a better story…

I graduated high school early and got a job at a warehouse. Though the place is long gone, let’s just call it Widget Contractor Supplies warehouse. Each weekday, I took the subway from Brooklyn, where I lived with my parents, to 34th Street in Manhattan — a 1-hour commute, each way, on a good day — straphanging in a crowded train that often sweltered because the air conditioners were broken and the windows didn’t open.

When I got off the train, I had a 20-minute walk to the warehouse, which sat on the perimeter of the neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen. This was before either Brooklyn or Hell’s Kitchen were the hipster havens they are today.

Horse Racing and Rude Comments

The size and setting of the place were like the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin, but darker and dirtier.

Before clocking in, we warehouse guys gathered under a fluorescent fixture in the dusty basement, the truck drivers in a semi-circle drinking orange juice laced with vodka. The topics of conversation were either sports or what we now call “locker room talk.”

At 8am, after getting sufficiently buzzed and punching the clock, the drivers headed out to make deliveries. The rest of us got busy unloading shipments or picking orders from the shelves and packing them up.

At noon, we clocked out for lunch, and most of the older guys sat on crates in front of the warehouse, talking about horse racing and making rude comments to women who walked past.

(Horse racing was a big thing with this crew. One of the sales guys, in fact, ran a bookie operation out of his office.)

The younger guys would sometimes cram into a closet in the most remote corner of the basement and smoke weed, telling tall tales about the giant rat that supposedly nested back there.

When Sales Sold Stuff We Didn’t Have

Once, I went to a deli with a couple of the guys and, as we walked around the block, scarfing down our roast beef “heroes” (i.e. sub sandwiches) in our grimy, white T-shirts, my co-workers — Vince and Larry — swore me to secrecy and proceeded making plans to move a bunch of the Widgets to the basement steps that led up to the cellar door, so they could come back at night and easily steal them, then sell them to Widget stores around the city. After briefly weighing pros and cons, they agreed not to bring guns for the theft.

When our sales guys sold stuff we didn’t have, they sent me, hand truck in tow, to the competitor’s warehouse across the street. The workers there were the only ones who could find ways to treat me more demeaningly than my own employer, calling me names, yelling at me, or leaving en masse for lunch when they saw me coming.

Poor Man. Rich Man.

An elderly homeless guy, Little Louie, worked in our warehouse, packing boxes into bigger boxes. He smelled so bad it was hard to be near him, but he was gentle-hearted. He talked to himself incessantly, and the other guys got on him about it. “If you don’t shut up, Louie, I’m gonna…” It was teasing more than a genuine threat.

Louie once disappeared for a couple of weeks and Vince had to take over his job. He was packing up a can of contractor hand soap — the kind a construction worker or plumber might use — and he made a big show of carefully prying off the lid, vertically jamming a pen into the container until it was submerged in the creamy soap, and replacing the lid. The idea was that a customer would open the can and stick his hand in and — I don’t know — impale it on the pen?

The owner, Old Joe, worked upstairs in an air conditioned office with a couple of female clerical workers. He had to be at least 80 years old and was right out of a Dickens story. He grumbled and snarled — never a kind word or smile for anyone — and had a reputation for being stingy.

Little Louie and Old Joe — the homeless fellow and the wealthy owner — had something in common: They both used rope instead of a belt to keep their pants up.

Everything I’m telling you — except the actual identities of the company, people, and industry — is true.

Shame at Work

Eventually, Old Joe needed another clerk in the office to process invoices. I suspect he thought I’d be good at it because I was college-bound and wore glasses. Of course, the warehouse guys teased me about moving upstairs, but not too seriously. Despite a diversity of races, nationalities, and life circumstances in the warehouse, there was esprit de corps that even getting kicked upstairs couldn’t break.

After a couple of days of me adding up numbers and filling out forms, Old Joe figured out that my work was riddled with errors. I was ashamed, but couldn’t get on track. The work was too boring for me; I couldn’t stay focused. I got kicked back downstairs. Best. Demotion. Ever. To this day, I’d rather unload trucks than do tedious desk work.

Do I think this job experience was positive? Or negative?

Believe it or not, I’ll vote positive. But not because I learned the value of a dollar or to appreciate a hard day’s work. And not because I found meaning or purpose in the work. None of these occurred.

Lessons Learned

One thing I learned from this job, and the many warehouse, retail, and food service jobs I had thereafter, is not to assume most people’s work lives are anything like mine and yours.

Workers like Little Louie, Old Joe, the bookie, the thieves, the office underlings, the truck drivers… We live and work among them — not the warehouse employees I worked with, specifically, but others with their own unique challenges and identities.

We also live and work among the women getting harassed on the street; the legions of exhausted commuters; the transportation workers taking flack from those commuters when they can’t stick to schedules they don’t control; tradespeople suffering injury or indignity, whether it’s being stabbed by a pen in their soap or something worse; and the gamblers sacrificing their paychecks to dreams of easy street.

New, young workforce members are also still there, testing the work world in the same way they’ve tested limits since infancy.

When I think about employee wellbeing, my mind turns to those workers. And, make no mistake, I’ve found that, like members of the workforce everywhere, most work hard, pursue excellence, and act with the utmost integrity.

Sure, I care about office workers, too. Working in a corporate desk job — in an office or work-from-home — takes its toll. But many of us (not all) at desks have access to resources… and the possibility of a better future.

Ignore Less

Wellbeing advocates don’t often talk about those whose employment (and/or non-work life) is so bleak they sometimes turn to things like bookmaking, thievery, company sabotage, and drugs. We act as if the work world’s biggest problems are five-day work weeks; having to be present at the office; being scheduled for too many meetings; or insufficient “empathy training” for leaders.

We needn’t focus employee wellbeing efforts on criminals, substance misusers, misogynists, or even unhoused workers, but nor should we focus on the most privileged employees.

There’s a majority of people in between — hard workers, including those in healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, food service, retail, mining (as well as warehouses and offices). Maybe, for starters, we could ignore them a little bit less?

My early job was positive, because it allowed me to experience — to a tiny extent — a work world that otherwise would’ve only been something I’d read about or observed from the outside.

It’s a lesson I’ve aspired to keep in the forefront of my mind throughout my career as an employee wellness professional.