One of the most formative experiences of my youth occurred between my freshman and sophomore years of college, when I spent the summer working in a warehouse for a hardware store.
Up until that point, my version of manual labor was quite different than everyone else’s. As the typical spoiled first-born child from a middle-class family, my worldview was already quite warped. I thought blue collar work meant sacrificing half of a Saturday to help your buddy’s uncle mulch his yard. You stand around holding a garden rake for a few hours acting busy and he hands you a 100-dollar bill afterwards and treats you and your friend to a nice dinner at Outback Steakhouse. I had never had a real job before; I was more allergic to employment than a 3rd grader with a peanut allergy.
So when I first showed up to the [redacted] warehouse at the ripe hour of 6 AM on that cool summer morning, I was in for quite the culture shock. On my first day, I walked through the doors with the swagger of an irrationally confident 19-year-old punk. By week 3, I would instead be humbly shuffling through those doors, like a peasant in the bread line, knowing damn well that 10 hours of extreme suffering stood on the other side.
The first day was a walk in the park, filled with corporate indoctrination videos filmed on a toaster, a tour of the building, and paperwork. I was wearing a salmon-colored Ralph Lauren hat backwards, a Nike t-shirt, and gym shorts. I might as well have been wearing a Rolex in a Brazilian favela.
On day two, I met my manager Joe, who was exactly what you would expect of a back-office manager at a regional warehouse. Joe was 45 going on 65 in the looks department. He walked around with a superiority complex, and without a doubt was severely underpaid. Rumor had it that he was on his 3rd marriage, with the first two ending in infidelity scandals.
Joe gave me the unfortunate news that instead of working in the shipping lanes with my two high school friends, I would instead be joining the ranks of the order fillers (or “pickers”, as they were so eloquently called in logistics lingo), who were responsible for transporting selected product from the shelves to the trucking lanes. How exciting. They wasted no time, and by day 3, I was set to start the education necessary for becoming the Michael Phelps of order filling.
My trainer’s name was Vince. He was a middle-aged French guy, with a lanky build, a dark complexion, and a thick but comprehendible accent. Like the rest of his compatriots, Vince had a war-torn face and melancholic eyes. Despite this, there was something welcoming about Vince’s aura – he resembled the prototypical old man posted outside of the café with an ashtray, newspaper, and a life story to share.
Vince was an expert and truly married to the game – he was able to train me and still meet his productivity numbers, all while doing it with a wide smile on his face. He was a gentleman through and through; he even wore gloves when he was snatching items off the shelf, as if he was a Parisian waiter serving Boeuf Bourguignon in a Michelin star restaurant perched along the Seine. He placed shipping labels on products as if he was some hipster chick placing the finishing touches on her overpriced Etsy crafts. I genuinely admired Vince, and I still to this day hope the dude has moved on to bigger and better things.
I caught on quickly, like I do with most things in life, and soon enough, Vince was ready to let me leave the nest and venture out on my own into the never-ending forest of rows and aisles that made up the warehouse. I was soon in for a rude awakening about the nature of warehouse life.
The harsh reality is that being an order filler is both a grueling and lonely job. Grueling because you are on your feet all day, constantly walking between your tugger and the shelves, loading product onto your carts (some of the items were well over 100 pounds), all while having the mental fortitude to stay locked in and meet your productivity numbers. Lonely because it was just you out there in the perpetual sea of product. There was no time to stop and chat like those degenerates in shipping did all day, because there were goals to be met. Product to be moved. Hardware stores all across the nation relied on you to replenish their supplies, and if that didn’t give oneself a deep purpose, then I don’t know what would.
Despite the loneliness, I still was able to get to know some of the characters that roamed those aisles with me, as well as the culture they curated. Without a doubt it was the best part of working there, and I still discuss these creatures to this day with my friends. Of course, you had Vince, who I described before. And there was also Bob, a single man in his 50s, who sported a Dodgers cap and never hesitated to tell you how he felt about Hillary Clinton. And Helen, the closet lesbian who so desperately tried to be “one of the guys”, but just ended up coming off as a giant c**t (Bob’s words, not mine). And who could forget Steve, the forklift operator who wore a cutoff and a bandana that made him look like a pirate, as if he was Blackbeard navigating the choppy waters of the Caribbean.
And so beyond the ceaseless misery, I began to see the beauty in the struggle. If nothing else, these characters I so affectionately described were (for the most part) good, honest people with a strong sense of hard work and an addiction to cortisol and nicotine. Some of them deserved better, some of them probably deserved worse, but on average, they were exactly where they were supposed to be.
There is something to be said about the “clock-in, clock-out” style of work. Manual laborers may not be the most talented or brilliant people in the world. But one skill they do possess that most white-collar workers lack is the ability to flip the switch. When they are at work, they are at work. When they aren’t, they aren’t. Forklift operators aren’t toiling around with a monetized social media account side-hustle while they stock the top shelves. Order fillers aren’t checking emails at family dinner to see if their boss made comments on the latest deliverable. And the people that work in shipping certainly aren’t tossing and turning at night, fretting over their upcoming performance review.
In the era of connectivity and the rise of remote work, the line between work time and rest time has been blurred. I am guilty of it myself. And despite my persistence to never step foot in a fluorescently lit office ever again, I do recognize the dangers of always having my laptop plugged in to the matrix. This year, I will attempt to cultivate the spirit of the blue-collar man. Put in the blood, sweat, and tears when necessary, and when it is time to stop, there must be no questions asked.
I must admit, leaving the warehouse at the end of Summer 2016 to head back to school was a bittersweet experience for me. While I certainly would not miss the strenuous hours racked up performing hard labor in that sweatshop, I would miss the people and the culture. The yellow-stained breakroom that hasn’t seen a renovation since 1970 will forever be a piece of nostalgia for me. The ability to tough it out and grind through lengthy periods of exhaustion is something that I never would have learned anywhere else, not even on a football field. And most importantly, the family of snake-eaters, societal misfits, screwballs and hard-nosed people who earned an honest living at that wretched place will always be a part of my spirit.
Working in a blue-collar environment for a few short months taught me a variety of lessons. It built character in a unique way. It obviously kept things in perspective for me, and cemented my reasons for attending college. It made me recognize the importance of separating work and rest, as I mentioned above. But most importantly, working a blue collar job made me a more interesting person. There are separate worlds within the boundaries of our own that we do not even know exist. Worlds where there is a foreign language and culture. Worlds that exist within our own city limits and towns. Simply setting foot in them, even for a brief period of time, will freshen your perspective, broaden your horizons, and if nothing else, give you some funny stories to tell.
Onwards,
Tony
PS: One last shoutout to my man Vince. No doubt that you are currently living out your destiny as an international man of mystery. Godspeed to you sir.
Neat!