Mine was Derek.ĭerek was ambiguously old old enough that being contracted to such an antisocial shift begged questions about his personal life that he was too old for anyone to dare ask. Plus, it was the ‘Night Supervisors’ – a strange, mythical breed. It was just us and a scant few supervisors in a warehouse that normally housed thousands. The pickers were out in force still but everything else was pared right back to the bone.
It was stripped back alright, but even I wasn’t ready for just what a skeleton crew they had running the graveyard hours.
I was offered a fortnight’s worth of shifts and the extra money would mean I could quit a few shifts earlier before Christmas. They were massively coveted for anyone whose personal timetable wasn’t tied to the school run, so if you were offered one you damn well took it. People said they have better pay, lower pickrate targets, fewer supervisors, fewer orders coming through, the whole lot. The night shifts were a different animal. What really stepped up the game was when I offered a night shift. Still, the money was alright, and it was only temporary. It was another shift down, and there was blood in my shoes again. Then, finally, feeling that one short jolt of pain followed by a warm, seeping damp that collects under the arc of your foot. The worst though, was spending a day running on it feeling the pressure of your step stabbing at the periphery of the blister feeling it bulge and wane with every step feeling the pressure separating the layers of skin.
#Kola kubes vodka skin
I’d check again in the morning and try to gently roll a sock over the big skin bubble of protective fluid that developed overnight. I’d check my feet after a shift and see raw, red, irritated skin. My knees ached and popped from doing more squats than an Olympic wannabe. The skin at the base of my nails was broken and peeling from being caught on 50 books and CDs an hour. It didn’t take long for the physical demands of the role to come to the fore. BEEP-One Direction-BEEP-Pokemon X-BEEP-Game of Thrones-BEEP-Breaking Bad Complete Box Set-BEEP-Hunger games bedroom poster-BEEP-Hopes-BEEP-Dreams-BEEP- Legend of Zelda Premium Wii U Giftset. He could even set it to start beeping if it got too low, like I was the bus in Speed, charging around the aisles with an imaginary Keanu Reeves on my back making sure I don’t go below 50 items/hour.Įvery shift was the same. The world over, there are babysitters violently shaking infants and thinking that at least they don’t have to carry this thing for a daily half-marathon.Įvery few hours, I’d have to check in with a supervisor who’d check my pick rate. I had a handheld little beepy machine that I had to use to scan all the items I was picking and, Christ, no sound in history has ever become so irritating as fast as that little handheld. The job was monotonous, but what was worse was the sheer pressure of the role. I took a pedometer to work one day out of curiousity and was amazed to see that I covered nearly 16 miles in a single shift. I guess you don’t become a major online retailer without knackering a few ankles. I’d worked in target based environments before so I thought I’d known what I was letting myself in for but… No. As the Christmas orders flooded in it was my job to dash around the shelves, pick them up and bring them back for packing. If you’re still in doubt, during the training period I was informed by a manager with a puffed up chest that the warehouse had its own public road built by the local council just to accommodate them. I won’t say which one just in case they see this but you might have seen people… droning on about their latest innovation.
I’d seen adverts for temporary Christmas staff for a major online retailer. Seriously, had I known that making some extra Christmas money was going to be this intense I would have just bought a big bag of macaroni and glitter and made everybody calendars. There was blood in my shoes again, as I sat in the staff room waiting for my heart-rate to return to ‘not-deadly’.
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