Not even the worst day at a job!
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
It was around 3:30 AM, and I was preparing for my first day at a new job I was going to be doing… well, I don’t know. I put the chicken alfredo I made the night before in my lunch bag and ventured into the cool night. I put the address in my phone’s GPS… It was the wrong address. The first sign it was going to be a long day. I put “road” instead of “drive,” and it sent me to an apartment complex. So, I get there at 4:05 AM I was supposed to be there at 4:00 AM — not too bad. There is no lead or supervisor around; everyone is just sitting looking extremely tired. Now, this is not my first job or first warehouse job. I know how this goes: interesting people, tedious duties, lousy management, and long hours are nothing new. A guy comes out of a room looking like he came from coal mining. He tells us to gather around. Then he says, ” OSHA is coming today, so everyone be on your best behavior, and we had someone who was burned from their left cheek to their wrist.” He paused. “He’s going to need skin graft surgery.” he paused for the second time. “If you don’t have the right equipment or don’t feel safe, tell me, I will remove you.” Once again he paused. “Ok let’s get to work.” I quickly found out he was the supervisor.
First, OSHA stands for Occupational Safety and Health Administration. I’ve been at a lot of jobs and heard about OSHA, but they never came. I wasn’t worried about that, but for someone to be injured so badly they need skin graft surgery I was like “what?” Nobody, I mean nobody, seemed too bothered, like that type of incident happens all the time. The supervisor paired me with an old dude who kept telling me what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m spraying water off metal plates as they pass by. They’re all different shapes and sizes and are all hanging on a rack. Something happened where we all had to wait for about an hour to start work. While we were waiting, I went to the one break room the building had to put my pasta down. As time past men dress in business attire were walking around checking everything, but not talking to anyone but the supervisor. Those men worked for OSHA They didn’t seem too worried and I don’t know why.
It was around 6:00 AM when the workday actually started, then boom!— the supervisor comes with an…
