In Which My Co-Workers Shine

Yesterday was mighty stupid, folks. To familiarize yourself with the inner workings of retail, you should know that some stores have an unloader team. It is their job to unload trucks. This is what they get paid to do. Every now and then, someone among their ranks proves himself as a valuable human being, and as such he is transferred to a different department (the use of "he" is not my chauvinism shining through; there are rarely ever any female unloaders). However, those who end up being unloaders for the entirity of their retail career do so for a reason. They are automata. They will stand around staring into space until prodded into action. Many of them are dumbasses. Some are downright fucktards.

This is their story.

Yesterday, we had to unload the frozen/dairy truck. This, in hindsight, is what allowed all of the stupidity in the first place. Things were moving along smoothly for about five minutes. We were placing the third pallet into the meat cooler when the guy I was helping started drifting toward the left. This would not have been so much of a problem, except that there was a laden cart right where he was trying to go. "Turn to the right," I said. Immediately, the pallet swung towards the left. "The right," I said again. "There's a cart over here". The pallet turns even more to the left. "The right!" I shouted. Yes, I was shouting at that point. The pallet turned even more determinedly to the left. I stood back, as the gap between the pallet and the steel bins was narrowing, and I did not care for my position between them. I looked the guy in the eye and said, "No, your other right!" Finally, he stopped. He pulled the pallet back. He straightened it up. And he once again steered it to the left. I walked away. It was only after I thought about it that I realized he probably thought he was turning toward the right. In order to push the pallet to the right, the handle on the jack has to be turned to point left, and vice versa. But I don't care. Bastard was still turning left.

Now, before this whole thing started, I had to re-arrange some items in the freezer. There was a pallet in the very back that I had to work (and wasn't able to get around to; go figure), so when the truck came in, I pulled it out of the freezer, so I could keep it toward the front. Now, I was not the last person to load a pallet in last night. That fell to one of the unloaders. In passing, he told me he had the last one, so I went about logging the truck, which involves recording time of arrival, as well as temperature of the pallets. After that, I still had things to do in dairy. Fast forward about an hour. I suddenly remember that I had to remove a pallet, and I had the sinking suspicion that the unloaders didn't put it back into the freezer.

And I was right.

Cursing, I found a jack and was about to return the pallet, when I opened the freezer door and looked in. There was still a jack under one of the pallets. That is a big no-no. Each jack operates on a pneumatic lift. If the air inside the lift is frozen, it compresses to such a point that the jack is no longer useable. So, cursing vehemently, I grabbed the jack, pulled the trigger to release the lift, and tried to remove it. Tonk! It wouldn't come out. I held down on the trigger to see if the jack was just being slow. Tonk!

Crap. I went to get Gary. Gary and I puzzled over it for a minute, before he decided it would be best to just remove the pallet and examine it outside the freezer. Once outside, it took a few minutes, but he was able to remove the jack. He pushed it back in, and then out, three times, making sure it was clear. He pushed the pallet back into the freezer. And then I heard, "It's stuck again!"

"The jack?!"

"Yep."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

So, out came the pallet, again. This time, when the jack came out, I used a different jack, from the other side of the pallet. Into the freezer. Tonk! My jaw dropped. I looked back at Gary. Gary was doubled over, laughing. Yet again, out with the pallet. This time, suspecting the problem was not the jack, I dropped to the floor and started looking under the pallet. After a minute, I came up with a block of wood. It had been catching under the jack, keeping it from lowering enough to be removed. A simple answer to a vexing problem. I started laughing, but I was still pissed off. It had taken us about fifteen minutes, and I felt dumb, but what really angered me was the knowledge that the other guy had given up without even trying.

I looked at Gary and said, "I either need a smoke or a drink. Don't really care which."

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

So.

I want to kick my uncle's ass. Or maybe hit him with my car.

My uncle has been through some hard times. He's a recovering alcoholic, has two divorces under his belt, and he's separated with his third wife. He lost one job, but was able to find another.

Well, he's down in Louisiana on a construction job. He'd been going to AA meetings, but he relapsed last week. He hasn't left his trailer in about four days, he's been calling my grandma every five minutes. He says that he's sick, but he sounds like he's drunk, and he's being irrational and belligerent. I tried talking to him last night, but he just told me I was boring, and said he was going to kick my ass. Then he told me he was just joking. And then he tried to pick another fight.

And now my grandma is making a twelve hour round trip to bring him back, when he probably STILL won't leave his trailer. She wanted my cousin to drive with her, then she wanted my brother to, and then she wanted me to drive with her. She was able to get someone from the church, a lady who is accustomed to long-distance drives. As far as I'm concerned, my uncle can stay down there.

He's 50, and acting like he's 5.