Who’s there

One of the guys in my training group just got out of prison in New Hampshire. I think he might be living at the warehouse, because when we get off our shift he doesn’t leave — he sits in the waiting room outside the HR office. There’s a bathroom there, and just down the hall a number of unused offices a person could probably sleep in without being noticed. He seems to have just one set of clothes, so he doesn’t need a lot of space for his wardrobe.

Another fellow recently moved to Vermont from a small Hudson Valley town, where he worked as a carpenter and was a volunteer fireman. He wears Nascar t-shirts. His wife and three kids just joined him, and it bothers him that he hardly sees them, due to the work schedule. He also finds the job desperately boring.

The other three are very young guys. Two seem like they could be college students, and don’t look like their situations are dire enough to explain working at the warehouse — they have nice clothes, probably bought by someone else, and they seem fresh and innocent. The third looks like he has a more hardscrabble background, and is none too smart. He likes to socialize by barking fierce orders at people, then grinning at the joke, or coming up behind someone and tapping him on the right shoulder while he stands off to the left.

In another training group there’s an incredibly sweet black guy (noteworthy in a place as white as Vermont), a fat kid (I would bet a large sum he won’t last), and a fellow who is saving money to get the hell out of New England and move to Colorado as soon as he can.

A selector who has been at it for ten months or so told me that if I stick around, most likely I’ll be the only one in my group who does. In his tenure at the warehouse, he said, he’s seen hundreds of people come through and leave.

The old hands, then, are an elite of sorts. You could look at them as the dregs, of course, who can’t find better work and so are stuck, and maybe there’s truth in that. But I suspect the few who stay on for any length of time have found they can pick groceries and build pallets fast enough to make decent money, and those who work at night may be among the rare breed who actually like it. Most are a little older than most trainees — late 20s, perhaps — and they seem serious and focused. One of the shift supervisors told me he tried daytime work, at a desk job with the company, but he didn’t like dressing up (shirts with buttons) or the schedule. His wife didn’t like having him around the house when she was home, and he missed having the house to himself after work.  So he’s back on nights in the warehouse, for the long haul.

People like Mike, who have graduated to supervising the orders for truckloads and moving pallets onto the trucks, seem to be older still than the long-term selectors. They’re the sergeants of the warehouse command structure, close to the action on the ground but definitely a step above their squad members. There’s Mike, the savant.  Another guy, probably 40, looks like he could be a professional recorder player, supporting his music habit with a nighttime day job — he has none of tattooed scruffiness many of the warehouse workers sport. His round wire-rimmed glasses and oddly precise, slightly long hair make him look a bit out of place, although he seems comfortable enough. Another looks like a hippie, with his flowing hair, unkempt beard and Mexican coarse-cotton hoodie, but apparently missed the peaceful flower-child part of the orientation. He likes hearing himself bellow obscenities and death threats, and boasts of his many appearances in front of a judge for his misbehavior.

Incentive selectors have a jack of their own, and the more committed among them usually pimp them out with stickers (“I kill people like you” is one I’ve seen on more than one jack) and especially with stereos, which they build themselves to run off the 24 volt batteries that power the jacks. I’ve seen one that had a round screen on it, something like an oscilloscope, with a display that relates to the music, and another that has a TV screen. I heard about one guy — possessed of an extreme personality, I guess — who spent $4,000 on his 24-volt stereo.

I’ve heard a variety of music amid the cacophony of competing stereos, including Elvis Presley and old-time Delta blues, and there’s even one selector who plays stand-up comedy recordings, but the most popular genres seem to be thrash metal, hardcore and hiphop — sounds that express rage and bad-ass posturing. It’s incongruous to hear the threatening approach of a jack playing what sounds like the soundtrack to hell and then see its typically mild-mannered driver.