I’m working the graveyard shift at a warehouse store; we stock shelves while the place is closed. My boss comes by one night.

Boss: “I need you to help out with a spill in aisle seventeen.”

I figure someone dropped a jug of detergent or something. It turns out one of the guys with the forklifts knocked into the shelving causing pallets of material to slide off. There had to be a six-foot pile of stuff on this forklift.

The mess is a mixture of detergent (dry and liquid), pet food, and random light bulbs. I spend all shift cleaning it up, and my clothes are completely caked by the end.

I am off the next day, but I still get a call from my boss.

Boss: “You okay?”

Me: “Yeah, why?”

Boss: “Well, that bin we made you fill up with that junk from yesterday…”

Me: “Yeah?”

Boss: “It spontaneously caught fire…”

Me: “…”

Boss: “Thought you’d like to know…”

I have a job, but I am casually looking for better compensation (and not retail). I mention this to a friend, and he says his job is hiring. It’s warehouse order fulfillment, so it’s not my cup of tea, but I would only have to travel ten minutes to work instead of half an hour. I tell him I will look into it, but the next day, I get a phone call. 

Me: “Hello?”

Recruiter #1: “Hi, this is [Recruiter #1] at [Company]. Can I speak to [My Name]?”

Me: “Speaking?”

Recruiter #1: “Hi, thank you for taking my call today…”

He goes into a speech, talking about the great opportunities his company provides, the benefits, the hours, and so on. 

Me: “That’s great. So, it’s full-time?”

Recruiter #1: “Yes! We work up to sixty hours per week.”

Me: “That’s a lot. I do have a job right now, so—”

Recruiter #1: “Oh, we were under the impression that you were unemployed.”

Me: “No, I have a job. I’m just seeing what else is out there to decide if I want to switch career paths.”

Recruiter #1: “Well, great!”

The next part of the conversation is what feels like an interview. He asks about my previous job experience, how I handle pressure in the workplace, and whether I can lift up to fifty pounds.

Recruiter #1: “Well, this has been great! Do you have any questions for me?”

Me: “Could you tell me the pay range for this position?”

Recruiter #1: “The… pay range?”

Me: “Right. Like, [Local Gas Station] has window clings saying they pay $13 an hour to start. What is your starting rate?”

Recruiter #1: “Oh. Um, I’m not sure. We can discuss that during your interview, though.”

Me: “I thought we just did the interview?”

Recruiter #1: “No, this is just the initial contact. We can set up an interview for [time and date] if that works for you.”

Me: “Okay…”

The interview time comes, and the conversation is much the same: employment history, conflict resolution, and so on and so on.

Recruiter #2: “Well, I think you would be a great fit for [Company]. If you can come by today, we can get your drug test done, and as long as everything comes back clean, you can start next week.”

Me: “I’m sorry, what is the starting wage?”

Recruiter #2: “Oh, [Recruiter #1] should have told you.”

Me: “He said that would be discussed in this interview.”

Recruiter #2: “I see. Well… I will have to get back to you on that. Are you able to come get your drug test paperwork today?”

Me: “I would like to know the pay before continuing any further with this process.”

Recruiter #2: *Getting annoyed* “That’s not something we discuss outside the company.”

Me: “But you just said [Recruiter #1] should have told me. How can—”

Recruiter #2: “I will have to have someone call you with that information. I don’t have it on hand.”

Me: “Okay. Once I have that, I will decide if I want to join [Company].”

He hangs up without another word. I have basically decided that I’m not taking this job, but I still want to know the pay; their avoidance of the subject just makes me want to press harder.

A week goes by before my next call. [Recruiter #3] goes through the same interview questions, talks about the same benefits… and avoids the same question.

Recruiter #3: “We offer a lot of great benefits, and—”

Me: “Look, I am not going to go forward with this until someone tells me the pay range.”

Recruiter #3: “I don’t have that information on hand.”

Me: “Your team has called numerous times, and I’ve answered the same questions time and again, but nobody there can tell me what the hourly rate will be. If the next person to reach out doesn’t have the answer, I will not be taking the job.”

Recruiter #3: “Okay. Well, thank you for your time.”

They did not call again. I asked my friend what he started at, and he told me it was a dollar above minimum wage.

While I am a safety officer, I’m also well known for being a bit accident-prone.

Manager: “Check out this cool finger knife. It straps to your hand, and it’s spring-loaded.”

Me: “Neat! How does it work?”

I press a button on it, causing the blade to go straight into my thumb.

Me: “Oh.”

Manager: “…Maybe we’ll limit it to the shop guys.”

Back in the mid-1990s, I worked in the warehouse for a company famous for its outdoor clothing and a trim level of a popular SUV.

For some reason lost to history, the designer of the building decided that the best place to install the main employee time clocks was directly beneath a forklift access gate to a mezzanine level. This gate allows the forklift to raise or lower pallets from this level, but doing so blocks access to the time clocks. Obviously, the forklift operators do their utmost to avoid using the gate when people are likely to use the clocks, but tardy employees happen, so the area is roped off while the forklifts move pallets.

A memo goes around the building one day after an incident involving an employee being “injured” by one of the forklifts using the gate. The lift operator had just lifted a pallet to the mezzanine when a tardy employee ducked under the rope and began to clock in. The lift operator could not see this, and as he moved slowly forward, the employee was gently brushed by the side of the forklift. 

She was uninjured but insisted on filling out a report on the incident. This resulted in an investigation and check of the security cameras, which revealed that she had, in fact, moved under the rope and violated safety protocols.

This level of infraction usually resulted in a written warning, but she was fired the next day. During the course of the investigation, a memo was sent to her immediate supervisor noting that “Jane Doe” was involved in the incident. The supervisor responded with a “Who the heck is this Jane Doe person? I don’t have a Jane Doe in my department.”

After a lot of scrambling around, it developed that “Jane Doe” may have been EMPLOYED, but she wasn’t WORKING. Every day, she would enter the building, clock in, and then leave. At the end of the shift, she would re-enter, clock out, and leave again. Nobody noticed because of the crowd of people at shift change going back and forth.

It further developed that a relative of “Jane Doe” in Human Resources had been actively deleting her name from personnel records along with two other people to hide their existence while they collected paychecks from NOT working. This scheme had apparently been going on for around thirty months at the time…

The final fallout was all four were terminated and criminally charged. If “Jane Doe” had not insisted on the incident report being made, they would likely have gotten away with their fraud for years further.

CONTENT WARNING: Gross imagery.

In college I worked at a FedEx hub loading eighteen-wheelers. Part of the load are two buckets that are very heavy and should not have been put through the regular sorting system. Sadly… they were, and they spilled.

Two five-gallon buckets of bull sperm. Spilled.

Let me tell you to this day as a mom and former day-care worker I have never smelled anything as foul as ten gallons of bull sperm in an un-air-conditioned warehouse in the middle of a Pennsylvania summer.