Warehouse work usually isn’t difficult — shipping/receiving, cleaning, pulling orders, using forklifts, and so on. The work itself isn’t hard, but sometimes those truck drivers you have to deal with can be a real pain in the back.

I am busy working on small parcels going out via [Shipping Company]. The parcel shipping station is about ten feet away from the shipping desk where truck drivers go when they show up for deliveries. While I’m doing this, a truck driver shows up at the shipping desk. He stands there for maybe sixty seconds as I finish the order I’m working on.

I grab a last-minute order that’s come through to ship out, and I take the order form and head out to the warehouse to pull the order. I address the truck driver on my way past him.

Me: “I’ll be with you in just a couple of minutes.”

Truck Driver: “I’ve already been waiting here for over twenty minutes.”

He starts to raise his voice as he continues.

Truck Driver: “I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get help around here!”

I stop in my tracks and turn to face the driver.

Me: “You’ve been standing there for about sixty seconds, not twenty minutes. I don’t appreciate your attitude, and now it’ll be longer before you get help from me.”

Truck Driver: “I won’t be treated like this, making me wait! It’s already been over twenty minutes! I want to speak to the manager!”

Me: “Go right ahead. He’s sitting in the office, right behind you.” *Points*

The truck driver’s eyes get wide and he slowly turns around to see my manager, who has stood up from his desk and is now standing in the doorway of his office.

Manager: “I don’t like your attitude. [My Name] told you he’d be right with you, and you decided to lie about how long you’ve been standing there. You’ve been in here now for maybe three minutes. You can either wait there patiently until we get around to helping you, or you can go sit in your cab and we can come and get you when we’re ready to help you.”

The truck driver didn’t say anything else and just walked out to his cab and waited for us to get him.

It is our busiest time, and I have at least a dozen projects waiting for me, all of which will take a long time to do. At this moment, my boss accidentally knocks over a glass bottle behind some shelves. It’s at an angle where I have to do some fancy gymnastics to reach it, so when I grab it — you guessed it — I cut my hand quite deeply.

Boss: “Wait, you should see to that.”

Me: “I don’t have time to bleed!”

Our forklift has been down for sixty-two days, with several repair bills, many new parts, and no end in sight. This ticket crossed my desk today.

Ticket: “Maintenance Request Ticket:

• Equipment: forklift.
• Problem: forklift.
• Parts request: Ruger American Predator, 50-round bag .223 ammunition.
• Estimated time to fix: 2 minutes until we can finally admit defeat and buy a working forklift.
• Approval: DENIED.”

No end in sight.

My immediate supervisor and I work in the shipping department for our company We manage and control thousands of pounds of material that ship out of our facility every day. Things move pretty smoothly around here. Sometimes things back up when it’s really busy or if we’re short drivers, but in situations like that, we have third-party companies we can outsource shipping with.

Several times a week, we see emails from some of the owners or sales representatives asking why something that was just produced hasn’t been delivered yet, or they’re in the office breathing down our necks to make sure things are shipped out NOW! Then, we see emails from them saying to not hold orders and ship them out now! Even though we’ve explained to them that we don’t hold orders many, many, many times, they still yell at us for holding orders.

Long story short, if the material makes it to the floor, it has to be out the door instantly so we don’t get yelled at.

Then, we have other people in the company that can do no wrong, regardless of what kind of complaints come in about them from customers and vendors.

Take the ladies that handle Accounts Payable (AP). They can go up to a month before they get to invoicing orders for material that we’ve shipped out, but the owners don’t care, even after customers that have received material have called in asking why they don’t have any invoices for the material they received almost a month prior. This is a constant issue. Also, all invoices needed to be scanned into the server so we have both a paper and paperless backup. It can take multiple months for orders to get scanned into the server, and when we need to access this information it’s not scanned in the server yet. It takes months, but it’s okay — no problem found according to the owners.

These AP ladies constantly “work” from home. I don’t know how they can work from home because all the invoice paperwork is here at the office and they’re not allowed to take it with them because paperwork has been lost in the past. Yet, they’re allowed to “work” from home because they can respond to emails. Emails are about 25% of their normal job, but that’s because they email out invoices to customers, and if they’re not in the office to do invoicing, they aren’t emailing. They literally have nothing they can do at home for work, but apparently, it’s okay by ownership that they can “work” from home.

Next, we have the IT guy; he is never around. We can have computer issues that go on for days and days until he finally shows up. When we call him he’s aggravated that we’re bothering him and he tells us that he’ll be around soon. I usually have to fix most computer issues since this IT guy takes forever, but it’s okay that he can take a week or two to fix a computer issue; ownership doesn’t care.

Then, there are the owners’ daughters who work here. Out of the three owners, two of them have one daughter each that works here. The two girls are cousins. It was like a family feud when they started and worked in the same office space — constant yelling, bickering, and complaining. Eventually, [Daughter #1] was moved to the same building her dad worked in, so the drama between them ended. While it was entertaining to see, it was nice that the childish bickering ended.

[Daughter #1] now takes after her dad; she’s always out, poorly entering orders, and causing a lot of mistakes that cost the company a lot of time and money, but it’s never her fault. It’s always production’s fault or a shipping issue because we should have known the order she entered was wrong and fixed it for her.

The other owner’s daughter, [Daughter #2] started out great for about the first six months. She was always on top of things, never missing a beat, and not making any mistakes. She was set up to work under my supervisor. After six months, she sweet-talked her way into getting a raise, and after that raise, her work ethic dropped off the charts. She started coming in later and later, or she’d call with some BS excuse to not have to work for the day, and her mistakes kept piling up. Here are a few excuses she’s used to get out of work for the day.

Daughter #2: “I can’t come into work today because my cat is stuck behind the drier and I can’t just leave her there. I need the day off to work on getting her unstuck.”

Daughter #2: “My cat scratched my leg, and I don’t have any special antibiotic at home I can use that I’m not allergic to, so have to run out to stores until I find some. I won’t be in today.”

Daughter #2: “My cat threw up on the floor, so I have to take him to the vet and I won’t be in today.”

[Daughter #2] has changed her times from coming on her own accord without asking her supervisor. She used to come in around 7:00 am and work until 3:00 pm. Slowly, over time, she’s pushed her start time out later and later. Her hours are now around 10:30 am to 4:00 or maybe 5:00 pm, and customers are complaining that she’s not available when they need her. But that’s okay; she can’t do anything wrong.

Then, we have the lead supervisor for the floor. This guy is a piece of work. He dresses provocatively — shirt unbuttoned down to his navel so we can see his nipples and pants so tight you can see everything. He pees on the floor in the bathrooms, and he only hires women to work in the Quality Control department and takes bets with others to see how long it takes to sleep with them… yet he can’t do anything wrong.

Sadly, the thing is that in any other place I’ve worked, there are always people like these of some kind causing similar issues. You have to learn to work with them or go somewhere else and work with similar problematic people.

This was my first full-time job. I’d had a lot of jobs before this one, but this was my first official full-time job after high school. The owner had a good head on his shoulders and he understood that having good employees is part of having a successful business.

After I’d worked at the company for a few years, the owner brought his sons into the company so they could learn about it and start taking over some of the daily aspects of things. This would have been just fine, but the two boys were entitled jerks. They always had something snarky to say about the employees and assumed everything being done was against them and the company. The employees didn’t like them, but we put up with them because we were still working there.

One day, my supervisor and I were having a warehouse meeting with the other six or seven employees working there. We were all standing in a circle, talking about some change coming up that we all needed to be aware of. My supervisor and I were stressing how important it is to COUNT everything that ships to us, especially with boxes that show up through two major shipping companies, and to immediately move them to our receiving area where customers aren’t allowed. (A few days before this meeting, one of the warehouse guys had signed for [number] boxes from [Shipping Company] and left the boxes at the dock. When the boxes were finally moved sometime later, we were short a box, and its contents were worth almost a grand.)

As we were going over things, one of the owner’s sons walked past us to go to the vending machines, and he heard part of the conversation. He made his purchase and, upon walking back, he caught the end of my supervisor explaining how things could easily walk off when we signed for packages and didn’t bring them back to receiving right away.

Owner’s Son: “It was probably one of you guys that stole it.”

All of us just stopped our meeting and stared at him, slack-jawed, as he walked away.

I looked at my supervisor.

Me: “Did I hear him right? Did he just basically accuse us all of being thieves?”

Supervisor: “That’s exactly what I heard.”

Coworker: “If that’s how he really sees us, as thieves, we might as well not let him down and start taking everything.”

A murmur of agreement went around the other warehouse crew.

Supervisor: “All right… All right, everyone. I know it sounds like he’s basically calling all of us thieves, but let’s not stoop to his level by supporting his twisted thoughts. Just keep up the good work and ignore what he said to you guys.”

Here’s a second stupid comment that that same son said to me and the warehouse employees. I don’t recall the context of his comment, but I won’t forget it.

Owner’s Son: “This is just a basic warehouse job. All of you are replaceable, and anyone we bring in for less could do this job.”

I tend to be a jerk and tell people how it is, so I made sure to comment back.

Me: “If this work is so easy and we are easily replaceable and anyone can do the work, how about you show us how it’s done? We’ll watch and take notes.”

The owner’s son got really red in the face, turned, and stomped away.

The other son wasn’t any better. He made accusations about employees and would try to threaten us by imposing his power/position in the company to bully us into submission. Most people buckled and gave in to his temper tantrums, but after he tried to bully me a couple of times and I stood my ground each time, he never spoke to me like a spoiled brat again. The owner was such a nice guy; I don’t understand why his two boys were such a**holes. I don’t miss that place and I’m glad I no longer work there.