The whole trick to the job was glancing at the order and determining how many pallets it would need. Then you found the bases, the heavy stuff – the bananas, the potatoes, the lettuce if a “wet board” – and went from there. It was boring, it was largely solitary, it was very repetitious, and I loved it. It was one big game of Tetris, complete with scores. I had an ability to “see the pallets” and I went racing through the rooms on my pallet jack, making racing car noises in my head trying to get my best score and keeping track on a notebook I kept in my back pocket. 132%. 140%. I’d look over other people’s shoulders as they punched out, comparing scores but not wanting to ask and sound arrogant or, god forbid, look like I was enjoying myself. That was the first rule of the workplace I learned. Work sucks; you don’t enjoy it, ever. At the occasional morning meetings I got praised by the bosses, and heckled by my coworkers and I shrugged my shoulders like “I don’t know. Maybe I just get all the easy orders.” They called me The Journeyman, although I don’t know if they really respected the speed and ease at which I did the job, or if they were mocking my enthusiasm under hardened breaths. They’d been there too long. Picked too many orders. Seen too many years go by, still doing the exact same job as the one before it. “Don’t get stuck here,” they warned. “You are better than this. The pay is good, and we’ve seen it happen to people before you, but it kills you. Look at us. It killed us.” 

So, this was the job I had when it happened. It hit me, and I stood there, order in hand, not knowing what to do. If I could finish that pallet, I could clock out, get my score and then run to the bathroom “off the clock.” Then I would be able to take my time and not have it affect my scores. If I’d gone right away I could have made it and maybe even run back, finished the pallet and gotten my 100%. Or at least a 90%, then averaged it up with the rest of the day. But I wasn’t sure if I had the time and I spent too long pondering it; I didn’t make it. I shimmied up the steps to the bathroom, feeling the wet shit start to glide down my legs and thought about how long it would all take to clean up. My scores dwindling away in the process.