I’m not sure when walking became a grim task. And the work is hardly mindless. I work at a smaller warehouse facility called a sortation center. As the name indicates, we do a lot of sorting there, which is anything but a mindless task. Some of the sorters in my warehouse have to make dozens of sorting decisions every minute. The diverter, for example, stands beside a conveyor belt in the unloading dock and as envelopes and packages speed by, she has to quickly look for the yellow label that tells her which of the three off-ramps each package needs to be diverted towards.
It’s not a job you can do with your eyes closed or with your mind disengaged. It is a repetitive task, and it can also be a tedious one, but it isn’t mindless. On the plus side, it isn’t very strenuous either, at least not for a reasonably fit worker. Compared to picking cotton or mining coal or catching Alaskan King Crab, a shift at my warehouse is a walk in the park. And I generally enjoy it.
Even some of my closest friends didn’t believe me when I told them that I liked my job. They seemed to think I was putting a brave face on an embarrassing situation. This is because elite national reporters at the Atlantic and the New York Times have very little actual experience among working-class people and don’t know how to report on labor issues except as a battle between villains (the capitalist ownership class) and victims (me and my ilk). It’s insulting. And it’s inaccurate.
I work a four-and-half-hour shift every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Essentially, my job is to help load local delivery vans by filling up metal carts with packages and then dragging them outside to the “staging area,” a parking lot where the drivers can easily access them.
To avoid getting sacked, workers on my shift are required to “pick” no fewer than six routes per day. This is a ridiculously easy bar to clear. I’m 62 and don’t have any difficulty picking at least ten routes a day. I’ve done as many as 15.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
