It's about 10 minutes into the truck unload. I am scanning, my dear friend is unloading. The stack is about 8 feet high, and my friend is 5'2". In order to get the boxes off the top, they grab a corner of a bottom, tip, and get the hell out of the way. Smash.
"Uh oh," I hear.
The smell is fantastic. A case of Clorox hit the floor. As the damage-control person, I grab the bleach and throw it into a hazard bin. We get the Absorb-All, and the thin, sickly kid with the allergies goes in to sweep it up. He comes out red-faced.
As one of the scanners, my job is to run into the trailer, grab the end of the line of boxes, push them down to the other scanner, scan a few, run back into the trailer and do it again. I'm about to puke from the memory of it. I wanted to puke right there. Couldn't open my eyes.
The solution? Set up two fans to blow the stuff out (at me) and open the second trailer door. Manager takes the wet, bleached boxes I hand her, opens them up, and puts the salvage in re-pack boxes. We throw out baby food, dog food, but I guess the Halloween candy went out.
In the meantime my Dear Friend stayed in the truck and kept on working. WTF is wrong with her? I'm thinking. Her helper staggered out, retching. We had two replacements during unload. Friend manages to stay almost until the end. There's bleach soaked all the way to the back of the trailer, along with a leaked bottle of RUBBING ALCOHOL and some fabric softener.
"Hey," I say to no-one in particular, "is there any ammonia I can throw on there for good measure?"
We did not meet our goal that day. We got chewed out for it, too. Dear Friend went home after she was done unloading. Curiously, no one ruined their redshirt that day.
"Uh oh," I hear.
The smell is fantastic. A case of Clorox hit the floor. As the damage-control person, I grab the bleach and throw it into a hazard bin. We get the Absorb-All, and the thin, sickly kid with the allergies goes in to sweep it up. He comes out red-faced.
As one of the scanners, my job is to run into the trailer, grab the end of the line of boxes, push them down to the other scanner, scan a few, run back into the trailer and do it again. I'm about to puke from the memory of it. I wanted to puke right there. Couldn't open my eyes.
The solution? Set up two fans to blow the stuff out (at me) and open the second trailer door. Manager takes the wet, bleached boxes I hand her, opens them up, and puts the salvage in re-pack boxes. We throw out baby food, dog food, but I guess the Halloween candy went out.
In the meantime my Dear Friend stayed in the truck and kept on working. WTF is wrong with her? I'm thinking. Her helper staggered out, retching. We had two replacements during unload. Friend manages to stay almost until the end. There's bleach soaked all the way to the back of the trailer, along with a leaked bottle of RUBBING ALCOHOL and some fabric softener.
"Hey," I say to no-one in particular, "is there any ammonia I can throw on there for good measure?"
We did not meet our goal that day. We got chewed out for it, too. Dear Friend went home after she was done unloading. Curiously, no one ruined their redshirt that day.
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