retail confidential

nightmarish working conditions continue in predictable fashion on day four

product ages in a back room with more hazards than an OSHA textbook, as tens of thousands of dollars of product gets spoiled daily

cooler remains jammed to the gills so no one can even walk in there, and now it's bizarre stacks of pork chops on top of yogurt on top of sprouts, so no effective work can get done

everything is at least triple work for the crew, a handful of whom are competent enough to deal with the trucks arriving twice daily, unloading more pallets and stacks of perishables, like salmon and meatloaf entrees, to rot in the sun for several hours on the dock, until the refrigerated truck gets shufled back into place and filled back to its brim

after herculean (actually sisyphian) efforts all morning with bruised hands to clean up the dock or shovel a path through the backroom, we get hit with the next overloaded order and avalanched on all over again

the crew continues to be browbeaten into staying positive as they were brainwashed to do during their ten day programming, i mean training, by all the bigwigs and regionals who likewise have since disappeared from the scene of the crime

but not before installing new and improved technology for merchandising produce with spring loaded cheap plastic gizmos that allow half the amount of stock to be out on shelves, thereby doubling backstock which is now full of half cases of things, while the contraptions do not even function well enough to actually push the products forward, and offer added benefits of crushing letttuce packages, signage holders that continually drop their signs all day long, and mechanisms that break hourly leaving mushrooms and endives sitting in a pile on top of the springs

i should not be surprised to learn these have been ordered for use company wide

upscale apartments next door complain about shopping carts and blowing trash, the 15 pallets and stacks of racks and cardboard bales on the dock we agreed would be kept clean, and the five am trucks we agreed would not arrive until seven

customers get a free bag, which they fill with toxic garbage for their families to eat, all the while chanting the familiar refrain like sheep, i love this place!