Sunday, June 22, 2008

I Thought I Was in Hell For a Minute There

I went to wal-mart very early this morning to get some packing boxes-yes, you are in hell when you step foot into wal-mart but the total wal-mart experience was made even more hellish for me when I heard this over the loud speaker:

ATTENTION OVERNIGHT ASSOCIATES!! IF YOU ARE JUST STANDING BY THE SIDELINES GET ON OVER TO THE BOYS DEPT AND START ZONING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As many of you may know, I worked for wal-mart for 3 years, the last year on the overnight shift-10 pm to 7am-part time in the cash office and part time as a stocker, which are the only overnight positions in this walmart since it's not open 24 hrs. Overnight stocking is the absolute worst job in the world as far as I'm concerned. I would rather clean out porta potties or flip hamburgers at McDonalds or clean fish guts than ever ever work the overnight shift at wal-mart ever ever again!
The overnight part is bad to begin with-humans are not nocturnal and it just goes against Mother Nature to have to be awake when it is the middle of the night. Humans do not do well trying to sleep in the daytime, especially when the rest of the country is outside your door using leaf blowers and gas mowers.
No, the sleeping is the least of the bad parts of working the overnight shift. The bad parts are being treated as a little less than human because you are working the overnight shift at wal-mart and you must be a little sub-human to have taken this job in the first place, so it's okay to treat you as you would someone who just isn't the sharpest crayon in the box. Besides the hard physical labor of slinging heavy boxes around and pulling 5000 pound pallets of freight around all night, there is last straw of being LOUDLY TOLD to go help clean up a department that isn't even yours at 6:30 am when you are exhausted and have had just about enough of the overnight shift at wal-mart and just want to hide behind an end cap somewhere until the magical hour of 7am when you can finally get the f**k out of there and go home!

What was really disheartening was seeing one of my old co-workers from the overnight shift looking about 10 years older than he did when I left wal-mart a little over a year ago-his hair had turned completely grey too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gahhh!! I don't shop at Walmart. I haven't for several years now. So long, that I cant even remember the last time I shopped there...

this just adds to my list of reasons why.

So glad you got out and were able to make it on your own... My mom was a cashier at walmart for a while, and she absolutely hated it!!