I recently worked in a big-box warehouse as a garden associate. For 17 months I was undercover, a spy in the house of capitalism. I was unceremoniously terminated. Expelled from the home where doers get it done. Overlord flunkies with dime-store smiles. We love stealing your money with overpriced, shoddy products made in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada, and Mexico, or anywhere else but here. Kiss-ass servility and fake forced hospitality.
An obedient grunt in the garden section, restocking shelves, safety-flag spotting a forklift operator, stacking 40 lb. bags, piling stones, bricks, pavers, mulch, and manure, and removing damaged goods was constant. There’s always tons of stuff to dispose of every day. They throw everything down a metal chute into a monstrous compactor. Perfectly good stuff down the garbage hole. Can employees buy those damaged goods? No. Can consumers buy those items for a discount? No. Do employees have a store discount? No. Do they donate to charitable organizations. No. Why? Tax credits? Garbage in, garbage out. Thousands of dollars of usable products and materials are trucked in.
Waste is the biggest part of the fishy equation for little money invested and the big returns expected in the monopoly of commodity. The giant kingmakers are also the big takers. This single garden center raked in close to $10 million last year. That’s only one department in one warehouse. There are thousands of these places dotting the country. The profits are obscenely astronomical. The employees are paid accordingly, with low wages and less than nothing to survive. Young go-getters climb the corporate career ladder to upper management positions. In a way, I looked forward to working. It was good exercise. I had a gym membership; never used it.
I was getting paid a paltry sum to work four days a week. At my age I’m lucky to still maintain the abilities to hump and grunt heavy boxes and bags around a filthy garden department. The garden aisles are covered in bird shit, the droppings splattered all over the cement floor like a bad abstract painting. Add mice, insect infestation, rats, and feral cats running wild in the garden. Mice nest inside the shelves of chewed-open bags of grass seed, gorging while pissing and shitting all over the other bags on the shelves. A thick layer of sticky dust covers everything. But it’s a warehouse, argues the night manager. That makes it alright to work in an unhealthy environment. As if it’s supposed to be a bacterial biologically toxic stew. My resentment of the safety policies equaled their self-righteous indignation towards me. I was a threat to their unchallenged authority.
The entire time on the job, I saw the regional manager only once. He was on his way out the door. An absentee landlord who collects the rent every month but never keeps the property regularly maintained. Because it costs money to hire a cleaning crew. Whose job is it anyway? Don’t even whisper the word “union” around there; it could be cause for a violation.
A controlled chaos of supply and demand shuffling between the aisles of contempt and hatred. Hiding behind the lies of good Christian values. Row after row, packed with 10 different kinds of the exact same paper towels and toilet paper. It gives the downtrodden masses of consumers the illusion, and confusion of choice. It’s the same stuff wrapped in a different packaged gimmick.
I wasn’t fired for being a rabble rouser or trying to organize a union. Although, I did talk about it often with management in earshot. Many, if not most employees, shared the opinion of having a union. For all the removal of diversity, equity, and inclusion thrown around today you won’t find it there in the mega malls and shopping centers across America. One of every kind of person begrudgingly work there and thousands more just like it.
Is it pretty or ugly? Or just pretty ugly. I disobeyed the safety rules. Three times, you’re out. Maybe I did it on purpose, or maybe I just had to go to the bathroom. I set myself up for failure by sheer disregard for their strict safety rules. A violation of the code of ethics and conduct. It’s a sick joke.
Like the rampant shoplifting and theft that happens there on a daily basis. They let people walk out the front doors with big-ticket items. Awhile back they were ripped off twice in the middle of the night. Lawn tractors were taken out of the locked gate in the outdoor fencing area. And then it happened again a week later. They did nothing. It’s part of the con.
