To Be Found

One of the most universal feelings in my opinion is five minutes prior to going into work, when you’re sitting behind the wheel of your parked car thinking about all the reasons you don’t want to work. I’ve found that this job is the one that brings out that feeling the most with me. I promise I’m a positive person, generally well adjusted. This job just sucks.

I promise you won’t have to hear me talk about it for too much longer. I don’t intend on working here past the holiday season. But then again that’s what everybody says.

I started working in this warehouse an hour outside of Reno Nevada last summer. In town, warehouse work is largely considered a last resort, and folks who don’t see it that way tend to be looked down on, like maybe their options are even more bleak.

Worse still, is the opinion people have who actually work in warehouses. Something about going through metal detectors every day so that you can’t steal ten dollars of products from a multimillion dollar company really drives home the impact of capitalism in America.

So was it a last resort for me? Sure. You could say that. I have it better than a lot of my coworkers, but sometimes life kicks you when you’re down and you trust the wrong people at the wrong time. I ended up newly single and newly jobless within a month or so of each other, and knew I could pass a drug test. Boom, instant job.

If I’m being positive about it, other than being grateful for the income, I was most grateful for the commute. The freeway East out of Reno is gorgeous high desert magnificence. There’s a few small little towns dusted along the way, and you don’t get out to the desolate stretches of the Loneliest Highway, but there’s a small mountain between the skyline of town and this stretch of highway that severs you from reality a little bit. A two lane highway is a great place to clear your head. They’re practically written into the fabric of our American culture. That and motel rooms for some reason. All things I have a soft spot for, having been brought up in the desert.

But here we are back in the parking lot, not wanting to begin the work day. A universal feeling of not wanting to. And I still have to put on my PPE and go through security. I begrudgingly locked the car, and took a deep breath of nighttime desert air before heading inside for 12 hours.

“Hey Jackson, what’s good?” Asked Kevin, the only remaining guy from my training group less than a year ago (That’s me by the way. Jackson. My mom named me after her cat. I wish I was joking).

“Another day in the life” I responded. This is what I always responded with. I never cared too much about if anyone found that annoying. On jobs with high turnover rate, it’s almost comical how exaggeratedly surface level all the relationships became. Outside of this environment, I think I would try to make an effort to have a meaningful connection. So I suppose that turns a bleak job into a self fulfilling prophecy if you’re only putting in minimal effort. But I don’t have time to get into that right now, I’m late.

There’s a taped walkway we have to stay within while going to the team huddle area at the beginning of the shift. It’s impossible not to feel like a herd of cows when participating in this part of the shift. I’m always surprised by how slow some people walk. Today since I was late, I had free reign to power walk to my area, and there weren’t any lines at the time clock or at the equipment lockers. I tried to sneak into the back of the group while the manager was talking, so that it wasn’t glaringly obvious I’d missed the warm up stretches. Thankfully he didn’t seem to notice. At the end of the metrics discussion, we all follow the tape line to our designated departments. You’re supposed to rotate departments occasionally, but all the managers play favorites and want their friends or low drama coworkers in their department. So off I go, to the same place I go to every day to pack boxes at the conveyor belt section. The best part is being able to zone out and think about whatever you want. It’s mindless physical work. So it’s here that I plan out the rest of my year, or the next week, or imaginary situations I want to find myself in in the future. Usually I just make deals with myself about how many more seasons I’ll be staying at this job. It’s not the plan to be doing this, it wasn’t ever the plan, but that’s not always how life works.

Eleven months prior I was sitting in the living room of the apartment my partner and I shared. It was a tiny thing, two bedrooms and one bath in a bad neighborhood. Things hadn’t been going too well in our relationship for the past year or so, but I think we were both attempting to pin blame on each other and not assume we might also be part of the problem. Our friend groups were still just separate enough that there was no shortage of people to lean on and complain to. But this particular Thursday, I just had the first moment of clarity in what would turn out to be a whole week of radical shifts in my mind. I looked over at the person I’d spent the last three years with, and didn’t even recognize anything from that first date. I looked around the room with careful eyes, and didn’t see anything that was solely mine. I didn’t see my personality in our joint space. But to be honest, I didn’t see my personality in myself either. And that’s what did it. I turned inward on the couch and began having that hard conversation. Just like that, out of nowhere. It didn’t take long. As I’d mentioned I think we were both just waiting for this to happen. I know that sounds sad, and maybe it was, but if anything it all felt so inevitable that I think negative emotions had been a slow release for awhile and there weren’t any more left by the time it ended. I moved out that weekend. The part time local line cook job I’d been working my way up the ladder at suddenly couldn’t fully support my bills that weren’t split in half. That’s when I got this warehouse job, and now we’re all full circle and you’re all caught up.

Today, having spent the better part of a year packing boxes, I figured it wouldn’t have taken me that long to find another job. All of my friends were happy with what they did, where they lived, and who they slept with. I’m not a fan of the huge backwards step I’d taken, but anytime I got scared about starting fresh, I remembered how I felt on that couch, realizing I didn’t see myself in my own life. Anything would be better than that. I always felt so bad in movies when the dying grandmother says her only regret is not taking more risks, or whatever. And while I’m not a risky Grandma, I certainly didn’t need to be unhappy and coasting through life at 29.

“Jackson. It’s your break.” Shouted Julie, my section’s manager and possibly one of the most self assured people I’ve ever met in my life. You simply could not tell Julie she didn’t have it all figured out, in spite of the fact that her current role at this warehouse far exceeded any expectation she had prior to where she’d be at 35. You’d never know this wasn’t her dream job. But of course it wasn’t. She and I shared being sober, though that was the extent of our comparisons, and between you and me she really wasn’t sober. She just didn’t do hard drugs anymore, and for her that was enough of a victory. I wasn’t going to rain on her parade. I was going to leave my station for a break though. I had recently installed a camera facing my balcony so that I could spy on my weird neighbor, who walked past my balcony with his tiny dog and smoked while talking out loud to no one in particular. I also recently downloaded a smattering of dating apps. And I was forcing myself to be optimistic that would get me somewhere in this world. It never hurts to meet new people, and in this day and age you can’t really walk up to someone in public and talk to them. Any time I’ve tried to make casual conversation in line at the Starbucks or the gas station, I get looked at like I’ve sprouted a rooster head and am saying the ABC’s backwards.

“Wait up Jackie!” Shouts a disembodied voice behind me. I glance and see that it’s Kris, the loudest and proudest LGBTQ+ member of the staff on daytime shift. They’re as gender ambiguous as one can be in a tiny chunk of rural Nevada, and they do their best to advocate for the normalcy of that. I’ll support them endlessly, but I do think their fight is in vain within these four walls. And before you think I’m a bigot or something, let me justify my secret opinion by stating that I am of ambiguous sexuality, though my gender is and always has been male, I believe personally that everyone is at least a little bit queer, or a little bit of a fluctuating gender experience. I can’t stand the grey area, but a gender binary or a 100% straight identity with zero appreciation for anyone other than one binary gender experience seems a little exhausting to me. But this is too deep of a thought for seven in the morning, so I check back in with what Kris has been mumbling about as we walk to the lockers by the break room.

“I’m just saying, I don’t understand the need for three dating apps plus two hookup apps. Add that on to four or five social media apps and I spend the entire day on my phone without even wanting to.” They were saying.

“Yeah but here’s the thing. You don’t have to check all of that every day.” I counter.

“But what if my future husband is just waiting on the other side of a red bubble notification?” At that moment they’re cut off by the security checkpoint beeping, reminding me that my box cutter is still in my pocket, something I do almost daily without fail. Placing the box cutter on the fold up picnic table on the warehouse side of the checkpoint, I meet Kris at our locker area.

“Look Kris, I get it, I have three out of the five apps you mentioned, but I don’t have social media anymore. I just watch YouTube sometimes. And I feel super isolated with just that, but it also still feels overwhelming to have the dating apps to check. I’d rather have none of them. But how else are we supposed to meet people?”

We walk together into the break room, knowing full well we only have about five minutes until we have to walk back to our departments. We sit at our usual table, which has someone else’s lunch bags and coffee mugs on it. Not-so-gently moving them all to one side, we both pull out our phones and start tapping. Or, Kris does. I pretend to, but the reality is I don’t have any dating app notifications, and none of my friends are awake yet to text. It takes two seconds to delete the emails I got overnight, and I spend the next five minutes watching nothing happen on the camera pointing to my balcony. Kris has stopped talking at this point, favoring the escapism on their iPhone over my sparking company. I don’t blame them. I get up to go put my phone back and grab an electrolyte packet for my water bottle, which is back at my station.

The break alarm goes off, but I don’t see Kris come out of the break room, so I head through security on my own, making my way to the time clock to put in for an extra day off at the end of my work week this week. We work 12 hour shifts, rotating between 3 day weeks and 4 day weeks. This week is one of my 3 day weeks, but I was going to drive down to Arizona this weekend for a concert and I’m worried the four day weekend won’t be enough when I factor in driving time. It’s about a 12 hour drive, but if you go at night, or really early in the morning you can shave off an hour or two speeding through the long stretches between towns. Unless there’s construction. Then you’re stuck, because it’s largely a two lane highway the entire time. But that’s the fun of it too. It’s a quick flight, if you have the money for that. But I didn’t plan on this trip, so last minute plane tickets would end up being way more than gas and a motel.

They usually don’t approve time off requests at the last minute, so I’ll have to remember to stop into Megan’s office on the way out today. Megan (or Megs as some of us call her) is Julie’s boss, and she is currently transitioning to night shift, so we only see her on the way out the door at night. Following the tape walkway, I’m back at my station before I know it, and I’m putting on my gloves as the next alarm goes off, signaling that you should be back at your stations. The alarm bells remind me of the Flinstones, and the pattern day in and day out can get super depressing if you think about it for more than a second at a time. I suppose some people like the routine and the mindlessness. I don’t mind it, but it sure gets old.

I must do a pretty good job zoning out today, because the rest of my shift goes by as quickly as 12 hours can go. Kris and I sat together at lunch, like we always do. But they didn’t eat today for some reason, so I let them do all the talking while I ate my leftovers and nodded along, occasionally throwing in colorful commentary, because you get what you give. On the tape walkway, I remember to poke my head in Megs’ office on the way out. She couldn’t hear me over the loud conversation on the walkway, so I stepped in. Warehouse manager offices are separate from the Upper Level Management offices near the HR and Ops Conference Rooms at the front of the building. These “Floor Management” offices are small, usually just enough room for a desk and a few filing cabinets, and there’s huge windows to obliterate any sense of privacy. Megan is a Type A, Too Smart For This Job Semi-Recent College Grad who loves white wine and Taylor Swift. We got along immediately, but she keeps everyone at arm’s length, because she has high goals at the company and thinks that close relationships will make it harder to make impartial big money moves. I can’t fault her there. You have to treat your employees like a statistic if you want to impress higher ups in the retail space.

“What’s up Jackson?” She always uses my full name.

“Hey boss, I just wanted to give you a head’s up that I put in for an extra day at the end of this weekend. Sorry for the short notice.” I start, figuring it’s better to be formal and polite, since the approval would be a solid favor to me.

“Oh okay, I’ll go check that after my meeting” she says while writing my name on a sticky note for her planner. “Doing anything fun?”

“Just a concert I found out about too late to plan ahead of time. Shakey Graves is doing a southwest tour, and I missed the last time he was anywhere near us.” She’s not really listening anymore, because people are talking to her over the walkie-talkie, so I wave and back out of the office, heading towards the time clock.

The drive home was easy, which it isn’t always due to rush hour. But I made it home in about an hour, backed into my parking spot, and jogged up to my apartment because I had to pee.

My apartment is beautiful. Not to brag. I take a lot of pride in how it looks. There’s framed art covering every wall, plants all over the place, and nice lighting. Most of the windows are south facing, which is awesome for the plants, and for me, who doesn’t see the sun a whole lot on work days. While I’m peeing, I look out the small bathroom window. There’s nothing to see, but it’s a habit anyway. Then I head into the kitchen to begin cooking. On work days there’s generally only time for a quick meal and then it’s time to wind down for a couple hours and go to bed to attempt eight hours of sleep. Some days this plan works better than others. But tonight, the first step is Pad Thai.

I can never get my noodles to not clump together, but I always try anyway, the best I can without a wok. Stirring in veggies, I switch to a different podcast. There’s days that true crime doesn’t fit the mood. I’d rather laugh today anyway. The veggies don’t take long to soften, so as I’m whisking a sauce together I get a bowl down with the other hand and then it’s pretty much ready to go. I wish I could tell you I sat at my dining room table, but I don’t have any reason to lie to you, so the truth is I paused the podcast and sat on the couch with my Pad Thai and my fourth rewatch of the new Top Gun movie. Anyone who thinks they wouldn’t be able to top the volleyball scene was a fool!