monsoonmartin

Another blast from the past, as promised: the third of my five-volume opus of employment woes, from 2006.  Enjoy!

The Many Jobs of Monsoon Forecast: Volume Three

Wednesday, 1 November 2006

After graduating from Albright in May 2005 and before heading out to The Ohio State University for my graduate studies in August, I needed to find a situation that was straightforward, low-impact, and laidback—a place where my well-being would not be imperiled, a job that could make me some decent coin before my trip.

Instead, I secured work for nearly three months at the Eagle’s Eye Northlane Warehouse in Conshohocken, PA. If you’re not familiar with the Eagle’s Eye clothing brand, they import mostly holiday-themed sweaters in varying degrees of gaudiness made in Malaysian sweatshops and sell them to sartorially audacious women all across this great land at outrageous prices. There is even an Eagle’s Eye outlet in the Berks County region, I believe. If you’ve seen a bright orange sweater with black jack-o-lanterns, witches’ hats, bats, cats, corn stalks, bats, and other sundry Halloween-inspired images and phrases (“Boo!”; “Trick or Treat!”; “Spooky Fun!”), you have in all likelihood seen an Eagle’s Eye garment.

First, let me issue a caveat of sorts: I have seldom been accused of having a strong work ethic. I tend to avoid and resist grueling physical labor as I would dental x-rays, or an afternoon of in-service training at school: with no small amount of whining, and violently if necessary. Hard work and I are usually on perpendicular paths—at cross purposes, if you will—and I feel that is as fate intended it.

But friends, this place straight-up sucked. Ask anybody.

The Northlane Warehouse was a place where boxes and boxes of unfortunate clothing were received from Malaysia and other exotic southeast Asian locales, checked in, and then moved around aimlessly until they were needed to fill orders. Then the clothing articles would be placed into flow racks by “replenishers,” where “pickers” would fill the orders; then send them down a crude conveying system made of rollers, where “packers” would box up the merchandise and send it on to its destination.

During the summer, Eagle’s Eye’s busiest time of the year, things are especially hectic around the warehouse, and supervisors are especially jumpy. In addition to the year-round staff, the “summer help” consisted of high school kids, college students, and even a teacher or two. Throughout my tenure, I think I performed nearly every single job in the whole joint: I unloaded boxes from 120-degree truck trailers; I climbed up the storage racks to retrieve boxes (there was only one forklift for the whole place); I used a pallet jack to move about fourteen thousand pallets hither and yon in the warehouse; I broke down boxes (with a utility knife—me! And I left with all my fingers intact); I picked orders; I packed orders; I swept the floor. If you can believe it, I made time to complain more than a little bit about the deplorable conditions in the warehouse, as well.

There was, of course, the inescapable heat; there was very little air moving through the building, so a gauze of oppressive, filthy, breathtakingly humid air enveloped every unfortunate soul who worked in the warehouse. When I recall the memory sensations I have retained from that experience, I feel the heat and I hear the songs that blared over and over from the radios that summer: “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio, from the film Dangerous Minds; “This is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan; and “Here Comes the Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze: “Act like you know, Rico / I know what Bo don’t know / Touch ‘em up and go, uh-oh! / Ch-ch-chang chang / Here comes the hotstepper, murderer!”

I remember that sometimes when we opened the boxes that had been shipped from southeast Asia, strange, large, spindly-legged bugs—bugs with faces, with stubble—would emerge. Those of you who know me well understand how I feel about domestic bugs; how do you think I reacted when one of these super-sized rainforest predatorial foreign insects spazzed its way out of a box? Need I go on?

Toward the end of my tenure, I found a cartoon about sweatshops and realized that in many ways (though not quite approaching the level of misery in the Malaysian sweatshops that had produced the clothing), the conditions at Eagle’s Eye Northlane Warehouse met the criteria of a sweatshop: arbitrary discipline, forced overtime, lack of adequate break time, no living wage, hazardous conditions, and other indignities. Of course, I was reading a lot of Chomsky, Marx and Engels, so I was loaded for bear as it was. Fighting the Power and Sticking it to the Man were two of my most dearly held aspirations at this point in my life. (Come to think of it, not much has changed in that regard…)

[This is not the actual cartoon mentioned above; it has been lost to me.  But this one, by the exceptionally talented political cartoonist Kirk Anderson, conveys a similar idea.  *Please see update following this piece!]

So I went in to work with my little cartoon, popped in to the office area (off-limits to “floor” workers), and used the office photocopier to make 20 or 30 copies of the cartoon. As I was finishing, Alan Loberstein, the warehouse’s Operations Manager, bopped by and admonished me for doing what I was doing—but luckily, he didn’t see what I was copying, so my plan could go on as devised. I took the cartoons over to my workstation (I was a “packer” that day, as fortune had smiled upon me) and throughout the day, many of the boxes contained—in addition to the unsightly garments and the packing slip—a copy of the sweatshop cartoon. Stores, wholesalers, and individual customers across the United States received what I imagined they’d see as a cry for help from the oppressed workers who had produced and packaged their precious crap, and I further envisioned that they would as a result reconsider doing business with Eagle’s Eye.

I also recall being singled out for my resistance to the “voluntary” weekend overtime that had been offered (read: forced upon) us all. As a summer worker, I felt I could turn down these opportunities with impunity. But good old Alan Loberstein didn’t see it that way; he called me over to him at one point in the waning weeks of my Eagle’s Eye residency and asked why I hadn’t signed up for the “voluntary” overtime. “Because I have other things going on,” I answered simply. “But Glen…you’re really hurting your chances for advancement if you don’t pitch in a bit on the overtime thing. Don’t you want to work here in the future?” I will admit to being rather smug, and perhaps even elitist, in my reply, but having been screamed at by supervisors, hounded repeatedly about meaningless rules, and involved in work team “pep rallies” that would have insulted the intelligence of even a pre-schooler, I had had enough. “Alan, if I find myself working here again anytime in the future, ever, I will literally kill myself.”

My “parting shot” as I took my leave of the Eagle’s Eye Northlane Warehouse was one of the first strongly-worded letters I ever composed. (At the risk of detouring too dramatically from the narrative roadway we’re traveling together, I should explain: I have become quite well-known among friends and family—and beyond—for my “strongly-worded letters.” I’ve crafted these missives and sent them to companies that have discontinued products I enjoy; legislators and entities whose actions rankle me; acquaintances and colleagues whose actions have annoyed, offended, or horrified me; and many others. I suppose it’s my love of writing, together with my rather strong opinions and inflexible tastes, which compels me to write these letters.)

About a month prior to my departure, I had approached Alan with some safety concerns, and he dismissively recommended that I “put them in writing” and he’d see what he could do. And so, on the day I completed my tenure there, I sent a three-page, single-spaced letter to Alan Loberstein; to Diane, my immediate supervisor; and to Alan’s boss in the Eagle’s Eye Corporation. In it, I vented my ire in painstaking detail, chronicling the pattern of (what I saw to be) humiliation, maltreatment, negligence, and downright villainy being perpetrated under the guise of normal business operations there. Near the beginning, I said: “I disagree with the assumption that in order to elicit the greatest effort from workers, they must be demeaned, belittled, and put in danger. I feel respect and trust can produce a better work environment as well as more efficiency and profit for The Eagle’s Eye.” A few months at a warehouse and I was coming on like I’d earned a fricking Harvard MBA.

I went on: “I feel the absolute emphasis on productivity - on making rate - does not inspire workers to work harder; it results in fear and discouragement. Unrealistically inflated productivity goals serve only to prove to the workers that the supervisors are not really concerned with their safety or the quality of their work, but instead are thinking in terms of an economic bottom line which devalues and commodifies the lives and abilities of the individual workers themselves.” This was based on my observations at the warehouse. All anyone did—even the permanent workers there—was just enough to make rate, but not anything that might help the company make an extra buck. Why should they? The company obviously looked on them with nothing but disdain and disgust, no matter what kind of effort they put forth.

My rhetorical histrionics reached new heights when I attacked the company’s “voluntary” overtime policy: “I also feel mandatory two-thirds overtime is an incredibly unfair tactic to employ against loyal workers who toil forty hours per week as it is. Overtime should be offered as a choice - an essential element of a respectful relationship, after all, is the freedom of choice - rather than held over the workers’ heads like a terroristic threat. … Supervisors treat workers almost without fail as though they are stupid and inept, often blaming their own mistakes on the workers who work under them.”

I ended my letter—and, forever, my relationship with The Eagle’s Eye—by listing some of the safety violations I saw (and suffered from) during the time I served at the Northlane Warehouse. “The flow racks have incredibly sharp, uncovered edges. Countless pickers and replenishers have been put in danger by the various flaws in the flow rack system, which I hope will be corrected during the upcoming automation project,” I began. This safety concern was near and dear to my heart—literally—because I had suffered an injury to a sensitive location on my chest when running into the sharp corner of a flow rack with my torso. I still carry a scar in the affected region that was perforated by the rack’s jagged metal edge. “The roof of the warehouse leaks seriously and unpredictably in various places, producing hazardous wet spots,” I continued. “The rail system which runs throughout the entire warehouse inhibits safe and convenient passage through all areas, and especially in the kids' replenishment area,” and on and on, until I had purged myself of the rage I’d accumulated while I worked at Eagle’s Eye.

I left several days later for Columbus, Ohio and graduate school—but that’s a story for another forecast…

Monsoon