Manual Labour
As some will be aware I have my truck drivers license. I can drive a vehicle with three or more axles up to 22 tonnes. Not really that exciting if you’re not into driving, but if like me you love driving, it’s just another machine to conquer.
In my current state of unemployment and in a desperate corporate environment, I thought I’d give driving for a living a go.
Over the last few weeks I have made nearly 80 phone calls to various companies asking if they need drivers. Dustbin collection, cement, line-haulage, bulk landscape supplies, coach companies and car haulage. A guy at one of the car haulage companies said, ‘it’s more of a man’s job love’.
I had an interview with a bin collection company, but for my interview I think I was over dressed. I wore jeans, a business shirt and jacket. If I hadn’t have washed them for a week I would have fitted in perfectly. Unfortunately, my outfit was clean and I was wearing deodorant. They didn’t call me back.
I went to an interview with a tour bus company. It sounded good, but they have never called me again.
The third company to respond to my requests for employment was a warehousing company with property in Sydney and Canberra. They wanted a night driver to ferry goods between the warehouses. At their request I sent in my CV, with the disclaimer that it not a classic truck drivers CV, but I was really interested in driving. I was called into an interview.
‘I’m looking to retire’. This was the opening line of the interview.
My interviewer preceded to tell me about wanting someone to take over the operations manager role and looking at my CV I seemed capable of such a role. Driving a truck, he told me, was not worthy of my talents.
‘I didn’t grow up thinking to myself, when I grow up, I want to be a Change Communications Consultant. I grew up wanting to drive taxi’s trucks or buses. I was hoping to take this chance to live a dream’.
He asked me to start on Thursday at 7am. ‘Wear your lovely new steel toe caps.’
I set my alarm and got up at six. I saw the sunrise. That is just so wrong on so many levels I can’t go into it now. But let me just say I believe sunrise so only be seen on spontaneous romantic mornings, mostly when sleep hasn’t been had yet.
I’d packed a lunch the night before and I was ready for my first day as a truck driver.
Upon my arrival the warehouse was already busy with trucks being loaded and unloaded. Men in Hi-Vis of yellow and orange buzzing around. I had personally selected the yellow vest that I use when riding my bike in adverse weather. The Boss, saw me and told me to observe for a while, ‘see if you can figure out what’s going on and who’s doing what’.
That took me about five minutes, I stood there for nearly any hour.
Then the box shifting commenced. First I helped a guy load his truck. Then I moved some boxes from one pallet to another. Then I cleaned up all the bundles of discarded pallet wrap and cardboard boxes and got to use the Elephant Foot garbage compactor. Then back to moving boxes, but now I got to use the hand pallet jack.
At the end of the day I got to clean up the big puddle of water in the middle of one of the cold rooms. The mop I was given to use was so dirty it wouldn’t absorb any water. I ended up using a giant squeegee to push the water out into the open air.
I didn’t stop for seven hours.
After driving home, I stopped the car in the driveway. It took me about five minutes to get out.
This morning I crawled out of my lovely warm bed at 0610. I got to work at just after 7. The place was a madhouse. Six truck inside the warehouse being loaded, two outside. I was immediately put to work.
‘Help Ali load, he’s bulk picking’.
By ten past seven I was loading boxes full of pre-cut salads bound for Pizza Hut into a refrigerated truck. Having moved over 250kgs I assisted another truck driver load. Then I was asked to move the water collection barrel out of the cold room and drain it. Now sweep the floor. Moved these drink can pallets with the pallet mover. Now, make these six pallets, three pallets, by hand.
I was complimented on my pallet wrapping skills. ‘I’ve never seen anyone wrap pallets so effectively the first time out.’
I just smiled and carried on.
Being knackered and ready to tell people to FOAD. I had a chat with The Boss. I told him this wasn’t really what I thought I’d be doing and that I didn’t really think I wasn’t cut out for such a labour intensive job, after all I’d applied for a night driver job. He told me, he’d already hired a night driver.
14 hours of hard labour. $264.
Knowing I never, ever, ever, never, ever have to go back again and get so dirty it takes a thirty minute shower to get clean: Priceless
That was an experience.
