Warehouse Adventures for BeginnersOr, ‘How an Ageing Choirleader Briefly Sullied His Hands, & Became a Spokesman for All the Worlds Downtrodden Workers.”

PrologueMonday March 16, approx 4.30pm, the PM proclaimed, ‘No More Non-Essential Gatherings’.Like so may others, we spent a few minutes in shock, carefully weighing & re-weighing his words before realising that, yes, this was indeed the end of all choral activity for the foreseeable, & also of our income. I sent a mail cancelling that evening’s rehearsal, then went down there anyway, just in case anyone didn’t get the message in time. Once back home, we immediately began job hunting.

By 1am I had applied for every available delivery/warehouse job within 20 miles of our house. (Coz we figured that parcels & nursing would be the only sectors working in the coming months). Adel chased up social care.By Weds 18 th , we both had several offers, which was just as well, coz that was the day that the school I worked in shut down. We chose the 2 options with hours that allowed us to both to work full time & perhaps cope with home schooling too.Fri 20 th , we learned that we might be ‘keyworkers’, & therefore entitled to send the kids to school! Either way, with or without childcare assistance the die was cast.

With retrospection, I realise that past adventures had prepared us well. Having toured for years with an amazing but notably unsuccessful rock combo, I gave it all up after my firstborn (1995), & worked manual jobs, mainly in building or gardening for 10 years. This was my late twenties, & I considered myself above shit shovelling, so there were always people who could shovel shit better than me, but it paid the bills. Also, I had rebuilt life from scratch twice already, once when moving to Normandy in ‘94, & once (with Adel) when moving back to Bristol in 2008. In each case fast reactions were called for & the stakes were high. (Lots of dependents, & a tight window for getting up to speed). When we arrived in Bristol, I put out feelers for work in building, gardening, as an instrumental & singing teacher & also choir leading. It quickly became apparent that choirs was the way to go, & we built the Lush empire from scratch in just 9 months. So between us, we’ve some experience of sudden changes. Never expected those particular life-skills to be called upon again. How wrong can you be....

Turns out that warehouse work is quite different to running a choir. -Who knew? :DIn the great tradition of middle class people cameoing working class experiences & then deigning to give expression to their inarticulate but worthy cause, allow me to share a little....

I am now a card carrying Night-walker, aka Zombie... Walking Dead.... etc.All titles that the day workers confer on us beasts of the darkness, & which we wear with pride.They sneer & snicker, but are slightly afraid of us. So they should be..... ;)

Us newbies were summoned for a training session. 6 hrs solid, page after page of Health & Safety questions.The manager warned us (with steely gravitas), that all we needed 100% in these tests in order to set foot on the sacred warehouse floor. Then he told us exactly what to write in order to pass. -I'm proud to state that all my group are now legally incapable of suing the company, as we all scored full marks in H&S.

On the way out the nice lady asked if I had my own Hi-Viz/safety boots."No, but I can get some...""Oh don't worry. -They're provided, & we've got a huge stock of all sizes."

The very next day, one rather nervous & physically inadequate choir-leader turns up for duty. Badly-made sandwiches dangling from a skinny wrist, anxiously checks watch for the 4th time in 5 minutes. Manages to find the correct sign-in book. Dares to ask Scary Polish Giant if he can have boots;"Size 8.5, please"..... #TriedForGruff,CameOutSqueakyScary Polish Giant (aka Igor, who actually turns out to be friendly & vegetarian) grins toothlessly & says, "We've got Size 7 or Size 10".

Any seasoned labourer knows that this is a simple choice between bleeding toes (Size 7) & bleeding ankles (Size 10). I decide to sacrifice my toes. They never really recovered from all the labouring I did in my twenties, so logical enough to finish them off now. -Anyway, it’s always good to brush up on your hobbling....

With just 1 minute to spare I dash through the doors of that mighty warehouse & about 3 minutes later, realisethat our training was a farce. Zero sign of the regulations that were so stringently filled in for us. Effectively just the same 2 rules as any building site. -Try not to die & try not to kill anyone. I prefer it that way. It's very intuitive & there's obvious motivation.

The warehouse is huge. Something like half a mile long & wide with 116 loading bays. Walking the perimeter takes 20 mins. Looking down the aisles feels like dodgy CGI, as it all fades to vanishing point. Surreal. It never stops. 3 shifts/day, 24/7/365. It supplies a chain which sells everything from garden stuff to toys, food & medicine. We’re keyworkers because of the food & medicine. Proud to do my part, but weird to be loading pallets with pergolas in the middle of a such a crises.“What did you do in the Great Corona Crisis of 2020 Grandaddy?”….”Dappled shade, little Timmy.... -dappled shade....”

On that subject, PLEASE, let me completely dispel any rumours that we are somehow heroic keyworkers. Adel is in frontline social care, it’s true, but she’s visiting her clients in their own homes, so she’s more likely to give them the virus than catch it from them. Her work is heroic, but only as all care work has always been. Mine, not at all.

We’ve had so many supportive comments for taking on these jobs. All gratefully received, but also a little embarrassing as it’s just for a few months, & 99% of the global population do worse jobs for entire lifetimes. -So easy to forget quite how privileged we are.

You clock in/out at the door. A second late equals 15 mins docked pay & a bollocking.Ant-like & vaguely 2m apart, our feisty platter of misfits files down to the evening briefing. -Good news! Last night we were (again) the most productive shift of the 24hrs. And the lowest sickness rate. We scoff of course, but are secretly proud. Night shift represents. Bays assigned, the teams head out.

It’s a tower of babel, with few speaking English as a first language.Polish, Somali, Asian, Jamaican & (as everywhere) a mouthy Scouser or two.The casual racist/not racist banter flips me back to the building sites in Normandy, when I was the immigrant. Yep, still English & it’s still funny. Yay.Having said which, it’s almost less offensive to be called an English C*nt or Polish C*nt, than simply a c*nt.The Lithuanian C*nt is particularly proud of the additional syllables required to honour him with his full title.It’s always nationalities, never skin colour which is invoked, & as there’s so many, it feels quite harmless. Initial protocol is taciturn blanking. Scowl & ignore. But the ice melts readily once we work together.

My fellow newbies are 2 teenagers on gap years & Bulgarian Dave, -a wily old warehouseman with all the tricks. This is worrying as I know from building sites that teenagers are usually moping, entitled wimps. Physically weak, psychologically worse. They tend to lose their morale quickly & openly, & in any crap job,

dark moments should be swallowed, not shared! As for Dave, I guessed he'd be good for a few tips, but would somehow escape any heavy lifting. Fair shout. He'd been there a long time.

Then cometh our mentor, trainer & spiritual leader, Bazza.Judging the book by its cover, he is clearly a homeless meth-head.But nonetheless a nice chap & much less dangerous with a fork-lift than you might expect. ...And an inimitable, -nay, pioneering training style.....

"Ok Bazza, so what do we do?""Well, MAINLY.... ....There's boxes & stickers but don't forget the stickers coz when the lorries come it must under 24 & but at least 20 & sometimes sideways coz the pallets need the stickers coz the food is blue on top.And don't forget the stickers"....

......"Um.... ok.... -Shall I move these boxes over there?""Yeah"."And do they need stickers?""Er.... Dunno"

Despite misgivings, the 2 teenagers turn out fine. "Samwise" & "Danny-Boy" both sag at moments over the long night, as we all do. But they try not to show it, & we're convinced that we're the fastest new team they've ever had. (No one's said anything, but all the same, we're pretty sure). The harder you work, the faster turns the clock. But I’ve not seen either of them for days now. Reckon they must’ve cracked after all. Changing the teams means more new friends!

There’s weird angry junkie guy, who proudly claims to spend a third of his take home pay on industrial strength weed, talks often about murdering members of his family (theoretically, I presume), & particularly favours necrophilia as a conversation starter to while the hours away.

There’s Marcin, who somehow manages to spend the whole night, every night, leaning on a broom in the pickers bay. Always an utterly foul mood. Never helps, rarely even responds, but suddenly comes to life when the young pickers come in. Polish banter abounds. Marcin is firing on all cylinders. The body language comes alive. -Vigorous, spivvish & just a hint of wacky...? The girls respond in kind., then giggling whirr off into the darkness, & Marcin deactivates & slumps back despondently on his broom. The spectacle would be adorable if only he’d work a bit between solicitations.

Ollie, shy to the point that if he speaks at all it’s in a barely audible whisper, though he’s been there years & is as good at his job as any. Yet when a pallet started collapsing on me he gave a mighty roar & charged over to pitch in under the tumbling boxes. Eats 4 packets of crisps & 2 cans of coke for lunch. Legend.

Bill, -seasoned hard-hand, but with terrifying V.A.C. (Visible Arse-Crack). Sometimes as we tango around parallel pallets I look up to find myself actually staring into the abyss, merely inches away from my face. I have nightmares of a physical collision & will certainly need counselling when this is all over.SURELY health & safety legislation should cover this! Bill is very professional for the first 3 hrs, then descends into mumbling & becomes almost useless, then after the break just giggles insanely till end of shift. Presumably it was just exhaustion, but striking nonetheless.

Mikey, an unkept & scowling Polish bear. Highly intolerant of incompetence, but softens if he decides you’re on the ‘get it done’ team. -Like all menial workplaces there’s a chasm between those who survive by doing the best they can as fast as they can & those who try to do as little as possible without getting caught. One bloke attempts to spend the whole night brushing dust up & down whatever bay he’s working. I just don’t get it. -Surely that’s the same amount of work as actually cleaning the bay? But to him it’s beating the system.

Mikey is doing overtime, so he starts 4 hours before the rest of us, & also does a bit at the weekend. He’s clocking 70 hrs this week, & is chuffed to bits. “Can’t go out, -so what else am I going to do?” Turns out he’s a physiotherapist, has only been here for a year, sends money home, & hopes to set up his own practice as soon as he’s saved up & improved his English. He will surely succeed.

And my latest ‘trainer’, Maff.At first I was pleased as he could definitely construct a sentence, so I looked forward to building on Bazza’s estimable foundations. Even better, he was actually keen & enthusiastic on doing the job as well as it can be done. That’s the attitude that gets a watch spinning. I was a shameless teacher’s pet, clinging onto his every word, & he loved it & rose to the crowd. His thing wasto be ‘the character’. Noisiest crew, crudest banter etc. He constantly rotated a very few leitmotifs:1) The first four bars of “La Marseillaise”, except with one wrong note. “Da-da, da, da, da, da, DAH....da-da”... Same wrong note every time. Harmonically it was a reasonable choice, but irritating just the same.2) A charming little nursery rhyme, perhaps even of his own invention?“I like to play with my ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling.”...etc. -That’s about it. No really.3) A noise which I imagine, HE imagined as some sort of Indian War-CryThen back La Marseillaise. Round & round. 8 hours straight. All this was fatiguing, but tolerable. I was finally learning something.

The next night I was paired with him again. Actually, it turns out he has major mental health issues. He’d already proudly namechecked OCD & PTSD as part of his collection. Tip of the iceberg, says I. From the outset he is completely different. Moody, introverted, constantly muttering. Within a couple of hours this has grown to full blown paranoia. The muttering definitely mentioning cameras everywhere & CIA plots. Heno longer gives any sort of useful instruction, but breathes fast & loudly through his nose, in fact I’m fairly certain that he is very close to randomly punching someone (anyone, perhaps even himself), & decide that, in the case of such an event, my best course would be to stab him in the face with a pallet shard. That theory remains untested, happily, as soon after he disappears entirely for the rest of the shift. No idea where. He hasn’t been back since, & I’ve just found out that he did time for GBH, so my face/stab/pallet instincts wereprobably a good call. Many people find him hard to cope with, but others love him warts an all & the whole shiftmisses the energy he brings to the floor. Damn good driver too.N.B. There are also lots of normal-seeming people who work here, but they make less good copy.

Overall, it's actually not bad. A lot of the men comment that this is one of the best warehouse gigs in the west. Nightshift (10pm-6am) pays just over £300/week after tax, which is top whack apparently. (Yay..... ;) Plus, there's much less Orange Jackets on the night shift, -the line managers. Us green jackets distrust 'em, though they're mainly ok really. Here, as everywhere, the odd person who was clearly bullied at school & now finds themselves in a position of power is easy to spot, but happily there are few. Most importantly, though we work hard non-stop, there is no-one constantly pushing us to work even faster, & there’s time to do the job properly. That’s a game-changer in any crap job. Our manager paused as he passed last night, cast a critical eye & said. ‘Nice pallet that’. I swelled with pride... -”Nice? -Moana Pallet Lisa mate!” He laughed & moved on. A good moment. Banter is pivotal. Queuing to sign in, I turn to my team mate & ask politely, …..“And are you excited for the evenings entertainment, Johnny?”.Johnny looks confused for a moment, then the penny drops & he guffaws,“Living the dream, Sam... ...Living the dream....”

We get one (unpaid) 30 minute break, roughly in the middle of the 8hr shift. It's a bit of a rush, cramming in all the necessary calories in the time. Almost everyone smokes! -AND crams at least one fag into the short break! It’s like being in a 70’s film. In an attempt to show that they're being virus-responsible, management remove most of the chairs from the canteen. The remaining chairs are all 2m apart. But there's not enough chairs for everybody, so some have to

eat standing up. That's truly a kick in the teeth to a warehouseman. Then we all cram into a crowded corridor in the desperate rush to clock back in on time, salting the wounds of those who had to eat standing. Obviously, overrunning your break = docked pay. No snacks or medicines on shift (Paracetamol/Caffeine tablets = New Best Friend). We are allowed water in a clear plastic bottle. Yay!

Towards the end of the night shift, reality starts to bend. Pretty much all the bawdy banter dies away, though our crew fights this better than most. Rolling machinery drivers become an increasing menace. All clocks misbehave. However much you know not to look at your watch, you still can't help it, & every time it just seemsimpossible. Press it again to your ear to check it's still ticking. Each final hour a day.

But eventually, the sun doth rise & the buzzer doth sound. And the happy workers doth scamper for the escape hatch, only to be met by teams of Orange-Jackets who order us to form a queue all standing 2m apart,Getting to the back of the queue entails another half mile walk on feet howling for liberation, -Stride straight & true & hide the hobble. Freedom is at hand!

Clock out & we are once again sardined in a corridor with 200 other people as the clock-pressed day shift meets zombies craving dawn. Obviously I set off the random search button at the end of my very first night. Thankfully they didn't want me to take off my boots, coz I'd never have got them back on again.

TBH It's nowhere near as tough as labouring on a domestic building site.We are treated like cattle, but when you've got 3 shifts working round the clock, how else are they going to do it? We have no objection to being cattle as long as the farmers behave themselves. (Having to stand up on thebreak is not ok. They have since taken steps to remedy it). The management response to social distancing has been a bit slow, but is now reasonably effectual. They’ve loosened up the signing in/out times, which is an anathema to a logistics company. We no longer use the thumbprint clock in/out system. They, (& the building), are completely unsuited to dealing with the crises, but I reckon they tried their best & are now belatedly getting it right. Nature of the job is the problem. We all come in from the outside world with all the best intentions of observing the rules. ‘2m apart’, squawk the orange jackets, every 30 secs or so. And we comply. But when 2 or 3 men are working on a pallet, each pallet is only 1.5m wide, & working habits die hard, so by the end of the shift we’re all basically shoulder to shoulder, -stumbling against each other, even. Pushing through to make it stop. Orange jackets included. Much as we’d hate to lose our jobs the place really shouldn’t be open. Yes, they sell a bit of food & medicine &a few toys, but the vast majority of products are SERIOUSLY non-essential. Staying open is pure greed from top management. When the virus properly takes hold in Bristol our 1000 strong workforce will be a ripe breeding ground. Expressing this opinion is a sackable offence of course.

I’m currently on 'cons’, (consolidating & wrapping'). Basically, you take pallets of boxes apart & rebuild them into bigger & better pallets, then wrap it all in plastic about 50 times round. A lot of time spent bent double, but otherwise it's ok. Next, I’ll probably be 'picking'. (Going round the warehouse building up the small pallets that then get delivered to ‘cons’). Pickers work alone, so I'll miss the banter, but there's lots of rats for company. IMMENSE rats. Not even joking.

The reality of nightshifts has finally hit me now, as my co-workers warned it would, & yes, I have no idea whichway is up or down. I’m never really hungry, until I’m suddenly starving, & even then I don’t know if I want cerealor a roast dinner, & v. often, after 2 mouthfuls I don’t want it any more. Bizarrely, weekends are perhaps toughest of all, as I try to flip my clock to fit in with the rest of the family as much as I can, & desperately make the most of the 2 nights off. #FirstWorldProblems But after 2 weeks of quite considerable physical pain my ageing & ill-conditioned body is finally stepping up.I feel my whole posture changing. I stand taller & squarer. (A reflex to de-compact the spine, I suspect).I finally got a pair of size 9 boots, & bought gel insoles & extra thick socks, so hopefully next week will be a little less maiming, -& if my back was going to go, I reckon it would have gone by now!It still hurts by the end of the shift, but in an acceptable way now.

I’m not even the oldest person there! Nearly, but not quite.Fun fact: Among my arty peers, most people think I’m older than my actual age. In this labouring environment most people think I’m younger. -Analyse that as you will....

Since I started this ramble, Adel has started her new job too. Very different, but on reflection tougher than mine I reckon. She’s doing door to door social care. Home visits to people who can’t cope unaided, but are deemed capable of living alone with help. She’s no stranger to hard work & thankless jobs, but the weight of long days with the lonely & helpless is tangible on her. She speaks of the smell in the houses, the invading clutter. The patient usually shivering in a dirty bed, (budget only allows for so many visits/week). Often afraid, always alone. Old photos sing youth, marriage, hope & beauty. She gives them basic kindness & they weep with gratitude. -Honestly couldn’t do it... Phew....

So she takes a spiritual bruising by day, while I take a physical one by night. -It’s all exquisitely Ying/Yang darlings....! Of course we’re slightly jealous of all those getting a massive extra holiday on 80% salary, but thenthey’re slightly jealous of us, coz at least we’re getting childcare help, & get to leave the house. Such is this brave new world.

Final ironic insight. I'd been thinking that we choirleaders are a little soft compared to most of the population. Disproportionately adored, certainly! But surprisingly, in some ways it’s prepared me well for this job. I've worked closely with about 40 other 'pallet monkeys' over the last fortnight, aged between 18 & 60, & from zero to 30 years warehouse experience, & am astonished to find that mentally, I'm among the very toughest! (Some start well but their moral collapses half way through. Others scowl for 5 or 6 hours, then suddenly come to life as dawn approaches. Almost none maintain solid energy & drive right through). When we do a concert it's fairly non-stop high-pressure professional good humour from setting up the chairs, right through the rehearsal, the concert, the after-party, until the venue is cleaned, restored & locked down. Usually about 12 hours of calm & patience under pressure. The myriad skillset my old trade demanded is more transferable than I’d previously imagined.

We applied for these new jobs before the whole keyworker concept was announced. I now realise that we could both be keyworkers in the day time & still get childcare, thus cover bills & have a better family life. So I’ve just applied for a couple of menial jobs in the NHS (Porter &/or Cleaner). The form says that it takes at least 3 weeks to process the application, so who knows if it’ll come to anything but fingers crossed... Apart from more family-friendly hours, it would be nice to serve my country properly in this crises, rather than stacking inflatable spas with built in multi coloured led’s. Now there’s a sentence I couldn’t have imagined writing 3 weeks ago....... ;)

I do miss you all a lot. (Only the singing, not as people.... #WarehouseHumour ;)

But, on some slightly weird & painful level, we’re honestly appreciating the extremity of this change, so don't worry about us, we're fine. And I Solemnly Promise, that when we return to rehearsals, I will bring ALL the new acerbic insults of the warehouse floor with me.

You have my word.

Keep safe,x

Sam Burns.