The Allegory of the Warehouse
A couple of weeks ago I was hard up for work.
I had taken some time to visit friends in Spain and attend the Great American Beer Festival with my father and brothers, and the momentum of my employment machine had suffered.
During that time of great need, a woman reached out to me with an opportunity to write product descriptions for a well known fashion brand. This woman (we will call her Linda) was an action-oriented, heroic, well-meaning individual. I communicated my interest in the low-paying, early-waking, opportunity to her, and away she went to close the deal.
Two weeks later, she called me asking if I was still interested in writing product description copy for the fashion folks. I was in a more secure spot — Sure, but I thought it would be better to consider the possibility of job scarcity, and accepted the position again.
This time, the deal did, in fact, close.
So I woke up at 6:00 this morning, showered, dressed, walked up to the L at Myrtle-Wyckoff, got a coffee with whole milk and one sugar, got on the L, drank my coffee, got off the L, threw away my cup, got on a C, got off the C, walked up three flights of stairs to Port Authority, gate 314, and boarded the 129 to Secaucus.
I got off the 129 in an industrial park. I found the appropriate gray box to enter, entered it, and was escorted by a second woman to my working quarters. These quarters, to my surprise, were in a warehouse. A warehouse which was not heated... in Secaucus… where I found myself, at 8:00 in the morning.
I had little pity for myself.
It was I, after all, who, in my hubris, had accepted this in-glamorous description position sight-unseen. I, who had accepted it again even when my need was not so great. And I, who would hunker down and do the work I had set before myself. I would use the opportunity, I told myself, to practice my stoic meditations. So I sat where I was told to sit, and did the work I was told to do.
It was painful.
I was typing in my sixth “ORIGINAL PENGUIN Two-piece Navy Floral Print Tie and Pocket Square Set,” when I came to understand that my sanity was being threatened by my environment. Factory managers were scolding workers in the background. The walls were closing in. The words were worthless. The products too similar. The value thereof, too insignificant.
As entry forms melted into one another, I took a look thirty feet above me to my left at the nearest source of natural light. I decided it was quitting time.
I had been in the warehouse for less than an hour.
I walked over to the person who had explained my descriptive duties to me at the beginning of my shift. I asked her if we could talk quickly, and told her that I was leaving. I made clear that our employer wouldn’t see any bills from me, and that we would all just pretend it had never happened.
My sensei was not phased.
She said, “Oh, ok. No worries.”
I walked five minutes to the door through which I had entered, and stepped into the free and open, though cold and wet, mid-morning air. I bore witness to the three-dimensional world which I had so quickly begun to forget, having been removed from it so sharply, and my heart was once again filled with the joie de vivre it is so accustomed to carrying with it.
I wish I could say I wept for the poor souls I left trapped in that world of SKUs and shadow, but I didn’t. I ordered a car and returned to New York. I scheduled an interview with a creative director I’m looking forward to meeting in Bushwick, and I did my best to forget about my morning.
I hope the workers in that warehouse enjoy their lives outside of it immensely. I do not believe the conditions they work under are conducive to good health. But it is not my responsibility to remove them from the projections of their forms on screens. It is their responsibility to remove themselves.
I hope they fare well despite their work.
I hope they see better days.
I know I will.