BACK TO SQUARE ONE... So anyways, I recently quit a job that I only had for three days at a warehouse close to my home. I got laid off from my previous employer (for reasons that I won’t divulge here) almost two weeks ago, and quickly took this job after I applied for it last Tuesday. So why did I call it quits at that warehouse, you ask? Well for starters, I found out that it’s not my kind of work. I did blue-collared jobs in the past, but this one required a lot of strenuous physical activity (and my last two jobs called for me to either just stand there and look official for hours at a time, or work a computer. But at least I got to wear a nice business suit—hence the 'look official' part, haha)...such as loading and unloading hundreds of boxes from cargo trucks; sorting these boxes according to numerical designations written on their side; picking up these boxes again, placing them on wooden pallets and then using so-called "pallet jacks" to tow these boxes—which are now heavily stacked—to the back of the warehouse. Fortunately, the company I worked for dealt with distributing clothing goods...so the boxes weren’t that heavy (for the most part). As for other reasons why I left that job? There were a gripload of factors.
One very simple reason why I quit that warehouse gig? I totally felt out-of-place there. I live in Southern California, FYI, and being Asian; I obviously felt that I didn’t belong inside a building where the majority of workers were Latinos. In fact, 99% of the employees at this warehouse were Hispanic [this is actually a derogatory term for Latinos (according to a class I took in college like, 12 years ago)...but saying Latinos in two consecutive sentences feels a little repetitive...except when they’re in parentheses haha], 0.9% were Caucasian (they were obviously company managers who manned cushy computer workstations inside the warehouse) and 0.1% was Asian (which would be me). And not to sound racist or anything (too late?), but you know that I’m in a bad situation when—inside a warehouse filled with hundreds of Latinos in which the majority of them are tattooed high school drop-outs who are paying child support and don’t speak fluent English or no English at all—it’s the lone Asian with a college degree who was constantly sweeping the floor with a broom. Yea, NOT COOL. On the plus-side though, you’ll be pleased to know that Latinos have a good work ethic and that illegal immigrants from Mexico should receive some slack in the next U.S. election. Yes, I’m being serious. Who else is gonna do the slave labor? I KID.
(Another reason why this job wasn’t good? It was pretty much a sausage-fest at that warehouse. Apart from middle-aged women who were working in other areas inside the building, the workforce that was unloading trucks consisted of all dudes...plus some overweight she-male who was part-Latino/African-American. The one cute Latino girl—who appeared to be slightly younger than me—in the company worked in the Human Resources office...which is a 15-minute-plus drive from the warehouse I was assigned to.)
The reason why I got this gig in the first place was because it was offered to me right when I was still filling out my job application last Tuesday. I was still filling out the form when a lady from Human Resources immediately walked up to me and asked me to show up at 7 AM the next day with work clothes on. Having been unemployed for 3 days before that, I knew it was too good to be true that I could be hired so soon after I lost my previous job (considering that one of my close high school friends, as well as one of my siblings, hasn’t had a full-time job for about 2 years now). SO WORD TO THE WISE: When someone wants to employ you right when you’re still applying for the job, watch out! The work is most likely so crappy that they’ll hire anyone who bothered to drive to the company’s main office in the first place.
All I know is; I hope that I don’t feel any kind of regret for ditching this job anytime in the future. I personally call this emotion misplaced nostalgia: You start getting sentimental about a past event even though you know that it was a crappy situation in real-life. I’d be angry with myself if I had that "would've, could've, should've" type of regret months from now. To apply another analogy to this: It’s like when you’re dealing with someone who constantly angers and annoys the CRAP out of you. When you finally snap at them, you start feeling bad for doing so afterwards. That person saw it coming and most likely deserved it, but you still feel bad for getting mad at them. It’s like this warehouse job. I think it’s a s***y job now, and I better think it’s a s***ty job in the distant future. ‘Nuff said.
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