Toxic Thursday in Current Events

My mood was toxic today. It started first thing in the morning. I didn’t want to leave the house. I just didn’t want to go to work. We are doing our spring reset which is our biggest project of the year. This is hard on everybody and I am not being assigned the biggest tasks but the pressure is just too much anyway. The reason it feels that way is that every single little thing that I dislike about the workplace bubbled up to the surface. Once it is in my consciousness it is all I see.

The complete disregard for safety with the pallets is what triggered me. I saw Sean driving the reach truck with crushed lawn mowers that were stacked too high and were blocking his vision. They were also leaning against his truck. First of all, that pallet was built too high. Second of all, what the fuck was he doing driving it across the store? Unsafe pallets are all I could see across the store after that landed in my consciousness. I couldn’t cope, I couldn’t focus and I just wanted to walk out. All of the safety issues I am finding are systemic, I can’t fix it with the same people who created it. Then at the end of the day, Brandon was helping me bring down products with the reach truck. It was the last one of the day, it was assembled to be way too high. He had a security camera, a light fixture and a ceiling fan to worry about. I told him not to attempt it, I wanted us to refuse unsafe work. He hit the light fixture and some of it came crashing down. Nobody got hurt but somebody could have. We had associates die last November, not at our location. I am going to blow up at the management tomorrow. Something needs to be done.