Amac Productions

Welcome to Listen To This!

If you’re new here, welcome! Every month, I’ll drop a new wild story from all my years working in retail! Names and other identifiers have been changed so everyone may remain anonymous. All terrible customers will be referred to as Karen.

Boxes Attack Craig

Once upon a time, in the retail world, a great evil descended upon all the workers in stores far and wide… The dreaded holiday season.

That time of year that makes everyone in retail, shiver and shake with fear.

Christmas music will blare. Lines will be long. People will be anything but jolly to us. It is a time of year we all dread. We’re about to be bombarded with a sea of customers from wall to wall until the new year. There is no escape. Don’t even try!

Yet, the villain of this holiday retail tale isn’t the customers.

Not even the lines and lines of people. The never-ending orders, shopping, endless days, and feeling like you’ve been awake since the start of November as days blur together.

Sometimes, the holiday villain for us, is one we never see coming.

One late night at General Nonsense, the store is closed, not a customer in sight, and the retail workers are locked inside desperately trying to get product to the shelves.

They’re so very, very far behind. The boxes are stacking up everywhere in the backroom and the shelves are getting more and more empty as the holiday season ramps up.

In an effort to subvert the inevitable, store manager Julia has asked several of her loyal employees to work their shifts in the middle of the night to unload boxes, empty, and shelve product while there are no customers.

Amac, Sara, Kath, and Craig in addition to Julia herself agreed to these terms.

After all, working a night shift is a reprieve from the chaos of the crowds all day every day, that leave you feeling a bit hungover and tapped out from dealing with people. Even if they do nothing wrong, there’s just. so. damn. many.

One headphone in, I’m working my shift.

It’s a smooth night with Julia in charge. Always with a plan and efficiency, Julia took charge and easily sorted jobs for each of us to get through the obscene number of boxes.

The backroom of the store was far too full for any of us to work in. Instead, it was decided that large carts of boxes would be delivered to the entrance of one of our sections to be unloaded.

Within the cornered off section of the store, we set up tables to unload the books and merchandise onto. Empty boxes were broken down and removed by the carts as they returned to get more boxes.

Between unloading boxes from the cart, we would funnel items to the appropriate shelves as quickly as possible.

Essentially, Craig took the boxes from the back room on a cart. He would meet me and Sara at the entrance of the blocked off section. The three of us would unload for Kath and Julia to empty the boxes onto the table.

We’d return empty broken down boxes to the back room as needed and while their piles were filled with boxes still filled, we would take merchandise from the tables and shelve accordingly.

Then the three of us would reconvene as needed to reload the boxes for Kath and Julia.

The five of us are fairly efficient. Had worked there for a reasonable amount of time and could easily handle these jobs quickly and correctly.

No one was worried about whether or not things were getting to the right place.

The night chugged along.

I had a headphone in my ear as did everyone else.

One out, just in case we needed to communicate with each other.

It’s a common rule that we do not deafen ourselves with both headphones while we did things like this so we could get to each other in case of issue or emergency.

Plus, it’s way easier to shout across the empty store than search everywhere for each other.

“SARA!”

“YO!”

Way easier than looking behind every freaking bookcase, which I just will not do. I’d call them before I search all of General Nonsense for them.

I mean, unless they don’t answer. In which case, well, you know what? Just keep reading, okay!

We’re a good chunk of the way through the night.

Craig, Sara, and I have emerged from our corners of the store to restock the boxes in Kath and Julia’s piles.

Now, for the first trip, Sara and I help Craig load the cart. Take it out and unload it. Then we’ll stack it for the other two and clean up around them. We’ll take away the bags of packing, bring them new bags, get them water, or anything else they need.

We turn into barbacks for them.

That way, they never have to stop unless we go to break.

Which we do.

This is not a sweatshop.

In fact, if we didn’t take breaks, I think Julia would kill us. There is no break skipping on her watch! Nor would we be allowed to not have water when we need it.

We can stop, but we were cranking trying to get through as many boxes as possible because we were wildly behind.

Kath and Julia even offered to switch with the three of us, to give us a break from running around since they were standing essentially in one place all night. But the three of us had such a groove going on the floor, we didn’t want to.

Why mess with what’s working?

Craig comes with another cart and we unload it, giving him the empty one back to fill again.

Because we have two.

Did I not mention that?

Yep, we do. After the first trip, there’s an empty cart that Craig fills while we unfill the other. Then we swap carts. We do this until Kath and Julia tell us they have enough boxes.

And while myself and Sara are no slouch when it comes to lifting heavy boxes, we were notably slower than Craig as the night wore on.

He would always have the next cart ready and waiting for us before we finished.

Every time.

Which is why as Sara and I finish the cart and turn to grab the next one and Craig isn’t there, we’re confused.

However, we do not panic.

Craig is the worst communicator in the world. He could have needed to use the bathroom or grab a drink or a Band-Aid or any number of things without saying a word to us. It is completely within his character to disappear on us without a word.

Not weird at all.

Usually, he reappears within a minute or two with an apology and explanation for the random disappearances.

Collectively, we shrug and take a moment to catch our breath and have some water.

Julia and Kath are still emptying boxes like crazy in the corner, but they think nothing of us taking two seconds for a break.

We finish our drinks and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And now, more than a minute or two have gone by, and Sara and I are frowning at each other.

Kath and Julia are sort of oblivious, so caught up in their work and their own music they don’t notice that Sara and I are exchanging confused looks.

Where’s Craig?

He should have appeared by now.

Therefore, we must go find him.

Without a word to the others, (important note there) the two of us exit that area and head into the backroom.

In the receiving area, we step inside and looked around. We see piles and piles of boxes, noting that even though we’ve been here almost eight hours, we’ve barely made a freaking dent.

We both groan at the sight of all the boxes and look around for Craig.

We don’t see him. The room is quiet, and eerily still. A feeling I can still remember to this day.

Sara and I look at each other, still super confused by the missing manager.

“Craig?” I call into the room.

But it’s quiet. Just like it was when we entered. Quiet and cold. We look at each other again and wonder where on Earth he could have disappeared to. We’re about to walk out of the room when we hear a little shuffling of boxes.

Just the soft sound of two boxes brushing against each other.

We freeze.

Is Craig in the room after all?

Sara does about face, and I stand in the doorway as she shouts louder this time, “Craig?!”

Then in the most hilariously defeated voice Craig could muster, he answers us. “I’m over here.”

His voice is soft, full of defeat, and a bit of shame or guilt. I immediately start walking into the room.

Craig is a one-of-a-kind dude.

Thinks he can do anything, all the time. Very prideful guy. A bit of an ego, but there’s nothing truly malicious about him. He’s just sort of full of himself from time to time.

And it can get him into trouble.

Like now.

“Where?” I ask, rushing further into the room with Sara hot on my heels.

“Over here. I’m a little stuck.”

Understatement of the century, Craig!

Sara and I round the corner of a still standing pile of boxes to reveal what we couldn’t see from the doorway. Everything behind those still perfectly stacked, almost to the damn ceiling wall of boxes has completely collapsed on itself.

Boxes are everywhere.

Scattered across the floor, tumbled into one another, and I’m marveling that one extremely tall row managed not to fall. Worse yet, the wall of boxes that from the doorway make everything look fine.

But it sure as hell isn’t fine!

Not only have somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five rows of boxes fallen, but that were also almost as a high as they could go without hitting the lights. But Craig! Is wedged in the middle of it all.

Half covered by boxes, he waves sheepishly to us as we round the corner.

For about 10 seconds we’re both stunned as we take in the scene in front of us.

There are boxes everywhere, making it hard to even get to Craig. He’s covered in boxes, trapping his legs in place while he’s in a half-seated position he was forced into when the boxes came tumbling down around him.

His head and torso appear unharmed, but he’s buried from the waist down and sort of lounging back on a pile of toppled boxes.

Sara just starts asking him if he’s okay and if he his head and why didn’t he shout for help.

His answer to that was, “Well, I thought I could get free or somebody would eventually come looking.”

Meanwhile, I’m just chucking boxes out of my way to get to Craig. He claims he’s fine but can’t get leverage to get out. Nothing hit his head. He managed to get out of the way and protecting himself, mostly.

Except in the process he got completely stuck in the collapsed pile.

He – however – did save himself from injury. How? To this day, I still don’t freaking know!

Sara starts in on helping as I fling whatever is in my way out of my way to get to Craig.

Mind you, I have no idea what this looked like, but I imagine it had to have been a bit cartoonish.

I was not at all worried about what was in the boxes trying to crush Craig to death. They were filled with more books than anything else. They’d already fallen, so anything fragile was broken anyway.

Oh, and I could not have cared less about merchandise in that moment.

Craig was literally trapped.

He is not a weak man. I’ve seen him lift a pile of eight boxes so we could slip on the bottom out. If he can’t move those boxes around him, they’re heavy.

I did not care about damaging a thing.

While Sara was a bit more delicate in her approach and not as strong as I am, she was a bit slower going.

I just flung whatever was between me and Craig somewhere else.

Didn’t care where. We could clean later.

Can’t replace Craig.

As I’m about to reach him, here’s where that noteworthy moment above is important.

You see, none of us said a word to Kath or Julia.

In fact, if you think about it from their perspective, everyone has just f*cking disappeared.

They regularly had three people flitting about their table. Taking books and putting them away. Cleaning up trash. Grabbing them stuff. Refilling their box piles.

Yet all of that just came to an utter grinding halt.

Craig disappeared.

Then Sara and me.

Just poof.

Right as I’m about to start pulling boxes away from Craig’s legs to free him, I hear Kath and Julia chatting as they walk to the door.

“Guys?”

“Amac, Sara?”

“Where did everyone go?” They asked.

Very reasonable question.

And I have to admit, I like working in a place that if you disappear oddly, people come looking for you. They may not hit the panic button right away. You know, they want to assess things before freaking out.

I get that. I did it.

Just now, with Craig.

Sara and I shout that we’re here by the boxes that have fallen. Seeing as Sara is still able to move more freely from where she was standing, she slipped out from the pile and waved them over explaining what happened.

That Craig disappeared and we came looking for him only to discover the boxes collapsed on him.

With that news, Julia rushed around the corner and joined me in the frantic flinging of boxes to free Craig.

Sara and Kath cleared a path for us to pull Craig out and let him sit somewhere comfortably as he explained what happened. Because he admitted it was his own fault.

Remember how I said I’ve seen him lift eight boxes before.

Yeah, well, he tried lifting more than that of an unsteady stack, and the whole thing came down around him taking out other stacks like dominos on the way down. He managed to dodge some boxes and fall into a smaller pile, but the larger ones wedged around his legs trapping him in place.

Every time he tried to move, there was just too much weight.

Julia was glad he was fine but berated him for not shouting for help sooner and trying to lift more than he should.

All of which he had done because he noted the pile was unsteady and he wanted to fix it. But instead of rebuilding it, he just tried to realign it in place.

Jeez.

This is the mindset of some males I cannot stand. I need not ask for help for I am man; I am strong. I can do.

Dude, there’s no reason not to ask for help or take an extra second and restack the boxes, so you don’t hurt yourself.

Like I said, Craig is an interesting dude. Cocky enough to think he can lift ten boxes filled with books by himself. With heart because he was afraid someone else would get hurt if the pile fell.

In fact, I think he was grateful it was him the boxes fell on and not someone else.

He’s a weird guy. I’m telling ya.

Regardless, Craig was completely fine in the end! Our shift came to a close with us cleaning the backroom and restacking the boxes, so they didn’t murder anyone else.

So be careful out there during the holiday season fellow retail workers. For it is not always the customers or the holiday rush out to get you. Sometimes, it’s the very crap you ordered that wasn’t stacked correctly, and gravity hates you.

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