Like Father

 

In the fall of 1981 I was fresh out of the Marine Corps and starting back to college at Three Rivers Community College (now just Three Rivers College) in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.  Late that year I was able to get a job at the Wal-Mart in Malden.  They were in the final stages of opening the store.  Thus I was one of their first employees.

In the spring of 2018, my youngest son, Patrick was hired by the same store into the same position I’d had there 37 years before.  It stands to reason that we would have some similar experiences during our employ.  You know, like father, like son.

Some similarities, though, we would rather avoid.

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Patrick and I were sitting across the table at Las Brisas, our favorite Mexican restaurant, enjoying delicious food and a little father/son conversation.  When I casually asked about work, he laughed and said, “I’ve gotta tell you.”

A few days before, Patrick had been using a pallet jack to unload stock from a trailer that was backed up at the loading dock.  All Wal-Mart trailers may look exactly alike to most people who only see them driving down the highway, but there are differences, not the least of which are differences in height.  This is most noticeable when they are backed up to a loading dock, where a flat plate of steel can be placed between the trailer and the dock to form a ramp, over which the cargo can be loaded or unloaded with a pallet jack regardless of how comparatively high or low the trailer is.

Also, keep in mind that many loading ramps are angled downward so that cargo is unloaded to the warehouse, where the floor is the same level as the rest of the store.  It makes moving heavy stuff a lot easier, but leaves the trailer at an angle too.  Yeah, that makes unloading faster and easier too.

Still with me?

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The pallet Patrick was unloading held dairy products, including crates of milk.  Milk crates are designed to be easy to stack, but they are not designed to be stacked in a staggered manner so that they interlace.  In other words, a pallet of milk crates is basically just a bunch of pillars or towers of milk crates.  One milk crate is so stable that you have to put effort into tipping it over.  Once you stack four, five, or more they get to be less stable and more easily tipped.  Much more.

Yeah.

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My boy had made good progress unloading the trailer and was moving at an efficient pace when he got to the aforementioned pallet.  He pushed the jack under it and pumped the handle to raise the load.  As he pulled the heavy cargo toward the ramp, it picked up perhaps a little more speed than he would have liked but it was moving easily so…

The pallet had enough momentum that it easily went over the slight bump when it hit the steel plate, then tilted downward as it started down the ramp.  That of course caused the cargo to shift its center of balance and the towers of milk crates leaned forward and kept right on leaning.  My quick-thinking son could visualize the mess he was about to have to clean up as gallons and gallons of milk burst upon impact.  So he let go of the handle of the pallet jack and reached up to catch the leaning crates and halt their accelerated tilting as the jack continued rolling down the ramp under its own steam.  He slowly brought it to a stop.

No muss, no fuss.

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I laughed at Patrick’s story and said, “Well, I had a similar experience, but mine didn’t end as well as yours.”

It was during the heat of summer just before the 4^th of July.  We had put various Independence Day related picnic items out on the walkway outside the store so that shoppers could grab them easily.  Some member of management had decided that canned sodas should be stacked on a pallet on cardboard flats in sixpacks.  At the manager’s behest the plastic wrap that originally stabilized the drinks on the flats was removed.  This too was intended to make it easier for the customer to “grab-n-go”.

It all makes good sense until you realize that, at the end of the day…the long, hot day…I had to pick up the pallet-load of loose sixpacks and move them into the building.  What none of us noticed was that there was a rock where the automatic doors opened into the vestibule.  And this small rock had found its way to the exact path the front wheels of the pallet jack would take.

Yeah.

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I was pulling the heavy pallet of soft drinks, guiding it carefully through the door when suddenly one of the front wheels hit the rock.  The pebble may have been small enough to escape my notice, but it was plenty big enough to cause the affected wheel to stop and the front wheels to turn, which sent the jack sideways, into the door frame, which brought progress to a sudden stop.

Well, not exactly.  The jack and the pallet came to a sudden stop; not so the sodas.  A few dozen of the sodas tipped off the pallet and smashed down onto the hard floor.  What happens when hot carbonated drinks smack onto a hard surface?

Yeah.

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The same arcing droplets of liquid that make a water fountain so beautiful, make for a disgusting mess when they consist of hot, sugary soda.

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Needless to say, I spent a few hours cleaning up the cans, then mopping up the sticky mess, then mopping again with water, then again with water, then again…

Yeah, you get the idea.

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By now Patrick was laughing.  He said, “Well, I didn’t tell you the whole story.”  He cleared his throat.

“After I got the pallet of dairy products down off the trailer and brought them safely to a stop, without spilling a single drop, I took it to the part of the warehouse where it would sit until somebody took it out on the (showroom) floor.  As I was pushing the pallet into its place I didn’t notice that the pallet next to it had a case of canned sodas sticking out…”

Needless to say, my son’s skilled driving of the pallet jack was interrupted by a loud hissing sound.

Remember those droplets of sugary sweetness I talked about earlier?

Yeah.

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Maybe there’s more to the old saying, “like father, like son” than we want to think.

 

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