Yeah, when I worked at Sears. I was on the truck unloading crew and we also pulled items from the stockroom, brought them upstairs and loaded them in customers cars.
A typical day we would load a couple items when we first opened and one guy could handle that. But usually after an hour or two the calls would start coming steadily and pretty soon it took two or three guys to pull stock, put it on the freight elavator to take upstairs and load the items in a customers car when they pulled up to customer service.
We had all the heavy items like vacuum cleaners, refrigerators. ovens, gas grills, tool chests, lawn mowers etc. It was really easy to get behind. Sometimes the customer service girls would call us directly on our walki-talkies and we would have 9 or 10 customers waiting for their item. And most of the time it would be a steady stream of calls for one of two or three hours, one right after another
I just think how stressed I get at my janitor job now but back at Sears, we were doing ten things at once and I was working with people who were cool most of the time but they fancied themselves hoods and tough guys and so while you were doing your job they were giving you sh*t and giving you a hard time.
But most days it was unbelievably hectic, I couldn’t handle that much stress now. This was actually from 1994-98, when I was in my mid thirties. Awhile back but the time has flown by so quickly it just seems like a few years and I can remember it well.