My First Day, They Handed Me a Radio and Said 'Good Luck'

First day at the warehouse. Six in the morning. The parking lot was still dark and the sky was the color of a bruise. I walked in through the metal side door, the one with the 'ENTER HERE' sign written in marker on cardboard, and stood in a sea of forklifts and wrapped pallets with no idea where to go. The place was the size of an airplane hangar, lit by yellow lights that made everything look like an old photo. Somewhere a belt hummed. Somewhere a beep went off again and again. A guy in a bright vest and a beard walked past me without slowing down, tossed me a radio the size of a brick, and said, 'Channel 4 is the drama channel.' He kept walking. He didn't look back. That was my training. No video, no buddy, no name tag, no tour. I stood there for a minute holding the radio, then turned it on and scrolled through. Channel 1 was dispatch, all business. Channel 2 was nothing. Channel 3 was someone humming. Channel 4 was, in fact, the drama channel — two guys fighting over who took the last Gatorade from the fridge, a forklift driver named Big Ron talking about himself in the third person ('Big Ron is near the bay. Big Ron sees the pallet. Big Ron does not like the pallet'), and someone, somewhere, playing a harmonica softly and badly, like they were the soundtrack to their own loneliness. By nine I'd found training videos on my phone and taught myself to drive a forklift from a YouTube guy named Doug in Ohio, who had a calm voice and a real respect for weight limits. By lunch I'd moved my first pallet without hitting anything, which Doug would say was the bar. By day three they had me training the next new hire, a kid named Tyler who'd also been thrown a radio and told nothing, standing in the same spot I'd stood, holding his radio like it was a bomb. I taught him what I knew: channel 4 is the drama channel, Doug in Ohio is your friend, the fridge is a war zone, and if you hit the big red button the forklift just stops, which is the most comforting button I've ever pressed. The system works, I guess. I've been here nine months. Big Ron still talks in third person. I started talking back, on channel 4. Sometimes he pauses, then says, 'Big Ron hears you. Big Ron likes that.' No one has told us to stop. The harmonica guy quit last month. I miss him. I hope he found someone to play for.