Reminder ask: The guy who almost killed you and your Lowe’s team.
(original post)
Thanks for the reminder!
YES okay the dude who almost killed half the team while we were working at Lowe's! This is less one cohesive story and more several unrelated incidents that put everyone on edge.
So, who was this dangerous person? Who was the guy who nearly killed myself, a few other team members, and our manager on separate occasions?
A goddamn teenager. Of course.
Eric was probably a decent enough kid in his day-to-day life, but he was a fucking MENACE at work. In just the five months I worked with him (keeping in mind that he was working there BEFORE me), he did the following:
almost hit me in the back of the head with a 2x4 that had nails sticking out of it while we were throwing away trash/debris in one of the dumpsters after a display teardown, and only missed because I happened to have dropped some smaller pieces of trash and bent down to pick them up. This was my 2nd night on the job. Jethro witnessed this and shouted at Eric so loudly I'm surprised he didn't set off the nearby car alarms.
Dropped one of the huge vinyl display posters without warning onto Cindy and Jessie - when I say "huge" i mean it was about the size of an entire bay, so it was about 10 ft across and about 20 ft tall. That's a lot of fucking vinyl, so it's fucking heavy! Cindy and Jessie were working on unattaching it from the bottom struts, and Eric was doing the top. He didn't warn them when he cut the last support and the whole thing fell on their heads, which scared the hell out of them, understandably, and could have seriously injured them, as both were holding knives and bending over their work. He's goddamn lucky that dropping the fucking thing on them didn't cause either of them to fall into their knives. They both yelled at him, as did Manager Brenda.
DROPPED A STEEL BEAM ON OUR MANAGER'S HEAD. NO I AM NOT KIDDING. He was taking out a support for a shelf, and while one person can carry a single beam by themself, those fuckers are still heavy, and yes! Steel! I don't know exactly how it happened bc I didn't see it myself, but just like with the poster, Eric released the beam and just let it drop and it landed on Brenda's head. Apparently the manager for the permanent nightshift crew at that store saw the whole thing, so both of them yelled at him, and the other manager offered to call an ambulance for Brenda, which she refused. Not the choice I would have taken (we actually had decent insurance there) but whatever.
Took a ladder out from under Cindy! Technically you're never supposed to be actually walking around on the shelves, but there's literally no other way to do some parts of the job, so we did it all the time. Cindy was up working on a Christmas display, iirc, and had one of those biiiiiig rolling ladders/staircases that are scattered around the stores parked next to her so she could get up and down as needed. She sent me an SOS text at one point, and when I went to her, the ladder was gone. She said she had been sitting on the edge of the shelf with her feet on the ladder as she worked, and Eric came by and wheeled it off, either not hearing or not caring that she was telling him to stop. I tracked him down, shouted at him, took the ladder back to Cindy, and then she also went and shouted at him.
In a similar vein, almost knocked Cindy off one of the tallest ladders! Several of us were working in the Gorilla Glue section, trying to organize and restock it. Cindy was up on the tallest ladder (which puts a person about 15 ft in the air, depending on how tall they are) so that she could reach the overstock boxes and we were calling information back and forth on what product was needed at floor level. Jessie and I are hard at work doing this. Eric, on the other hand, decides he's very bored and that the best solution is to grab one of the support bars on the ladder, hang his full weight on it, and start swinging. These ladders are HORRIBLY shaky under the best circumstances and feel like they're going to tip over at any moment WITHOUT this sort of monkey mimicry going on. Cindy, Jessie, and I all shout at Eric to cut that shit out, which summons Travis and Sam from the next aisle, who also chew him out.
FREQUENTLY drove the Ballymoore (the blue single-person lift, used to get product up and down from the tallest shelves, but no forks to move pallets) with earbuds in, despite being told by the entire team, our manager, and a few other supervisors that that was EXTREMELY dangerous and against both company policy and OSHA regulations
I cannot even count the number of times he almost hit Cindy, Jessie, or myself with the metal shelving grates because he would sling those fucking things around willy-nilly. While not as heavy as the support beams, they were still pretty fucking heavy and it hurt like hell if you accidentally pinched your fingers when putting them in place. I don't want to think about what it would be like if he had hit one of us Captain America-style.
You may have noticed a pattern here. Trust me, we did too! Jethro especially was absolutely incensed that Eric seemed to be, if not outright targeting the AFAB members of the team, at least less concerned about if we got hurt compared to the AMAB members.
Holy shit, you may be thinking. How was this kid not fired????
TRUST ME, BRENDA WANTED TO. On top of all that bullshit, he also called out at least once a week (for context, we worked a 4 on, 3 off schedule because we had 10 hour shifts) which was less dangerous for the rest of us, but also meant that we were down a set of hands, which really sucked because it really needed to be a team of about 12 or 15 people, rather than 8. He also got in trouble for sleeping on the rug displays a few times, and sneaking off to take vaping breaks.
BUT. Because we were already short so many people, and it's fucking difficult to hire nightshift workers in a small town, Brenda was not allowed to fire him. Her boss literally would not let her, presumably unless he actually did manage to kill or maim someone.
Eric eventually just stopped showing up to work entirely and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
