insider_imageForget about elections, depressions, and recessions – the summer is not far away. Of course the recession is an ongoing concern within warehousing, I know only too well because I suffered unemployment at the front end of the current dip.

However there is little most of us can do about that apart from make the best of the hand we’ve been dealt and put smiles on our faces.

It’s great at this time of year when it starts to get light earlier and the daylight hours stretch into late evening.

I found one of the highlights of working a warehouse night shift was the drive home at 8 in the morning as you watch suited businessmen and women on their way to the daily grind with the smug satisfaction that within ten minutes you’ll be tucked up in bed for the rest of the day – or at least watching daytime television.

Of course in the winter months this ritual is spoiled by the fact that all you can see is a collection of headlights around you.

There’s also the bonus that you don’t spend the day staring out of your office window at the bright summer sun wishing you were on a beach somewhere.

Instead you most likely spend it under the covers and by the time you wake up it’s too late to enjoy the sun anyway – but at least you weren’t awake and aware of what you were missing.

There are few people who would choose to work such anti-social hours, most are doing it for the money, but with the right group of workers around you it is far more enjoyable than sitting in an office all day.

It’s certainly more enjoyable than sitting at a desk crunching figures all day, although I hear these bankers do get some decent bonuses.

Of course there are downsides to night-shifts, not least how cold those big non-insulated expanses can get overnight and the way your body clock gets messed up whenever you have a day off.

However I would recommend a stint on nights to anybody who was daft enough to ask for my advice and the next time you drive home after a night shift and pass a suited banker counting his bonus on the way to work – allow yourself a self-satisfied smile in the knowledge that he will not be the one enjoying the latest instalment of Jeremy Kyle within the hour.

Warehouse & Logistics News

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