Caina Amalas: Nobody Ever Looks Up
From the comments to yesterday’s post, it seems like a lot of you recommend my books to your kids. Thanks for that! That’s a big compliment.
I suppose if my books had an overarching moral, it would be to look up, because no one ever looks up.
This was actually a valuable life lesson I nearly learned the hard way!
A very long time ago, I worked in the warehouse of a large retail store that will remain nameless. All the merchandise was loaded on pallets, and the pallets themselves were then loaded onto massive metal shelves that went up about twenty feet. To get the pallets up there, we used a Fully Adjustable Stacker (something like this, but less advanced) to bring them up and down. Basically a hand forklift.
Now, one of the main things that got loaded onto pallets was TVs. TVs are so light nowadays, you know? Not back then! This was well before flatpanels came along, and so TV were still tube TVs, big and heavy. And the biggest TV the store sold was this monstrous sixty inch tube TV for $1200 that was so huge it had to take up its own pallet.
At least, it was supposed to take up its own pallet. More on that later.
Anyway, one day an order came down that a customer wanted one of these $1200 monster TVs. That was never good, because usually the customer showed up in a Chevy Corsica or a Ford Taurus (or, God forbid, a Geo) or something and then was angry that the 60-inch TV didn’t fit in the trunk in defiance of physics. Fortunately, this time the customer had showed up in a pickup truck, so we were in good spirits as we went to get the TV.
Then we discovered a problem.
The store had three of the monster TVs in stock, and they were on the top shelf of the warehouse rack. Unfortunately, to save space, some genius had somehow managed to get three TVs onto only two pallets, with the TV in the middle on two pallets at once. That meant it was impossible to get either of the pallets down without causing the TV in the middle to fall.
Discussion ensued. The TV was too heavy to get down on a ladder. At last a plan was hatched. We would raise the tines of the hand forklift up to the level of the top shelf. Then one of our more agile employees would climb up and push the TV onto the tines of the hand forklift, and we would then gently lower the TV to the floor.
As I type this now several decades later, it is obvious what a remarkably bad idea this was. However, while I might be smarter now, I still wasn’t a complete idiot back then, so I pointed out that this was a remarkably bad idea. However, I wasn’t in charge, and the floor manager didn’t want to blow a $1200 sale. $1200 is a lot of money today, and it was even more money back then. So the floor manager raised the tines of the hand forklift, and another employee (we’ll call him Ladder Guy) scrambled up the ladder. I was in charge of spotting – making sure that Ladder Guy didn’t climb into an unseen obstacle, or that the floor manager didn’t back the elevated hand forklift into a light fixture or something.
So, very carefully, Ladder Guy pushed the monster TV off the shelf, and then it fell onto the extended tines of the hand forklift. And then it landed there perfectly centered! Everyone cheered. Success!
However, we had overlooked an important fact. Tube TVs, you’ll recall, are lopsided, and a lot heavier on one side. The monster TV had landed centered on the tines, which meant that all the weight was hanging on the left side. Which meant with slow, graceful majesty, the monster TV rolled off the tines of the hand forklift and fell right towards my face.
Fortunately, I was spotting, and watching very carefully. I weighed about 120 pounds more back then, but I don’t think I ever moved so fast in my life. I jumped back, and the monster TV landed about two inches in front of me. It was like having this wall of cardboard suddenly appear right in front of my face.
Truly, that day I learned the importance of looking up! So when Caina thinks about that, it’s coming from the heart. 🙂
Now for the punchline. The floor manager went ahead and sold the monster TV that had fallen off the tines to the customer. I was sure this would come back to bite us. But the TV worked perfectly! The customer loved it and never returned it. I can’t remember who manufactured that TV, but I wish I did, because they clearly make a quality product!
-JM