After causing thousands of bucks worth of damage while operating a pallet jack on his first day, most thought Duncan would never rise to the ranks of a licenced forklift operator. That’s until he caught his boss giving the new accounts lady the ol’ smoko poke-o in his office last week.
Now, Duncan has been fast-tracked to get his forkie’s ticket and finally make something of himself. What he lacked in common sense, competence or employer confidence he made up in leverage over a superior. This is how the wheels of big-blue collar are greased.
Duncan could hardly contain his excitement. Ever since he joined a labour-hire company in 2018 he dreamed of being a warehouse-cowboy. Making female coworkers weak at the knees as he rode his valiant steed into the daily load and unload battle. Moreso though, he’s really excited about getting 2 paid days off work to get the licence.
On the day of his course, Duncan decides to take the edge off with 4 buckets in the morning. Although the Magistrate’s Court disagreed in 2009, Duncan maintains he does his best driving when he’s higher than the voice of a sack-tapped jockey.
To level out the bongs, he slams a 2 triple strength Dare iced coffees and turns the training facility toilets into the roof of the shitstine chapel. He’s now ready to learn just enough to hopefully pass the course and go up a pay level.
It’s a gruelling two days to say the least. Not for Duncan but for the instructor who struggles to contain his urge to choke Duncan with his bare hands. See, Duncan cant be taught anything, in his cooked mind he knows it all.
He interrupts the instructor for the 10th time in the day to tell a story about how he was doing some circle work on a forkie at his cousin’s farm last year and driving them was a piece of piss, “I was born to drive a forklift, mate”.
Which, of course, was evidently untrue as Duncan needed to resit the assessment to finally pass. Nevertheless, at additional cost to his employer, Duncan was finally deemed barely competent to operate a forklift to the relevant standard.
When he gets his physical licence he snaps a photo of it while throwing a shaka and sticking his tongue out. He sends it to all the industrial estate canteen ladies that told him he wasn’t baby daddy material after a wild 3.5 minutes in his AU wagon. How do they like him now?
It’s Wednesday morning and normally he’d threaten to get the unions involved if someone talked to him on smoko but they needed some pallets urgently loaded for an order that was already running late. He stands up proudly, sausage roll pastry flakes cascading down his Hi-Vis vest. This was the moment he was born for.
He’s off to a bad start after being reminded to put his seatbelt on 3 times. Nevertheless, after jabbing the pallet like a drunk virgin he finally slides in. He can’t believe it, he’s about to perform a basic warehousing task to a mediocre standard.
In his excitement to prove to his mother that he isn’t a useless sack of manure, he fails to spot a hazard – another mouth breather who had walked into his path. Aw no, he’s going too fast, so he panics and tries to swerve out of the way, sending it straight into some storage racks.
It’s objectively impressive how much money he can cost his company without getting fired. Nevertheless, when you’ve got a recording of the boss rogering a staffer, you can achieve anything.
Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?