I work in one of those big box stores – in the garden area. I won’t call my employer dangerous – certainly it’s not a dangerous place to shop. However, there are many, many ways to get seriously injured in our store if you’re not using your head. We’re not unsafe, but you do need to pay attention and use your head when you’re shopping in our store.

We use power equipment – forklifts and other things – to move products around the store and to get heavy items down from top shelves. We try very hard to avoid using this equipment when the store is busy, but there is no way to completely avoid doing so. We have a set of special safety rules we follow when the store is open. These rules are to protect us and our customers.

One of the things we do when we’re using power equipment in the store is block aisles to keep customers out of the areas where we’re working. We block the aisle we’re working in and we frequently block the next aisle over from where we are working. Danger in the aisle with the power equipment is fairly obvious to many customers. Danger in that adjacent aisle is actually greater even though it’s less obvious. All it takes is a little push with the power equipment and items start falling off the top shelf in the next aisle over. It’s all too easy to do. Trust me.

(Think about it. We’re all about sales. If we block an aisle, it’s an inconvenience to our customers. Inconvenienced customers shop elsewhere and don’t come back, meaning we lose sales. We don’t want to do that. If we block an aisle for safety, there is a very good reason.)

Some customers are too special to be injured in a retail store. Others simply believe they are immune to falling pallets. They feel they’re impervious, so they can walk into our work areas and we should wait to do our work while they shop. (Not a thought at all that there might be a customer waiting for the goods we’re pulling down from the top shelf …)

The other day, I was working a jammed and hung pallet – somebody else jammed it and I was called in to extract it safely. This pallet was jammed against a ceiling beam and hanging over the edge of the rack. Only a thin layer of shrink wrap was keeping a thousand pounds of merchandise on the pallet. When that shrink wrap gave way, four very heavy grills were going to fall from twenty feet in the air.

The aisles were blocked off. Colleagues were in place to keep customers out of the way. The situation needed correcting, and there was a high risk of serious merchandise damage. The only real danger of injury was in being underneath that pallet and I could get the reach truck in place without driving directly underneath. So long as everybody was smart about the situation, nobody was going to get hurt.

Here I am, operating the reach truck in limited space, trying to back up far enough to get the forks into the pallet without smashing the rack behind me. The shrink wrap is stretching and that pallet is about to fall. I finally get the forks positioned and start moving forward to put the forks in the pallet, when a customer walks past the aisle blocker, steps over the moving front wheels of the reach truck, and starts shopping right underneath the pallet that’s about to fall.

(Not to mention, the customer stepped between a moving piece of heavy equipment and a fixed object. It would have been very easy to crush the customer against the racking or smash the customer’s feet with the front wheels of the reach truck.)

Talk about panic. I can feel my blood pressure spiking just writing this story.

I told the customer to get out.

“I’ll only be a few seconds.” was the response.

In a few seconds, that pallet could fall.

A colleague yelled at the customer. The customer told her to be patient and that I could finish my work when she was done shopping.

I didn’t know what to do. I considered getting off the lift and pulling the customer out of the way. However, there was no way I was going underneath that pallet.

I totally panicked and froze – very poor reaction. I couldn’t move forward to grasp the pallet safely, because the front wheels of the reach truck would hit the customer’s feet. If I did anything else, I risked knocking the pallet loose. The shrink wrap was continuing to stretch and it wasn’t going to hold those grills forever.

Fortunately, the customer moved before the pallet fell. I was able to pull the pallet down safely. As the customer left the area, my colleague started explaining the situation to the customer and pointing to the danger of the hung pallet. The customer called her rude and impatient in not quite so many words. The customer couldn’t understand why we were so upset. Given my level of adrenaline, I’m sure I wasn’t at my most coherent or cordial.

If I had physically pulled the customer out of the way, I would probably have lost my job and been charged with assault. (And I wasn’t about to go underneath that pallet to physically move the customer out of the way.)

If the pallet had fallen on the customer, my colleagues and I would have been fired on the spot and quite possibly charged with manslaughter. The resulting legal fees would have ruined me win or lose. (Not to mention, I don’t really want to kill anybody.)

Please, if you’re going to shop in one of these big box stores, please, please use your head. If an aisle is blocked off, there is a reason. You don’t shop faster than a falling pallet. If you get in my way and I start yelling, it’s not because I have to wait for you, but because you’re in serious danger.

My next safety rant will be about those @#$%^& shoes with wheels in the heels and parents who allow their children to roll down the aisle at 25mph out of control and unsupervised…