A Traumatic Work Experience

In 1996 and into the New Year, just six weeks after my youngest daughter was born, I got a temp job working through an Employment Agency.  I was to work at a local bakery, either in dispatch, putting orders up or working in the bakery as and when required.  But it was always 12 - hour shifts and I was on constant 24 - hour standby.  It was extremely hard work; I only ever got a few hours sleep at best, sometimes working in the bakery on day shift, other days on dispatch on night shift.  It was a very cold winter and I had to use a mountain bike to get to work, which was exhausting for me.

Sometimes I would have to finish in the early hours of the morning and when I got home, I would have to feed my daughter. She had health problems and took a lot of looking after, plus I was very concerned about her. I also had relationship problems with her mother, so you could say I was under a lot of pressure: this on top of my undiagnosed mental health problems. But I desperately needed the money to provide for my child and her sisters, who I was looking after at the time.  I was lucky to get three hours sleep and rarely had any food to eat. I felt and looked like the walking dead and often wished I had been dead.

Although I had worked there in 1980 and knew what to expect, so I thought, this was a big mistake, nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead. 

It was such a bad ordeal I will never recover from it and a lot of the detail is blocked out of my mind, but I will try to explain as best I can.

I started in dispatch on night shift putting orders up and was getting help and advice from one of the regulars. And was getting on well with every one. On about my third night, early on in the shift, I remember I was feeling very unwell. I was very weak and sickly and my eyes were closing due to lack of sleep but as always I would struggle on, no matter what the pain.

I was happily working away, along with a regular who was telling me the various aspects of the job, then suddenly this man come from nowhere and just stood silent as he starred at me with a very unpleasant quizzical look.  He was a short, stocky, confident, arrogant person and a very loud-mouthed individual.  He proceeded to investigate whether I was doing the job properly, asking me did I know what I was doing in a very unpleasant manner. It was already obvious to me, that he had taken an instant dislike to me and that my seemingly good fortune in getting some work was already coming to an unpleasant end, as he was quizzing me.  I remember the other worker saying to him leave him alone, he is a good worker and is doing O.K.  Then in return I get yet more stares, then he shouted, “Hey, come with me I have the job just for you.”  He was obviously the one in charge and power hungry. He took me to another part of the warehouse, which was much colder, where I had never been before.  There was no one else working there. He told me to start putting up an order that I had no experience of doing and he went away for a while. I was struggling to understand the different lines and where to find them, my hands were purple with cold and I was incredibly tired I did not want to be there, due to this unpleasant man.

You need to understand, this bakery had a big reputation of being the worst place to work in and with good cause; the regulars didn’t help the casuals unless it was in their immediate interest. Usually the casuals did most of the work while the regulars took prolonged breaks. When they returned they couldn’t believe their luck if you had done all the work for them.  The problem for me was I had to learn as I went along, in what was a high-pressured job. 

Anyway I was struggling…I was searching high and low for various brands of bread in a very large warehouse and bakery. On one occasion he took me into the bakery to look for a particular brand that I had spent ages looking for, only for the both of us to find it had not even came out of the oven.  Yet minutes earlier, I was apparently useless as I could not find it. He ended up throwing me onto another job that I was used to and had done well on but he kept harassing me, desperate to find fault. 

The next night things got much worse. I was working OK, until yet again this man appeared from nowhere. He made some silly comments as he was passing me close to other workers, then stopped about 20 feet away and said, “You have not even got a name, what shall we call you?”  He gazed at me with the same horrible expression that will always haunt me and said, “Hey! You look like Fred West.’’  “I know, we will call you Fred West.’’ And from then on I was greeted with lots of harassment, beginning loudly from any distance, “Hey Fred!’’

At the end of my last shift when in the office to hand in my paperwork, I ask if I would be in the next night. In front of all the other supervisors, he loudly told me, “Don’t call us, we will call you!’’  I felt so helpless to defend myself, no one can imagine my pain, and I never went back.

(Fred West was the notorious mass murderer, who along with his wife murdered countless women!) 

     

©Paul Davidson 2008