Pallet Pandemonium

Okay you bitches at Shipping, listen up!

This is a pallet.

This is a pallet on drugs.




Okay, okay, I'll be serious now. Let's go back to the picture of that pallet.

This is your standard run-of-the-mill wooden pallet used to haul stuff around with a forklift. Look at it closely. Notice how it's longer at its length than at its width. Notice how the slots on its width are larger and can accomodate all sizes of prongs, whether you use a forklift or a hand-driven pallet truck. Notice how the slots along its length are much smaller, and only the smallest size of prongs could be inserted into them. If you were a shipper that gave a shit about your customers, or have even an iota of common sense, which side should you have facing out when loading the truck?

Correct! The width of the pallets (also known as the front) should be facing out so that they are accessible to whatever equipment we have to haul them. Unfortunately, one of our suppliers wasn't as smart as you are when they sent nearly 15 pallets of plastic containers to us, under the assumption that we had a forklift with small prongs.

This wasn't the case with us. Our forklift wasn't even working because we haven't finished construction to build a charging station for its batteries. All we had to haul them were the larger-pronged pallet trucks. So whoever the retard was who shipped the pallets facing the wrong way, the poor driver had to come all the way here from California only to find out that we don't have the equipment to unload his cargo.

It also didn't help that the retarded supplier scheduled the driver to arrive during everyone's lunch break. I had to run all over the place to find people to help unload it. Since none of us were able to even handle the pallets, the pallet slots being too small, we had to manually turn the fucking things before our pallet trucks could get to them. That's right, we (or at least, two of the strongest guys) had to turn nearly 15 fully-loaded wooden pallets 90 degrees by hand.

Okay, you people at Shipping. To be fair, I understand that sometimes loading the pallets sideways is the only way to have all the pallets fit into the truck. If you're going to do that, CHECK WITH THE CUSTOMER TO ENSURE THAT THEY HAVE THE EQUIPMENT TO UNLOAD THEM!!!! If, like us, the customer cannot unload pallets that face sideways, book a different truck to ship them facing the right way.

You were lucky that the plastic containers were light enough for us to turn them by hand. If it was denser construction materials like bricks, concrete blocks, or elephants, we would've had the poor driver send them all the way back to you to fix the problem. If you really care about your customers, you do not make any assumptions about them.

It's like having me send you your mail-order bride wearing a chastity belt, and I assume you have the key.