I worked in a warehouse for around 3 months over a decade ago. They stored data in paper form from various companies. I was hired to place stickers sequentially on all the incoming boxes.

One of the worst aspects of that job was I wasn't trusted with anything. I think this is because I got the job through a staffing agency, and this warehouse probably assumed that anyone they were going to hire would either be sketchy or missing a bulb in the pack, but would at least be competent enough to place stickers. I couldn't even operate the sticker printer or fix issues without annoying this one other guy who I was never sure was my actual boss. Every day, I had to put these stickers on pallets of boxes, standing the whole 8 hours, and perform janitorial duties if I happened to get through that day's worth of palettes.

It was a very lonely job, which was both a plus and a negative. I could put on my headphones and space out, and after a while I figured out areas that were out of sight of security cameras, so I'd sneak under them and play games or read comics. No, I wasn't lazy, but if I got through all my boxes and already swept the entire warehouse, there really wasn't anything else to do, but I had to look like I was working if anyone spotted me. I never got caught in one of my hiding spots.

What made the job more lonely, ironically, was the fact that sometimes I'd be working with someone. I was never fast enough for these people, so there was a handful of times where they brought in someone else from staffing to help out with the stickers. These people never lasted more than a week, if they even lasted a few days. It sucked because they were personable and I was hoping I'd make a friend or two. One of them was a Black lady, real nice person. I didn't expect to hit it off that easily with someone from a different background from mine; we were joking and laughing the whole time, and I even showed her where those hiding spots were once I knew she was cool. The following week rolls by and she's not there. I was disappointed because she made the job a lot more tolerable.

The one cool thing about the job is boxes frequently came in with missing covers or they'd fall apart, which let me peek and see what's inside. A lot of the incoming boxes were from big film studios, and I found some scripts for old films and TV shows. In retrospect, I could have rifled through that stuff more and gotten away with it, but I was mostly a good boy back then. lol I like to believe there were some lost episodes somewhere in those boxes.

I stayed for 3 months because I badly needed the money. This was a few years after the Great Recession and I still found it difficult to find work as someone with no experience in animation (which was my first career). I did make some money doing web development, but at that time I didn't have any projects to work on. The staffing company, for good and bad, gave me a job pretty easily.

In the end, I just had something snap in my mind. I suddenly realized "I can't come back to this anymore." I collected my check from the staffing company, told them I'm not showing up again, and that was that.

There are worse jobs from a physical standpoint, but being almost alone in a gigantic warehouse of identical looking boxes and having the sole task of placing stickers was the most soul-crushing experience I've ever had.