Friday The 13th: Attack Of The Killer Window Film

Sounds like a title to a most excellent B-movie, right? A fun and wild slasher/scare picture loaded with bad acting, continuity and gaffe issues. A movie that is sure to win at least one 2010 Razzie Award. Most likely (and hopefully) the worst movie of 2010.

This scary tale starts in a simple envelope production plant. As we fade in and push into our location, we drift over to the warehouse portion of this manufacturing plant. We come upon a lone man operating a forklift and pulling bulk materials needed for the production floor.

Then, quite suddenly, there is a loud sound of a crack/snap that could only resemble wood splintering apart. Startled, the lone man on the warehouse floor looks up to find...

*cue dramatic stager*

ATTACK OF THE KILLER WINDOW FILM!

OH MY GOD! RUN RUN RUN!!!!!!

But first, lets look at the back story as to what in the hell I’m talking about here.

There are a variety of materials that fall under the control of the warehouse peeps at my place of employment. And since I’m a “warehouse peep”, I rule such materials with an iron fist! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Okay, Mike, chill out.

Aside from storing customer envelopes and bulk envelopes in our warehouse, we have just about everything in our department to produce envelopes. There is paper stock, glue, ink and window film.

What is window film?

Window film is the very thin, see-through layer of plastic that you see with your standard window envelope. Ever get an envelope, say like a bill, where your name and address is visible through a small “window” in the bottom right corner of the envelope? In most cases, that window has window film.

Some companies just have the window and no film covering the window hole in the envelope. This makes your mail far more susceptible to cold and flu season. And you sure as hell don’t want to get mail that is coming down with something that it gained on it’s travels to your mailbox, do you?

That’s why you should demand from all places that send you mail to make sure that their envelopes with windows are protected by window film.

The window film also adds protection from envelopes trying to get it on with one another while in transit. The last thing you need is to be opening up your mailbox only to find that a couple of envelopes had unprotected sex and made baby envelopes.

Nothing like a 10x13 window catalog envelope with your 2010 insurance information showing up after being violated by a standard, non-window #10 envelope.

You pop open that mailbox and the 10x13 has given birth to a shitload of 6x9’s! Now you have to find something in which to accommodate all those baby envelopes. Luckily, since it is the Christmas holidays, mail out some greeting cards and whatnot.

Maybe a thank you card to your favorite blogger here?

Anyway...

The window film comes to us on big rolls contained in big boxes. They are stacked in rows of four about nine high. Usually each box contains 36 rolls of window film. The window film comes in different sizes, too. 6”, 5.75”, 5.50”, 5.25” and so on. The largest we carry is nine inches and the smallest is 3.25”, I think.

Regardless, it’s heavy and bulky. Especially when you get up into the larger sizes. We go through a lot of 5.00” and 5.25” window film. I’m constantly restocking this film on a weekly basis.

The way it works is that we keep one box of window film on the floor for the production people to grab as they need it. As the box becomes empty, I utilize our “Big Red” order picking forklift to pull out a new box of window film from the storage racks above to replenish the active stock on the floor.

I believe that a full box with 36 rolls of window film weighs roughly about 1500 pounds. I’m not quite sure of that estimation. Whatever it is, it’s weighty. One roll of 5.00” window film is probably 40 pounds or so.

The heaviest thing that I’ve had to move on occasion in our warehouse is glue. One drum of glue is 560 pounds and a real bitch to move around. We have to use a special hand truck just to get them from one place to another. I’ve had the misfortune of one of these giant drum of glue spilling on me, too. What a mess.

On Friday, I had placed a full pallet of window film (one pallet holds one box of window film) into the third rack of our window film storage area. The third rack is close to 30 feet up from the floor. Keep that in mind.

I like to think of myself as very careful when placing things into the storage racks. I do my best to make sure that the load I’m placing is straight and resting as best as I can get it on the steel framing of the racks as opposed to the wooden planks that are placed in between the racks for added support.

Except on Friday, something was amiss.

After I had placed this box of 5.00” window in the third tier storage rack, I lowered the forklift to the floor and proceeded to hop out so that I could pull some materials that were needed at one of the production machines.

As I pulled this material, I heard a distinct crack. A very loud, distinct crack. The kind of crack that only a wooden pallet would make if it was failing under it’s load. My eyes widened and I whipped around and looked up to where I just was placing the window film pallet.

Sure enough, the pallet wasn’t sitting just right in the rack. It’s was somewhat crooked and not resting correctly. The back end of the pallet was partially resting on the steel frame and partially resting on the wooden support planks.

One of the slats on the bottom of the pallet had cracked and made the weight of window film shift slightly to the back right corner of the pallet. As I turned around and saw that the pallet had broke, it got worse. I actually gasped and was about to run for cover.

Just as I had turned around and was able to see what had happened, the pallets weight shifting from the broken slat pushed into the wooden support plank below it. The support plank fell out and to the floor in front of me. The pallet then tipped and fell into the support beams of the racking.

I thought for sure that window film was going to take a nose dive right into the area where I was standing.

In a panic, I jumped into Big Red and quickly launched myself upward to try and stabilize the pallet. My concern wasn’t for me but for anyone coming into the area to get needed items for the production floor.

As I reached the pallet, I could see there was no way to get my forks into the pallet and lift it safely. The pallet was tipped at such an angle that I had no idea how the hell I was going to get it down without it falling. My only idea was to climb onto the racks and down-stack the pallet.

But I first had to notify my supervisor of the issue at hand.

I explained to my boss what had happened. He came over and tried to stabilize the pallet with no real success. Then we had the idea to use some of the planks from empty racks as additional lift on the forks of the forklift. It was a good effort but as he lifted the wooden planks on the forks underneath the broken window film pallet, the weight shifted again and popped the support plank from the other side of the damaged pallet.

What made it even worse was that when this happened, the weight shifting to the other side of this broken pallet pushed into the pallet of window film next to it. That, in turn, popped a support plank from THAT pallet of window film.

This caused the second pallet to tip into the first pallet. Now there were TWO full boxes of window film that were about to take a serious tumble 30 feet below and make a whole hell of a lot of ruckus.

Now I was worried and so was my boss. So we got my boss’s boss involved. We all agreed that the only was to fix the problem was to down-stack both pallets onto empty pallets to keep them from falling.

Guess who got to be the monkey?

I don’t mind heights. But I do mind trying to down-stack 40+ pound rolls of window film 30 feet up while trying to keep from falling. I had to grab a ladder for my boss so he could climb down from the Big Red order picking forklift. I grabbed another ladder to climb up to the top tier of the racks to down-stack the rolls of window film.

My boss came over with our standing forklift and raised up two empty pallets which I placed on either side of the dangling danger pallets. As I started to down-stack the more seriously damaged pallet that started all the fuss, the second pallet cracked and slipped just enough to almost make me wet my pants.

I had a brief moment of fear when I thought I was coming down with two full pallets of heavy ass window film. I even thought that maybe it would be safe to just say “fuck this” and get down from this asking-for-trouble mess.

But I was a trooper and kept going. I stopped working on the first pallet and moved to the second pallet. I tried to quickly move over the rolls of film to an empty pallet I had placed behind me. Once the pallet was light enough for me to lift, I moved it so that it was sitting firmly on the steel of the storage racks.

Then I moved back over to the first pallet and emptied it completely of it’s contents. By the time I was done, I was boiling hot and sweating like a pig. Crisis averted, though. I’d like to pat myself on the back and let it be known I saved the day. Not only did I not get seriously hurt, but I was able to save all the rolls of window film from any permanent damage.

I’m a hero in the envelope window film community. The funny thing is, I didn’t realize that it was Friday the 13th until after this chaotic event took place. And, to be honest, my day was downhill from there. A few other troublesome things happened but nothing too glamorous to report.

I haven’t had a real good work scare since I almost rolled my truck at Honey Bucket. Although, by comparison, I’d much rather deal with this pallet scare than that whole almost rolling my truck thing any day.

I have to pee. Excuse me.

-Mike The Janitor
©2009
Millenoma Publishing