We have another mold problem. It has been there for a week now. This time I'm taking appropriate documentation.
Before I get into that, I wanted to give an update on my last post and let you know that my OSHA guy finally showed up a while ago (and I wanted to wait for anonymity reasons), but the results were... disappointing. See below the fold for more.
As far as the mold goes, from what I can understand, apparently people in Deli had been pouring a bit too much grease down the floor drain. (I don't work Deli so I don't know if that's standard procedure, but common sense tells me that grease and drains don't mix well.) The grease and the meat bits caused the sewer line to back up. The next drain down that line is the floor drain for Dairy, which is the drain down which they pour spoiled milk and other liquid (or liquefied) dairy products. That drain... well, the word used by someone who saw it happen was "geyser." Spoiled milk and chicken grease flowed liberally from that drain, and of course there were temp bins of food (on pallets) near that drain, and a week later, those pallets still have a liberal coating of this white-ish film that smells like a dead mouse in a sorely neglected fishtank. Boxes sitting on those pallets have the same white spatter, and the paper bin labels (with the temp bin's number, barcode, and four-digit binning code in case the barcode is unscannable) have incredibly visible mold spots that are a very dark gray color.
It's been a week. The smell, at times reminding me very strongly of the truckloads of manure I have to unload sometimes, has been horrendous (but is slowly dissipating), but while the drain was fixed in less than a day, the white film and mold spots are STILL THERE. I have raised concerns about this, up to and including refusing to touch those temp bins unless I'm given gloves, a respirator, and garbage bags for whatever food I'd be picking, but I'm not seeing any changes. (Somebody mentioned that the spatter was just on the outer cases of the food, but you know, cardboard isn't exactly waterproof. I mean, really?)
(Oh, and whoever gave Deli their sanitation rating clearly sucks at their job, because Deli has a nasty housefly problem. And flies are to unsanitary things as bees are to pollen, and every time I see someone standing in line at the Deli counter I kinda throw up in my mouth a little.)
So now there is mold in the backroom, on food that is still for sale. Again. I know, I know, it's not the first time, but still!
Oh, and I did leave a tip at the local Health Department, before you ask, and encouraged a few other coworkers to do the same. I'm still not crossing my fingers.
And now, on to the OSHA visit.
I first 'met' him in a phone conversation, when he said he'd shown up during the daytime but didn't see much of what I'd described in my complaint. So I said, "Come back at night, when there is much more activity in the back rooms." I really, really wanted him to watch people try to take apart those temp bins stacked taller than I am, sometimes with glass things ON TOP, or with tall towers stacked with flimsy boxes of marshmallows or bagged noodles on the bottom because the people who stacked them clearly sucked at Tetris.
I told him, "I realize you can't tell me when you're going to visit, but if you try to make it a night I work and then 'randomly' select me for a private interview where managers can't watch, I can safely hand you a flash drive of pictures I've been taking." I told him the days I worked, and gave him a few identifying features, and I thought we had it set in stone. I prepared the flash drive that night.
And then the next day, which is one I didn't work, one of my trusted coworkers texted me that my OSHA guy was there. (He was the one person I'd told, and I knew he'd keep it to himself because he wanted official intervention just as badly as I did.) I was incredibly disappointed: not only could I not give him the flash drive or casually nod toward areas Management would probably try to keep him away from, but he came on a good night, when the fire exits were clear and the temp bins were tolerable and everything was running smoothly. Had he waited one more day, he would've walked into a logistical nightmare that would've been ample fodder for him, because that was a really, really bad night.
He saw the temp bins, and agreed that they were 'horrible,' and I mentioned that I'd been injured by one of those bins falling and the medical records would put it within six months of his visit. He inspected our pallet jacks and saw that many of them are old and need servicing, not only for employee health but also because a heavy pallet, good momentum, a child running out in front of you and a faulty emergency brake on a pallet jack could really ruin someone's day. He noted the freight overcrowding. On the subject of the fire shutter doors, he told me that the hooks are actually there to hold the door up because the door's dropping mechanism is controlled by a frangible link that will melt in high temperatures, and it will drop when it's supposed to and I "would not want to be standing under it when it dropped," which made me wonder what the melting point is, because the A/C in the back rooms isn't what I would call stellar, and did he happen to look at that one fire shutter door that was hit by a pallet stacker because the idiot running it at the time forgot to lower the mast?
And those are the results of his visit. Wait, did I say 'results?' I should've said 'review,' because as far as I can tell, not a single damn thing has been done. The temp bins keep getting taller. Most of our pallet jacks still have faulty emergency brakes or scream when you use them to pull things, which can cause back problems; we name our jacks things like 'Fubar' or 'Herniator' for a reason. I still spend hours of each day boxed in by precariously-stacked towers of flammable materials or potential for toxic gases (like that one Chemicals temp bin, where I noticed that the bottom involved a leaking case of bleach, the middle of the pallet was starting to lean to one side, and on top was a case of ammonia, and I was taught in third grade to never let those two chemicals mix because the result makes your lungs stop working, or something like that).
My family, especially my parents, keep urging me to get another job, if not for pay and benefits then for a job that didn't suck quite so much. (Truthfully, I don't mind the job itself. I mind the bullshit, which is a whole 'nother rant entirely.) But the way I see it, even if I could find another local job that I could stand, if I leave Walmart then the problem still exists. At least right now I'm in a position to do something about it, or at least to warn others.
Thu Jul 31, 2014 at 6:37 PM PT: My stomach's been, ah, misbehaving since the drain exploded, so this time I went to the health department IN PERSON and talked to a guy who makes inspections, carrying two ziploc baggies of samples of stuff I can still smell in my backpack. I gave him a very clear description of the problem, told him exactly where in the store it was, and he marked it on his calendar. And as far as I can tell, either he never showed up or he never did anything because the nasty shit is STILL THERE. What in the fuck is gonna have to happen for something to get done?