When I returned to Britain after a working holiday in Australia, I wanted to travel again. I’d already spent a summer driving across America, and I wasn’t ready to settle down. I had an idea of what to do next.
Take a CELTA course, learn to teach English and look for work somewhere in Asia. What I didn’t have was enough money.
An agency found me a job at Hays Storage Depot, a warehouse along the A13 in Barking.
As far as I know, the building is no longer there. I had no interest in warehouse work, but the job paid, and I needed it.
The A13 is basically a grim dual carriageway that goes from the suburbs into East London.
It always seems to be grey, no matter what time of day you’re driving down it.
There’s factories and just it’s got a feel of just being somewhere that you don’t want to be.
I absolutely hate that road with a passion, and I’ll be happy if I never visit it again for the rest of my life.
Five in the morning
My shifts started at five, while it was still dark, and usually finished around two or three in the afternoon. Most days I stacked trolleys with stock that would go onto trucks and out to petrol stations across the southeast.
Some shifts took me into large walk-in fridges, where the cold got into my hands within minutes. When I finished in the afternoon, the daylight felt oddly out of step with the day I’d already had. Other people were still at work, while I was heading home after hours of lifting and stacking.
Conversations on shift
A lot of the men I worked with talked about time they’d spent in prison. Conversations turned to which prison someone had been in or how long they’d served, and I listened while I got on with the work.
My background was different. A university degree and stories from my travels weren’t things I felt a need to bring up unless they fitted the conversation. I joined in when I could and did my share of the work, speaking to the other men as I would anyone else. I didn’t think I was better than them.
Six months at the warehouse
I hated the job. I didn’t look forward to the early starts or the time in the fridges, but I turned up and did my share because every week brought me closer to leaving. Over six months, I got to know the people on my shifts. There was no particular conversation that changed things. We spent enough time working together that it stopped feeling strange.
Eventually, I saved enough to take my CELTA course. During the course, someone offered me a teaching job in Japan. I hadn’t chosen Japan when I started at the warehouse. I’d been aiming for Asia, and the course gave me a way in.
The work that got me there
Most mornings, I just wanted the shift to end. I kept going because I knew what I wanted to do with the money. The warehouse job had little in common with the life I was trying to build, but it gave me the means to take the next step.
If you’re working a job you don’t enjoy while trying to build something of your own, you don’t have to pretend you love it. Think about what that income could help you do next. Mine paid for a teaching course, and that course took me to Japan.