The medical supply company was self-contained. The front of the building housed the IT people and the sales staff, as well as the huge office the owner claimed for himself, and a smaller office for the owner's useless brother. The warehouse sat in back, and in between was the shipping department, where the orders were packed and processed.
I worked in the back, initially as a packer and order puller, eventually as the only full-time shipping clerk. We in the back were the designated proles of the place, and were seldom allowed to forget it. The boss would occasionally pick one of us at random to wash his pickup, but more pathetic would be when sales guys would help us out with picking and packing. They would make a great show of changing out of their sweat-stained Dacron shirts, colorless Dockers slacks and clip-on ties, donning t-shirts and torn jeans, making it clear they considered this kind of work beneath them.
The thing is, every single one of us who worked in the back thought these guys were pathetic losers. Their wages were no larger than ours, so they lived and died by commission, and their naked desperation for the almighty sale made the guys in Glengarry Glen Ross seem dignified. Their only apparent perk, invitations to parties at the boss' house, would be meaningless to anyone with a life outside the place, but these guys were in permanent ass-kissing mode, and the job, the sweet, sweet job with its hollow promise of a brighter future, took precedence over meaningless things like wives and children.
There was no point in telling them how ridiculous they appeared, how empty their lives seemed to be. They wouldn't have listened, and wouldn't have believed it. All they had was their unearned arrogance, and the need to believe that they mattered.
