The Tower Of Milk Crates

[Jack7957]

A story that still brings me smiles thinking about it 10 years later....

I was working part time at a retail store, owned by a company that sold food and supplies to restuarants, for extra money, already had a full time job. Well, in addition to the main business, food supply, and the two retail outlets, the company also owned one of those outdoor fun centers that have go carts, batting cages, mini golf and a driving range. They had a golf pro that one winter when the center was closed became our reciever. He was only doing it till spring, so the back room was always a mess, the worst was the milk crates. These are the plastic crates that generally hold 4 one gallon bottles of milk. As the dairy deptartment would empty them, they'd leave them in the cooler where he was supposed to get them and bring them to the back. Instead of making a nice stack or at least piling them in one spot, he would just drop them wherever, so if you needed to get at stock, or use the compacter, you'd be walking over and around stacks of 2-3 crates all over the floor. One night I went back there after he'd left for the day and found about 30 crates scattered all over the floor. A lightbulb went off in my head when I noticed a part of the wall where nothing was being stored. I gathered up all the crates, then made a stack as high as I could reach. Then using the wall to support the stack, I'd reached down, grab the bottom crate, lift the entire stack and slide another under it. I kept doing this till I had a stack that reached the roof, about 22 crates. Took the remainers and stacked them up next to it. That night I kept having other employees asking me if I did it, and I did admit to it. It's didn't take long and would be easy to disassemble right? Two days later I came in and the store manager asked to talk to me. It turns out the reciever came to him the next morning, basically crying about the stack of crates and not knowing how he was going to get them down. The SM, went and looked at it, then tells him "this is how you get them down". Proceeds to grab a crate near the bottom and runs with it, bring the entire stack down. I got off with a verbal warning that while it was funny, don't do it again.

[Iced Coffee Man]

I can relate to this, I work in the dairy dept too.

[protege]

Ah....milk crates. They were among the favorite things to um, "borrow" at camp. Several staff tents had multiple crates stacked up along the walls for storage. But, one guy went overboard--he had his entire tent lined with them! Of course we had to dump them on the loading dock at the end of summer...much to the delight of the kitchen staff

[thegiraffe]

We have a practical use for milk crates at my store (other than carrying the milk, of course).

Many stores in our area from the same chain had been hit with smash and grabs this summer - they were going after cigarettes of all things. So we stack the crates up about 7 feet and fill a pallet with them, then tape around the top to keep them upright (and more difficult to disassemble). Our store has 2 'entrances': one from the outside into the lobby, then from the lobby actually into the store. We blockade the doors in the lobby going into the store. Yeah, they could be moved, but these guys were in and out in like under 2 mins - that would eat up too much time (and you can see it clearly from outside, so it acts as a deterrent).

Before we did the milk crates though, we were all experimenting with how best to blockade. One night, we blockaded the area around the service desk (where the cigarettes are kept) with pallets stacked with about 4.5-5 feet of milk crates. There was NO way you could get in there. We topped it off with a sign (on a paper bag) that said something to the effect of "come and get it you M-F****rs."

Yeah, management totally let that slide since no customers would see it, and you couldn't see it from the doors. The blockade in front of the doors takes the least amount of time though, and seems to work well.