Bruce Finds His Rainbow. Part 1

Bruce Grayson was aptly named. He was the epitome of a grey person. His complexion was grey-ish; his clothing was grey-ish because all the schools he had attended had uniforms that were uniformly some shade of grey. The only thing not grey about him was his shoulder length brown hair.

And average, yes he was an average person – average height, average weight, average attitude, average intelligence. Bruce was one of those who faded into the background. He had the usual number of friends but was not really close to any, he just made up the numbers in any team he was picked for. He didn’t even stand out as being bad at anything, no, he did well enough at most sports not to get shouted at but never well enough to be given extra training. His grades were average; he had enough marks to complete his schooling with a certificate but not enough to go on to higher learning. He even had grey dreams, no colour in his life at all.

He got along with both boys and girls, as someone who was part of the group but not someone who would give some input. He had been out with a couple of girls who were almost as grey as himself and he could not see any meaning to it in the end. The evenings went well, pictures and a snack and maybe even a chaste kiss at the end of it, but there was never any spark that urged him to push for a second date and the girls didn’t seem to be put out by not being asked. The only thing he did out of the ordinary was to write poetry, using an old Corona typewriter because it slowed him down and made sure his thoughts were fully explored.

His biggest problem was that he lived in an average, grey house, in an average, grey road. The road was situated in a grey industrial city, in the grey, industrial midlands, and there was very little chance for him to see vivid colour. Even when he went into town the people around him seemed muted, somehow. The only splash of colours came, other than the traffic lights, was when he went to the cinema, the colours on the screen exciting his senses with vivid flashes of red and blue and green and every colour in-between. When he emerged from such wonderful experiences he felt sad to be coming back to his grey existence.

When he left school his parents told him that he needed to get a job as they were not prepared to support him any longer. He went to agencies and scoured the newspapers but didn’t seem to be able to find anything he could do that didn’t need some sort of flair or expertise that he didn’t have. Then he saw an advert for a warehouse worker in a distribution company that was on his side of town. He rang the number and got himself an appointment for an interview. This was almost an occasion for rejoicing as getting this far had been eluding him.

He lived close enough to be able to cycle to the warehouse which, unsurprisingly, was a large grey building with the words ‘SupplyMode Distributors’ in large black letters over the door. After he had chained his bike to a rack he went inside, his satchel with all his paperwork over his shoulder. The receptionist was the most colourful woman he had ever seen, with a bright red pantsuit over a lavender blouse and she even had red fingernails, something he had never seen his mother wear. She told him to sit down and that Mr Jackson would be along to see him.

When Mr Jackson came into reception Bruce was amazed as the man was wearing a forest green suit with a yellow tie. Bruce was almost hyperventilating at the absurdity of the colours around him. Led to an office that was painted in a light blue, Mr Jackson took him through his experience and aptitude and Bruce proved likely to be a good, average, worker who would turn up every day and so got the job. The job was simply moving things around in the warehouse, loading and unloading trucks, cleaning up and making sure that the workplace remained a safe and clean environment, tasks which Bruce was ideally suited to as nothing required flair or original thought.

He was given a look inside the big part of the building and the first thing that caught his eye was that everyone was wearing hi-vis clothes and he almost backed out with the concept of wearing vivid orange shirts but swallowed and just accepted that some sacrifices needed to be made if he was going to be able to continue to live at home. There were doors where trucks came in and the centre of the building was racks for storage. The other side was a loading bay where smaller trucks were loaded with goods going out. It all seemed very ordered and this gave some relief to Bruce as he would never be able to manage something chaotic.

He was told that he could start the following Monday and was taken to a room where he was measured and weighed “Just so we know where we start and to get your safety clothes made up and to get your safety boots in.” They said for him to be there at seven in the morning to go through induction but his normal starting time would be seven-thirty. He rode home to tell his parents that he was now a working lad and they celebrated by getting extra chips with the fish that evening. His father had an extra bottle of beer but Bruce was too excited to eat or drink much. That weekend he had flashes of red; green and orange appear in his dreams.

Come Monday morning he wore his tidiest jeans and a grey shirt under his duffle coat to ride to the warehouse. A security guard let him in and took him to a room where he was taken through all the dos and don’ts that are needed to know when working with trucks, fork-lifts and large boxes. He was shown how to lift without bursting anything and finally presented with his locker key and a set of work clothes and boots. He was then taken to the change room where he was shown his locker and the showers should he want to take one. By this time other men had arrived and were changing into the safety shirts and boots.

Bruce found that he had been given two pairs of thick trousers and two shirts but just one pair of boots. He also had an orange beanie and a baseball cap. When he changed into his new garb he saw that his shirt had an odd name embroidered above the pocket. It was ‘Bree’ in red script. As he looked at the other shirt and cap, which had the same name, another guy came over to him and said “Welcome to the job, young lad. I see you have noticed the name on your shirts. The problem is that we already have three men called Bruce in the building. I am Brucey, the chap over there in the corner with the white hair is the original Bruce, and the chap just to your left with the curly hair is a far northerner so he got called Bru, as after Irn-Bru. I will be looking after you in your first few weeks and we do unloading of the big trucks as they come in. I reckon there will be a couple backed in already so we had better get going. I will show you the time-clock as we go out, there should be a card there for you today. Make sure you put the cap on to keep your hair from swinging around.”

Bruce followed Brucey and clocked on, then going to the far end of the building where there were two trucks backed into the unloading dock and the drivers were opening the doors. He was introduced to Geoff and Bill and also to the foreman of the unloading, Mr Morrison, and then they got to work. It was not too taxing as he was shown that some boxes had different colour tags on them and these went into storage bays with the same colour. Brucey drove a fork-lift to pick up the bigger boxes and the main thing that Bruce needed to do was co-ordinate his movements so that he didn’t get run over. They cleared the truck in an hour and Brucey gave him a slap on the back and said “Well dome, young Bree, you picked up the tempo very well, I bet that you make a good dancer. You can see that there are three other docks here, when the new season starts we get pretty busy here and you will need to keep out of the way of more forklifts.”

The next truck that backed in was a bit different as it was full of racks with brown paper garment bags shielding whatever garments hung on them. Brucey quickly showed Bree where they needed to go in the warehouse and that a similar system worked with coloured tags. The unloading was easier as there was no lifting, just pushing the racks. When they emptied the truck there was a big stack of empty racks to go back into the truck and Brucey did much of that with the fork-lift moving a dozen a time.

The foreman and driver co-signed the paperwork and the truck pulled out. Brucey said that it was time for morning tea which made Bree very happy as he needed to go to the toilet. The toilets were next to the change room and the canteen was next to that so it all seemed well laid out. The teams sat together and Bree sat with Brucey, Geoff and Bill at a table. Bree was told that he had done very well and had fitted in with the system immediately. He asked what they were unloading and was told that SupplyMode was a central storage and distributer of womens fashion and beauty goods. The racks were dresses, skirts and suits while the boxes contained everything else a woman would need, from cosmetics to accessories to underwear to hygiene product and shoes. His town was central to every other town in the midlands and the other side of the building was where trucks were loaded to deliver directly to large stores and smaller boutiques in a hundred mile radius.

The rest of the day continued at the same pace and Bree was happy to sit down again for lunch and, when it got to be time to finish, Mr Jackson was waiting by the time-clock and told him that he had been very good for his first day and that he needed to be in and changed before clock-on at seven-thirty. In the change-room he was sad to be taking off his orange shirt and cap as he had felt somewhat happier with them on. He had noticed what was going on around him and had been able to chat with the other men and the drivers. This sociability was all alien to him, and would take a bit of getting used to. That night he even dreamt with orange flashes in them and woke up feeling refreshed and ready to go to work.

Marianne G 2021