Queer Encounters With Race and Gender While Package Handling for FedEx

Photo by Morning Brew on Unsplash

Working overnight in a warehouse handling packages for FedEx this past year has taught and helped me grow a lot. I experienced the warehouse environment as a microcosm of American society that reflects the broader race and gender relations that structure our world, and as a result have come to see my whiteness and queerness more clearly. Working for FedEx has changed me for the better, and I would like to share how my learning and growing took place.

The Workload

Package handling for FedEx is a very physically demanding job that requires significant amounts of strength and endurance. Shifts typically involve between four and ten hours of constantly lifting packages of many shapes, sizes, and weights, as well as a lot of walking between sorting areas where packages are stacked in cages behind FedEx trucks whose drivers then deliver throughout the rest of the day. According to my FitBit I walk an average of 12 miles a shift, and according to my musculature I have gotten into the best physical shape of my life.

FedEx receives and sends shipments from a wide variety of sources, which means that we handle everything from furniture, car parts, rugs, pet food, human food, medical supplies, clothing, makeup, and even some Amazon packages that other shipping companies like…