#18 Reflections: Warehouses and Love Stories

Why are all my stocktakes full of love stories?

I prepare for a grim day in a warehouse, with hi vis jackets, helmets and numb toes. But instead I leave all fuzzy learning about all the different ways people end up falling in love.

(In case you’re wondering what a stocktake is — I work in audit so its basically a procedure where we go to the warehouse of the company we are auditing to check that the stock they claim to have actually exists. It’s the one time us office-workers get to do something not office-based.)

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I’ve only been to two so far, since I haven’t been at this job for very long. My first one was to a warehouse near a camping spot. The place was stunning, if you could ignore the glaringly large and dull warehouse smack right in the centre.

For this stocktake, there were plenty of locations for us to look through and so as the warehouse manager took us around from one buiding to the next, we started chatting. He had been working in this area for more years than Iv’e been alive for! Not at the warehouse itself but, interestingly enough, at the camping spot just on the other side of the hill in the scouts company.

He then goes on to wisfully state ‘and there I met my wife’. He was only 17 and she was part of a group he was leading. She came to camp, he came to earn money. But they ended up finding eachother and they’ve been happily together since then.

A few years later, he moves across the hill to his new job at this warehouse we were at.

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The next love story was from todays stocktake. It wasn’t a pretty location. Just the standard warehouse in the middle of a hundred other warehouses. But with the sun and blue skies, even a dull gray warehouse builidng could look a little less ugly than normal.

This was my first stocktake on my own. I was both excited yet nervous, hoping that it all would go smoothly. I finished my job at the warehouse with the warehouse lead and went back to the office to tie up any loose ends with the manager. It all went smoothly and as I was packing up, I started small-talking with her, asking her how her holidays went etc. She said they had a grand time just spending it with their family.

‘Me and Jack…oh we’re married, me and him.’ I was a bit confused, ‘You and who?’. ‘ The guy who took you around.’

Oh. OH.

In no time I was back in my seat, ready to hear another story!

She was 14. He 17. They just happened to meet through mutual friends. One day he saw her and that was it for him. It wasn’t love at first sight for her, and especially for her parents (she was only 14!) But after a few months, they all realised he wasn’t a normal 17 year old and so she said yes. They’ve been together since. For 28 years.

And so just like that, I left another warehouse with another love story to take.

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It’s funny how people end up meeting their other halves in the most unexpected ways. You wake up one day, go through your same routine, walk through the same old streets with absolutely no idea that today is a day that’s going to end up being marked on your calendars for years to come.

There was no fireworks, no train-running scenes. Yet there comes a special beauty in the mundane, the steady, the raw type of love stories. You see it in their eyes as they talk, you see it in the rythm they have with one another.

I think it’s beautiful how the dua we use to ask Allah about a partner is where we are asking Allah for someone who is the coolness of our eyes.

Not someone who you’ll always be passionately in love with, because sometimes passion is destructive. Not someone who is just religious, because even the two most religious people you know may never be able to get along.

But someone who is the coolness of your eyes. Someone you look at and you feel a sense of contentment and peace with.

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But with that being said, how would I know, eh!

And with that being said, I look forward to many more warehouse trips.