You do not love him.
You love not being on the floor for five minutes. Attraction at work is often just nicer lighting and a break from the radio.
I say this as someone who has clocked in looking done and still gone a bit stupid over a laugh by the cages. I know the feeling. I also know what it is. It is not fate. It is a long shift looking for a plot.
The warehouse makes anyone interesting
Twelve hours of pallets, scanners, people moaning about the rota, a supervisor who thinks volume is a personality. Your brain wants a sweet. So it picks a person.
He is not even your type half the time. He is just there. He says your name like he means it. He asks if you want a tea and that becomes a scene in your head. You start clocking where he is without meaning to. Aisle three. Break room. By the doors pretending to check something.
That is not a love story. That is proximity with better lighting than your flat at 6am.
I have watched it happen on the floor for years. I have done it. You put mascara on a bit more carefully on the days you know he is in. You laugh louder. You find reasons to walk past. You call it chemistry because boredom does not sound sexy enough.
What you are actually addicted to
The job gets small. Same faces. Same jokes. Same broken printer energy even when there is no printer. A crush gives the day an edge. Something to look forward to that is not payday and not the bus.
People online say it straight and I believe them. They miss having someone to be a bit delusional about. They work harder because they want to be seen. They get through a dead shift on banter and eye contact. Then the person leaves or gets a girlfriend or just turns out dull in a full sentence, and the job goes flat again.
That should tell you what the crush was doing. It was entertainment. It was a private series you could watch between tasks. It made you feel chosen in a place that mostly wants you fast and useful.
I want to be chosen. I will own that. I also want a promotion more than I want a story I have to lie about in a meeting.
Warehouse gossip travels faster than a forklift
You think you are being subtle. You are not. Someone always sees the extra smile. Someone always clocks who you stand next to at break. This place runs on radios and rumours. If you sleep where you earn, you do not get a soft landing. You get a nickname and a shift pattern that suddenly feels pointed.
I can be flirty. I am flirty. That is different from taking it off the floor and into a corner that can follow me into a review. I have seen people do it and then spend months pretending they are fine while the whole building knows. I have seen it go sour and watched one of them leave because the other one had more friends here.
I like my job enough to want the next title. I like my reputation enough not to hand it to a man because he has good forearms and he laughed at my joke by the baler.
Be messy somewhere that cannot tank my reviews. That is the rule. I say it like a joke. I mean it like policy.
The crush dies when they become a full person
Talk to them for longer than the sweet bit. Ask what they actually do on days off. Listen to how they talk about women. Listen to how they talk about the people they manage, or the people who manage them. A lot of work crushes evaporate the second the person has to have an opinion that is not about the job.
He is funny in short bursts. He is fit in a hi vis. He is kind when he wants something moved. That is a colleague. That is not a life. You have not seen him tired in a bad way. You have not seen him go quiet after a good night. You have not had to ask him for rent money or watch him eat toast over the sink. You have seen the highlight reel the building allows.
I do this in dating too. I invent a future off a tea and a mouth. At work it is worse because you get daily top ups. Little hits. Enough to keep the story alive. Not enough to test it.
If you cannot imagine the Sunday with them, it is not love. It is a better break room.
Sometimes it is real. Most times it is the rota
I am not saying nobody ever meets someone at work and it turns into an actual life. People do. They get lucky. They get careful. They wait until one of them leaves. That is the grown version.
The version I am talking about is the one where you are bored, a bit lonely, a bit vain, and a person becomes a hobby. You start thinking their good morning means more than good morning. You start dressing for an audience of one in a building full of cameras and opinions. You start wanting the day because of them, which is a dangerous way to earn a wage.
When I am honest in the diary, the work crush weeks line up with the weeks I am restless. Not enough sleep. Not enough money. Not enough of being wanted in a way that stays after. So my brain picks a safe object. Safe because it cannot quite happen. Safe because I can want it and still clock out.
Wanting what you cannot have is a very tidy way to avoid wanting a real person who might say no in daylight.
What I do instead, when I catch myself
I notice the extra mascara and I laugh at myself in the bathroom mirror before I leave. I put the energy into the actual job. I ask for the extra responsibility out loud instead of hoping someone finds me magnetic beside a pallet.
I go out after the shift if I need to feel looked at. That is what nights are for. Pubs. Apps. A man who does not share a staff entrance with me. If I want sex I can find sex that will not sit in the Monday briefing like a smell.
And if the feeling is still there after a month of being boring about it, that is different data. Then I would treat it like a real decision, not a daydream. Leave one job or do not start. I have not been that sure about anyone here. I have been that bored.
The lighting is doing a lot of work
Offices have their version. Soft lamps and laptops and the same lie in a nicer chair. Warehouses have ours. Fluorescents, radios, a laugh that cuts through the noise. Both are just places where you spend too many hours being a useful version of yourself. Of course you attach to the person who makes you feel like a person again for six minutes.
That feeling is real. The story you build on top of it is optional.
You do not love him. You love the bit of the day that is not the floor. You love being slightly more alive in a job that can sand you down. Take the feeling home if you need it. Write it down. Get it out of your system on a night out.
Do not turn a tea run into a fate. The building will still be here in the morning. So will the gossip. So will your name on the rota.
I want the promotion. I want a life that does not depend on who is on with me. If that makes me less romantic, fine. I can be romantic after I clock out.
