I worked the loading docks at a distribution warehouse in Newark. This was summer of 1983, June or July, one of those months where the heat just sits on you all day. I'd been there about three years at that point. Loading, unloading, inventory checks. Standard warehouse work. The guy I'm talking about, his name was Carlos. Carlos Mendez. Good worker, kept to himself mostly. We weren't close friends or anything, but we'd been on the same shift for over a year. You know what I mean? You get to know someone's routines, how they work. Carlos was methodical. Always double-checked his work, never rushed. This particular day was a Tuesday. I remember because we always got the big shipments on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was around two thirty in the afternoon, middle of shift. We had maybe six or seven shipping containers lined up on the dock, all the standard 20-footers. Most of them were already loaded and sealed. We were working on the last couple.
Carlos was assigned to Container 12. That's how we tracked them, by number. It was backed up against the loading bay, one end open, the other end sealed shut like they always are. He was doing a final inventory check before we closed it up. I was working on the container next to his, maybe fifteen feet away. I saw him climb up into Container 12. Watched him step inside with his clipboard, moving those boxes around to verify the count. The thing is, these containers aren't that big. Twenty feet long, eight feet wide. You can see from one end to the other, even with boxes stacked inside. There's nowhere to hide, you know what I mean? I went back to my own work. Couldn't have been more than two, maybe three minutes. Then I heard Miguel, another guy on our crew, shouting. He was asking where Carlos went. I looked up and Container 12 was still sitting there, door wide open, but Carlos wasn't in it. Miguel went up to check. I walked over too. The container was empty. All the boxes were there, arranged exactly how Carlos would've left them. His clipboard was sitting on top of one of the stacks. But Carlos was gone.
We checked everywhere. I'm talking we searched that entire loading dock. Checked between containers, checked the warehouse floor behind us, checked the bathrooms, the break room. Called out his name. Nothing. The weird part, and I can't explain this, is that I'd been watching. Not constantly, but I had a clear view of that container. There's only one way in and out of those things. He would've had to walk past me to leave the dock. But I kept checking both ends of that container, and he never came out either side. sealed container with no exit is unsettling - Eva' We called the supervisor. He came down, we explained what happened. He didn't believe us at first, thought maybe Carlos had just wandered off for a break. But Carlos wasn't the type to just leave in the middle of a job. And his clipboard was still there, his pen, his coffee thermos sitting on the dock. After about twenty minutes, someone found him. He was in the parking lot, sitting in his car. Just sitting there, staring straight ahead, keys in his hand but the car wasn't running.
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