Margen
I clocked in at 21:58 and I was on my own in unit 4. The maintenance man, Iker Lahoz, was on call that month: he is not in the building, but he comes if you ring him.
At 04:02 I was in aisle 9, with the pallet truck and the scanner in my hand, reading a pallet of 8-litre water containers.
At 04:10 I was standing on loading bay 3 with the scanner in my hand. And on the bay there were four pallets lined up, properly seated, the straps tight and the labels facing out.
I have nothing between those two times. Nothing: not walking the 40 metres, not lifting the first one, not turning round.
[04:12] Diego: iker [04:12] Diego: I’m on bay 3 and I don’t know how I got here [04:13] Iker: did you bang your head? are you dizzy [04:13] Diego: no. there are four pallets set down and I set them down [04:14] Iker: well then it’s sorted [04:14] Diego: iker I don’t remember putting them there [04:15] Iker: coming
He got there at 04:31 and the first thing we did was look at the scanner, which saves the time of every read. The reads were all there: 04:03, 04:04, 04:06, 04:07 and 04:09. Five of them, in order, with no odd gap. Nothing was badly placed. The labels, all four facing out, which is how I do it and not how the afternoon shift does it.
Yaiza Carrión, the shift supervisor, rang me at seven and sent me to the company doctor the same day. What I have is called a microsleep, and I had already looked it up myself, in bed, at eight in the morning, with my phone in my hand. The brain switches off for a few seconds, never more than 15, and the body keeps walking. And if what you are doing is something you have done ten thousand times, the body finishes it without you. Mine finished four pallets.
The doctor corrected me on one thing: 8 minutes is not a microsleep. It is a lot of them in a row, and in between there are stretches awake that I do not remember either.
He also asked me how many nights I had been sleeping in the daytime with the blind half down, and I told him the truth, which is since May.
What really took my sleep away was what I did when I got home. I downloaded the scanner reads for the six previous nights and looked for the gaps. On the 24th there are two minutes. On the 25th, four. On the 27th, seven. And bay 3 gives on to the ramp, the ramp goes down to the yard, and the lorries come into the yard at ten past five.