Milk Crate

Milk Crate, Metal Wire

Milk Crate, Plastic

Milk Crate

n. A sturdy, stackable and reusable wire-frame container with a heavy-duty plastic bottom, or similar, fully plastic container used to ship cartons of milk or other dairy PRODUCTS. Also simply CRATE: “Crate that up.”

NOTE: There is a daily flow of CRATES between Dairy and Grocery DEPARTMENTS because they are so strong, so readily available, and so convenient to use. For instance, they get “borrowed” to hold and protect glass jars coming off DISPLAYS and being transported to the BACK ROOM on RUNNERS. Either at the end of the SHIFT, or whenever a sufficient number of empties pile up in Grocery, they're returned to Dairy. Dairy will periodically load their seemingly endless supply of empty Milk Crates onto PALLETS, WRAP them, and put them on the TRUCK to make room for more.

CAUTION: Now, while it's certainly not OSHA-approved, one way to get a few feet of extra height above what the usual footstool provides—e.g., when you need to quickly get a really good view of what's happening up on the AISLE'S top SHELF, say, to clean up a spill—is to create a “stairway” of three to six crates stacked upside down, each stack one higher than the previous.

WARNING: The wire or plastic bottom crate in contact with the waxed FLOOR is very prone to slide. So, be sure to walk up, do your business, and descend, all very carefully.

The safer, OSHA-approved way is to get one of the sturdy and bulky rolling blue ladders with those nice handrails. A medium-height one is sometimes kept in the bottle-return storeroom adjacent to the CUSTOMER SERVICE DESK, or in the BULK FOODS DEPARTMENT BACK ROOM.