📦 Warehouse worker

A storekeeper is a warehouse worker who receives, stores and issues goods and keeps records. In the ILO classification (ISCO-08) this is "stock clerks", code 4321: they record which goods have arrived, been weighed, issued or dispatched. In a dairy warehouse some of the products sit in cold rooms.

Among the tasks of this group in ISCO are organizing and checking the receipt and dispatch of goods, keeping stock records, assessing needs and placing orders for new batches, weighing goods and compiling inventory lists. For related jobs, stockers and order fillers, BLS says they receive, unpack and track goods; formal education is usually not required for this group.

The main rule of a warehouse is stock rotation: goods with the nearest expiry date are placed in front so they are taken first. For food it is called FIFO, "first in, first out"; there is also FEFO, where whatever expires first goes first. According to Wikipedia, rotation reduces losses from spoilage and helps avoid food poisoning.

Cold is part of the job. The FDA advises keeping the fridge at 4 °C (40 °F) or below, and not leaving perishable food in the warmth for more than 2 hours, or more than an hour when the air temperature is above 32 °C.

Why it matters to you. Rotation explains why packs with the nearer date are often at the front on store shelves: they are sold first. According to Wikipedia, shoppers usually take the pack closest to them and rarely look at the date, so the order on the shelf matters.