As a handyman, I’m a solid 5+. I can build desks and assemble shitty IKEA furniture. I’ve hammered thousands of handles onto brick hammers and ground thousands of rippers. But I’m not a tradesman – I don’t work with my hands every day in a way that makes me a true professional. And today, that became obvious.

At 7 a.m., an order we’d been waiting on finally arrived in a 40′ container. I’ve unloaded plenty of pallets from trucks, but this was my first time dealing with a dedicated container delivery. I had no idea what to expect. The merchandise was expensive, it was our first order with this vendor, and I was hoping nothing would go sideways.

The container backed up to the loading dock, we dropped the dock plate, and I crossed my fingers the pallet jack would get the job done without a fork lift.

Inside were ten machines that looked like this:

The first surprise I got – though maybe I should’ve expected it – was that those 4×4 wood beams were held down with 6″ star bolts that looked like they were designed to hold the Titanic together.

Knowing it was a Euro screw with a star head didn’t scare me – I came prepared with the right bit like some kind of hardware whisperer. Each machine had three bolts anchoring it down for transit, and the moment I removed the first one I realized: Oh… this is going to be hard.

1. I couldn’t remove it with one hand as the drill would break my hand.
2. Every tiny angle mistake gave me that “congratulations, you’re stripping it” sound that haunts my sleep.

After fiddling around with settings like I actually knew what I was doing, I discovered it needed the highest torque known to mankind. In hindsight, speed 1 probably would’ve saved my sanity, but we don’t live in hindsight – we live in chaos.

By machine number five, I finally stripped a bolt. Well, two. The first one I heroically crowbarred out after getting it mostly free. Whoever put these screws in must’ve been a 7-foot-tall demigod with forearms like steel beams. Meanwhile, I’m in this tiny container, reaching over and down like I’m auditioning for Cirque du Soleil, using both hands, trying not to strip yet another screw while muttering inspirational quotes to myself.

The second stripped screw required a Sawzall. We had to cut around the bolt like we were performing some kind of emergency field surgery. This was Nick’s idea, and without it we might still be in that container, dehydrated and telling stories of “the outside world.”

Then the universe said, “Let’s spice it up.” The third-to-last machine didn’t go down the dock plate correctly and nearly yeeted itself off the side. Miraculously, the dock plate held on by millimeters. We shoved the machine back, lifted the pallet jack like a team competing in the Strongman Finals, and manhandled the whole thing to safety so we could reconfigure the dock plate. After a few more grunts and questionable life choices (the driver almost got his foot ran over), we finally rolled out the last three machines.

At no point did I think those machines weren’t getting out – though there was a brief, terrifying second where I wondered if the Sawzall idea was actually a death wish in disguise. Nick was working in such a tight spot an accident was possible. Somehow, it worked. Being unprepared turned out to be one of those weird life bonuses: next time won’t be a disaster, because now I know exactly how bad it could get. Lesson learned: worrying when you’re unprepared is valid, chaos teaches better than any manual, and apparently, I’m slowly leveling up – even if I’m not a master at anything yet.