ladders: so stressed

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So I have been a cashier for two years at Home Depot.
I was asked to do inventory prep for 7 weeks and I was super excited.

Well it involves big ladders, we're only counting things 12 feet and above.
The ladder is 10 steps and I've been up 5, and I just don't think I can do it.

Don't look down.

I was in the exact same situation a decade ago (cashier for two years at a big box home improvement store) and was TERRIFIED of heights. Even my manager used to laugh at me. Do you know the best way to overcome that fear? Just do it! No matter how scared you are, realize that you aren't doing anything dangerous as long as you follow the store's safety procedures (and as an Aspie you should have no trouble with that!). Once you get used to it, soon it won't bother you at all. I'm having a similar issue now: okay at 30 feet but start feeling uncomfortable at 40 feet. The more I force myself to do it the easier it gets. Have trust in your equipment and your abilities and soon wonder why you ever had a problem.

Sometimes I have to use my imagination and pretend that I'm not climbing a ladder, I'm scaling a tower to escape from a dragon--something like that. It sounds silly, but it gets the job done.

I have been lucky so far as we have 5 people, 3 ladders. But some are going on a week long vacation. I've done two nights so far and got away with printing labels for two girls and doing the packdown and putting product out on the shelves. I got asked to do this because of my "attention to detail".

Good news.
My partner is non-stop and likes to be busy and has no fear of ladders plus taller than me. She does the ladder stuff and I am doing the packdown and label making. Other parts of the store, the highest stuff is on pallets and has to be brought down on a lift truck. Sweet.

Hey, I used to work at Home Depot too, back in the day! At the one I worked at, they were EXTREMELY unsafe with their ladder practices, they basically expected you to carry 50-70lb things up and down the ladders as part of the job, even though it was technically against company policy. Now if you're just going up the ladder to check the inventory I wouldn't worry at all, those ladders they use are pretty sturdy .

Have to say that I've never been up a ladder that high. It would make me a bit uneasy if it was one of those ^ shaped ladders that can wobble a bit as you climb them. My approach would be to take it all step by step logically. Starting with setting up the ladder, making sure it was stable and suitably positioned to improve stability. I would then carefully ascend, do what I had to do, then carefully descend.

I think sometimes employers have a habit of giving people tasks they know they don't enjoy doing.

Only a week left and I have managed to stay off the top of the ladder because we had a bunch of big pallets that had to be counted, and they had to be brought down off the shelving to the ground, one had 133 different things on it, so this has been really time consuming.