The injuries of pace and repetition
Backs and shoulders from lifting and reaching; knees and feet from concrete miles; hands and wrists from scanning and packing thousands of repetitions a shift; crush injuries from equipment and falling stock; and in hot facilities and vehicles, heat illness — which is a compensable injury, not a personal weakness. One-event injuries and built-over-months injuries are both claims; the second kind has discovery-based deadlines most workers never hear about.
Quota culture vs. your claim
High-pace workplaces create quiet pressure not to report — the points system, the team lead who sighs, the fear of being flagged. Understand what's legally true: reporting a work injury is protected, retaliation for it is illegal in essentially every state, and an unreported injury becomes almost impossible to prove three weeks later when it's worse. The move that threads the needle: a calm, written report the same day — "I hurt my lower back lifting around 2pm, continuing my shift, want it on record." You've protected the claim without stopping work.
The temp-agency question: who's your employer?
Staffing-agency workers are usually the agency's employees for comp purposes — the agency carries the insurance, and the claim gets filed with them, not the warehouse. But the host facility isn't out of the picture: depending on the state, it may share "special employer" status, and if its negligence (a broken dock plate, an untrained forklift driver from another company) caused the injury, a third-party claim may run alongside comp. Practical rule: report to BOTH — your agency in writing, and the site supervisor — the same day. Let the companies argue about whose claim it is; your job is making sure it exists.
Running the claim
Everything standard applies, plus: your average weekly wage should reflect peak-season overtime if that's your real pattern; light-duty offers must genuinely fit your written restrictions (a "light duty" job that's the same job with a smaller cart goes back to your doctor); and your state's clocks run regardless of any internal injury-reporting app — the state deadlines are the ones that end claims.