affirmative action

[just mercedes]

This changes style as it goes for dramatic effect.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
 
As the ten wheeler left the loading dock, his gaze went from bulking crates The ten wheeler truck has eyes? Clunky construction here.
to Alan, come to help.  Alan always came to help, though with the company . You're 'telling' a story, rather than allowing the actions of the protagonists show it to your reader. Readers hate being  lectured, but they like to be involved.
only six months longer and dark as he was light. Alan taught him how to open Six months longer? Time is a measurement of distance now? Why wasn't I told?
cartons, slicing sides not tops so layers of product could be quickly removed. Actually, factually incorrect, as with sides removed, layers are not accessible to be unpacked. Only removal of the top does that.
 
Alan told him which supervisors to trust, which to avoid. Alan this, Alan that.
Helpful yes, but he would have learned all that by himself--sooner or later. What is '--' supposed to be? It's not a recognizable notation in grammar (or language).
While Alan was only a high school grad, he had a bachelor’s degree Again, confusion between 'he' and 'Alan' - Alan has a bachelor's degree, is what you've said here. I think that's the opposite of what you mean. Though it's hard to tell.
tucked for six years in his bureau. Same pay, same hours for both- What is this hyphen for? What portmanteau word is it creating?
until Alan was promoted and moved elsewhere on the corporate campus. Corporate campus? This is a very uneasy image, and not backed up anywhere. You've taken me unwillingly into a male white supremacist type of privilege mind-set that is actually pretty ugly.
 
Affirmative Action, thought the red-haired college graduate, condemned
to the same pay, complaints, remedial training and repeated orders.
 
The world wasn’t fair.
 
With his parents off partying, the darkening house is his. Why is it important to the poem that the parents are partying? You lose my interest totally by now. Your poem is actually about a spoiled little whiner who throws a rope over a chandelier because he didn't get promoted? As if. 
Straightened from bending low to burn his diploma in the fireplace,
his eye catches the elegant chandelier twelve feet from the floor. 
Check living room doors, assure they’re locked.
Chandelier tight to the ceiling? Knot at its base double tied?
Four-foot rope moving smoothly through the cylinder of eight careful turns?
Looped over, around neck, pulled snug? Feet square on step ladder?
A quick one-footed shove, ladder clattering to the floor,
its splayed legs collapsing with an unheard wooden bang.
The body jerks with a lifelike twitch just strong enough to prompt
a gentle chorus of faint tinkling from the fixture's crystal pendants.
 
Outside, as if impelled by Wagnerian opera, a car’s demanding horn mocks the end,
its swerving headlights briefly sweeping away living room shadows, signaling a curtain's
closing on an empty life.
 
Alan is the only company representative at the small funeral. He had sent a modest bouquet
with an awkwardly-written note, and now speaks softly to the guilt-ridden, broken parents.
 
Affirmative Action

Of course these points are all my opinion, and you are free to use them or ignore them, as you wish.