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It’s been another great week here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I hope everyone’s had a safe and prosperous one as well? I’m Marty, I’ve been out on the road the last two weeks so I’m grooving on getting caught up and settled in myself. It’s cold here in Texas, it seems a little early for us to be seeing these temperatures here. All week I’ve been getting comments about the snow showing up early in Illinois and Denver, I just heard Pennsylvania has seen some of the nasty stuff this week too. I say nasty not because it’s not beautiful and it does help kill a lot of those pesky flying critters, but it can make for some treacherous driving situations and plays havoc on our industry’s routing and delivery schedules! Doe’s any of your facilities do any kind of cold stress training or talk about the need to take care of our muscles this time of year? Joe did a really good presentation just about this time last year and I believe he’s already got one scheduled for next month to broadcast to his group of Sup’s and Managers. Maybe that could be the first thing we could put up on our You Tube Channel, let me see what he thinks about it! When I think about Cold Stress I always remember my start up meetings as a selector. We’d do some short exercises to warm up our muscles, maybe some arm and leg stretches, something simple like that. Most of us would do them again after breaks and lunches, I don’t know if there’s really any medical benefits but it did make me feel better and I never had any muscle problems at all in the winter. OSHA has a pretty good page on Cold Stress, I’ll add it in todays show notes, https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/emergencypreparedness/guides/cold.html I think you’ll find it really informative. Most Cold Stress meetings I’ve attended brings up the safety aspect, things like:
How contributing factors can include Diabetes and Hypertension, being out of shape or in poor physical health. You know the wetness and dampness and not dressing properly can be a serious issue and really contribute to our bodies suffering from cold stress.
Cold Stress as stated by https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/cold+stress occurs at temperature less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) varying with chill factor, wetness, protection from wind.
Everything I found on the internet kept referring me to the word Hyperthermia, so I checked that out on Wikipedia.org, there I found all the cautions I’d been taught before! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia . Your management team should be teaching you the signs and preventions, but it never hurts to do a little self-education on our own Safety needs right. A few of the mild symptoms to be aware of could be shivering, maybe our heart rate increasing, maybe a faster respiratory rate and even some mental confusion. A moderate level of hyperthermia can increase our mental confusion, muscle miss-coordination will become apparent to us too. We could notice our ears, lips, fingers and toes turning a bit blue as our blood vessels constrict to keep our internal organs warm.
And severe hyperthermia can present with sluggish thinking, slurred speech and even amnesia. It’s important we remember to stay hydrated in the winter and that alcohol can actually add to our loss of body heat.
I worked in a Freezer for about 6 years, I was always dressed properly with my freezer gear, but I did see a few order selectors and lift drivers deal with mild cases of cold stress. Again, it’s really all about doing what we’ve been taught and using a little common sense. If your supervisor hasn’t brought up anything about winter safety yet hit them up with your knowledge of cold stress and hyperthermia, a great safety topic to get you noticed! A few other things you could mention is to be cautious with any outside stairs and hand rails, I hate those metal steps coming in from the transportation yard. A little mist or freezing rain and snow is the perfect recipe for a fall. Mention having a box a de-ice around, it’s super inexpensive and comes in handy when you need it. Even here in Texas, where we only see icy conditions a few hours a year it’ll save someone from falling coming into the building on that 1 morning a year!
Well as good a topic as cold weather is, I was wanting to share a thought from one of our listeners last week. He didn’t mind me sharing his story, but he didn’t want to talk about it on the show. I’ll call him Jeff, remember our fictional character from our first few WAOC episodes? Well Jeff is 23 years old, he’s looking for his 9th job since graduating high school. Jeff’s been following the show and disagreed with my thoughts on goal setting, planning and how I believed any of us could earn $5000 more dollars in a year if we just decided too. We had a great talk and ended up just agreeing to disagree though, but I am excited about having a new friend in the industry. Anyway, Jeff’s been a forklift operator for about 2 years, a year and a half on a counterbalance and almost 6 months using a stand-up reach lift. His complaint was that he’s always passed over for promotions or getting to move from one job task into another one that would pay him a little more. I asked him about his attendance record and how was his tardies and if he ever contributed to the daily pre-shift meeting or safety meetings. I went on the ask him about his job, what all it entailed and how the freight moved throughout his warehouse, a few questions about his equipment, just a lot of things like that. Jeff’s point was that he’s an employee and should be compensated for what he does, and that all that team participation and knowledge stuff shouldn’t matter. Jeff seemed a little surprised when I wholeheartedly agreed with his statement. I pointed out that he was being paid for the job that he was doing, and only being paid for the job that he was doing. I believe every job in the warehouse is a great career choice. I know fork operators that’s been doing it for 10 plus years, they love operating a lift and plan on retiring from that job. It’s giving them all that they want. They’ve reached their goal and I think that’s a great thing. But I pointed out to Jeff that it seems he’s wanting something else, so we explored that for a bit. Jeff stated that his goal was to earn more money. He felt his next job should pay him more than his last position did because he was more experienced now. Jeff hadn’t decided what industry to apply too, or what benefits they may be offering and wasn’t concerned what, if any, advancement opportunities his new employer could offer up. He only knew he wanted to drive a lift and make more than he did at his last job. As we’ve discussed many times here at WAOC, we, as employees, especially in todays work environments, have to own some of these responsibilities ourselves. Our industry is the greatest there is, I mean really, without a college education, or any special schooling at all, just by working hard and doing a little self-education along the way we can retire from operations earning over a $100,000 a year. Yes, it’s going to be hard work, we have to be responsible and loyal to the industry, but that’s required with any Career! Back in October, in episode 108 we talked about how everything we accomplish is about choices. I really do believe that we control our careers and will get out of them exactly what we put into them. Like I mentioned, I’ve been traveling and had an opportunity to read a book by Cindy Brown while I was flying, you may remember her, I mention her Podcast Unlocking the Secret to Living Rich from time to time, anyway her new book is called Pragmatic Prosperity – The Art of Living Rich. She shares several thoughts or techniques that I believe us as employees can prosper from in our daily lives as well as teaching us how to become wealthy to boot! No, I’m not affiliated with it in any way, I just think it’s a great book, it’s .99 on Amazon kindle right now, you ought to check it out, you’ll be richer from reading it! Speaking of affiliates, last week I was asked 3 or 4 times if WAOC was affiliated or being sponsored by the equipment manufacturers I mention every so often, Nope, no affiliation right now with any one or any company at all. We like sharing our opinions and experiences too much, I wouldn’t do well having to speak to someone else’s thoughts or ideas. I do try and post links to any articles or websites I mention though, primarily so you can go read something interesting.
Boy, I strayed way off topic this time didn’t I! Where was I going with all this, oh yeah, But I do believe we control our careers. It’s the choices we make, good and bad, sometimes the bad ones are necessary for what’s going on in our lives at the time but it’s our choices that takes us where we’re going. Back to Jeff’s points for a minute. If we’re tardy too often or take too many days off, we’re just being that average employee, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I know Managers are cringing right now but really the average employee in the workforce believes that’s fine, and really it is. Being average will earn us X number of dollars an hour, and as long as we don’t go over that average number of days off or tardies and hit our average numbers we’ll keep those jobs. An average employee punches in, completes his or her shift, punches out and never thinks of the job or career again until the next day when its time to punch back in. As Jeff mentioned, that’s an employee getting paid for what he or she does. As we’ve talked about before, those with more experiences and more knowledge earn more money. That’s just a fact. As you know I believe if we want to earn more, we just have to let our management team know that and let them see that through our actions. Communication and participating is going to show them we want more and their going to need us, maybe even to take their place so they can move up to the next spot themselves. As for earning $5000 more dollars this year, it’s a given, if we’re THAT employee our extra over time alone that our manager will need from us will get us there. And that 5k is only $2.40 more an hour over the year, being that employee will earn us those promotions or the movement between departments or task to earn us that much easily. I’ve always tried not to get hung up on the hourly wage, use your tax filings each year as a metric, here in the States that’ll be our W2, you’re probably achieving more that the 5k annually already. If not, I assure you that you can, and it is really up to you! I’m looking forward to more talks with my new friend in the coming months. He’s agreed to check in with me every few weeks and I’m going to see if I can help him with getting noticed and maybe getting those increases that he’s chasing. I’m looking forward to working with him. And if you have any questions about getting noticed or just want to vent a little about a situation, shoot us a email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com we’d be happy to help or offer up some experiences or a few fact based opinions on just about any subject you shoot to us! Well we only have 6 weeks left in 2018, it’s about time to start reflecting on the goals we reached this year and planning out those 2019 ideas, if you haven’t started tossing them around yet it’s time ladies and gentlemen, be sure to start putting something on paper!
Well Thanks for listening in again today, have a great week ahead and Be Safe, get noticed by your management team, and share some of your knowledge with the new guy, especially the safety stuff!