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Last week we talked a little about Training, not classes or programs but more about the responsibilities regarding training, I just lived a perfect example of self-education and training us as employees! Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty T Hawkins and I appreciate you listening in with us today. So, I’m a bit over booked today and I stopped by a neighborhood restaurant for a quick dinner, pretty good diner like food. So, I’m leaving, carried my ticket up to the counter, my waitress met me there and we exchanged the normal pleasantries of course. I already knew she was new, and she was young, probably her first job, and she’d done really good keeping my tea glass filled and my order was 100% correct. Anyway, my bill was $10.72, I handed her a $10 and a $1 but she accidently punched it into the register as only a $10. Of course, this sent the register into a digital meltdown. She started to give me my change, she knew she owed me some money back but….yep I witnessed her then go into a meltdown on her own. I wasn’t in a hurry at this point so I stood there nicely waiting on her to realize we were talking about 28 cents. She reached a finger into the penny drawer, oh so close but then she froze. At this point she called over another waitress, she quickly knew what to do and grabbed a calculator! While they were working on putting in $11 dollars, I suggested counting back to $11 dollars, I said you know, say $10.72, grab a penny, 73, grab a penny, 74, grab a penny 75, and a quarter makes 11 dollars. We all 3 laughed, they did wait until they got the answer from the calculator, but we just joked about it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not belittling her or laughing at her, I was honestly laughing with her. Waitressing and being a casher is hard work, and it being our first job makes it even harder! What a great training opportunity though, either self-education or maybe the other girl could help her learn to count back change. And shouldn’t her manager have taught her that? I know the register’s today give us the amount of change to hand back, but what if we’ve entered the incorrect amounts like she did or the thing malfunctions or something. There’s my humor for the day I guess, and yes, I do turn everything into a learning moment for myself. Tomorrow I’ll teach someone how to count back change, I bet there’s people in my office that can’t do it even!
Anyway, so I was working with social media a lot this week and ran across a few posts that I understood what the individual’s frustrations but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how they arrived at them. The more I thought about them the more lost I got! The first one was about a young man that worked at a medium sized facility, it sounded like he was an order picker or maybe a selector and he had experience operating a double pallet jack, an electric rider jack. His place of employment was about a 45-minute drive, he liked his position but there was a large facility about 15 minutes from his house that he’d always wanted to work at. I guess they rarely posted any ads or had a hiring now sign out front but to his amazement, they’ed posted a position and he’d gone in and applied. He filled out the application and he was interviewed right then on the spot. He stated that the interview went well, and he had all the experience to qualify for the job. The ad he had answered was for a will call position, pulling small orders for customers to come by and pick up. The applicant would be using an electric rider double pallet jack and needed that experience. The part of the ad he failed to read, or just ignored was that applicants needed to be bilingual. Of course, the hiring agent pretty much stopped the interview once he was asked about the language thing and at that point the gentleman went to social media asking for help, that he’d been discriminated against. O.M.G, the post kind of blew up from that point forward. I didn’t join in, but it was comical to see how people were treating him over it. I’m so thankful that discrimination as it pertains to the workplace is so well defined for us in 2019. Early on we as employees didn’t have all the protections we do today. It still can exist, I hope for the day it never comes up and is an issue and I’m thankful we have the many resources to help us when it does. It’s much easier to identify what’s not discrimination though, the fact we do not get a position that is listed as bilingual, yet we only speak one language is not discrimination. Believe me, all the Facebook friends in the group had no problem pointing out that language is a learned skill. Just like applying for a forklift position that requires one year of experience is not given to someone that has never driven a forklift. You can learn to drive a forklift, come back with a years’ experience and be considered for the position. I guess this particular warehouse had customers picking up their will calls and the majority of them spoke other than English. They needed a will call person that would be able to communicate with them in their first language. It had been posted that way, there wasn’t any bait and switch, or false advertising done. The applicant had just gotten in a hurry, wanted the position and jumped to the extreme a little too quickly.
Oh, here’s another good one. Two weeks ago I was observing a PIT or Powered Industrial Truck class. It came time to onsite one of the gentlemen, his instructor got on the reach lift and showed the class the short course and how he wanted them to run it, which pallet to retrieve and where to store it. The first 3 pre-tripped the machine, got on it, ran the course and each of them went back to the training room to get their observation cards. The last gentleman pre tripped the unit, just like he’d been taught in class, stepped onto the machine and froze. The trainer asked him what was wrong, and he had to confess that he’d never stood on a forklift before. He didn’t know how to make it go. I was very impressed with how the trainer handled everything. He politely asked him why he’d told his recruiter he could operate the lift and was told he was a fast learner and if he was given the chance, he could do it. The trainer asked him to go back and visit with his original recruiter, get into a warehouse as general labor maybe and get the experience needed for an operator. Well, the applicant didn’t take that advice very well at all. He said he was being discriminated against because he couldn’t operate the reach lift, and it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t have any experience! Ladies and gentlemen, that’s not discrimination. Again, it’s a learned skill. It’s a required skill for some positions. I get it. We’re needing a job, a good paying job, and a job close to our house would be a great job. But we’re not owed a job. As we talk about here all the time, we have to invest our time, we have to learn new skills, those skills needed to perform the job that pays what we want it too and doing what we’ll enjoy. That’s work, sometimes a lot of work, and it’s our responsibility, not someone else’s. Its all hard, and sometimes we’ll need to get a break or a helping hand from someone, but in the end only experience and knowledge is going to get us, ahead right? Getting upset, pointing fingers, blaming someone else is never going to help our cause. We’re not going to make anyone else feel bad about it.
Another thing I want to mention really quick is offensive behavior. Working in our industry is tough. When we’ve gathered the experience needed and we’re working at the position we’ve always wanted, we’ll need to try and do what’s right and keep that job. When we’re hired on, we’ll typically get a handbook with all the company’s policies, rules, procedures, it’ll have just about everything in there that we can’t do. It’ll have all the positives and great things about our new company in there too but let’s face it, the important thing for us now that we’ve been hired is what is not allowed and what to do to keep our jobs! In there somewhere is going to be offensive behavior. Offensive behavior is so easy to stay away from and it’s just the right thing to do. What’s ok with us, isn’t always going to be ok with our teammates. The first thing that comes to my mind is foul language. In our industry, lets be honest, it’s kind of the norm. But if it offends someone else, its wrong. Forget 10 others are ok with the way you talk, they may talk the same way when their around you, but, we don’t need to do it around the one person that is offended by it. If it escalates on up the chain, you will lose. You’ll lose because its wrong. We know its wrong. We’re not in high school anymore, we’re in the workplace, you’re getting paid for the entire time your there. There’s not a handbook that says it’s ok to use profanity around others, not in our warehouse settings anyway. The dress code, that’s another one we want to always make a big deal out of. Graphics on our tee shirts, language printed on our shirts, why make a big deal out of wearing what we know is against the dress code? I heard about a company that actually included belts in their dress code. It was written something like belts are to be worn at all times to keep jeans pulled up, underwear is not allowed to be shown at any time. It’s a rule, again, were being paid the entire time were at work. If something offends others or our company, we’re not going to win the argument, and we’re not getting noticed like we want too right?
Well, I wanted to talk about logistics today, but I got lost on social media. I’ll get back to it next week, I’m actually working on getting a couple of guest to join me in the next few weeks and they’ll help us understand what the logistics fields can do for us and help explain all the opportunities and positions in those fields!
Until then, please send us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com or share your thoughts on our Facebook and twitter feeds using @whseandops, talk about a past topic or bring up something we can all share some experiences about. I hope to hear from ya again next week, and please not only talk safety this week but practice it as well!