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Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career! I’m Marty, and I’d like to apologize for the background noise today up front, hey you got to record where you can right! I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone for the comments last week that were sent in, we really appreciate all the interaction and participation!. So I’m way behind getting a few listener questions answered, I thought I’d start there and we’ll see where we end up today!
So Zachery is in sanitation, its not stated how long he has been with his employer but his question is “I am wanting to get my palletjack certification so I can change jobs, we use Crown stand on pallet jacks here but the school is using something called Raymond. How different are they and is it easy to learn?”
Very good question Sir and thanks for sending it in. First I’d like to share a few thoughts on paying for your certification. The OSHA standard their teaching too is 29cfr1910.178. Now please don’t take my comments wrong, these are great classes, they will help prepare you in the safe operation techniques you’ll need to know and understand when operating powered industrial trucks. Yes, they are definitely worth the money you will spend on the class and your certification. And this is where I have to say, But, because your employer will or should be providing that training to you and they will do it for free! They are required to observe you on-there-docks-on-the-equipment. I get a little peeved with some of the schools out there that advertise their certification classes and imply that we’ll be able to go out and get a higher paying position right off the bat by having their certification card in our hands. When we hit the streets, filling out applications and speaking with the recruiters the first thing were asked is how much experience we have on the equipment. Everywhere we apply is going to want us to have 3, 6 or 12 months experience. So back to Zackary’s question, I feel there is no difference between the models operationally. All the controls pretty much even look the same. Last week I operated a Raymond Rider double pallet jack and 3 weeks ago I had the opportunity to operate the Crown version of the same jack. Now if I was a maintenance man or salesman I may have a preference but I’m an operator so if it’ll make my production numbers I’m all in with it. As for learning on one and operating another model, I do not feel its going to make a difference. I’d urge you to be careful, perform your pretrip, check the name plate on the jack too. It’ll tell us the weight capacities etc and look over the attached user manual. Of course if you trained on a steer assisted unit and jump on a jack without the assist it’s going to operate a little differently. You’ve learned to be safe on the equipment, the functions are going to be about the same. Be cautious, aware of your surroundings and others and you should be fine.
Zachery, my suggestion would be to go speak with your supervisor or manager. Let him or her know that you’d like to move into the other position and how interested you are in operating the equipment. You’ll save some money, your manager is going to know your goals and I’m sure they’ll help you be successful in them!
Lets see, oh here’s a question about pallets. “Why does everyone say not to walk on pallets. A lot of times I have to walk over pallets to move a case or just because the pallet is in the way.” I didn’t write down the name but that’s a fair question I guess. I have seen so many ankle injuries caused by an associates boot or shoe falling in between the plank boards. Our footwear never wants to come out as easily as it fell in and our forward motion is going to make us loose our balance, we fall to one side or another, and then we loose a weeks worth of work while our ankle sprain heals. And in many cases that’s best case scenario. I know a couple of men that was in a brace boot for several weeks, and 1 guy that had to have pins inserted into the bones. As to having to walk over a pallet because its in our way. Lets stop and pick it up. Move it to where it is suppose to go. Its for all of our safety. Every company I am associated with will have a line that states Do Not Walk on Pallets within their preferred work methods & as for picking up stray pallets it’s probably in our job descriptions as well. We will occasionally have to step on a pallet to reach that case in the far right or left corner, just be careful. Step with our foot across 2 boards, not running along one. And remember at some point we’ve probably signed a piece of paper stating we know not to walk on the pallets. Our safety teams take that stuff serious. Lets not give them a reason to write our names down on a piece of paper and pass it along to our boss right?
I hear some form of this question almost weekly, something about the daily shift start up meeting or the pre-shift meetings. A quick side note here. Last week I had a gentlemen call me about how he received a corrective action to sign from his supervisor for being tardy 7 times over four weeks. He honestly felt that was not justified because the first 7 to 10 minutes each day is just their startup meeting so he wouldn’t have been working yet anyway. Well, like I explained to him, our start times are our scheduled shift times. One of my favorite speakers, who just happened to be a great football coach as well, Vince Lombardi, taught me that if you are 5 minutes early you are already 10 minutes late. Lombardi time means being to work 15 minutes before your scheduled start time. You will be surprised how much more you will learn and hear about arriving early to work each day. Anyway, I hope after we spoke he better understood the importance of being to work on-time and the importance of showing his supervisor that he was a motivated employee and interested in his job.
So back to our daily start up meetings. I know these meetings seem like a waste of time. We’re production people, we’re at work so we’re ready to go. Ladies and gentlemen, our start up meetings are an important part of our jobs. We’ll learn about how many widgets we need to produce this shift or how many cases we’ll be selecting and loading out for the night. Our errors like misships and truck shorts may be covered from the night before. That’s our money sometimes, depending on how were paid. By participating in those meetings were going to get noticed by our management team and in a good way! Here at WAOC we’re always talking about sharing our self- education and letting or giving our supervisors the opportunity to share a little of their knowledge with us as a group. They hardly ever get a chance to impress upon us or teach us, haha, we hardly ever ask them any questions. Our start-up meetings are a great time to let them talk to us and help us. But we have to engage them at that level. I’ve always used our meetings to really solidify our safety culture within a facility. What better way to bring safety to the forefront of everyone’s minds than as a group before we all head out into the aisles or up on the docks? I’d suggest that we try and look forward to that daily meeting. Get the shifts information, make an impression and use it to motivate ourselves to the shift. And please remember this is an excellent time to perform some pre-shift stretches. We’ve learned through all our ergonomics trainings the importance of getting that blood flow to our muscles, helping them prepare for the work ahead!
And as to our safety meetings. Whether their daily, weekly or monthly, take them seriously. Its sometimes a dry subject, we’ve all heard the same things a hundred times but we gain new experiences with every shift. What I mean by that is when we’re listening to the same thing we talked about last week is that this week we may have seen an instance where that knowledge can be applied a little differently for us. Being one that gives those talks weekly I try and broaden the audience a little, maybe throw in how our significant others or husbands and wives could apply a little lifting techniques when putting the babies in and out of the car seats or how to avoid lifting and turning when getting our groceries out of the car. This is a great point for us as employees to speak up and throw in an experience of our own. Again participating and getting noticed, and, maybe helping one of our peers take a little better care of themselves through safety as well.
And I guess to make it real simple, these meetings may just be regulatory. Simply put, it’s a part of our jobs, a task that goes right along with our job descriptions. Lets all be on time for them, be interested in them & participate. It’ll pay off in the long run I assure you! Well. That’s it for today. I hope you found something interesting and found something or a thought that you can apply towards your plan and goals. Until next week let’s all get involved and talk Safety to someone next week!