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Welcome back! Marty here with warehouse and operations as a career! I hope everyone is having a great week! Let’s see, we’re in week 18 now, I know I’m not where I thought I’d be in 18 weeks, but, hey, the last 6 weeks, I wouldn’t call normal so, I’m more than pleased with my accomplishments. It’s the new norm I guess we can say. Seriously though, we’re always having to make adjustments to our goals, so mine are just that, I’m adjusting. I know a lot of you are waiting to get called back to work or maybe working reduced hours right now. Here at WAOC we’re always talking about self-education and I have a quick story I’d like to share with you today on that very subject. Over the last 4 weeks I’ve been doing quite a bit of research and learning myself. A few of my go to websites are Udemy https://www.udemy.com/ Universal class https://www.universalclass.com/ and Lydia, it’s now called LinkedIn Learning I think, https://www.lynda.com/
And a few other online offerings I’ve heard about are https://www.coursera.org/collections/free-online-courses-finish-in-a-day and https://www.edx.org/
All those offer a lot of free courses and even more for greatly discounted fees, like $10 to $15 dollars. I’ll add the links in today’s show notes in case you’d like to check them out. Education will never go to waste and if all we must invest is our time, we’ll, it’s kind of on us if we don’t invest in ourselves, right? I mean, right now it seems we have more time on our hands than anything else!
You’ve heard me mention before that I’m a big fan of you tube. WAOC has a good friend, Raymond Harlall, I met him through his you tube channel. He used to do a lot of short, instructional videos on how to use powered industrial equipment but there’s literally 10’s of thousands of videos on how too and how not to use powered industrial equipment on you tube. I think you could devote an entire weekend to YouTube channels and never run out of content on pretty much any subject lol. Which brings me to a great example of you tube learning.
So, about 2 months ago I received a phone call from a young lady that wanted to change her career. I know it seems like I’m always picking on the restaurant industry, but she had worked the front of the house and back of the house both at dining restaurants and hotels and decided she wanted more, she wanted to get into warehousing and had done her research, found a company within her commuting range and decided she’d apply for a sanitation position there. Her only hold back was she needed to know how to operate something called a tugger and an EPJ and she had no experience with either nor had she ever heard of or seen one! She had looked online and discovered she’d need a license or certification to get hired and was asking how to go about choosing which school to go to? You know how I feel about the Pay for the Card type places out there. I explained to her that those kinds of places are great if all you’re after is getting a card. Oh, there’s some good training centers that’ll take the time and actually train you, give you some time on the equipment, and where the instructor works with you and will teach you how it operates. But there’s also those, and so many of them, that are going to show you the films, talk a little, put you on a machine for like 15 minutes and then give you a card and call you certified. I won’t climb up on my soap box but, well, I’m just saying be sure before we pay for something let’s know what we’re getting. Anyway, so after talking with her and explaining that odds are, especially since she was going to work for a larger distribution center that they would run her through a 29cfr1910.178 or PIT class for free anyway. I expressed that I felt like her bigger obstacle was going to be that she didn’t have any experience on the equipment. I asked her if experience was required. She said she had talked with HR and they had said if she was comfortable and knew how to operate it that they would work with the applicant and train them. I think sanitation is a great get our foot in the door position. It’s one of the easiest positions to get some equipment experience with. 2 or 3 years ago we weren’t seeing equipment experience being required at the entry level, but today, most of the sanitation jobs are requiring electric pallet jack experience. So we talked a little about what the machines were and why she’d need to be able to use them to perform the task and I suggested that she check out you tube to see the tugger and electric pallet jack being used, I thought that’d give her an idea of what they’re looking for anyway. She thanked me and I didn’t hear back from her until now.
I just love this story! She said she appreciates the show each week and through our encouragement she set her goal and started planning out the actions needed to make it a reality. She watched 47 different you tube videos, most of them more than once or twice, and got to feeling good about the equipment. She had applied with the company shed targeted and was brought on for a warehouse sanitation position, but they would also consider her for a janitorial job in the office area if she couldn’t learn to operate the EPJ in short order. The janitorial position was paying quite a bit less, so she knew she’d need to do a good job in the warehouse. Well, to make a long story short, she did a great job in the warehouse position, had no problem showing her boss that she was comfortable on the equipment and could operate it safely at all times. He gave her the PIT class and even started working with her on the double jacks when they had some time. She was only in sanitation for that 1st month and is now been promoted to the pallet runner position with an increase in pay! Her next goal is becoming an order selector! And there’s no doubt in my mind that she’ll achieve that goal in very short order as well!
I’m just a firm believer that we can control our destiny’s ladies and gentlemen, especially when it comes to our careers. I know a young man that’s been an order selector for just over 5 years now. He came to me, I guess you could say complaining, about how no one had offered him the opportunity to do anything else and he was thinking about finding another job. He knew I worked closely with most of the supervisors at his facility, and I asked him who he’d spoken with about wanting to do something else? I got an odd look from him. I told him that these guys weren’t mind readers, and with him being one of their top order selectors, moving him around probably had never entered their mind. I suggested he go talk to his immediate boss and let him know that he was getting a little burned out with order selecting and let him know he’d like to do something else if there were any openings. He knew a couple of inventory guys, so I told him to mention that department to him.
Today he is working in inventory control, he’s the lead in the department and has received 2 rate increases since he moved over there. All his product knowledge turned out to be a great asset for his new boss. It took them about 3 months to get him moved but once his supervisor knew he was a bit dissatisfied he helped find him something else. Our company does not want to lose experienced talent, but we can’t expect them to read our minds, right?
It’s true not every story is going to end as well for us as these two examples, but I can promise you they will not if we don’t communicate our thoughts or feelings. And planning. Both of these individuals came up with a plan. They had a goal. Yes, they both reached out for a little help or advise, but that’s how we learn how to help ourselves. Doing a little self-education is like reaching out for advice. We’re learning something we didn’t know.
If you have some spare time, put it to good use. What’s the alternative, playing a video game or watching tv for another hour a day? I have one of the trainers that works for me taking a little $25 online class on Microsoft excel now. I think it’s about a 16-hour class in all and he’s working on it about an hour a day. In 17 days, he’ll know a lot more about using excel than he did last month. How is that going to be a bad thing or waste of time? He doesn’t use excel a whole lot now, really just inputting data in a couple of premade templates for class attendees, but I bet next month his boss will see a lot more data and information being captured for his company. Odds are that could result in a better wage for him and all he’s invested is 16 hours of his time and 25 bucks. When you say it like that it’s a no brainer isent it!
As we all wrap up another week, I hope we all stay safe, respect others space and protect our loved ones. Just as it is up to us to take care of our health it is also up to us, and us alone, to take care of our careers. I wish you a safe, productive and prosperous week ahead and I hope you’ll join us again next week right back here at warehouse and operations as a career!