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Welcome one and all, it’s my birthday week! Where are we at this week, it’s the 26th week of 2020. It has been a wild year for all of us to say the least. How many of you get the day off for your birthday? It used to be a paid holiday for us at my old company. I know they don’t do it there anymore, I’m not sure I’d take off for my birthday anymore anyway. It seems every day we’re off work we just get farther behind doesn’t it! Who am I kidding, of course I’d take today off if I could!
So week 26, the last full week of the 2nd quarter. I hope everyone’s on track with their plans and goals. This week marks the halfway mark for our year. Well, kind of, this year we have 53 weeks in the year. There’s you something to go look up, a little self-education, you may find it pretty interesting, if you go back far enough lol.
This week I didn’t really have anything booked to discuss so I thought I’d get caught up on a few questions we’d received!
First up, and I liked this one, but I’m not sure why it was asked, was – I see that you’re all over the job boards so I guess you’re a recruiter? And then there’s a follow-up question right behind it that said – And everything says national? Well, I do a lot in the recruiting arena. I am a member of 7 Facebook recruiter groups, and actually admin 1 of my own. I am a member of 61 job boards across the nation, I am a mentor and coach for a few of them and help monitor several. I work with a large sourcing company with sites in several states and the distribution training center where we help educate to the opportunities within our industry. So yes, it is quite possible you’ll run across my name or the WAOC branding through job boards by means of mentoring groups, webinars and being associated with skilled labor postings. I help put together a lot of training programs and work closely with several organizations, I guess you could say, trying to put people to work and helping them find a career they can commit to! I genuinely love what I get to do. Wither it’s paid or on a volunteer basis. I hope that helps with why you may see my name under a few different categories.
So about Op’s now, I thought this was a good one. I’m in sanitation. I have worked for XX company for 26 months. I have asked my supervisor why do we have to do dock plates on Mondays, and then wiping down customer pick up racks on Tuesdays, and then sweep under pallets on aisles a-2 to D –7 or E –2 to H-7 every other day. Why is everything just so so. She’s nice but just say’s that’s the law? Is it a law?
Well, maybe not a law, but probably does have a little regulatory weight behind it. She is probably working off of a Master Sanitation Schedule. She’ll have daily task, weekly tasks, monthly task, quarterly task and then annual cleaning task listed on it and she’s responsible for documenting that the task is performed as listed and those files have to be kept. I’m not sure what industry you working with but a few of the agencies that will ask for that documentation could be a city inspector, maybe a fire marshal, the USDA or FDA if you’re dealing in food or pharmaceuticals, even OSHA could be interested in our sanitation practices. Oh, and our company may hire a 3rd party auditing firm to follow up on us, making sure we’re doing everything we say we are. Like you’ve heard me say so many times, If we have a written procedure or process, something like a master sanitation schedule, it is so important that we adhere to it & follow our own guidelines. That’s probably what she means about the law!
He also asked about scrubbers and are they hard to learn to drive? He states he is not allowed to operate it. Haha, there not hard to operate. They’re a little tricky to operate, it’s all about coordinating your speed, the release of cleaning solution and pressure of the scrubbers and squeegee on the surface. Ever see that little line of water being left behind as a scrubber is making a turn or running down an aisle? That’s one of the things you don’t want to do. Oh, and most importantly. Never back up with your brushes and squeeze down, you will tear it up & those things are expensive. I know from personal experience! In my experience a supervisor likes driving the scrubber around. It gets them off the phone, away from all the hour by hour problems and gives them a few thinking moments. Probably most importantly though is the fact that when done improperly one can make a real mess with the floors. We can make things dirtier if we don’t do it right. And then there’s the expense of fixing anything that gets torn up! With all that being said though, there is a way to become the scrubber operator, at least the backup to you supervisor. YouTube has thousands of videos on operating a scrubber. I’m positive you’ll be able to find your make and model on there. Watch them all. If we start talking shop with our supervisor, asking if you’ve ever noticed this or that about our scrubber and dropping some key words like clean tank, recovery tank, solution module and pressure settings for brushes and squeegee bars I’m certain we’ll get their attention. Remember, our supervisors never get to talk about themselves, they never get to let us know much about their talents. They’ll love talking to us about something they like doing. You’ll get your shot on the scrubber!
Here’s a great one, the old that’s not my job line. So, a pallet runner at a medium sized distribution center lost his job. Refusing to paint a few Bollard poles. If you’re a warehouseman, shoot I think the same holds true in any industry, it is our job to do whatever is asked of us by our management team as long as it’s legal, safe, and we have been told and shown how to perform the task. Now that’s not to say we can’t complain or go talk to someone else after we complete the task, but it’s our job to do our job. We’re getting paid to do as asked, and usually not to just do one thing. So, what happened was, it was a slow few week. The company was trying to keep everyone working. Sometimes with reduced hours but they were trying to stay busy. So, one night they finished up their orders in about four hours and the supervisor found enough sweeping and cleaning things to keep 3 or 4 people busy for a few hours. He gave a can of yellow paint and two brushes to 2 guys and said they could go out in the yard and paint some of the bollards, it’d get them a few more hours over the next few nights and it’d help out the inbound drivers. We’ll this gentleman said no, he wasn’t a painter. The supervisor explained he was just trying to keep their hours up so no one would have to be laided off. The employee wasn’t hearing it and walked off. The supervisor had to list it as job abandonment and now he didn’t have to be concerned with finding something to do for that set of hours!
Just last week, at one of my facilities, a forklift driver did the same thing. She was asked to go help unload some containers & work with the receivers since all the pallet work was caught up and she said no. Got mad and walked out.
Our job is to do what needs to be done. Moving freight is an art form, everything has to feed the next step and all the tasks have to get done and be completed. It’s all our jobs. And in this day and time, I think we need to all work together, and do what we can to keep our positions.
Let’s see, where’s another good one. Here’s one that I hear from recruiters all the time. I mentioned that word commit or commitment a little bit ago. I think this came from a lead or a trainer, it might have been a supervisor. Anyway, I was asked what is up with the new hires these days? HR hires someone and they don’t show up on their first day of work? Why do they bother filling out all the paperwork? Well, I’ve struggled with this one myself. Even when scheduling interviews, I’ve been told most recruiters double book because only about 50% are going to show up. I just did a webinar for a couple of job boards on this very subject. If you’d like to register for it shoot me an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and I’ll get you a link. I know sometimes things will come up, and I have to think our recruiters and supervisors understand that. And I know as an applicant and new hire we occasionally may not do what’s right. But I have to think as a whole we all want too! In my humble opinion I’m wondering if we’re a little anxious about our new job. Was everything explained to us & did we ask questions if we didn’t understand something? We’re we not comfortable saying hey, I don’t think this position is going to work for me. And if we’ve gone home and then realized that our new job just isent going to work for my family, the hours or shift or maybe even the pay is just not going to work. Why don’t we give our new boss a call?
It’s hard, but we don’t ever want to burn any bridges. And to be honest, we’ll feel better and less anxious if we do the right thing. How many times have you heard us talk about that communication word here at WAOC? That’s really what everything we’ve talked about today is right? Communication!
Well, I hope you can take something from these questions today, and please join in and share any thoughts or experiences with our group! I’d love to get an email from you or maybe you could pose a question or statement to our Facebook or Twitter feeds using @whseandops or hitting us up in the warehouse equipment operator’s community group on Facebook as well.
Until next week, be safe & let’s all communicate our thoughts like we know we should!