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Hello everyone, so next week is Thanksgiving! Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I’m Marty and I appreciate you stopping by again this week! Quick question, are you already seeing or maybe even experiencing those holiday frustrations? Every year about this time I notice how the mood changes out on the docks. And this year I’m senescing new or added worries regarding family gatherings or lack thereof, being on people’s minds. I always try and coach my associates to be a little more understanding of our work partners this time of year. I believe like it’s important to remember we could have it a little better than some. Take our over the road driver friends. They are out on the road dealing with weather issues and think what it’s like driving in town with all the people on the roads, maybe shopping or getting together or basically just causing unnecessary traffic with his or her routes! And then add in that the dispatcher may have, we’ll say, mislead the driver to believe they have a 6 a.m. appointment when their appointment is actually at noon, meaning they’ll be out of hours and have to reset somewhere before they can head back towards home for the holidays. Or even worse, there’s an issue with our systems, maybe we’re out of slots, the building is full and we’re having to may replenishments before we can run their labels. Come on, you’re experiencing that about now, right? Things happen. I heard of one facility running out of pallets this week so they were sending everyone down the aisles to grab anything that was empty just so they could get in as many loads as they could.
This time of year, people can be emotional, maybe more like stressed! I guess maybe both and even more! My point being we need to recognize this time of year and help each other in this business. I don’t want to push someone into losing their job and I certainly don’t want to let my quick temper or false feelings of justice to cost me my job either!
I mentioned drivers. I can’t even imagine the patience they have to demonstrate this time of year. Sometimes we take that driving job for granted. Yeah, all of us, I know I’ve done more than one driver wrong in my career!
I was at a production facility last week and was watching a driver get her door, she got docked and came up the walk ramp to the little caged area where all the drivers have to sign in, answer a few health questions and get their temperature checked. You know what I’m talking about, the times we’re living in for now.
Well, after all that was done, she was left alone. Standing in a large cage area. She could see her door, with the load that she needed to be unloading and nobody was helping her get to it. Now, this wasn’t my facility but even I was embarrassed for them. There were 2 supervisors, a lead person, 4 receivers on the dock, well, only 2 really was on that end of the dock, and like 3 forklift drivers and at least 3 of the company’s unloaders working within 20 yards of that gate.
I admired her patience so much. A lesser person may have already gone off! I was able to flag down the lead and he went to help her. I guess she was watching me trying to help her from afar and she thanked me with a little fist bump as she was being led to her trailer.
On my drive back to my building I saw a big rig pulled over to the side with a blow out on his or her inside rear tire. I’m not sure why they had to pull over, maybe something else was wrong as well but I thought to myself, I hope this doesn’t coast them a load or a ride back towards the house this weekend.
One of the agencies I work with has experienced a huge issue with ghosting over the last two weeks. Applicants make appointments for interviews and don’t show up, or even worse, they accept a position and don’t bother calling or coming in on their first day. I was speaking with the recruiter about it, he mentioned it’s like this every year around the holidays. He felt like it’s a hard time to start a job. Family may be coming in, the children are getting excited, it’s the holidays and he believes it’s just hard for an out of work individual to start this month or the next. I just don’t see it that way. Side note, I started my career with the company I retired from on November 11th.
I was wondering what the supervisors we’re seeing out there so I took a little phone poll. I spoke with 7 Supervisors or leads; over the last two weeks they had experienced 7 voluntary resignations and 16 unvoluntary releases. All in I was told that 5 people had been released because they would not consistently wear their required PPE’s, 7 associates had what was described as habitual attendance opportunities, 2 people that couldn’t get to work on time and 3 for performance or productivity issues.
Now I guess all 16 could have corrected their actions, everyone released was given their companies corrective action or written warning programs or the steps needed to help the associate fix their performance but really. So many not wearing their PPE’s and then all those with time clock issues? That accounted for 14 of the 16 people that lost their jobs. Let’s let that sink in for just a minute.
Oh, I’ll add this really quick, since we’re talking about being on time and showing up for our shift. I know of this one company that has offered an attendance bonus before that worked off of a case and pallet formula. Basically, as long as you were punched in, at least within 8 minutes of your 4 a.m. start time, and came to work all 5 days, Monday thru Friday, you were eligible for and awarded the bonus. With the average case and pallet counts each day you could earn between like $60 to $80 dollars a week. That’s $1.50 to $2.00 an hour or $3120.00 to $4160.00 a year. For going to work on-time. The program consistently had under 25% participation.
OK, so back to the time of year, the holidays.
For some of us our business may be dropping off around this time of year. For others it could be our busiest two or three months. Either way it can be stressful right.
I had a boss once, he was actually a great coach and counselor, mentor I guess that I really looked up to tell me during an encounter one day just before thanksgiving that I’d be wise to stay out of his sight until after budget time. That was in January, and I don’t think he saw me more than like 10 times for those 2 months! Where my jobs concerned, I don’t have to told twice!
What I’m saying, sounds kind of corny when I’m thinking it but I do think we should help each other out over the next two months. We have a lot going on here in the states right now. An unsettled election, a pandemic many of us are being affected over, a drop in business or worst, maybe we’re worried about layoffs or we’re out of work right now. We all have a full plate outside of work. And we may be stressed about work!
I assure you it is going to be ok. It is going to be what it is. We will go over any wall we need too and if we can’t go over it, we’ll go around it or maybe even through it! It’s not going to hurt us to carry a friend of teammate with us.
If we’re helpful, positive and productive others can be too!
Ok Team WAOC, we’re wrapping up week 47. We have 6 weeks left in 2020. Have we reconciled with our accomplishments this year or our 4th quarter goals? I’ve accepted the ones I missed this year. And that’s ok, some of the things that came up were honestly out of my control. The ones that weren’t, well, I learned from the failures! I’m feeling good with the outcome.
I’ve started working on my 2021 plans and I can tell you that I’m being pretty aggressive with them. I am going to own the 1st and 2nd quarters right out of the gate. I’m going to pick a dollar figure that I’m going to earn next year and I am going to achieve it!
Start your plan and get those goals set because we’re all going to increase our W2 earnings next year, right?
I think we’re off to a great start with our planning. Let’s all help our teammates over the next 6 weeks, cross that finish line together & prepare to own the new 1st and 2nd quarter of 2021!
Until next week, stay calm, focus on the objective, stay healthy and above all be Safe out there.