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A job is a job is a job, nope it’s not. I don’t buy into that train of thought. Oh, I guess if were 16 and talking about the fast-food industry or maybe a retail or restaurant position, I’d let someone say it’s just a job. I’m Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career and I’m of the opinion that even our first job should be planned. We should enjoy it. It should serve us with a purpose. Oh, it’s ok if that purpose is just a paycheck, as long as we know that is its purpose. I’m not going to hash out planning and goals today but I do want to brush up against them a bit. I wanted to share some conversations I had since last Thursday regarding working, why people are working, and what they hope to get out of their jobs. I picked this subject because I had to scratch my head more than once this week after sitting down and digesting what I just heard! Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with working a job with no plan at all. It is fine to change jobs every 3 months. If you’re only looking for a check on Friday and are content with it, it fulfills all your needs and commitments, it’ll work for you. Until it doesn’t!
You’ve heard me express my feelings about how I believe we should enjoy what we’re doing, enjoy our task, do something that makes us happy. I’m going to go out on a limb and say one can’t sustain a job if they are not happy or enjoying going to work every day. There is no way that path is going to turn into a career. Enough about careers, let me share a couple of conversations with you I had this week.
What I’ll call number 1 is a statement I hear too often to believe. I can do anything, I’m a fast learner. What I hear when someone says that is “I have no idea what the job is, but I’ll give it a shot for a few weeks.” That few weeks usually turns into a couple of hours. For one individual it was 30 minutes! This is a good example of wasted money and time. So, this individual took the time to be interviewed over the phone for a general labor position, unloading trailers. An hourly position. A pretty good job, no real productivity demands. Anyway, so he completed the phone interview and came to the office for a face-to-face meeting with the hiring agent. He went through the on-boarding process, had an orientation and watched a few videos. Probably had at least 3 hours of his own time invested, plus fuel to drive to the interview and his 1st day to his new job. Now, the company probably had already invested, what, probably something like $300 or so in him, counting the on-boarding, the recruiters time and the 30 minutes of training! He did not want that job when he accepted it!
Oh, here’s another one I liked. A person applied for a pallet runner position. The recruiter went over the candidates resume and felt like they had enough general warehouse experience to perform the task. She asked about their experience on an electric rider jack, even pulled out a picture of it and was told, oh yeah, I have over a year experience driving that. I’ll make a long story short by saying when they arrived for their PIT training and realized they we’re about to be put on the pallet jack the truth bubbled to the surface! This person had already wasted like 2 hours and was about to sit through a 3-hour class only to be told at the end that they did not have the experience required to perform the task!
I get it, these people are needing a job, a paycheck, they need to be earning some money. But they needed a plan.
I was interviewing for a Warehouse Supervisor position this week. I had a gentleman on the phone. I like to start off by reviewing the position I’ll be talking about. The hours, reviewing the job description, the salary range and a bit about our company before we dive into their resume. I figure it’s best not to waste my time or there’s if the position is not going to interest them at all right? So, I want over my whole spiel, he liked what he heard so we decided to talk about his experiences. My first question was, and now remember I was looking at his resume. He knew I had it in front of me. So, I asked if he could walk me through his duties at his last employer. His answer was I did everything. There was a long pause, and I asked, could you be a bit more specific, maybe walk me through a typical day, from beginning to end. In a bit of a negative tone, and without the specifics, he went on to state that he would do whatever his boss had laid out for him that day. Well, I continued with the interview and skipped on down to the skills area. He had noted that he could operate the standup reach lift and all electric rider jacks. When I brought those up, wow, it was like fireworks going off. The passion just exploded. He loved being an order selector and had worked as a put away fork driver for like 4 year before his old boss promoted him to supervision. I helped him get placed somewhere else as an equipment operator. He had already failed at supervision because he hated it. But he felt like that’s what he wanted to do. It wasn’t!
OK, as an employee, a prospective associate, an applicant. We have some responsibility to ourselves here. Have any of us ever took a job and then not go in on our first day? Any of us knew when we filled out our W4’s that we weren’t going in, we knew that we had no intention of going to work in the morning? How about walking out at lunch without telling anyone? Oh, here’s a good one for you. How about asking your new boss if you could go out to your car and get a different jacket? And then not coming back. I heard about that one this week.
There is nothing to be ashamed about with a job just not being for us. Maybe the work is harder than we thought it’d be. Or the environment is just more than we can handle. I was in Georgia 2 weeks ago and had a gentleman I had just hired the day before coming up to me and share that the cold dock was just more than he could handle. Although I had gone over the different temperatures, it was just too cold. He offered to finish up the day but stated he wouldn’t be back tomorrow. You’ve got to respect that. I thanked him for the heads-up and told him it was ok if he would rather leave now, he could certainly stay and earn a little more but that I was fine and would understand if he’d like to go. He left, no harm no foul.
As employees, no let me start over. As people we have to be happy. A job is great for a paycheck but we should put in the time to research our positions and the companies we want to work for, no, I’ll say that we want to work with! I feel like we should be interviewing them while they’re interviewing us. Honestly ladies and gentlemen. The sooner we can identify a career or profession we love the more money we’re going to earn and the quicker we’re going to advance within that industry.
And remember it is perfectly fine to change our careers. You may change yours many times. But enjoy everything your tasked to do. Otherwise, you’re just going to feel like you are wasting your time. That leads to frustration and poor performance. You cannot be the best of the best if you are not enjoying what you’re doing!
Ok, I’m jumping off the soap box now.
I wanted to remind everyone or to present to everyone that it’s our responsibility to seek out employment. Sometimes our situation may dictate that we just grab a job, and that’s ok. I feel though that we need to target a company that will afford us the positions, equipment skills and growth opportunities that will make us wake up for every shift and look forward to going in. Maybe even dance all the way there!
I didn’t end up talking about what I wanted to today, but I did get to share some thoughts right! Give us a holler at host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com Share some of your experiences on the subject!
Until next week, be upfront with ourselves, maybe even others and be safe at home and work. We have people waiting on us to return.