Quit or Termed

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Marty T Hawkins back with you and another episode of Warehouse and Operations as a Career.  Is everyone having a fabulous week so far? Today let’s talk about a few of the things that we as employees sometimes must deal with, many times things we possibly bring on ourselves.  Throughout my travels each week I hear about lost jobs, NCNS, layoffs, and a lot of reasons why individuals have loss those jobs.  This isn’t probably something we like talking about, but I guess it is a part of the job cycle or career cycle so let’s look at it for a bit. 

Ok, being a manager for over 30 years I’ve had the fortune of meeting and hiring many an associate, mainly in the realm of operations only to see them move on to something else voluntarily and non-voluntarily.  Some found better positions or greener pastures and moved on and some through terminations.  I like to believe I’ve never actually ended someone’s job, well I guess I’d have to say I have ended 3, all 3 we’re due to a position actually being done away with due to a loss of cases, through a customer loss or once a particular product line, the selectors job was to pull that one line of product only.  In all 3 cases I helped them seek gainful employment at another company or made the effort and offered anyway. 

A V.P. of mine, kind of a mentor to me for several years, once told me, that he’d never terminated an associate, that they’d always terminated themselves.  He honestly looked at it as the rules, or processes and procedures weren’t being followed and as the associate knew that, that they had terminated themselves.  I guess that’s one way to look at it but I subscribe to the belief that I’ve failed in some way or another every time I’ve lost an employee.  I always wonder if they we’re given the Orientation properly and received the welcoming, they needed, had they received the training they needed, had management supported them in every way?  In previous episodes I spoke to the Corrective Action Process, what I prefer to call the coaching process and presented the question to young managers as “Did we give them every chance to succeed, did we discuss any job-related deficiencies’ we were experiencing with their performance & offer solutions to help them succeed?  Personally, I think the Orientation of a new associate is the one thing we as managers have to get right.  It’s where we have a chance to express how important they are to the organization, learn a little about them and share the expectations, rules, processes or procedures of the company with them.  It’s intimating walking into a new job & managers need to make us feel welcome and allow us to leave that first day wanting to come back early for the second one, right? 

Ok, I’ll step down off the soap box now you can see how easily I get sidetracked.  Let’s look at a few of the reasons I’m given by associates and managers each week from a few different industries I deal with, all types of positions and regions as to why a term form ends up being turned into our HR departments. 

Let’s start with the simplest, this is one I’ve never been able to get my arms around, the infamous NCNS.  I mean we as new hires have filled out the application, went through all the hoops to get the job, the interviews, background checks, maybe drug screens, we’ve filled out all the onboarding paperwork, had the job descriptions explained to us, maybe even met our coworkers and bosses and then don’t show up for our first day on the job, don’t call anyone, just kind of disappear?  Don’t get me wrong, things certainly come up sometimes and I don’t want you to think I’m being or going negative today at all but this one I’ve never figured out.  If we’ve decided the position just isn’t for us, and it’s going to happen sometimes, maybe something comes up in the job description that we figure woah, this isn’t going to be for me. But why don’t we just speak up right there and then?  I guess what I hope we think about is if we’re dealing with a staffing or sourcing company we’ve probably just burnt a bridge and while looking for permanent employment we should never burn any bridges! 

And then there’s the NCNS when we’re employed.  I hear almost weekly from an associate that says yeah, I got mad, or my boss didn’t treat me right so I decided not to go in.  I just don’t see how that’s fixed or hurt anyone, I don’t think we’ve won anything by quitting like that have we?  If someone’s made us mad or our boss did us wrong, wouldn’t it have been better to communicate that to someone, maybe their boss or our HR departments?  There’s not going to be a check with our name on it next week!  Again, I know things happen from time to time, but it’s rare I hear a valid reason from anyone concerning a NCNS.  A phone call is just too easy to make.  If we’re taking off no matter what our boss says, go ahead and do it, but call.  Then on our next interview we can say we’d asked off, had a valid reason but my boss fired me for missing.  It’ll go over better than them finding out about us NCNSing.  The NCNS we’d have to agree we’ve actually quit or terminated ourselves, right? 

I hear this one a lot, every week, Excessive Absentees and missing too much work.  Our employers are going to need a certain headcount to hit the needed productivity numbers everyday.  The hours and shifts were explained to us when we applied for the job and even if the hours were changed later, we were probably told about it and I’d assume we accepted them.  We stayed with the company so why are we surprised when our supervisor counsels us 1, 2 or 3 times and then lets us go?  Typically, we’re not terminated on our first or second absence in 90 days.  Again, I’m not being negative about us quitting our jobs, and I think we all would agree we’ve quit, we just took the long road to doing it, we knew it was coming, I think. 

Then there’s insubordination, when I hear this one I come close to understanding sometimes.  We here at WAOC have talked a few times now about handling ourselves in a professional manner, and boy that’s very difficult at times isn’t it?  If we assume we’re liking our job it’s important to remember we have other recourses than saying no to management or something like “that’s not my job”.  As long as the request is ethical and legal we need to do it.  Many times, we won’t know the reason or the end result but hey, we’re being paid and it’s just a part of it.  I was a high rise selector, I’d only been on the job for about 3 months and a supervisor hurriedly came to the back and asked me to go clean the men’s room real quick and disappeared.  I was still a new employee, had 2 kids at home that was going to want donuts when I got home that morning. Yep I was pretty upset but I went ahead and cleaned it up and wiped it down.  I hadn’t been finished but for like 5 minutes and another sup came by with an auditor from one of our larger accounts and sure enough they walked right on in to the men’s room to check it out.  I ended up working for that company for 26 more years.  As employees we have other resources when we get upset, we have management members and our HR departments we can see.  Another time, a couple of years later I had a young supervisor come back to high rise and tell me I needed to pull pallets while I was up in the air instead of bringing them down to the ground first.  I respectfully told him I was uncomfortable working around our Safety protocol and suggested we go check with the manager first.  He told me to go ahead and do it like I wanted to but get it done.  We became good friends after that, I’d actually helped him do what was right in that instance.  We need our jobs; there’s nothing to be gained by throwing a fit on the docks.  Let’s try and do as request and voice our opinions to another member of management.  By being insubordinate we’re really just quitting again, we’re probably fully aware of the consequences? 

And then there’s horseplay, this ones tough.  Our shifts are sometimes long, its hard to maintain our focus for 10 hours, keep our heads down and focus on our jobs isn’t it?  You know, there’s Safety concerns, quality concerns and we probably know the rules.  I hate hearing about a young employee, meaning a new employee, losing his or her job for horseplay.  I just always trust us more tenured associates will kind of mentor or advise the new boots to do the right thing.  Once again, I hope the consequences to horseplay has been explained to us.  With horseplay there may not be any corrective actions applied to us, It’ll depend on what we were doing I’d think.  Anyway, we probably knew better, why do we get upset when we’re dismissed, maybe its just a human nature thing. 

Several weeks ago I heard about an order selector that’d done something wrong, or at least his supervisor thought he had.  Anyway the selector ended up getting in the sups face and threatening to hit him.  In today’s world that’s a threat, could even be a terroristic threat since it happened at work.  The associate was walked off the property and honestly didn’t understand how the authorities could have been called.  He got hot, calmed down and was now out of a job.  That’s a good example how not handling ourselves in a professional manner can really cost us dearly. 

Here at WAOC we spend a lot of time talking about how to get our jobs, planning for our advancement and reaching our goals but keeping those positions are just as important.  Terminations are a part of the work experiences, and being such we should recognize our responsibilities in keeping those jobs.  It’s hard, we’re humans and we all have reactions but I think we’d all agree it’s easier to be in charge of ourselves and in many instances, prevent terminations. 

Again, I hope I didn’t come across as negative today, I’d like to think I presented us with something to think about and consider. If you’d like to add to our list of terminations or share an example or situation with our group please shoot an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com we’d love hearing from you!  Check out our Facebook and Twitter feeds too, @whseandops & we’d appreciate a Like and Follow should you find any interest there.  If you operate any type of powered Industrial Equipment check out the Facebook group Warehouse Equipment Operators Community group, we’re usually hanging around there through the week!  Until next week – Be Safe and lets all take care of our Families and our Positions!

Ask Me Anything: Distribution

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Hey hey all, you found Marty and Warehouse and Operations as a Career here again. Here we are in week 50 of 2024. I just realized we haven’t talked about our 2025 goals or plans yet. Maybe we can get that in over the next few weeks. I’m big on goals and planning, and I’m pretty much right on target for the year. Anyway, before I get started running down that path, I’ll get back to today’s bullet points! 

I’ve been talking about the workforce out there right now and how we’re seeing people exploring new industries and changing their career goals over the last several weeks.  I was asked by a listener if I could talk about warehouse positions, at distribution facilities in particular. She wanted to know how to get started and how do you get into a management position. Speaking with her I found that her work history, although she hasn’t been in the workforce but for about 4 or nearly 5 years I guess, she’s had about 18 months in a production type facility, doing a little picking and packing for assembly parts. I’m not sure what they built though. Her only other jobs had been with 2 restaurants and 3 retail stores. She states she so enjoys the physical aspects of the job and the warehouse environment overall.  

One of the comments she made was that, in the restaurant industry, you could be trained as a manager after being there for like 3 months. There was a lot more responsibility given to you and the pay was pretty good, but the hours we’re never set. They we’re different week to week. She was wondering if she could be a supervisor in a few months? 

OK, there’s a lot to unpack there. She has a friend working in the distribution world, she’s spoke with them regarding the pay, and I think that’s where we landed on the distribution industry.  

So, let’s talk about distribution and delivery!  

I thought we’d walk a case of product through the building. We’ll start with that case being purchased. I know a merchandiser or procurement department isn’t actually a warehouse position, however they do interact with the warehouse more than any other office position, and we’ll talk about that more in a bit.  

Our merchandiser understands how valuable the real-estate is in our warehouse. Space is at a premium, square footage is expensive, and it has to be utilized to maximize our efficiencies on the floor! So, quantities are purchased with days on hand in mind. 

Pick slots are assigned to facilitate that products movement. Meaning how many times a week does our selector stop in front of that slot and how many cases does the warehouse select and ship in a week. Once we know that, we’ll calculate the amount of space needed to store, or slot, that number of cases so we don’t have to move pallets around more times than absolutely necessary. The merchandiser will purchase in that pallet quantity, hopefully, and where possible, even the correct ti and hi configuration for our slot size. Ti meaning how many cases on a layer and hi being how many layers criss crossed or reversed stacked on the pallet.  

So, the company has purchased the product, it’s on a trailer and on the way to us! 

First the load will need to be scheduled to arrive and be unloaded. Let’s say we’re working at a large facility, with an inbound trailer or container count of, oh, let’s say around 60 loads a day. The first position we’ll discuss is the Inbound scheduler. 

In my humble opinion, this is one of the hardest jobs in the warehouse. I didn’t like it and to be honest I never was very good at it! This individual works closely with merchandising and our logistics department scheduling the loads for each day. They are usually working about 2 weeks out. Setting up appointments through freight brokers and over the road operators for date and times to unload. It’s a tough job. Everyone wants the appointment to work with their schedule! This person has to be patient, be able to deescalate many situations a day, handle multiple phone calls a day and deal with people that may have been lied to regarding an appointment already. With all that being said, our case has arrived and the load is given a door to back into! 

Now the driver or operator may utilize a lumper or unloading service to remove the product from his or her trailer, segregate each item-by-item number, stack it in the correct pallet configuration using a breakdown sheet, and stage it on the dock for our receiver to work with it. 

The lumper position or unloader job is a great get your foot in the door job, an entry level position that can take us on to most any position in the warehouse. We’ll learn every item in the building, by sight. That ability can certainly take us places. 

The next position or person to see our case will be the receiver. Now this is a very important job. Typically, a very experienced person will have this position. They are responsible for receiving or verifying the item is what was ordered, the correct quantity, with nothing damaged, and entering it into our inventory. Once received; by accepting the delivery, the receiver is basically writing a check for the product right then and there. He or she works off of a p.o. or purchase order to see what is being delivered, or what should be delivered! They will then tag the pallet as received. At our large dc that tag will have a barcode which states the quantity on the pallet, the item, and any information our WMS, or warehouse management system has been given for it, maybe something like fifo or first in first out, the pick slot location or the reserve location to store the pallet in.  

The next position would be the pallet runner position. This person will work from a single, double, or maybe even a triple electric rider platform pallet jack, hauling the received pallets from the dock to the assigned aisles and staging them for the forklift operators to place in the reserve slots or the pick locations as instructed by the information on the barcoded pallet tags. This position may be filled from the lumper position, or off the streets with a person with like 1 + years of electric rider jack experience. It’s referred to as a skilled position, but I feel it still falls in that gaining experience category. It is a PIT position, so we’ll have completed the classroom portion of OSHA’s 1910.178 standard and had the machines operation demonstrated to us and us observed on the equipment in our working environment. A great growth position in my humble opinion. 

From here the put away forklift operator takes over. He or she will scan the receiving tag and place the pallet in the proper location, possibly a reserve slot or the pick slot. This position requires quite a bit of experience. Typically, this individual will have several years of warehouse experience and at least 3 years of forklift experience. Your placing pallets many feet into the air, working around others and different types of equipment. This is a job with more responsibilities than most. For all those reasons, and the importance of safety with the task, it usually pays pretty well. 

Awe were at the order selector task now. This is considered by many to be the golden ticket in the distribution arena. In our large facility it pays very well. The work is hard, the pace can be unbelievable. We could be paid by the piece and our productivity, so we are focused and moving! Our errors have to all but nonexistent, and safety has to be on the forefront of our minds and actions at all times. Yes, this position pays well but I encourage everyone to have an exit strategy. This is not a job we’ll want to do for 10 years, its rough on our bodies! Many order selectors move on to inventory control, or becoming forklift operators, maybe even receivers. With this position we’ll learn every item in our building and where its located! Again, having that item knowledge give us a leg up on others. 

Throughout the selection process the slots are being depleted or emptied, hence our next position. The replenishment forklift operator. This person is responsible for, besides the safe operation of the forklift, to keep the picking slots filled at all times. They bring the freight down from there reserve locations to the pick slots. Now, I know that forklift drivers want to stay on their lifts at all times, and you see a lot of that in the manufacturing and production facilities because a lot of times there moving freight from one location to another department to be worked, but in the distribution centers we’ll probably have to occasionally have to get off our lifts and hand stack product onto another pallet, and pulling empty pallets from slots by hand and stacking them to get them out of the way! This is a very respected position. We’re working in the aisles with others, and people are depending on us to help them hit their productivity numbers. And again, as with any type of equipment or machine usage, safety has to be our first priority. I’ll take this opportunity to slide in the fact that no one should ever, under any circumstances, touch or get on or operate any machine or piece of powered industrial equipment they have not been trained on and certified to operate. I know you get tired of me saying that but it’s just that important. 

Where was I, oh, next up is our loaders. Here’s another position I consider a great get our foot in the door position. We’ll be running pallets of selected products or orders into the route trailers to be delivered. In today’s world, I consider this job a bit of a skilled position. We’ll need a little experience on a pallet jack as we could be moving the staged pallets filled with orders into the correct position of the trailer so the driver can find his or her deliveries by stop numbers. In some instances, we may be required to load the trailer by hand or floor load it for various reasons or requirements. This is another position or importance and a productivity driven task. The trailer will have a dispatch time and it’s our responsibility to make sure the driver is ready to roll at that time! 

There’s a few other positions in the distribution center we’ll have the opportunity to learn or work in, positions like inventory control, drive helper, slotting coordinator, and then the frontline management positions like warehouse leads, supervisors, managers, and more senior level positions like directors, and vice presidents.  

As you can tell, experience opens those doors to growth, more responsibilities, and wages in our industry. Each position or task I mentioned today is a great career in and of itself. We need to be doing what we love.  

I don’t know of any other career where we can work our way up to a six-figure income through our experiences and without any formal education or tech schooling. Of course we have to keep self-learning every day, gather as many certifications as offered by our industry and continue to grow personally and professionally. But what a rewarding career we can have.  

I wanted to talk a little about that personal and professional growth and goals and planning, but I’ve ran long on time today and we all probably need to get back to work! We’ll get into all that a bit later, I guess. 

If you have any questions about anything discussed in today’s episode please shoot us a message to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and I’ll make sure we get an answer back to you. 

Until next week, be prosperous, productive, thankful, and safe out there!  

Errors And Expense

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It’s been another great week hasn’t it! I’m Marty and I’d like to thank you for joining us again here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career.  This week let’s spend a few minutes on controlling expenses.  I had a conversation last week with a V.P. of Op’s about a facility that had had over 1000 short on truck cases the previous week.  That’s a huge error ratio and creates a very real expense to the company, not to mention the disservice to their accounts.  I tell you what, we’ll get into all that in a moment, but let’s start with how we handle wasted expense when it’s our own.  I’m certain we’ve all, probably on a daily basis, talked or commented to our kids about leaving the lights on in an empty room, or leaving the A/C running way to cool when no one’s home, or how about running the bath for like 15 minutes before their ready to get in it.  All that can be a drain, an actual waste of our hard earned money.  By managing those expenses or that waste we’re able to have more and do more right?  The same holds true in our work lives, our companies can have more, maybe newer equipment or supplies and share or afford more, those monies we as associates don’t help manage could end up in better wages or incentives for our positions!

About two weeks ago I was speaking with a building maintenance supervisor, I’ve know him for about 15 years, hadn’t seen him for like 4 years now though, he’s now working in a new industry. I’d known him from the distribution arena and I’d asked him how he was liking the new job.  One of the things that he mentioned was how he didn’t miss all the pallet jacks and forklift maintenance he use to deal with.  His biggest complaint was always the shrink wrap and cardboard being ran over by the equipment and all the load wheels he’d have to replace and the cost it incurred for his department each month!  We can all realize those wheels aren’t cheap, those bearings we burn up each month not only cost a pretty penny but think how much time our equipment’s down while there being repaired.  Oh and speaking of cardboard and shrink wrap, these days a lot of companies recycle them, I’m sure we could all pitch in and save a few more bucks by saving as much as we can and getting it to the proper staging area!  One of my old pet peeves was the waste of things like tape and rolls of labels.  How many partially used rolls of strapping tape or rolls of labels that get changed out too early because we didn’t want to run out during a batch so we just put in a fresh roll!  Our one roll doesn’t hurt anything, but multiply that by 60 of us times 6 days and we could have saved the cost of a whole box. It’s hard, I mean we have a task to perform, thinking about expenses and saving or not wasting that money.  But I’m sure we can all agree it’d be a win win if we could do a better job at it!

So shorts or not on trucks.  The facility I spoke to earlier typically ships around 400k cases a week, with over a thousand shorts or not on trucks that’d be an error ratio of 1 in 400! That’s 1 case out of every 400 didn’t get delivered to the customer. Think about that cost, there’s an expense to get it ordered again, send a selector out to get it again, get it loaded and then driven back out to the account, times 1000 times.  I know that’s an exaggeration but wow.  A typical error ratio I work with is at a minimum 1 in 3000 and I know accounts that are hitting 1 in 20,000.  Those numbers include misships as well.  Short on truck and misships are a huge expense, and we can’t forget the impact to the customer.  If we take the family out for a nice dinner and the kids want spaghetti but a selector mispulled stewed okra in the can for spaghetti, well that’s not going to be a good thing.

Ok, so how can those expenses happen, what causes a short on truck and how can we prevent it.  And a mispull, how do we grab the wrong thing.  If you can answer those questions and eliminate them from the industry you can be a wealthy individual, every corporation would pay you just short of a king’s ransom.   Take shorts, we’re selecting our batch and we pull up to an empty slot.  The inventory may be off so the machines sold a case that we just don’t have.  If we don’t turn that label in as a empty where it can be removed from the invoice, bam, it becomes a short on truck.  Its quantity is still on the invoice yet the driver does not have it on his trailer and the customer can’t sell it!  Another scenario could be our forklift driver hasn’t yet replenished the empty slot, so when we get there it’s empty.  Again, if we’re busy and fail to get that label turned in, bam again, it’s a short!  So much has to happen when we’re dealing with an exception, or something happens to take us out of our normal pace or process and it’s then hard to get it done.  But we need too, I think we’ll all agree there.  And of course I’m sure theirs that one peer that, it may even be one of us, that just isn’t caring at that particular moment and thinks, heck I’m not going to mess with this, and bam bam, it becomes a short on truck again!  Human nature takes over, we need to fight against it, and we’ll be better employees if we do, but I’m sure it happens.

And a misship, I’ve always struggled with a misship.  Our label or pick ticket will give us the description, the item or sku number or supc number, the pack quantity, color or size etc.  We’ll be directed to a slot and we have the opportunity to verify all that, yet the misship is a real thing, happens every shift, and cost our companies and customers.  They happen, I’ve made more than my share over the years.  Again, if we could solve this problem we wouldn’t have to work for a living anymore.

Errors are costly in every profession and industry.  I guess we as associates can help by realizing those cost and helping where we can, maybe paying a little more attention when we can.  Again, it’s hard.  We have production numbers to hit, we’re making our money.  If we can improve with these two areas I’m certain we could see some more incentives.   Maybe that’s an idea you could bring to your management team, if you could present them with a way to measure our improvements they very well may just share those savings through an incentive or bonus program.  When I was selecting if our names weren’t on the short or misship sheet we’d get a $5 petty cash slip each night.  Back then that was quite an incentive, I’d come in every night, check that sheet and go count inventory, talk to the driver and loader, I was always pretty persistent that I hadn’t errored! Sometimes I found it or proved my innocence and sometimes I just had to accept it.  There’s no perfect system or WMS or warehouse maintenance system that can eliminate errors, yet anyway, but I’m sure we’ll all agree we could probably try a little harder!

I almost forgot about damages, that’s another expense we can help attack.  I’m sure we all see that staging area where we place damages at the end of the shift.  Again, it’s just that we’re working, maybe we take a corner too tight and graze the upright or stacking, I was probably the world’s worst stacker, anyway, if we’ve stacked a bit loose and have a tower stack fall over and damage a couple of cases, bam again, expense we maybe could have avoided.  And let’s not get into the cost of rack or building damages.  Those overhead doors aren’t cheap either!

I was thinking a few minutes ago, when we were talking about running over shrink wrap and cardboard.  I wanted to point out the safety aspect of it.  If you’ve never had a set of bearings lock up on you when you’re in motion, be thankful.  I hate to admit it but once the load wheels were so wrapped up in plastic it locked up and nearly threw me off my machine, and I’ve seen the same thing happen to a forklift a couple of times!  Not a safe situation at all! And things like that are incidents too, could even be near misses and could count as a Safety incident.  We may expose ourselves to retraining or be hit with a couple of Safety points as well.  I know we will if there’s ever any rack damage or one of those overhead doors are involved.

A bit of preaching today, but I’m sure we all understand the opportunities.  If you have any ideals or could share what your facility does to combat shorts and errors or damages please email us, host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com so we can share them with the group.  Talk about getting noticed by your management team, if you can help reduce those types of expenses you’ll get more than a handshake!  And please join in with our discussions on Facebook and Twitter, you can find us @whseandops on both, and we’d love it if you could like our Warehouse Equipment Operators Group on facebook as well.

We hope you stop by again next week, and until them let’s all gather up that cardboard and shrink wrap, maybe pick up those pieces of pallets on the floor and be Safe on our Equipment!