We all work to pay our bills and provide a better living for our families.  Some of us, I hope most of us, are fortunate enough to enjoy our jobs so much that it isn’t work at all.  I’m Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career and today I’d like to start off with a question from a gentleman here locally. 

You know, we’re often taught and trained how to do our jobs, we’re given all the standard operating procedures, step by step, how to do the task along with all the preferred work methods but maybe we, as managers, or our managers, forget to explain more to the individual aspect of the position.  The question was posed “I’m working a lot harder than a guy named Mike yet he always gets more cases than I do.  Can you tell me how to scam like he does.  We get our pulls from our wrist computer, I can’t figure out how he always gets better pulls.”  Well, it sounds like your facility is using a selection system through their WMS.  If there’s more than just you 2 selecting there’s not much of a chance that he’s scamming the system.  Batches or pulls are downloaded from a que, next selector up gets the batch downloaded to their wrist mount. 

When productivity or activity-based pay, even incentive pay programs arrived on the scene they actually disrupted the old “this is only what I need to do mentality”.  Now we could work harder than someone next to us and we may earn more pay. But if we work smarter than the person next to us, we will earn more pay. In the world of productivity pay it is not about working hard.  It’s all about the clock. 

Everyone knows about direct time and indirect time right?  Direct time is time handling cases or moving freight. Indirect time is time spent in the restroom, washing our hands, getting our equipment signed out, anything other than handling cases while we are on the clock.  Your company may operate on KPI’s or key performance indicators.  In your position those measurements could be cases per hour selected or pallets per hour that’s putaway or replenished.  A cycle counter may have to count x number of cases an hour and make x number of adjustments.   Anything can be measured.  Lets go back to the selector.  We can know, on average, how many pallets we will load with product and how many drops we will make at the staging area in a given shift.  We can determine that because  we know how many cases are on an average batch and how much cube we’re selecting.  If our WMS is set to say 55 cube, math will tell us the number of pallets we’ll load and how many trips we’ll make to the staging area or doors to be loaded out. 

Those standards are determined by measuring everything we will be doing for any given task.  Lets stick with selection for a moment.  Your larger distribution centers may have an engineering company to come in and assign engineered standards to every part of our task.  Everything will be measured.  How many inches it is from dock door number one to the last slot of our pick paths.  And between each aisle, each bay and each slot even.  That’ll be done for each dock door as well.  With the entire warehouse now measured they would time how long it takes to drive our pallet jack to each slot and each area within those paths.  How long it takes our forklifts to raise to the second level, the third level, the fourth level and so on.  Now they can work the math against the average batches or pulls and determine what the anticipated standard should be.  Yes, it’s complicated, a lot of math and a wealth of information is gathered.  But for us as employees, well, we can use all that to our advantage in an activity based system.  All we have to do is work the system like it was designed.

OK, I talked about not working harder but working smarter. Remember, those engineers designed the system and put reasonable numbers in place for an 8 hour shift.  They came up with, lets say, 170 cases an hour would equal 100%.  The average experienced selector will pull 170 cases an hour.  They have added all our human traits in, saying hi to each other, bathroom breaks, maybe slowly separating our pallets for the next batch, going to breaks early and returning a little late.  They knew that we were going to stop in the aisles and talk for a minute about our weekend plans.  All that is figured on us being the average employee. All we have to do is not be that average employee.  And that’s exactly how we work less by thinking more.  Maybe I should say focusing more. 

I had this friend once, I don’t guess I ever knew his real name, we called him dupee.  Dupee always, and I mean every signal night ended up with more cases pulled than I did. I don’t mean occasionally, I mean for 3 years I never beat him case wise.  I’d pass him up in an aisle and the next thing I’d know was I was passing him again in another aisle.  I’d never see him catch up to me, yet, their’d I be passing him again?  We always joked about it, actually, I always accused him of scamming or cheating, not so much joking.  Years later the light bulb went off in my head.  Dupee wasn't wasting time driving down aisles he didn't have a pick in.  He’d skip sometimes like 5 aisles and back track, running his path the most efficient route possible, hense why I’d pass him like 3 times in the same hour.  Dupee came in, signed out for his equipment, grabbed his pallets and stayed focused on his task at hand.  He never stopped and joked with us or complained about anybody, shoot, I don’t even know what he did on the weekends because he never brought it up!  He’d be on his equipment when break time arrived and be back on it the minute break was over.  Now, Dupee loved lunch time.  He’d talk with us and joke around then but he never hung around after the bell.  Dupee was just working the system.  Every minute the machine was counting him as working or direct time, he had a case in his hands.  He only stopped handling cases during scheduled indirect time.  He was working 20% less than me and getting 20% more credit for it!  Like I said, I figured it out.  Took me three years, but I’m a slow learner.  Over the next 3 years we were the top performers in the aisles.  Once I learned how to stay focused I actually had more fun pulling.  It became a game to maneuver the aisles and beat the system.

So to answer the question, your fellow employee Mike probably isn’t scamming the system.  That’d be hard to do in this day and age.  He’s just working it, as it was designed.  Watch him this week, closely, and I bet next week you’ll be out pulling him!

We just walked through how an order selector can work the system but the exact same holds true for any direct positions.  Even non-productivity positions can perform better by staying focused and, well, working like we’re being paid for!  A couple of weeks ago I had a young gentleman tell me it was his right to talk to people.  He’d been coached about spending too much time conversing with others on the front docks.  His supervisor had told him he wasn’t in high school any more, we weren’t here to socialize, we’re here to work and for him to get busy.  Now I think the supervisor could have handled it a little better, but you’d have to agree he was on point.  We’re being paid to do a job and we should just get it done.  I’ve been watching the employee for a couple of months now, he’ll make a top producer one day.  He’s already one of the better than average unloaders.  He’s working the numbers.  Once he figures out to stay focused he’s going to be one of the top earners! 

I do a lot of talking about having a plan and a goal here at WAOC.  Things like what we talked about today is a plan and a goal.  The gentleman that presented the question has a plan, he is going to out pull mike.  His goal is to be a top selector.  Once we’ve identified our goal it’s easy to develop our plan and easy to achieve it! 

So on that note we’ll wrap up another episode!  If your enjoying the show please subscribe and maybe tell a good friend about it!  And remember we can be found on Facebook and Twitter using @whseandops and one of my favorite groups is the warehouse equipment operator's community on Facebook as well. 

Stay strong and stay Safe in our personal lives and our work environments!  

Hello everyone, Marty T Hawkins here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career.  I want to sincerely thank you for checking in with us each week and I hope we mention something that will affect your career in some kind of positive way here today!  

I want to share something real quick.  I went to the grocery store today, a national chain, it’s close, convenient and frankly just easy for me to get in and out.  I’m not a big shopper.  I know what I want, I get it and get gone. Today I was the only person in line at lane 5.  The cashier was a gentleman that I’d learn in a bit had just turned 20 years old.  Now I often will hand out or leave behind a WAOC card or maybe even one of my distribution training center business cards if I’m somewhere local, and today, after paying I handed him a WAOC card and told him if he was ever interested in securing a job in the warehousing or transportation fields to send me an email, that I could probably help him out.   

No one else was in line so he took a minute to ask a few questions, and the conversation went something like this: 

Could I make more money in a warehouse? 

I told him probably and gave him the starting wage for a few entry level G/L positions I am presently working on with Belmar Integrated Logistics in Dallas.  

He stated that was a couple of dollars more an hour than he was earning now. I could tell that he was intrigued and wanted more information. 

I told him that all those positions would be full time and at least 40 hours a week with a couple of them providing maybe 50 to 55 hours a week.  Now I was thinking that would be the icing on the cake right?  A full-time position with some over time guaranteed! 

Well, he immediately, and I mean without hesitation let me know that he couldn’t work more than 25 to 30 hours a week.  That he only worked days and preferred something after 10 am.  Maybe 5 to 6 hours a day. 

I ask why those kinds of hours, was he going to school or maybe taking care of a family member or something.  He stated no, he didn’t need to make more than that and he needed his time off or what he called my chill time! 

Being me, I asked what was his plans for retirement?  Didn’t he want things?  He said he needed to be a kid first.  I’m only 20 years old.   

I thanked him and went on to my car! Having a WAOC card still in my hand I noticed a young man gathering up empty grocery carts in the parking lot, so I handed him the card and told him if he was ever interested in a warehouse position to give me a shout.  He said thanks but no thanks man, my brother works in a warehouse and that is some hard work, I don’t have to work that hard here.   

I took my card back and went to the car. I’m still shaking my head a little, but you know what, that may work for them.  They may have a better plan figured out.  Whither they do or don’t I honestly do wish them the best of luck and an amazing life.   

So lets talk some op’s.  To all the electric pallet jack operators out there, especially the rider jack operators.  Did you check your drive wheel and your load wheels today?  I mean really give them a good look over!  Both are on your pre-shift equipment report right? 

I was cruising YouTube today for a clip of stretch wrap being caught up in our wheels and ran across a short video that was caught by a security camera of a drive wheel literally falling apart while an operator was in forward motion.  Needless to say, the machine came to an immediate stop, and he was thrown about 6 feet forward.  Luckly he wasn’t hurt.  It showed him and a fellow worker picking up chunks of the wheel from under the jack.   

It made me think, If I am going to be honest here I have to admit that I do not always back way up and check that my drive wheel doesn’t have cracks running across or around it everyday.  I know, I should but, well, it is not something that happens all the time.   

I began to wonder how often it does happen, so I reached out to two different pallet jack mechanics I know for some advice.  They said that a catastrophic wheel failure like that hardly ever happens.  They both felt like a regular preventive maintenance or PM check may have caught it and had the gentleman backed up, bent over and checked the wheel that he would have seen the cracks.  They both felt like the incident was preventable.  

I reached out to the video channel, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.  I wanted to ask him if he ever checked the drive wheel before and if he would be checking it more going forward!  Do you check your drive wheels, I mean other than checking for chunks missing by rolling it forward and backward.  Honestly, before today, that’s about all I did.  but after seeing that film today, I’m going to be checking that wheel out a lot more often! Send us an email to [email protected] and share your thoughts with the group, what are you going to do, will you be adding that point to your daily pre-trip? 

Anyway, so the reason I was looking for a video about shrink wrap getting wrapped around our load wheels was that I had a student going over to a place, a facility, that I knew always had, let’s say, opportunities with excess wrap being everywhere on the floor.  The culture there is if it’s in the way run over it!  I was explaining the additional expense wrap spun up in our wheels and mounts cost and the dangers it presents to us as operators if we don’t take proper care of our equipment and I wanted to show him some footage of such.  I found some really good ones, a few where the mechanics were showing us how much damage is caused to the bearings and even our hydraulic systems and lifting mechanisms. I think he was quite stunned.  

Now our load wheels are easy to check out, I do check them out every day before climbing onto my jack! Do you?   

So, I know the maintenance guys at this facility, they’ve been sharing with me for months how many load wheels are replaced, and I got to thinking.  Ok, we all know it’s a culture problem.  No one brings it up, so the shift just continues to run over the shrink wrap.  So, what if a new boot, a new hire eased into it.  Brought it up to the supervisor ever so often.  Maybe with a little coaching, he could get noticed in a good way.  Who know he could bring about some change.  Maybe even get recognized as helping to reduce expenses and improving productivity.  Imagine how much productivity is being lost with machines not running at full speed or having to be in the shop.   

I’ll let everyone know how our plan goes.  Either way a gentleman has found a great job and he’s trained and ready to take on the responsibilities of an electric pallet jack operator. 

Well, I think that’s enough for this week.  Let us know how you handle those drive and load wheels at your facility.  I’d appreciate it if you would tell a friend about our little podcast, the more the merrier!  And please check out the website at warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and remember by using that little @whseandops that you can find us on both Facebook and twitter!  I forget what our Instagram handle is but you can find it.  Until next week, be safe, utilize your pre-trips, take that extra 60 seconds, it could mean that you’ll make it back home after your shift.

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 [email protected] 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!

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! 

Theres 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 [email protected] and I’ll make sure we get an answer back to you. 

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

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, [email protected] 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!

Hi all, it’s Thanksgiving here in the states, a time to spend with family and friends, a time to slow down a bit and reflect on what is really important in our lives and be thankful for what ever that is.  We’re working on a few great episodes with some long-time listener's I consider subject matter experts in the coming weeks that I’m super excited about. But for today, well, I have a few questions that was sent in I wanted to get to and keeping with the theme speak to a couple of things I’m thankful for! 

Lets start today with the word attendance. An associate received a written coaching regarding their being absent 4 days in a 30 day period. Their supervisor also, just verbally, brought up their tardiness. The associate had been tardy 8 times in that same 30 days. The associate shared that they had been spoken too about the absences twice before the coaching or write up, and they knew a written coaching was going to be the next step, but, disagreed why it was such a big deal. So lets talk about this individuals work history, and a couple of differences in their previous industry vs our light industrial and warehousing task and why our attendance is so important. 

The individual has been in the workforce for almost 6 years, did almost 2 years in the fast food sector and 2 more in the front of house restaurant world, and most recently had been working in retail, they mentioned a big box chain. Throughout their career they felt the pay was decent but the hours, the inconsistent schedules, all the weekend work, and lack of hours just wasn't working for them as their life responsibilities and bills had grown. They had a friend working for a national food service distribution facility and wanted to get a job there. So, they applied and was hired. Day 1 was an experience like no other was the way they put it to me!  

They felt like they were at boot camp! The orientation covered all the company dress codes, the safety procedures, where you could walk and where you couldn't, how to use a fire extinguisher, where the eye wash station was and how to use it, how to navigate the SDS book, the importance of keeping a clean work area, ergonomics and proper lifting techniques, how to evacuate the building, and they said the rules went on and on! 

Their job was loading the delivery trailers. They were hired on at the same hourly wage as they were making while at the retail big box store, however week one gave them 52 hours vs the 30ish they were receiving in the food and retail worlds. They were tired and worn out but liked the physical aspect of the task and really liked the first check after week two. With that first check in hand and in the bank, well the weekend had been a long one, both Friday and Saturday nights had been spent with friends so Sunday night they called in. As many of you know, Sunday and Mondays, like Fridays are not the best shifts to call in on in the fast-paced world of distribution! Monday night, right after the shift start-up meeting the supervisor called them over and asked why they didn't make it in Sunday night. While honesty is always appreciated and the right story to tell, the associate shared that they had partied over the weekend and was worn out Sunday. Now, that can be ok in the food service, and retail industries, there's usually backup that can be called in or the employer can get by if needed. But, and their supervisor explained, that their productivity had been missed, and the team had to work much harder to get the loads out without them. The attendance policy was reviewed, and the supervisor had stressed that this verbal warning needed to be taken seriously.  

From what I could tell from speaking with them, the associate was good at the job and the Companys management felt like they could be a great asset. Two weeks in the employee shared they had missed that 1 day and had been tardy twice, but only by less than 10 minutes. Well, on the fourth tardy, the supervisor had spoken with the associate about the importance of being at our work station on time and attending the start-up meeting to know what the case counts for the night were, to stretch out the muscles, and review the safety topic for the shift.  

The associate felt like the supervisor was being a bit what they called overboard. At their other places of employment, they’d never been counseled on tardiness and attendance. They shared with their friend who worked there that they were getting into trouble. The friend told them they’d been lucky to still have a job and to get their act together!  

On day 36, after coming in 7 minutes late, they were terminated.  

In our industry, well, and I don’t mean the restaurant and retail worlds, or any other jobs are any more flexible or less dangerous but working in a warehouse is what I want to call the bigs. And yes, I’m a bit biased of our light industrial industry. We can make very good money, and it's an industry that we can grow in any direction with, the supply chain is a huge industry with 10’s of thousands of different positions. But with that comes responsibilities. I won’t break off into a rant of those expectations today, but, and I think we all know that our jobs are important. To us and for our employers, and most importantly our teammates.  

Moral to the story. We accept a job knowing the shift times and scheduled days. Yes, things are going to come up, life is going to get in our way, and that's why it's important to not abuse time off and tardiness. That way it’ll never become a problem. Work life balance is important. Jobs in the bigs pay well, the pace has to be enjoyed being successful. When accepting a position, we need to consider all the expectations and remember safety is our first priority is all I’m trying to say! 

And a quick success story! I was visiting a warehouse this week, I have an associate working with an agency, that's been with this account for just a little under 90 days. She had started her assignment as a G/L literally just building boxes at an e-commerce facility. While walking with the account manager, he pointed her out and shared that she was transitioning to their team next week and he would be probably be promoting her to a lead position shortly after that.  

At hire she had very little warehouse experience. She had actually targeted that facility, it was close to where she lived, she had researched the reviews of other employees prior to applying with the agency that sourced for their positions. After 30 days of great attendance and working any hours offered, she had approached her lead and expressed a desire for more responsibilities. All that is coming true for her, and I wish her great success, this won’t be her last promotion. 

You may have heard me say I’ve only worked a hand full of days in my life. I honestly wake up and look forward to going in every day. I have always loved what I do. I’ve done most every task in warehousing and transportation and held most management positions offered, along with all their responsibilities. I can say I love my job, every job I’ve held. And I’m thankful for each of them, and I’m thankful for every person I’ve met along the way, every mentor that's giving me their time, and I’m thankful to know each of you! 

For the month of December we’ll be offering a live Q&A on Thursday evenings if anyone is interested in joining us. I’ll be posting the link on our Facebook page Warehouse and Operations as a Career, and you can find it using @whseops, and a couple of our more frequented Facebook job boards. It’ll be the first time for that format, we’ll see what it brings! 

Think of at least one thing your thankful for this week and share it with someone. I hope to see you again next week, and until then, be safe out there.  

Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty and I thought we’d talk about finding work today, something that's not always easy. Over the last month or so I’ve received so many questions from job seekers, a lot of frustration with the system and hiring processes, being interviewed, and feeling ghosted, being told your overqualified or under qualified etc. Looking for employment is like a job itself, and it's a hard one. Let's make it a little easier today or at least understand more about it.  

Let’s start with the job posting itself. Whither we see an advertisement in a classified ad sheet, a newspaper, a flyer placed on our vehicle, or a tear off sheet at our laundromat or grocery story or places like a Facebook Job Group, or Job Boards like Indeed, we need to take the correct approach in calling, emailing, or answering those advertisements. 

OK, first off, I’ve never placed quantity over quality. I mean if we answer every ad and send our resumes to every email address advertised, it’ll make us feel better because we’re thinking look at how many ads I’ve answered! But we know a lot of those ads are not fits for us. If we got the job, would we like it? I reached out to a person 2 weeks ago, introduced myself, spoke to the job I was hiring for, and was told, yeah, I don’t want to work those hours, and don’t want to load any trailers, do you have anything else. The advertisement stated the job and hours in the ad. I feel the better approach, a better use of our time, is to target the ads we answer.  

We need to understand recruiters and hiring agents may receive literally hundreds of resumes, messages and phone calls about every position they advertise for. And then many may be using a ATS, or applicant tracking system program to help screen all those resumes. Our resume must show our experiences and contain the keywords those recruiters and systems are looking for.  

Let's take a general labor ad for an example. It states the position is a Monday through Friday position with the occasional Saturday scheduled. The start of shift hours will vary between 6 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. and the shift end time being 4:30 p.m. with overtime.  The job description or duties or responsibilities listed state unpacking apparel, sorting, tagging, packaging, selecting and e-commerce and shipping. Sweeping, sanitation and box building may be needed as well. Ok, if we’re not interested or can't work on Saturdays this isn’t an ad we would answer. If 6 a.m. is too early for us or our life situation makes that impossible, this isn’t an ad we would want to answer. If we can't stay past 4:30 p.m., this isn’t an ad we would want to answer. And if we are not willing to perform any of the task listed in the advertisement, then this isn’t an ad we would want to answer. Yep, it may make us feel like we’re applying and trying to get a job, but we can't commit to the requirements or at the very least we’re not going to like it. I feel we’ve wasted our time.  

Here’s another example. Our experiences are in the hospital or hotel industry. We’re seeing advertisements for warehousing, let’s say order selecting or forklift driving, we like the pay listed so we upload our resume and apply. The advertisement states at least 1 year experience with a electric rider pallet jack or counterbalance forklift. We don’t qualify for these positions, we don’t have the experiences listed, or the equipment certifications. Makes us feel like we’re trying, but we know we be called about this job. 

One more example, A position that matches our experiences is listed, it states Sunday through Thursday nights, from 8p to 4:30 a.m. We’re seeking a day shift position; we can’t work nights. Yet we apply. Again, we’re trying right? We can’t accept it because of our life commitments or feelings about working nights. I think sometimes we think, well, if they call me, I’ll tell them I need another shift and it’ll be ok. Theres a 99% chance we’ve wasted our time. 

We’re putting all this frustration on ourselves. I think you get the idea. So, lets reduce that frustration and talk about the best practices of seeking employment and how to play the system.  

OK, let's talk about our resumes for a minute. We talked about how recruiters are going to have a hundred resumes to review or their using an ATS to scan for them. First off, we need to be honest about what we list here. Stating an experience we don’t have isn’t going to do us any good. Even if we get the job, we won’t be able to perform it properly. We may need to have a couple of different resumes saying the same thing but just using different words.  

Let's say we’re applying for a G/L position that states warehouse sanitation, experience needed, with at least 1 year warehouse experience.  Our experiences are a year in the warehouse unloading trucks. We could state something in our resume like, I have over a year experience working in a warehouse environment, I am used to the fast-paced environments and understand the importance of keeping a clean and uncluttered work area, not only for efficiencies and safety reasons but for sanitation and maintenance purposes as well. All this is true, unloading trailers we were responsible for keeping our work areas clean and we’ve used 7 words the recruiter and or system is looking for. We wrote the words year, experience, fast-paced, clean, uncluttered, efficiencies, safety, sanitation, and maintenance. All these words are in the keyword list for the position. It’s listed as G/L, usually meaning no predetermined skills necessary or training to the individual task will be given. We have not wasted our time replying to this position, we meet the qualifications. We can tweak the same resume, changing a few words here and there to meet a keyword search for similar positions.  

Alright, we get the idea now. Our time is an asset to us. And think of the fuel expense driving out to interviews we kind of already know that we don’t meet the listed criteria.  

So earlier I mentioned our targeted job search. So, let's figure out where we want to work. Job boards and job groups are great and there valuable to us, but I want to point out something really quick. So, we all have a distance in mind we’re willing to travel from the home to the job site. We generally know what we want to do for a living, and a lot of the times that's where our experiences are from. As a side note, say we want to grow our knowledge into other positions, maybe an equipment operator. I’ll share those short cuts here in a minute! Where was I, ok, I think it's a great idea to look around our neighborhoods or the commercial properties in the area. Or if we know of a particular company we’d love to work for because of their wages or benefits, or growth potential, let's go by there, see what openings they have, drop off our resume. We don’t have to use advertisements exclusively. Let's go to the doors and knock on them.  

Targeted job search means a position offered within a distance I can commit to showing up every day, and a shift that fits my needs or lifestyle, for the pay my life requires, and matches my present abilities and experiences, and I believe will provide growth within my career working with them. 

So, a bit about what happens next. We’ve targeted where to place or upload our well written resumes or work experiences, using keywords that's going to get us that phone interview. It’s going to be a cold call from a recruiter or hiring agent. Keep a copy of our resumes in our pockets or purses at all times. Know them by heart. If we receive a phone call and we can’t talk right now, say we’re watching the kids, or driving, or not in a quiet area, just share that with the caller. They will understand. Ask if they can call back at so and so time or is it ok if you call them back at a certain time. They are interested in us and want to interview us. They’ll appreciate us wanting to give them our full attention.  

When we call back, thank them for considering you for the job. We have like 2 minutes to grab their interest. State an experience we listed in our resume that is on the job task. Give them something to ask questions about. They want to, maybe even need to hire someone for the job, that is how they get paid. Our goal is to convenience them to give us that face to face interview. It’s important that we ask them a few questions also. Without conversation there not going to remember us. Remember, they may be calling 50 people from those hundred resumes they’ve screened. We want to be part of the 20 people there calling in to visit with. A couple of good safe questions to ask could be, is this an additional hire or a replacement position. State how we’re looking for long term employment and growth potential. Maybe ask do you hire from within for other positions. Be nice, professional, we want them to want to see us. And take notes on the resume sheet we’re using to bring up the different points with. We’ll want to bring up the same points they brought up when we’re on that face-to-face interview! 

Now for an important thing. I’m not saying I agree with it but it’s just a fact. Many recruiters and companies are now going to head on over to our social media pages to learn a little about us. If they see us with a controlled substance or any type of paraphernalia in pictures or a bunch of handguns covering our bedspread, a lot of vulgarity, odds are there not going to go ahead and call us. Get over it, right or wrong, it's just a fact. In my experiences, our social media pages don’t really reflect our personalities anyway, they project what we want our personalities to be to others. Anyway, it’s important to clean them up if only while we’re looking for work. A good rule of thumb as it was once explained to me is, if I wouldn't want to show my grandmother, take it down while I’m looking for work.  

Well, they’ve asked us to come in for an interview! We aced the phone interview; we bonded with them on some level and have been invited in to see them. It's important to bring that same resume we took notes on with us. Think about it, even if we don’t recite anything from it, the recruiter will see how much this means to us and how engaged we’ve been through the process. 

We must plan on arriving at least 10 minutes early, if not 15 minutes early. Look at it as our first day of work! We need to be dressed for an interview. Yes, we’re looking for work in a warehouse, but we need to look the part. A pair of jeans and a nice polo shirt or nice tee shirt with no profanity or music groups and such on it. If the job requires steel toes footwear, wear them. It shows we own them and have experience with them.  And let's not have our boyfriend, wife, or girlfriend, or friend, or even parents, back with us when it's our turn. And do not bring our children to an interview. We won't be able to bring them to the warehouse with us and remember, this is like our first day of work.  

Again, be professional, be honest, answer all questions in a positive manner, ask a few questions of our own. Again, we want them to remember us, they're going to be interviewing several others, and we want them to remember us! 

We’re going to get that Job! 

I mentioned that looking for work is hard work. We must put time into it. A lot of the frustrations with seeking employment we can bring on ourselves. 

Oh, I mentioned earlier about a short cut to becoming an equipment operator. Target a company that uses the type of equipment you’d like to operate. Get hired onto any offered position. Be on time and a great associate for about 60 days and then approach your boss, sharing that you’d like to be an equipment operator. You’ll have a great chance of them working with you, training you, getting some experience for the job! 

I hope the information shared today helps in seeking that new job. WAOC will be offering an updated free webinar coming up on Seeking Employment, check out the website for more details next month. Until then, good luck with the job search, and be safe in all you do.  

Hi again to all from WAOC, I’m your host, Marty T Hawkins, and I’m glad you decided to spend a few minutes with us talking about our light industrial careers. I was going to speak to logistics today, but, well, I’ve had a few conversations this week that pushed me to rethink that. Oh, and for all the WAOC subscribers out there, I have to apologize for the technical opportunities with last week's episode. It appears one podcast player did not pick up Thursdays upload! After working with our webmaster, we got it worked out yesterday!   So, here’s a few thoughts that sidetracked me this week! I heard this and it made me think of how things have changed and are changing.

Imagine dedicating 30 years to a company, showing up day after day, hitting productivity goals, mentoring new hires, and contributing to your company’s overall success. For many, retirement after such a journey should feel monumental. But for one associate, the final day felt hollow, missing the celebration and acknowledgment they had envisioned. Where was the recognition from the corporate officers? The grand send-off that symbolized the close of a long career?

This associate’s story echoes a growing sentiment among seasoned employees who feel their decades of loyalty deserve more than a handshake or a final paycheck. For them, long-term commitment once meant job stability and reliable income, and that was enough. However, in today's workplace, both employees and employers face new expectations around the job’s recognition and daily acknowledgment. So what changed? And why has it?

Today let’s talk about this evolution of workplace recognition and how shifts in corporate culture, generational values, and day-to-day workplace expectations play into how employees today perceive appreciation and value.

Decades ago, work culture placed a high value on stability. Employees often found immense satisfaction in having a steady paycheck, benefits, and the assurance that their job provided for their family’s needs. Recognition was simple and often linked directly to performance: a “thank you” during a meeting, a small bonus at the end of the year, or a promotion based on consistent output. Most employees saw these acknowledgments as a fair exchange for their work, and grand gestures at retirement weren’t really expected.

Today’s workplace environment, however, has shifted significantly. People look for a deeper sense of appreciation, especially around career milestones. Employees today want to feel seen not only for their work but also for the years they invested in building a legacy within the company. The rise of social media and interconnected networks allows workers to see how other companies celebrate retirements, promotions, and achievements, further raising expectations for acknowledgment.

A simple “thank you” may feel less meaningful if employees know other companies offer personalized mementos, gatherings with company leaders, or even social media shoutouts that publicly celebrate years of service. These added touches feed into the modern expectation that employees deserve a tangible acknowledgment of their contributions.

One place I know of, acknowledges birthdays and anniversaries. And it's a big deal.

In today’s evolving work culture, traditional expectations are mixed with newer ones, sometimes creating a mix of differing priorities. Employees—especially newer generations—seek an environment that not only offers fair compensation but also considers lifestyle needs and personal flexibility. Benefits such as fair share programs, options to leave early on a rotating basis, and perks like stocked breakrooms with free or deeply discounted snacks reflect a trend towards a more employee-centered workplace.

However, these newer benefits can present challenges in structured environments like warehousing, where the operations rely heavily on coordination, timing, and predictability, productivity and metrics. When one team member leaves early or starts late, it can disrupt the workflow, affecting the entire team’s productivity. For warehouse associates who’ve built their careers on consistency and routine, seeing these newer expectations can be confusing, especially when flexibility isn’t feasible for every role.

This cultural shift means managers are tasked with balancing individual needs with the team’s operational requirements. This evolving dynamic has led some associates to see benefits and flexibility as expected rather than additional perks. For example, while flexible schedules may work well in certain roles, many warehouse positions rely on hard start times, shift start up meetings and such to ensure that cases, pallets, and orders flow smoothly through the building.

That structure is foundational in warehousing, where efficiency and safety are paramount and priority one. Rules around attendance, tardiness, and procedures were historically essential to maintaining a predictable environment where employees could rely on each other. Safety procedures, attendance expectations, and time-sensitive workflows weren’t just guidelines—they were the rules of a well-functioning, safe workplace.

With today’s cultural shift, some associates might view rules as negotiable, and suggestions, challenging managers to enforce them without seeming rigid. Allowing flexibility is valuable, but it can also blur the boundaries of what’s expected and lead to inconsistency. This is especially true when new associates see rules as adjustable rather than established principles. Long-term employees who remember the importance of clear-cut rules can feel disillusioned, seeing the erosion of what they valued as core workplace expectations.

In this changing landscape, it's crucial to reinforce why rules matter. They aren't merely suggestions; they’re safeguards that ensure everyone’s safety, efficiency, and mutual respect. Flexibility, while appealing, must be balanced with the operational needs of the workplace to ensure that structure remains intact.

I get it, recognition at retirement is important to us, particularly for long-serving employees. Leaving behind a career they’ve committed decades to isn’t simply about ending a job; it’s about closing a significant chapter of their lives. These employees often seek more than just a paycheck; they want validation for the years they’ve invested. For many, retirement feels like a culmination of purpose, and an understated farewell can leave us feeling a bit short changed.

Historically, retirement recognition was simpler, and the paycheck served as a symbolic acknowledgment of that hard work and loyalty. However, today, associates often crave personal and public acknowledgment that validates that long journey. Small gestures like a personal message from a company officer, a farewell event, or a commemorative gift can make a lasting impression. Things like that can create a sense of closure for us, honoring not just the work we’ve done but the dedication and sacrifices we made along the way.

Companies may overlook these gestures, assuming regular pay and benefits are sufficient, but for retiring associates, these more personalized acknowledgments address a need for closure and a sense of belonging. Recognizing a retiring employee’s career allows them to feel valued and appreciated beyond what their paycheck represents. Is it important, I don’t really know. What’s your thoughts, maybe email us at [email protected], I’m sure there's quite a few opinions out there.

Oop’s, back to my points, where am I at, ok

The concept of work values has changed with each generation, impacting how employees view recognition, structure, and benefits. And it always has. For long-term associates, stability and a dependable paycheck have been the standard of a job well done. These employees worked through decades when loyalty and reliability were highly valued, and they accepted work, jobs, and careers as a commitment, labor and skills in exchange for financial security.

Younger employees, however, often value work differently. They prioritize balance, personal development, and benefits that support their well-being outside of work. Their view of a “good job” might include flexibility, acknowledgment, and mental health support alongside the compensation. These employees aren’t necessarily uninterested in stability, but they seek a workplace that adapts to their individual needs.

These differences can create different feelings in how employees perceive their company’s role in their satisfaction and longevity. Like I mentioned earlier, those who grew up with strict expectations around attendance and structure may feel that newer associates are seeking “special treatment” rather than being team players. And on the other hand, newer employees may feel that traditional structures and rules are outdated, sometimes viewing requests for flexibility and acknowledgment as fundamental to a respectful workplace.

So, the question is, can traditional values or old school and modern expectations, a younger workforce, coexist in the warehouse environments? Is there a way to honor and respect the longstanding principles that experienced employees hold dear while also meeting the evolving needs of newer associates?

My answer is absolutely they can. And they always have. They have too. Culture will always be changing and evolving.

Companies that succeed in bridging these gap’s often do so by building programs that cater to and recognize both groups. This might mean offering flexibility where possible while reinforcing the importance of consistency and structure or rules. For retirees, it could mean an acknowledgment that goes beyond the basics—a personalized celebration that validates their years of service. For younger associates, it might mean balanced flexibility, clear communication around expectations, and acknowledgment of contributions throughout their career, not just at the end.

For all you young managers out there, creating a culture of mutual respect is what will make you successful. When associates feel valued from their first day to their last, companies are better positioned to meet the needs of both veteran employees and the new boots. By open to conversations, actively listening to different viewpoints, and embracing both traditional and modern recognition practices, you can ensure that every associate, regardless of tenure, feels appreciated and understood.

Well, there's my 2 cents on an important subject. Share your thoughts with a quick email to [email protected], or start a conversation on Facebook or X using @whseops. We’d love to hear from you. Until next week, be productive, be prosperous, and be Safe!

Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career!  I hope you enjoy our show each week and we’re offering up something you can take away from it and it helps you in your career some how or way.  We have a lot of fun sharing our experiences and really enjoy getting to throw in an opinion or two every once and a while!  Don’t forget about our Facebook & Twitter page’s where you can find us @whseandops, oh and the warehouse equipment operators community group on Facebook, it’s a great place for everyone to share their day and thoughts with a likeminded set of individuals.  Well as they say, on with the show I guess so let’s talk about some of the little things that happen to us as warehousemen and transportation employees on literally a daily basis and why its important we always stay focused on our jobs and our positions.

I was speaking with someone who had just received a corrective action for a minor incident with a piece of equipment.  He was placing a pallet, with a counterbalance forklift and as he was reversing from the pallet the back of his forklift hit a fire extinguisher that was hanging on an end cap adjacent from the wall slot he was working at.  The butt of his lift raked the extinguisher from its hook and it fell to the ground.  There wasn’t any real damage, it did discharge however making quite a mess and broke the handle off of it.  Now he did the right thing and reported it immediately to his supervisor, as we’ve learned we need to always report any incident no manner how small it is immediately. Anyway she understood and even helped him sweep up all the powder from the floor.  I think that’s why he was so surprised about an hour later she called him into the office and counseled him with a written warning.  After leaving her office he was really upset and using his words “confused”.  Remember, guys and gals a written warning is not a bad thing and there’s no reason to get upset over one.  None of us likes to hear that we’ve done anything wrong but I’ve always tried, successfully most of the time, to think of it as a learning experience.  If it’s something worth writing down on paper it’s probably something important.  In my experience most corrective actions are rooted or based on something we as the employee did, he did hit the fire extinguisher causing it to discharge.  After speaking with him he agreed and understood, he said he was actually singing while he was backing up and just not paying attention, he kind of laughed that it happened because he works around that bay 20 times a day.  I’ve heard he’s turned in 4 or 5 Near Miss thoughts recently, so in his case that little talk accomplished what it was intended too.  The employee is working on staying focused and actually noticing things that could rear up as a problem in the future for himself or others!

That story reminds me of another Associate, he was a pallet sorter, his task is separating the good wood from the broken pallets, responsible for neatly stacking good pallets up in nice stacks for the receivers and the selectors and loading all the broken pallets or bad wood onto a trailer to be sent out for repair.  He showed up on a Friday to work his shift but had forgotten his steel toe shoes and his supervisor wouldn’t let him go to work.  Well, that upset him quite a bit but he lived pretty close, so he went home and got them and came back to work.  After lunch he went over to his Sup, and their pretty good friends anyway, but he apologized to his boss telling him that a few minutes earlier while he was reaching up to drag a pallet off of some bad wood that it’d slid down and landed right on the toes of his boots!  If he’d of had his tennis shoes on it’d of smashed his toes big time.  Needless to say he wasn’t upset with his boss anymore, at least for the rest of that day!

You know, here at WAOC we talk a lot about rules and why we have them in our industry.  I think that’s a good example of a valuable rule.  99% of the time nothings going to happen until it does.

Another quick story, a selector was pulling a case of Bal-sam-ic Vinegar, 4 – 1 gallons, what it was has nothing to do with the story unless you’ve smelled bal-sam-ic vinegar before, anyway she broke one of the glass bottles dropping the case on her pallet and it cracked or broke.  She grabbed it pretty quick and got it over to the side at the end cap to a trash can so it didn’t leak the whole gallon onto the floor.  She didn’t stop to clean it up and meant to tell the sanitation guy but she got busy and just didn’t do it.  Well, on her next batch, driving through the same aisle her pallet jack slid as she was trying to stop and she ended up hitting an upright and breaking a case of another item!  Once again, as an employee, she was really upset when she was written up on a warning report for not reporting the original spill and received 2 points on her safety record for hitting the racking and damaging another case with her jack.

Rules, boy I tell you rules seem to be that one thing that us as humans constantly have issues with or regard as unfair, of course there only unfair when we’re the ones that didn’t follow them.  I had a buddy that just got a ticket for riding in the HOV lane as a single passenger.  An HOV lane which stands for high occupancy vehicle is a lane that you can drive in if you have 2 or more people in your vehicle and of course he’s really upset with the cost of that ticket!  Now he knew what the lane was, what it was for and the cost for breaking that particular law or rule yet he’s guilty of ignoring it!

On a heavier note I know an order selector that was creeping his jack, meaning he was walking along side it, just reaching over and rolling the throttle forward as he walked it down the aisle because he had several slots in a row to select from.  Sure enough another selector turned into the aisle and bumped the back pallet on his load moving his jack forward and pinning his ankle in between the rack and his standing platform.  If he’d been standing on the platform, riding the jack properly or following the preferred work methods that he’d been taught he would of saved himself a lot of pain and the 6 days of lost wages!

I don’t know what it is about rules and why us as humans struggle with them so often.  We know they’ve been written to avoid something from happening or to ease our lives in some way but the human nature in us wins out sometimes.  Again 99% of the time theirs no cop there when we make that left hand turn from the center lane to avoid waiting our turn, or we can jump in the HOV lane when we’re in a hurry or run that red light so we don’t have to wait 2 more minutes on the next one.  99% of the time nothing happens, but that 1 out of a hundred can be expensive or bad, life altering or even life ending.  Same holds true in our work lives.  I don’t know why we get upset when we’re clearly, most of the time admittedly doing something the wrong way and someone calls us out on it or we receive a corrective action.

I hope we always receive the proper training for our jobs and that the rules, policies and procedures have been explained to us, and that if we don’t understand something or have questions that we raise our hands and speak up.  I feel that’s as much our responsibility as our management teams to make sure we know what to do.  That being said though means that we accept the responsibility to follow those very rules, policies and procedures right?  I assure you we’ll be safer, advance more quickly in our careers and be a much happier employee ourselves!

I have the opportunity to visit several companies each week and meet new employees and visit with different management teams and another little thing, or what we as employees perceive as a little thing is those pesky time clocks.  It’s another one of those tasks that are really our responsibility but, well, human nature kicks in every once and a while and here we go again.  It’s so easy to get distracted when we’re arriving to work or on our way to lunch, and its super easy to forget to punch out at the end of our shifts.  A very minor issue to us employees but it’s honestly a big deal for our employers.  First there’s laws and regulations that they have to follow and there responsible for recording.  You would not believe how long it could take at some companies to get our forgotten punch corrected.  In many organizations only a few people can even make adjustments to our times and really I guess we’d want it that way.  We punch correctly, and we get paid correctly, it’s honestly as simple as that.  I’ve seen people get upset and quit their job because they we’re missing a few hours or a days pay while admitting they had forgot to make that punch.  I couldn’t blame’ em for being upset but the company was trying to get him the money as quickly as possible but it couldn’t happen that Friday!  I felt for him but hey, it starts with us punching in and out.  Its going to happen, we’re all human.  I tell associates to see their supervisor as soon as they realize a punch’s been missed so they can start the process to get it corrected.  One thing we don’t think about sometimes is our weekly payroll has to go in or be processed by Tuesday each week for us to get our checks on Friday’s.  If our supervisor turns our time in on Monday morning it’s gone and sent within the next 24 hours.  Just another little thing to us, but wow what an impact that little rule can have on us as employees, our companies and, in some instances our families.

Well enough of the little things, I’m sure we all have a hundred examples or stories we could share, I know I’ve had all these things happen to me before and I’ve had my feelings hurt because I was counseled about it, but in the end I’d like to think that I realized I was the responsible party and that I learned from it!

Let’s see, Next week we’re going to talk about Logistics, what it is and all the opportunities those positions can bring us!  I’ve had a couple of questions on 3pl’s too, I’m going to reach out to some subject matter experts and we’ll get an episode put together, it’ll be fun learning about those opportunities too.

Thanks for checking in with us here at WAOC today, shoot us an email to [email protected] if you’d like to comment or suggest a topic for us to look into.  Until next week, please think Safe and lets all take responsibility for the Rules!

Have you ever heard that you only get one chance to make a first impression?  I’m Marty T Hawkins and I’d like to thank you for checking in with us here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career!  Whither you are a Supervisor or a lead, an Employee, Recruiter or an HR Generalist, maybe you’re in Benefits, we’re all some of the first people our new and existing associates see.  We greet them, walk them through the on-boarding process and sell them on how great our company is and how happy we are that they chose to work with us!  Us as a Warehouse Supervisor, lead or Trainer are going to greet them and its our responsibility to walk them thru our Facility, give them a great orientation to all the rules, safety procedures and processes and cover any regulatory concerns with them, right?  As a recruiter or hiring agent it is our job to kind of size them up.  Do they possess the skills and have the experience to do the task they’ve applied for?  Your probably going to watch our body language, how confidently we speak about our work experiences, then you may even check our references and look us up on social media, and your going to put all that together and decide if we would be a great fit for the position!  Ever wonder what that applicant is thinking about you and the experience there having?  I spoke with several new hires last week, kind of being a welcoming wagon for them.  This gave me the opportunity to observe and set in on several interviews.  I also got to follow some of those new hires on through the on-boarding process and all the way to their facility orientation and welcome to the team speeches.  I had a blast, I love being around young, new talent and it excites me to see their enthusiasm about getting a new job and earning for their families!  As great as everything went, I did have a few thoughts though and today I wanted to talk about, are we as employers and us as employees really doing all we can for each other?  Let me give you a couple of examples.  OK, a recruiter was interviewing an individual for a skilled warehouse position, I was asked to follow up with the applicant as this was a bit of a unique situation and task.  Anyway, the recruiter had interviewed them, told them I would be right in, and went next door to start interviewing another applicant.  The recruiter finished up there and came to get me to speak with the first one while telling the other one I’d be with them next.  Now, I don’t think the recruiter did particularly anything wrong, but I got to wondering if the applicants maybe felt they we’re part of a conveyor system?  As you can imagine, my interviews can take a bit.  Especially if I’m trying to ascertain one’s actual skills and work history.  You all know how easily I can get of subject and run down an entirely off subject rabbit hole.  I mean, isn’t the applicant probability gathering an impression of us and the company too?   That’s kind of the first opportunity the prospect has met us, face to face anyway.  They may have checked out our website, learned a little about the company, maybe even reached out to a friend that may have had an experience with us, but this is the first time their seeing our building, meeting us and seeing a little interaction around our offices.  Do you think we always make a great and grand first impression?  If we appear to be hurrying through an interview and trying to get to the next person in the room next door, or maybe have a little bit of a long delay waiting on the second interviewer to come visit with them, even if its just their perception, did we give them the first impression we deserve?  We’re good people, we care about them & helping them find work.  But could they tell that, do we always make them feel that way as hiring agents, Human Resource and Benefits departments?

I went out to several facilities while the new hires were being walked in and passed on to their new leads, Supervisors or trainers.  Now we all know how busy these men and women are, attending to a new hire is quite disruptive to their shifts.  One facility did an outstanding job here.  The trainer was introduced to her new hires, greeted each new associate, set them down and told them she would be right back.  She had her radio with her, she’d been carrying a clipboard, and what looked like some batches she’d pulled out to distribute to trainees she’d been working with.  Anyway she showed back up in like 5 minutes, her hands were empty, and she got on her radio announcing to everyone on the other end that shed be walking a group of new hires around and that she’d get back to them in about 30 minutes.  And then she turned off her radio!  I think that was the most in depth facility orientation and new hire tour I’d ever been through.  She spent about 40 minutes with us, as she would explain something to us she’d ask if we had any questions, really selling the supervisors and the company on us.  She dropped off the new hires with their assigned supervisors and told each of them that she’d be checking in with them throughout the shift.  I almost wanted to go to work with her at that point!  Now all the other facilities did good too, but I couldn’t help but wonder if they could’ve done better.  During their walkthrough they were constantly interrupted.  I couldn’t help but notice the others definitely picked up on the fact that the supervisor was very very busy.  He hustled us to the safety stations, eyewashes, evacuation routes, etc all the while explaining the job descriptions, processes and procedures to us.  He dropped one guy off with a loader and one guy off with a sanitation person and told them both to follow their teammates instructions and that he’d be back to check on them.  Now these were experienced warehousemen.  I’m certain that their feelings weren’t hurt at all and that they did fine with the welcoming and their orientation, but I couldn’t help wondering what kind of first impression their new supervisor had left them with?

Well then of course, me being me, I observed what kind of first impression we employees were leaving with the trainer and the supervisors.  Oddly, the associates walking with the trainer were very engaged, asking questions, talking about their experience and showing genuine excitement about their new positions!  On the other hand, the employees walking with the supervisors that were conducting business during their walk and honestly kind of rushing through it asked not one question.  I’m sure those supervisors hated that I was along for the walk.  They were perfectly polite to us and did a great job of answering all my questions.  I feel or felt like the employees could have changed the whole tempo of these orientations by talking up more.  It wasn’t that the Supervisors weren’t willing to take the time to explain more and answer any questions presented, I think the new associates simply fed off that perception of busy and just fell in line with that thought process.  So then I got to wondering what kind of first impression we employees had left with the trainer and the supervisors.  I’m probably over thinking the whole first impression thing right?  But what if I’m not?  I think we’d all agree, both employers and employees, we should be working at leaving a better impression of ourselves with others, slow down, and make sure others know how excited and appreciative we are of our new relationships!

Talking about all these behaviors I wanted to share a couple of other things real quick.  You know, being a supervisor means, yep I get to look up another definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervisor  Wikipedia  tells us a supervisor gives instructions to subordinates.  Be held responsible for the work and actions of other employees.  No where does it state that our subordinates should be afraid of us, or that we can single out people to pick on or pick at.  You know write ups should be used as coaching tools, not big 2×4’s.  We as young supervisors need to be taught that, yes we are responsible for our employees actions, but by ensuring there doing their jobs we’re able to perform our jobs right.  I have the pleasure of working with a couple of your sup’s right now.  It’s a hard job, one of the hardest jobs I know of, but it can be much easier when we accept it as a job.  There’s a title but it’s really just a job and now its our job.  I’m sure there was a time when we thought, man, when I have that position things are going to be different.  Lets watch our behavior, pay attention to the impression we’re leaving with others!  Yes, we have to be stern at times, but we’ll make a better impression on others if we’re always fair and consistent with our decisions, right?

And us as employees, I witnessed some behavior this week that left great impressions on me and some definitely not so great impressions as well.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is just a job, a career opportunity.  What kind of of an impression are we leaving if we’re always complaining, using profanity all the time and not acting like a team player?  Now we should certainly speak up if were not being treated right or an injustice has been placed on us but let’s remember to be professional about it.  Again, this is a job, nothing larger than that.  As an employee have you ever wondered what kind of first impression you made with a new hire or new teammate?

There’s a few of my thoughts on behaviors and first impressions.  Please send me an email to [email protected] and share some of your thoughts on the subject or tell me how far off the page I am.  If you enjoy our episodes each week, I’d appreciate a quick share to a friend and maybe a like and a follow on our Facebook and Twitter feeds!  I hope you enjoyed todays episode, until next week please be responsible, be safe and make a great safety impression on a teammate!