As many people know, I work at Kohl’s Distribution Center. The entire job is performance based, obviously the more freight you can get out the better. Naturally this is a very physical job - unloading trailers full of boxes and other things can take it’s toll on your body. This was also the first full week I’d have in a long time, a 40 hour work week - the first since November. It also comes at an odd time, since the week before I worked 30 minutes. Not 30 hours, but 30 minutes. I was a little unsure how my body would hold up, since it had been quite awhile since I had worked, let alone work 4 days in a row. Knowing this, I decided to approach this week differently. First, I decided that I would actually make an effort to get some sleep. This was huge, since normally I went to work on a few hours of sleep. Five is usually optimal, six is wonderful, and 4 is a neccessity. I averaged about four hours of sleep a night which was just fine. Second, I wanted to eat good. I made an effort to drink less soda and eat more wholesome foods instead of junk food. Third, body maintenance. Being an ex-football player I know how to take care of my body when it’s sore. Back in the hot summer days years ago you’d have two 3 hour long football practices in a day. That will absolutely kill your body, so needless to say I know how to maintain myself so I’m not a bent over hermit by the end of the week. So nightly before bed I would do stretches to relax my muscles and take some Tylonel. I’d wake up and do more stretches and then take a very hot shower and I’d be ready to go. And last, but not least, I decided to work my butt off. Give it all I had and dedicate myself to something. This made the days fly by and since I worked hard, but also smart, the wear on my body was minimal. I felt tired and fatigued, but never very sore.
Day one was Wednesday. It started out innocent enough, it was the first time I had seen A-shift since November too. If it was up to me, I would have never seen them again. There is an assistant supervisor on the A-shift who thinks that because she has a radio she is the queen of Kohl’s. Well, maybe not. She is absolutely terrible. I am by far better than her, at least I know when I don’t know how to do something to get help. Well here we are with a huge problem. Basically the labels for an order of freight didn’t match the freight. So the data the vendor sent us was incorrect. Or, the person who downloaded the labels did it wrong. Guess who downloaded the labels? Oh, it was her. So she had actually thought she had fixed it, but that just made her look more foolish in front of Sarah, the B-shift supervisor. Long story short, we had to sort all of the boxes (there was close to 300) into each individual product type and eventually Sarah came up with the labels. Wednesday was also special in the sense we ran special freight to stock our stores for the spring shopping season (spring clothes and appliances.) On these days, every truck with this special freight must be emptied. I love the challenge. Performance wise I moved a lot of freight with my partner Pat and we got all of the special freight out.
Day two was Thursday. A-shift was finally gone, and since it wasn’t quite as hectic Kathy was back over in our department so I can train her. I am the most trusted trainer in our department, which is a great honor because our department takes a lot. I think it is two things that makes me so great - my overwhelming knowledge of the system and my patience with people to learn new things. I know not everyone (hardly anyone) comes from such a computer background that I have, so these things don’t come naturally. So there will always be a lot of questions and mistakes made as well as a lot of uncertanties. I just consider this part of my job when training people. Fortunately, Kathy is a very hard worker which is a relief which means that just getting the trailer management stuff in the computer down, and then doing quality control audits with the radio frequency guns. She has a pretty good understanding of audits by today from previous training with me, and on this day I began focusing more on the computer stuff. I have become good at slowly introducing my trainees into things so they are not overwhelmed.
Day three started out almost just like Thursday, accept this time at the beginning of the day Sarah made it a point to mention that our performance from the previous day was not good enough and we needed to get more freight out. That gave me a little spark, Kathy was on a different trailor right next to me and together we combined for 2,000 cartons in the first few hours of work. After that however we didn’t push nearly as much since problems arose. A notable one was when an audit was failed by Kathy, but she hadn’t noticed it failed. This is ususally the golden moments for trainees, as it is crucial to realize you need to know when an audit is failed and why. To add to it, she accidentally sent the box past the checks that will check and see if the box is good to send. So it went up the conveyor and to shipping. Thus, I had to walk all the way to shipping (probably about a 2 mile round trip! figuratively speaking…) to find this box. Upon my return I made it very clear to her how to check the status of an audit and to be much more careful in the future. But I was also sure to make it sound as if it wasn’t a big deal what she did, that way her confidence wasn’t shot. This resulted in much better audit quality on her part, which made me feel good since when someone learns because of me it is quite pleasurable. Towards the end of this day with about 2 hours left of work one of the assistant supervisors John came and told me that they had a trailer with some special freight left over they had missed. So it needed to be done right quick, and so I went over and helped Jason throw it, and we threw it fast. We threw about 2,000 cartons in an hour and a half, and got the trailer done just in time. This marks the second time I’ve saved Kohl’s butts, oddly enough the first time was with Jason too.
Day four, ah God yes it’s the last day of the work week! The day started out sluggish on my part, with some good bursts of performance here and there. Up until first break I was rather inconsistent with my work even though I did manage to get about 800 cartons out which isn’t the worst in the world. I had a lot of audits to do which takes up a lot of time. After first break I was able to pound out some solid work, feeling much more consistent and also helped Kathy with any questions she had. Sarah came by and gave me a coaching session which basically measures my performance. I was a bit nervous about this since I hadn’t been through a coaching session in a long time, however I did find out later that I nailed it. Sarah came by later and told me I got a +60 score, with 0 being the average so I was 60+ points above average. It seems every coaching session and interview I have with her these things are brought up: I really know my stuff, I am amazing (she said my performance was amazing), I’m incredibly smooth in my movements and technique, my willingness to train people is incredibly appreciated and she loves how I have stepped up into a leader role. After that the day was standard, I was sure I was going to finish my trailer until I hit some Nike products. Nike is such a large vendor they don’t care if they do business with us, so they don’t quality check their products to make sure the prices are right, and overall dealing with Nike product is just terrible. Naturally, everything went wrong and long story short I would end up having to palletize a lot of boxes. Sarah came by and said don’t bother with that, just leave it for the next shift and focus on cleaning up your area. This was about 3:30 with only a half hour left of work so I was fine with that. A few trailers down they had hit the same exact problem and had several pallets stacked very high with Nike products. It was a huge mess.
After work I drove all the way from Ottawa to get Sarah. We went out to eat and then took a long nap which was amazing. Through all the hell I put up with to be her I cherish the moments that we do get together.
Why I love work
People will call me crazy when I tell them I had a blast at work this week, I really truelly enjoyed it. The challenges were huge this week. Work 40 hours, get a lot of freight out, train Kathy, and do a great job. Not only the challenge but the people. The people who work hard there and bust it day in and day out I love working with. The people who complain about being there and could care less about their work as long as they get paid I wish would just leave or get fired because they do nothing but bring us down. It got to the point where I was so happy being there that I almost considered coming in a day early just because I didn’t want to be away for 3 days. Saying that now, I’m sue these 3 days will go by fast enough and I’ll be right back at it. I look forward to another great week!
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