Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career! I hope you enjoy our show each week and we\u2019re 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\u2019t forget about our Facebook & Twitter page\u2019s where you can find us @whseandops, oh and the warehouse equipment operators community group on Facebook, it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.
\n 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\u2019t 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\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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 \u201cconfused\u201d. Remember, guys and gals a written warning is not a bad thing and there\u2019s no reason to get upset over one. None of us likes to hear that we\u2019ve done anything wrong but I\u2019ve always tried, successfully most of the time, to think of it as a learning experience. If it\u2019s something worth writing down on paper it\u2019s 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\u2019ve heard he\u2019s 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!
\nThat 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\u2019t 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\u2019d slid down and landed right on the toes of his boots! If he\u2019d of had his tennis shoes on it\u2019d of smashed his toes big time. Needless to say he wasn\u2019t upset with his boss anymore, at least for the rest of that day!
\nYou know, here at WAOC we talk a lot about rules and why we have them in our industry. I think that\u2019s a good example of a valuable rule.