Welcome to Week 10 of 2019 and to Episode 128 of Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I\u2019m Marty T Hawkins and WAOC is in Orlando Florida today. I had an opportunity to visit a conference this week, I always enjoy seeing old friends in the industry and learning something new every day! Speaking of learning and being that we\u2019re almost thru the 1st quarter, how\u2019s everyone doing with their plans and goals? I\u2019m pretty much on track with mine but I have made a couple of adjustments. I\u2019m looking at where I spend my money and my time much closer than I use too. Going forward I\u2019m going to pay much more attention to expense and what I\u2019m willing to invest money or my time with. I\u2019ll reach out to a few professionals in the industry and we\u2019ll try and have another roundtable for the 1st quarter here in the next several weeks! So today I thought we could talk a little about the sanitation position. Warehouse sanitation is quite a bit different than Custodian or Janitorial jobs and can entail a broad range of responsibilities. We\u2019ve received a couple of questions about the position this year and last week I had a long time listener, actually she was probably our 1st listener and I\u2019m happy to say she\u2019s caught every one of our episodes ask me when we\u2019re we going to talk about Sanitation, she wanted to know what all duties and responsibilities it encompasses. I thought we\u2019d just kind of walk through a typical day at a distribution center that I\u2019m familiar with.
\nSo, just like any light industrial position we\u2019ll need to arrive to work early, we don\u2019t want to be the tardy person and miss any start up or safety meetings. If we\u2019re working for a smaller facility, say 50k to 150k square ft and racked warehouse one of our primary functions is going to be keep those front area trash cans empty and clean. Man, they can fill up quick with papers, little pieces of wood from broken pallets, maybe card board and shrink wrap coming from the unloaders, lumpers and receivers. Speaking of cardboard and shrink wrap. A lot of facilities today may be recycling, most of the buildings I visit each week have a bailer for their cardboard and shrink wrap that\u2019s taken off the trailers and containers. It\u2019ll be our job as sanitation to separate them out from the daily trash and compact them into bales using the bailer. A large facility may have separate compactors to keep up with the quantities coming off the docks. As with any recycling efforts it\u2019s important that the item, cardboard, shrink wrap or even just non-confidential papers are clean and not wet or damp in any way. A bail can get pretty rank smelling if it has mildew or mold growing in it! Beside it being the right thing to do, why do companies spend the time, money and effort regarding recycling you might ask? Because there\u2019s revenue in it and it can be well worth having the program. If your facility is not capturing that revenue, even if it\u2019ll take a week to fill a trailer, typically 16 to 18 bails, I\u2019d bring it up to your management team. An idea to bring in additional revenue vs paying someone to haul off such a large volume of trash is definitely going to get us noticed in a positive manner! Got side tracked for a second, anyway, so we\u2019ve emptied all the trash cans, now we\u2019ll hit the aisles checking for and cleaning up any spills, sweeping around or maybe under the pallets, we\u2019d all be surprised at the amount of dust in our warehouses. Towards the end of the day we may have certain areas we\u2019ll mop, at least the high traffic areas. I know one small facility where the 2-sanitation people will each clean around and under 1 dock plate a day. There\u2019s 6 dock\u2019s there so they cover each door around twice a week that way. Even our smaller facilities will have, or should have, a Master Sanitation Schedule or a Duty list, something that outlines all our duties. Now this isn\u2019t a Job Description. Our master sanitation schedule will list the duties we\u2019re expected to perform daily,...