Tiger Team Ep#4
Summary
is a format for summarizing long text documents. TL;DR: Jordan and Ben discuss Prime Day and the record-breaking sales and long hours faced by Amazon employees. Ben tells a story about an outbound ops manager faking record-breaking sales, and another story about running out of space in a warehouse. In this episode of the podcast, the host and guest (Jordan) discuss various experiences and lessons learned while working at Amazon. Jordan shares stories about dealing with difficult senior leaders, proving the need to follow the advice of the warehouse team, and getting back at a general manager who refused to believe there was no room in the facility for more inventory. They also play a new segment called "Cringe or Cool" where they judge different photos related to operations work at Amazon. Some photos include anNo, you are not cool if you participate in cringeworthy behavior. However, you may feel cool in the moment. Girls who play golf wearing a beanie hat are cool. Jordan and John welcome any suggestions for future episodes and thank their listeners for tuning in.
Transcription
Speaker 1
[00.00.08]
All right. Hey, welcome, everybody, to episode number four with my co-host of the show, The Mythical Jordan. Jordan. How are you doing? Welcome to the. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2
[00.00.23]
Oh, thank you so much. I'm doing dandy. Spent the last 24 hours on my couch. This week was wild.
Speaker 1
[00.00.34]
Well, so the first thing I want to throw out here, the listeners of the show, we promised, and we both agreed on for the show that we were not going to talk anything about Coldplay. There is no Coldplay allowed on this show. It is. I'm overloaded with Coldplay lectures online. I think you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2
[00.00.57]
It was all yellow.
Speaker 1
[00.01.00]
You already violated the first rule of the show.
Speaker 2
[00.01.04]
That's my job. That's supposed to violate the
Speaker 1
[00.01.06]
rules. All right. Good. Yeah. Well, so, you know. So, Jordan, I mean, the big thing going on out there in the world of distribution right now is obviously Prime Day. So we just for all the amazonians out there that are listening, we're coming off Prime Day. What have you heard about that. How was Prime Day this year? How was your work life balance right now? Where are you? Prime day was supposedly big.
Speaker 2
[00.01.36]
Well, Amazon great records every year. So I heard that this year was the same. Uh, here, in here in that not a lot of people got got time to themselves. So it was a grind. Somewhere out there in the ether. You know, people were sick days. Well, sick days, 12 hours a day. Uh, it it sounds like it was a grind, even though We were breaking records.
Speaker 1
[00.02.06]
So here's the thing about Prime Day. You're right. I mean, people are working insane amount of hours, but the person on the other end, like my neighborhood, I have a neighbor on my street. And so we have a we have a neighborhood Facebook page. I know some neighborhoods out there will have this and this. This guy, my neighbor other than losing and best lawn competition's to me, his next big thing to do is to post all about ridiculous packaging that he got from Amazon. You know what I'm talking about where it's a small item in the big box. How does this happen? This is ridiculous. And it's this whole cottage industry of people that, for whatever reason, have this intense fury and infatuation with that. I don't know. I don't know why. I mean, like, yes, it can sometimes happen, but usually fairly legitimate reasons for why it does. Think about the employees in there. They're packing out 100 orders an hour. I wonder. I wonder if they're the same people who, uh oh. My package was was unsafe. It was ten times smaller than the box. Amazon needs to reimburse me. You know, there's all those people out there looking for a quick buck.
Speaker 2
[00.03.22]
Yeah, your neighbor's one of
Speaker 1
[00.03.24]
them. He could be. But there's only one other thing that gets people in a fury more than a mid-sized Amazon package. And it's when people don't bring their shopping cart back to the shopping cart place at a grocery store. For whatever reason, people get curious about that. And then the and then the opposite. When when people claim that they are American hero. If they do bring that back, even when no one's watching. Hey, hey, it's you. Judge people based off what they do when people are watching. They
Speaker 2
[00.03.58]
better be returning those shopping carts. Yeah. So you mentioned this before and we'll talk a little bit about this now and show that is how many records that supposedly fulfillment centers are breaking. And I'm online a lot. I obviously I have the website and I'm on LinkedIn and a lot of people know me there. So I'm I'm yeah, thank you for the job. I appreciate that, but I'm connected with many, many, many distribution like many amazonians. So after Prime Day my fee just goes absolutely fast. And the only thing that's ever in it is we broke this record. We broke this record. There's all the employees standing there with a sign of how much they shipped. I mean, if you're not, if you're working at Amazon and you're not posting a picture of how much, how many records you're raking online, you're just you're shit. I mean, like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1
[00.05.00]
And
Speaker 2
[00.05.00]
your team is not the best Amazon team in all of Amazon. Then you also have a problem because you must be every single high volume of that.
Speaker 1
[00.05.11]
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so but the thing but the thing about this is that there's so much pressure on them to do it that then they have to they feel this need to sort of fudge and manipulate the data a little bit. Uh, I'm not saying what
Speaker 2
[00.05.31]
review does come up. You know, around this time, maybe they're trying to edge their way to a good, uh, good
Speaker 1
[00.05.39]
review. Yeah. No, I'm not saying that anyone has ever manipulated or cheated the system and FC, but I'm going to tell a story. Are you ready? You want your story?
Speaker 2
[00.05.52]
I want a story. All
Speaker 1
[00.05.54]
right. So I'm, uh. I'm. I'm a young man. I'm young, like, brand new. And I'm working in. And it's it's it's peak, uh, it's peak season. And I walk by the outbound pack lines, and the outbound ops manager is just over there, stacking up boxes hot before the slam, right? Like before the light on. And I'm like, that looks strange. Why is he. Why is he doing that? So I go up to him and I go, hey, what are you what are you working on over here? He goes, I'm, uh. I'm showing a bias for action.
Speaker 2
[00.06.35]
Okay. The immediate leadership principle. Automatic reply.
Speaker 1
[00.06.39]
Yeah, okay, I get it, man. What? What do you really. And he goes, oh, I'm being peculiar. Okay. Scram type thing. So. I walked away. Well, what was happening, I found out later, is that they were setting it up to have a record breaking power hour. So there was a setup where competition, where it was to see which FC could produce the most outbound shipments in a given hour. But what he was doing was prime in the pump. So when that hour hit, he just started feeding all the boxes and that he had been stacking up one by one, by one by one. So it wasn't coming through naturally. You know what I'm
Speaker 2
[00.07.25]
saying? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1
[00.07.28]
The general manager knew about it. I mean, he walked by, he kind of chuckled the whole nine yards. Well, here's how it turns out. Okay, so later we went. We went. My my site wins the award for the biggest volume, the biggest power hour. We beat 4 or 5 other sites. The whole the whole thing. Sure. So what? We did not know what the outbound the manager did not know is that some of the other sites, one of them specifically was in Tennessee. I remember this, They thought that that was a little bit big. And they figured out a way to get into our camera on the inside of our FC. And so they saw on the camera exactly what would happen. So they knew that it was bogus, that we had the sheet, but they didn't bring it up right away. At the time where the awards were given, the regional GM or the National has given out the award and the kudos they just sat on. They waited until 2 to 3 weeks later when there was a safety call. There was some type of safety call where all the sites were talking safety, and they brought the video up there and showed it here at the safety call. And the regional was thinking, what, what, what in the world is what in the world is this? And it all came out. So then the general manager who had sort of complicit agreed, and who had tooted the his horn a little bit and accepted the win. Then when it got called out for the or the safety and the video they did not know existed. You know what he did?
Speaker 2
[00.09.11]
Oh, gosh. What did he do?
Speaker 1
[00.09.13]
He threw the manager under the bus. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know why he would do that. I had
Speaker 2
[00.09.20]
no idea anything was happening of her. We don't allow that. And so from that day forward, we think this this. You're back. You. You're a bad guy, and you're a villain and the whole thing. So. That's
Speaker 1
[00.09.40]
incredible. Yeah. So you never know who is watching eye in the Sky. All the all the different cameras that are up. So
Speaker 2
[00.09.50]
that is true. That is true. You never know who's going to catch you. Doing what? That's hate. That's why you always judge people by what they do. And they don't think anybody's looking.
Speaker 1
[00.10.00]
See, it's all goes back to the shopping cart thing. Maybe
Speaker 2
[00.10.03]
the shopping cart. Maybe.
Speaker 1
[00.10.04]
Maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe I just need to check myself and and and and lose that as a pet peeve. So. But I will say this, though, one of the good things about Prime Day that they have now, back in my day before Prime Day. There was nothing. Some it was just it was just peak. And so all during the summer, the building was just progressively getting more and more and more full as a lot of warehouses out there across the country do. Whether it's a build up or peak or quarter four or whatever. So I do have to say that one of the good things about Prime Day is that it can alleviate get a Super Bowl, because when it gets full, that's when all the fun starts to happen for the for all, for all the managers trying to run off.
Speaker 2
[00.10.55]
Oh, I definitely, definitely have an idea of what you're talking about there. I've I've been on many a spacewalk, as they call them, trying to find all the nooks and crannies where pallets.
Speaker 1
[00.11.09]
So let me tell you another story. I'm full. I'm full of stories today. I don't know what I
Speaker 2
[00.11.15]
could do that. Yeah. So I'm. I'm a manager. I think I'm maybe I'm a director at this time, and I'm not at a big fulfillment center anymore. I'm at kind of a smaller company. Still a lot of locations and still a lot of of, uh, goods in. But like many warehouses across the country, we start running out of space. I try to holiday sales teams, do more promos, logos, whatever to try to create space. But it's very stressful for the manager because I take a look at what's coming in and there's maybe 40 or 50 or 60 containers that are set to arrive over a two week period. And I'm walking around the facilities thinking we don't have any space. So I'm going to the I'm going to the CFO and the executives, and I'm saying, hey, we need to we need to do something here. We need to make an investment in some more racking. We're going to have to hold this much more inventory. We need more racking. We need some type of storage container to help alleviate this. We need some solution we we do not have. And so then I'm expecting them to agree and say, yeah, we'll work with you to find a solution. But instead they took it upon themselves to get together and and prove to me that no, I'm wrong. We indeed. You have one day, CFO, meet me in the hallway just outside the the warehouse. Come here. Come over here for a second. I walk over so that I. And that you're calling me over here. And he he opens up. He's like holding open the warehouse door and he goes, look, take, take, um, take a little walk. Oh,
Speaker 1
[00.13.10]
I look and say, well, you're you're wearing some very nice shoes right now. Are you sure that you want to go out here on the on this dusty of this dusty warehouse floor? Yeah, I don't know about that. Walking around. So we walk around and he goes, follow me. We walk and he finds this area, the facility, and he goes, look up there. What do you see? I look up and I go, I don't, I don't, I don't really know what what am I, what am I looking for? He's like, there's eight open positions right here. Yeah. Yeah okay. He's like and come over here, come over here. So I walk over here and I think maybe this will be something different, but I'm not holding my breath. Yep. He points up and he goes ten. There's ten right. And I think. Okay. What? What are you. What are you trying to. What are you trying to tell me here, like then plenty of room out here in the warehouse, like Keith. Keith was his name. This is not computing. We have 50 containers coming in. There's. There's 40 pallets on each container. I'm great that you walk through the facility and point out a couple of places, but imagine this. Imagine you are giving a big quarterly review of the financials to all the shareholders. And there are 20 that are coming into the conference room and you have five chairs. And I say, Keith, come into my office. Look what I have here. Man two chairs. Come on man. So it's like like listen to the warehouse people when they tell you what they need, they know what they need there. They're living in there. Don't try to prove to them otherwise, because you just need to make them. Walk around. Try to do. I thought it's pretty ridiculous. I
Speaker 2
[00.15.02]
just love hosting your senior leaders. Forget what warehouses when they get to a certain level. They just. It's it's like they it's like they have a brain dump or some eraser just come through because they just act like they've ever been there before. Yeah. I mean, just take a look at the inbound schedule. It's not difficult math. And I know you can do it because you're a finance guy. Just just stop and think about the ridiculousness of what you just tried to do. He's just. But it's just when it gets full and it's just it's all, you know and and I remember another time. Jordan. So going back to that same general manager that we were talking about earlier. Oh no.
Speaker 1
[00.15.45]
Even even though he was the he was the villain in in that story, we were able to we were able to get him back. So we're still working in the same facility. It's it's next year. So the whole week happens and everything goes through. But hey, he survived. He he did. But in the back of my mind, we just we just all. Proved to be not having a good back anyway. So it's summertime again and the facility is full again. And at this point I'm in the inbound side of the operation. And so all of the the story that has all that put away the product on the shelf, all their rates are just absolutely because there's no room, all the shelves are full. There's no space to put. Same thing that we had with the CFO. The general manager said, no, I refuse to believe that. Got faced, I walked around. There is some space. Quit complaining. Figure it out, sir. We really we really disagree with what we're saying, but. Okay. No, no. There's space. In fact, there's so much space that I actually showed you. I actually picked up a scanner stove in bath, and I had no problems at all. That was that was like,
Speaker 2
[00.17.16]
no, no problem. Quality was. Yeah,
Speaker 1
[00.17.20]
yeah. So the senior ops manager thinks, huh? I really, really doubt that this is the case that he actually went out there. So before the next day's demo, which at our site, like many sites out there, gemba is a whole presentation. The GM walks, the maintenance walks, finance walks, senior ops. Everybody walk around. Stop the stop, stop. They come to the inbound stop. There's a board there. Daily management board presentation. So he comes over there into the gemba and he's standing there and before it, the senior goes up to the associate who was, uh, creating the bimbo. And at that time, on the board, we would put up the, the top five usernames of people that were making errors in Stoke. Call them Sherlock. So she says put I don't want to say this. I don't want to say say because she's ever listed. But he's like, what? This log in number one on this for most number of souls. So the employee does that. She puts the general managers name. So he's number one. He puts it up there as it and says like well so where the second place person has seven and six five. And normally when the general manager comes in there he pointed out, hey, what are we doing to retrain these people and what are we doing to reduce errors? So he comes up to the to the gemba, and the associate does not realize who's presenting what she is being set up in here, this this massive trap. And so she starts presenting and she gets the so error that she says, oh well the the number one username for so errors is x. He, Smith will call it, and everybody immediately knows that He Smith is the general manager. And so all the people at the Gemba are sort of looking around at each other, kind of in an amusing way. And the and the general manager is looking at the senior op manager like you normally do. What are you doing about this? What, this this can't be basically looking out to her for help. Help me. Help me through this. And she was just like that. And now he's trapped because he had. He either has to admit that he lied, that he did not. So any product. I can't be the number one person with the most sexiest. I didn't stow anything. He either has to do that or he just has to stand there and take it on the chin as if he is the worst quality in the building when it comes to. So see,
Speaker 2
[00.20.15]
now I know, I don't know how this story ends Yet what if you really were smart? You would have won it said. Hey. I've been told there's not a lot of faith. So I went out to show myself and you. All right. And try to act like a hero. Did he do that?
Speaker 1
[00.20.33]
It did not end that way. Yeah, I did not in that way. And so what what he what I think he did is I think he walked with a store for a minute and they happened to find something, but it wasn't as if he was out there for five hours. That's what that's what really? We got him back. It all sent back to him throwing the bus from the fryer. So I just I thought it was a masterclass from the senior ops manager though. Setting that up, setting up that trap. I've always remember that thought so savvy and I could have happened to it couldn't happen to a nicer person. Wow, that is really savvy. That's interesting. Nothing. Nothing related to current events or anything. You know, like multiplayer? No, no no,
Speaker 2
[00.21.23]
no. Anything like that. We said we weren't going to talk
Speaker 1
[00.21.25]
about how do I mute, how do I mute mikes? I don't know how to mute Mike. All right. So now we are at the final portion of the show, Jordan. And this is a new portion of the show that I am calling fringe or Cool. Okay. Let's explain this to the audience. So Jordan does not know what I'm about to show or say, but she has to answer in 10s or less. Is this fringe or is this cool? And give her explanation of why it is that and all things going on out there in the world of ops right now? So, Jordan, are you ready?
Speaker 2
[00.22.06]
Oh I'm ready. Little nervous.
Speaker 1
[00.22.08]
Okay, I'm going to bring up picture number one onto the stage. You explain to the audience what this is and then cringe.
Speaker 2
[00.22.16]
Okay.
Speaker 1
[00.22.21]
Uh,
Speaker 2
[00.22.22]
so audience, you can't see this picture. But, uh, if you are really, really proud of where you're where you come from, then sometimes you might want to get a hairstyle, uh, that matches that. And so what I can only describe as an Amazon smile etched into somebody's hair. Uh, and and to top it all off, they're probably not earning trust there because they are a manager. So I'm going to go. Final answer. Print.
Speaker 1
[00.22.56]
All right. I figured you were going to do that. Although I do have to say it looks pretty good. I mean, it does look. I mean, the
Speaker 2
[00.23.03]
barber did break up, but that individual.
Speaker 1
[00.23.09]
All right. So this next photo is from a a visiting and general manager who is like a regional general manager visiting a site. And they posted this online on LinkedIn. I blocked out all the names and all the faces. But you tell me your your friends, your cool on the level of associate morality engagement from this.
Speaker 2
[00.23.42]
Well, it is an unknown acronym and somehow the.
Speaker 1
[00.23.50]
Safety quality delivery inventory.
Speaker 2
[00.23.54]
Yeah, but that's just it's just the flow. And they're standing there with their thumbs up and there in front of a whiteboard. It just looks like one of those mandatory pictures that the leadership had posed on LinkedIn to say, hey, we were out there seeing the people. So I'm going to go with
Speaker 1
[00.24.15]
cringe. Yeah, yeah. So the the title of the photo is, he says, I get super, super pumped and excited when the team talked about it. And there's six associates headed there in a forest looking photo with their thumbs up, as if the interrogator. The right side.
Speaker 2
[00.24.35]
I mean, if I had seen the full caption, the second shooter was a dead giveaway for
Speaker 1
[00.24.42]
yeah. All right. Uh, can you still hear me? I didn't take you. All right, so here, here's no more photos. Um, friend, your cool on converse sneakers hanging from the strap. Hanging
Speaker 2
[00.24.58]
from. Right.
Speaker 1
[00.24.59]
Yeah. When? When the go away. When people quit in Amazon, they post the the picture with their sneakers hanging from the orange stripe.
Speaker 2
[00.25.07]
So this will be my first pool because as a nurse, I do appreciate it like that. And secretly, one day I hope to have just as nerdy about.
Speaker 1
[00.25.19]
All right, all right. I'll go. I'll go with you on that for the for the converse sneakers. What about the giant balloons with the letter and the number for the most?
Speaker 2
[00.25.30]
Okay. Yeah. Uh, again, uh, certified nerd here, I, I do appreciate the balloons, and I'm very enthralled by balloons, so I would have to go cool on that one. That might make me great.
Speaker 1
[00.25.46]
All right, all right, I go with cool. What about, uh, choreographed dance routines inside of F6 with the assist? I mean, again, doubting myself here, but like, is it cringe? Most people. Yes. Am I typically a participant in that cringeworthy behavior? Also, yes.
Speaker 2
[00.26.16]
So I'm going to go with fringe, but I feel cool when I'm a part of this.
Speaker 1
[00.26.23]
Like a light cringe. I'll take that. So, just so the audience knows, one of the reasons why I love Jordan because she's just super good natured. She's super good natured, kind hearted, a baby underneath. So it's funny to watch her for some of the stuff. Not not quite as edgy as me
Speaker 2
[00.26.41]
or definitely not as edgy.
Speaker 1
[00.26.45]
Uh, for a grainy, grainy forklift accident that get posted on this.
Speaker 2
[00.26.53]
Oh, those are cool because I watch those and I go out. But it's cool because it's cool the fact that they manage to do that, and then it's cool that somebody managed to sneak the video onto the internet. I love every part of it.
Speaker 1
[00.27.11]
All right, I got it. Last question. Uh, girls who play golf wearing a beanie hat. Oh, definitely. Cool.
Speaker 2
[00.27.20]
Uh, cool. Golf. Golf, girls. Beanie hat. Cool.
Speaker 1
[00.27.27]
All right. I'll give you a pass on that. I'm going to put that one up to the audience about that. But
Speaker 2
[00.27.34]
the audience vote for Johnny
Speaker 1
[00.27.37]
Card. All right, guys, well, thanks for tuning in for our episode number four at the Tiger team, if you like. With, uh, humor and sarcasm from things going on out there in the world of warehouse and distribution. Spread the word. Spread the word on this show. Send it around and send us your your ideas. And by the way, Jordy and I have agreed that if there is anyone out there that listens to this that is interested in being a part of this, I'm a third co-host or maybe even a fourth. Reach out to this lesson. The more the more, the more we
Speaker 2
[00.28.10]
welcome all.
Speaker 1
[00.28.13]
Yeah. Jordan, any any parting words for the audience?
Speaker 2
[00.28.16]
No. We just want to thank you all for continuing to listen to the show. Uh, hopefully you find this cool, but maybe we're still friends, I
Speaker 1
[00.28.24]
don't know. I guess we'll have
Speaker 2
[00.28.25]
to do one more episodes for y'all to figure that out.
Speaker 1
[00.28.29]
All right, guys. See you. Uh, see you next month for episode five. Thanks for watching.
