Tiger Team Ep#5
Summary
: In this episode from the Tiger team, Tiger team discuss industry veteran stories derived from their experiences in the warehouse underground. They share stories of their initial days at work and how they were manipulated by their associates. The show starts with Jordan and Ben talking about their jobs in a warehouse. Jordan talks about how a lot of people in her warehouse job fake injuries to avoid work, but Ben argues that safety should still be a priority. They then discuss past experiences with managers who abused their power or didn't understand the job. They then introduce a new segment called "Cringe or Cool" where they show pictures and Jordan has to decide if it's cringe or cool. The first picture is a pin In this episode of The Tiger Team, we discuss the latest memes and trends in the world of distribution, including funny photos, work related cringe moments, and cool vs. cringe opinions on topics like off-site team morale events and the buzzword "power zone." Our guest, Jordan, shares her thoughts and experiences as a distribution center employee and safety professional. Tune in for some humorous and relatable content!
Transcription
Speaker 2
[00.00.06]
Welcome to episode number five with the Tiger team at the Warehouse Underground. I'm Ben. I'm one of the hosts of the show, and like always, I'm with my co-host today. Jordan. Jordan, what's up man? How you been? I haven't talked with you in a while.
Speaker 1
[00.00.21]
I know it's it's been a while. I had to. I had to really get in the zone for all of the salt that we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 2
[00.00.29]
It's it's hard sometimes the audience, we both still work in the industry active. And so sometimes we don't come into the show in a very good mood. So it takes us a little bit of a I have to boost our spirits up because we're we're kind of out there. So yeah, I definitely get that now. We're going to start the show today. Now, Jordan and I are both industry veterans. We've been in the industry for kind of more than a minute we've been around, but we realized that there was a time where we were both starting out and we were both very green. And many people out there are always coming into the industry new and they're fresh. And so we thought it would be a fun show to talk about some of the stories, some of the things, some of the ridiculous events that happen when we were first starting out in the industry. And, you know, Jordan, I was talking with Jordan before the show and she goes, they used to say that as I went along, the light of Jordan was beginning to dim.
Speaker 1
[00.01.30]
Yes. The light of Jordan is very dim right now.
Speaker 2
[00.01.34]
Yeah. And so I, I, I completely I completely get that. So I remember Jordan so I, this is like my very first week, maybe week two of working in a big fulfillment center and one of the managers or not, one of the managers, one of the floor leaders who was responsible for the Stoa area where the all the products were being put out in the bins throughout the facility. She pulls me over and she's a probably a 15 year industry veteran. She pulls me over and says, hey, can you go do some bin checks for me? And I think, okay. Sure, absolutely. I don't I don't admit that I really don't know what this means, but she hands me a list. It's all these different den locations out there and these different products and the whole thing. Well, what she wanted me to do was she had these carts, these stow carts in her area, and they were physically empty. They had some type of virtual products still in there, because in these fulfillment centers and everything, everything is tracked. So there's some type of virtual product that's still there. Physically they're empty. And so what she wants me to do is she wants me to go out and come back and let her know. Yes. There, there in these events, I, I found them, I found these products. They're there so that then she can clear out that cart. Right. So I go out there and again I've got this, this list, which to me looks a little bit like a shopping list. And so I spend the next probably 45 minutes finding all these products, and I take them off the shelf and I put them, I put them into the cart. No scanner. No, no nothing. After all this is done, I walk back to her station and here I am. I'm excited. I'm happy I found them
Speaker 1
[00.03.26]
all. You're proud of yourself. And there's
Speaker 2
[00.03.28]
15 items in the cart. And. And Miss Johnny. Johnny was her name. Like Johnny? I have them all. And I come up and she just starts shaking her head at me and goes, I know, I know, you didn't do this. I know you did not do this. And I go do what I did exactly what you wanted me to do. I found the stuff out there. It starts shaking her head and she goes, Ben, your name's Ben, right? I go, yeah, she goes, you're not gonna make it, son?
Speaker 1
[00.04.00]
Oh, wow.
Speaker 2
[00.04.04]
So I think. Oh, man. Uh, so she explains to me that the whole thing. Well, you know how word travels around the site every all the other associates then found out about it and so forth. From then on, probably the next four months, they started calling me Ben. Czech. Ben was my nickname. And then it. And then they shortened it to be like like BCBCBE, you know.
Speaker 1
[00.04.36]
Well, that is definitely a worse nickname than mine of, uh, MCJ money, so.
Speaker 2
[00.04.44]
Oh, how'd you get that?
Speaker 1
[00.04.46]
Um, let's just say when I was a store manager, uh, we had a microphone system, and I used to sing to the associates on the mic. So I had a loving, renamed Mic Money.
Speaker 2
[00.05.01]
Oh, because you, uh. Because you're you're performing.
Speaker 1
[00.05.04]
I was before I was performing. I was trying to motivate, you know,
Speaker 2
[00.05.09]
inspire. Yeah. No, I got it. But when you start out, you're just. You're. You're so green. You don't know. You. You don't know. As they used to say, you don't know your ass from your elbow. To you to use your speech. And if you're not careful, just the employees will. They'll. They'll feed off that. Like they'll they'll be able to sense it and then they'll use that against you. I remember I coming in, I, I have to do my very first stand up, which I had not prepared for practice. Stand up where you you stand up in front of 100 employees at the beginning of the shift in the morning, and you're supposed to go through this whole speech with all kinds of stuff, safety tips and standard work tips and all these things that you're supposed to do for things. Well, I didn't know any of that. I didn't know anything. But I stand up there. They they hand me the microphone. I stand up on this platform basically shaking because I know what I could, what I say, so I say some crap, like whatever you guys did yesterday, do it also today, but ever.
Speaker 1
[00.06.23]
Great rallying cry.
Speaker 2
[00.06.26]
Yeah, and I know, I know. As soon as I did that, they immediately thought, read me, read me. The sharks just start circling around. Because then that day and later in the week, they would come up to me and say, oh man, well, we've been talking. We really think that you should send us home right now. This group of these people over here, us, we really need to go home. That would be the smartest move for you to make. So they were just manipulating me into doing whatever they needed to have done in order to fulfill their. We should definitely be promoted to floor elites. We should definitely have to have a chance to have a chance to do that. So it's just you and you. That's why when you when you see a grizzled manager that's been in the industry for a while, they weren't that way when they started out. They became that way over time by being being manipulated. So that's why I don't feel bad about some of the, some of the mean stuff that I did later, because they took their shots at me when I was a brand new manager out there on the, on the floor.
Speaker 1
[00.07.33]
Well, and I do I do remember having to learn to take a more critical eye with what associates were telling me because, you know, you get the stories of, oh, you know, you know, my family's really sick. I have to leave right now or oh my gosh, like, all these XYZ things are happening to me right now. Like, I need your help. And then you start to learn that those same associates come back to you week after week after week, and there's something else. And and then you start to realize, wait a minute, am I getting played? Are they trying? Are they trying to take voluntary time off consistently, like just to take advantage. And then it is. So it's so mind boggling when you're starting out that people would actually take advantage of situations like that and use it to try to take time off or to do other things. And then when you do become seasoned and you have new managers and they come to you and they go, oh, you know, Susie said X, Y, and Z, I really want to help them. And you have to kind of sit them down and say, look, I understand what they said. However, let's look at this a little bit more critically and their eyes open up, and they're just so upset that somebody would even try to use the situation to their advantage. And it's. That's part of being a new manager. You just gotta learn. Not everybody has good intentions.
Speaker 2
[00.09.04]
No, don't. Don't fall for that crap.
Speaker 1
[00.09.06]
Nope. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 2
[00.09.08]
I used to joke about this until I had someone from HR come up to me and say, hey, you really shouldn't joke about this, but the amount of okay, so maybe I've managed, I don't know, hundreds, thousands of of hourly employees across really across the country in different places, the amount of grandma deaths and great grandma deaths and great great aunt deaths that I have heard about.
Speaker 1
[00.09.43]
And to their credit, the associates will tell on each other too. Yeah. Because they'll they'll tell you. Oh, hey, look into this one. This one seems a little bit off. Wink, wink. Yeah. They they you're right. They, they will fib but I but I but but later though you don't fall for it that you don't you don't fall for their games. In the beginning, you do. Especially when it comes to injuries and safety stuff in the. In the beginning you have to. Safety is a very important part of FC life and DC life and the warehouse life. And I'm not I'm not. Everyone does that. It's very important and it's not really a thing to joke about. And I'm not joking about it. But what if employees begin to learn that it is a magic word? It is almost a trump card. If if I say that this is a safety risk, then all bets are off. My manager cannot touch me anymore because it's it's it's that. And they they use it as a weapon sometimes and. Oh yeah
Speaker 2
[00.10.47]
that that's bad. I had employee.
Speaker 1
[00.10.50]
Well I was going to say I can't tell you the number of times where I have an associate who has an injury. And, you know, I asked them, oh, hey, well, like, explain to me how you do this process. And they explain to me the perfect way to do the process, and they demonstrate the perfect way to do the process and then like but you got injured. Question mark. Because it's like, you know, you can explain it to me, you can demonstrate it to me, but you're injured somehow. How did we get here?
Speaker 2
[00.11.23]
Listen to this story. I had an employee, so now I'm no longer green. Jordan. Now I live. I'm a grizzled, salty veteran. Okay? And there is an employee and her. Okay, this is a this is a long time ago. So her job is to basically line feed. So the way it was set up back then Jordan was you unload the truck, all the box, all the parcel boxes are coming down the conveyor belt. And then she was kind of the one that was feeding each one of the different receive lines where the employees are receiving into a cart. So she shows she's the feeder. So basically she's just standing there at the end of the conveyor and diverting the packages where they're supposed to go. Well, sometimes that's a steady flow of boxes, and other times there's a little bit of a dip and there's nothing coming through there. That's just the nature of the beast. So I'm watching her. She's just standing there. And now boxes are falling off the line down downstream of her. Right. Oh. But the thing is, Jordan, she is not moving. She is not lifting a finger. She is dead like a statue standing there. And so I go up to her and I say, Brittany, what? Why can't you go get these boxes that have been falling off the line when there's a lull in the in the thing and put them, put them back on and she goes, uh, she goes, well, that's going to break my back. Y'all going to break my back, I think, what what do you mean, break your break your back? You have to be able to lift 50 in order to to work here. But now, because I'm grizzled, I said, I'll think to myself. She said that we're going to break her back. So I wonder if she is a risk of being severely injured. So I take it at face value and send it up to the what? The call it care, the the medical spot and the site where they get care And the safety rep who's up there goes along with it too. And basically right down is like risk of being paralyzed in the thing. And we send her out. She sends her out offsite to see a doctor, and they preclude her from coming back into work. All because. Because she said, we're you're going to break my back, which obviously wasn't true at all. She didn't want to lift this up. Lift the box. Right. So she's gone. He's off site, not allowed to come back into work. And she absolutely tears me a new one on Facebook and all their online forums that they that they use. My manager is a complete moron. Just because people came from the military doesn't mean they're worth a crap exhibit A my stupid manager who doesn't say she didn't understand the the whole game that was playing, but. Yeah. That so. So safety is not always a trump card and a sword that you can wield out there. It honestly should be treated in a pure manner. And and don't do that
Speaker 1
[00.14.40]
right. Absolutely. Yeah. I, I don't know. And maybe, you know, at this point the light is dim, but I don't understand. I like why it's very dim and I just don't I don't understand why people would try to, you know, stretch a report about being injured because you don't you want to work. And if you don't want to work in a warehouse where, you know, there's manual labor, there are other jobs out there. You don't have to work here. You're choosing to work here. Yeah, no, I'm with you. But it's not just. It's not just the hourly employees, though. I had I had managers come at me too when I, when I was a young, a young manager. So I, I'm working at a site and I'm, I'm very ambitious. I'm on the inbound side and my, boss comes to me. I'm like like month one. He comes to me and goes, hey, I need you to make a display. I'm working on night shift. I need you to make a display somehow, to put it in the middle of where the associates are receiving their stuff of the different types of box sizes that they have. I think that at that time is called half vertical, sortable, vertical. And each one of those names was a different dimension of a box. So if it was in this category it went down. This received line. If it was in this category, it would go down this one. So he goes they need to have a some type of visual. Well I didn't know I didn't know how I was going to accomplish this, but I'm going to be resourceful as best as I can. So I start asking around the employees and they go, oh, well, there is a place inside the FC where they make boxes and I go, really? Are you are you serious? Yeah. There is. Where? Oh, it's called Box on Demand or Body and it's over there on the outbound side. So I walk over there. Now Box on Demand is making boxes to ship custom for outbound customer orders. That's what they're doing over there, right. So I go and it's it's a big machine. It's a team of five employees. And I go up to them and I go, hey, uh, I'm Ben, I'm a new manager here. Do you guys make boxes? You make boxes sizes over. Here they go. Yeah, yeah. This is a box on demand, sir. I go cool. Well, could you make some boxes for for me? Uh, and they each kind of look at each other and they go, uh, yeah. Because I'm a manager, right, right, right. You're
Speaker 2
[00.17.21]
not gonna they're not going to say no to a manager. So they spend about the next hour.
Speaker 1
[00.17.26]
Oh,
Speaker 2
[00.17.27]
this team of five people who is supposed to be processing outbound orders. Yeah. Spends the next hour making boxes specifically for me, the inbound manager to put up in my display. Right.
Speaker 1
[00.17.41]
Yeah. Yep. Okay,
Speaker 2
[00.17.42]
so this happens, I think I am just a winner. Look at. Look at this ingenuity. Look at this fortitude. Look at this motivation that I've showed. I put up the display over there. It's great. I think I'm going to be promoted to the general manager within probably a month.
Speaker 1
[00.18.05]
It sounds about right. That's the track. Yeah, yeah. So, so so go back over there. I come in the next day because the next day is one of those days where the night shift comes in a little bit earlier, because there's a manager meeting with all the managers in the building and the general manager and the whole thing. So I sit in there and I'm feeling pretty good, and I sort of in the, in the middle, the one of the outbound ops managers stands up and goes. He stands up in front of the whole group and he goes, hey, what moron came over Outbound Body last night and used them as his personal servants? Oh, that. And I go, oh my God. So I don't raise my hand, even though I know it's me because I'm so timid and his his tone is so venomous in the way that he's saying it. And I don't want to expose myself in front of all the managers over there. So I go find him after the after the meeting and I go, hey, uh, Steve, that that was me. And but you just came off really strong, and I just didn't want to to raise. And I'm like, hey, I'm sorry. He goes, well, you know, the reason why they miss the customer orders that they had to ship is because they were doing your own little special project like, oh, no, I, I did not know that. I don't even know how everything works in here. I'm just still brand new and all that. I didn't really know that you knew that this had happen. He goes, yeah, I knew it was you. I go, what? He's like, yeah, well, the other the other inbound managers, one is black and one is a female. Oh. So I asked my employees, do you know the manager's name? And they said, no, but he was a white guy with a hat on. And so I brought
Speaker 2
[00.20.03]
it, said I knew it was you. And I thought, well, thanks. Why don't you come talk with me before the meeting, you asshole? Why did you stand up and and say the question if you knew. If you knew it was was me. So, you know, managers can raise you in in the beginning.
Speaker 1
[00.20.20]
Yeah that's true. And also it's to your point, it's really tough when you don't know and you're afraid to ask sometimes because I remember one time our, uh, senior got on us because there was, um, there's a portal and at one of the places where I work, and it basically allows you to do engagements with associates on different paths within the warehouse. So, like, so were received, especially if they flagged for defects in those processes. And so our senior came down and said, hey, yesterday somebody marked this engagement and they clicked. I did not engage. And we can never have that. That is a no go. We can't ever click. Do not engage. But they did it. And and in my head I'm thinking, well I don't recall being able to engage that associate yesterday. So wouldn't the logical reason be do not engage. But I didn't say this because there was such a fire about clicking this one button that says I did engage versus I did not engage. And I think I was in month 2 or 3. So we get back on to the floor and I talked to my co co-manager and I go, hey, so what? Like, what's the deal here? Like, ah, aren't we technically lying if we're clicking? I did engage when we didn't. And his response is, oh yeah, that's just how it works. You just have to click it every time. Because if you don't click it every time, then it's a call out. And you know, we just we have to click it no matter what. And so I think that was the first moment where the light of Jordan did it. Because I was sitting there thinking, what's
Speaker 2
[00.22.16]
yeah, you gotta make it green. If you stay in this industry long enough, you make the metrics green. And if if they're if not, then you alibi them. It's green or red. You're right in the room. It's green. Red. Make them green. Make the metrics green. Make it green. Right. That's what they
Speaker 1
[00.22.33]
wanted. The suggestion to me was oh well you know click I did and then you know screenshot who the associate was and what the defect was. And follow up. And I'm sitting here thinking, how is that feasible or out of all of this.
Speaker 2
[00.22.50]
Yeah. No,
Speaker 1
[00.22.51]
no. And then my co-manager goes, trust me, that's just how it works. And sure enough, as a seasoned manager, I'm the one telling them, all right, you have to click this button no matter what. And you got a screenshot to make sure that you engage them the next time.
Speaker 2
[00.23.07]
All right. So now it's the portion of the show that we tried last week called Cringe or Cool. And if you're not familiar with cringe or Cool, I'm going to bring up 2 or 3 pictures or present a couple different scenarios that Jordan, she has not seen these before, so she doesn't know what's coming up. Jordan has to look at it, describe what she's seeing, and then give a quick cringe or cool to the audience with a justification. Jordan, are you ready for your cool 2.0?
Speaker 1
[00.23.39]
I am ready. All
Speaker 2
[00.23.40]
right, so here is picture number one. Uh, looks like, uh, this is a, uh, Peggy pin brought to us by Amazon. Uh, it says disagree and commit. It's a boot with an Amazon logo on it, and the boot is, uh, square up. Uh, Becky with a, uh, upside down smile. So, yeah,
Speaker 1
[00.24.10]
I am going to say, while I appreciate this pin, probably quite cringe for the general audience.
Speaker 2
[00.24.18]
Yeah. That boot, that boot is, uh, doing a big deep dive into the in the back there.
Speaker 1
[00.24.24]
Beer? Yeah.
Speaker 2
[00.24.25]
Yeah. It's it's way in there. All right. Uh. Number two. Uh, this is a shirt that I have seen floating around recently that sometimes people wear. I'm giving you a little bit of a of a teaser, but here's the shirt.
Speaker 1
[00.24.42]
It says, unfortunately, there are no veto opportunities available with the smile. So I'm going to go ahead and say that is cool if I see somebody wearing that. But that's that's a cool thing to wear. Yeah,
Speaker 2
[00.24.55]
I say this all the time. Employees that are working in distribution centers love veto voluntary time off. They take it all the time. Don't you guys have bills? I mean, what does it matter? They will do it.
Speaker 1
[00.25.08]
They. And they will wear that. They will wear that shirt just to troll the managers. Trust the. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2
[00.25.13]
All right. All right. So number three, I want you to imagine, have you ever been audited before with, uh, like an audit team or
Speaker 1
[00.25.21]
an outside
Speaker 2
[00.25.22]
performance team? Yeah, yeah. All right. So you will appreciate this one. This is a auditor who is coming to audit what's probably a construction site. It says she's carrying a big, giant clipboard, a big, giant book that says, I have no idea how to do your job, but my book says that you're doing it wrong. Oh, that's so cringe, so cringe.
Speaker 1
[00.25.48]
Don't tell me how to do my job.
Speaker 2
[00.25.51]
Yeah, yeah. Anybody who's been audited can can appreciate that one. All right. So that's it for the photo. So so the last couple of ones Jordan Creager cool on off site after our morale events.
Speaker 1
[00.26.05]
If you've got if you've got kind of a mix the leadership in there and y'all are drinking. It's a weird situation I'm going to go ahead and say cringe. But if it's a family friendly fun of like bowling, you know, Topgolf, something that, you know, very PC, I'm going to go ahead and say, cool. All right. I'm building a bet.
Speaker 2
[00.26.25]
Okay. Yeah. I'll go, I'll go with that. And right now, Jordan has recently taken on more of a safety role and and her site that she's working at. So Jordan, this one's for you. Cringe. You're cool on the stupid buzzword of Power Zone just simply described where someone should carry a box which is just right in front of them.
Speaker 1
[00.26.49]
This one makes me cringe because of the amount of times I have said Power zone to people in the past 30 days. I cannot count the number of times, but I have said power zone, and every single time I point to my shoulder and I point to my mid-thigh, and every single time I ask somebody, where is your power zone? And they can not repeat that back to me. It just makes me more sad and the light gets dimmer and dimmer.
Speaker 2
[00.27.20]
Why is it such a why is? Why is it such a cool word power zone or something? It's literally describing nothing where you should
Speaker 1
[00.27.29]
just lift the box close to your box.
Speaker 2
[00.27.32]
Hold the box where you should. Power. Power. Power zone. That should be like from a cartoon in the 90s. All right. Last one. And there's no. And you. You must be honest on this. You
Speaker 1
[00.27.42]
cannot lie. Okay. Right. Okay. All right.
Speaker 2
[00.27.44]
Okay. Cringe. You're cool on five S. Oh, that's that's a cringe for me I, I appreciate I appreciate the mechanism of organization and, um. I just I don't understand why does there have to be tape there? If a trash can goes there, why does there have to be tape there? I did it, the trash is supposed to go there. Why can't. Why can't we just put the trash can there? Why does it have to have any. Yeah. Not all that
Speaker 1
[00.28.18]
out about not having a,
Speaker 2
[00.28.20]
I don't know, five, five, five baskets people. It's people all worked out. So
Speaker 1
[00.28.25]
touch so and don't even get me started. If you get a lean professional. Well, that's not what my best is. Yes, I know, but you all have made it to the point where that's what it is.
Speaker 2
[00.28.36]
I know I feel like we could do a whole show on that.
Speaker 1
[00.28.39]
We could. I think my light just got dimmer.
Speaker 2
[00.28.44]
All right, guys. Well, that that's a that's about all we got for episode number five at the Tiger team. We appreciate everybody tuning in and following along and help spread the word. If you like the Tiger team stuff with humor and sarcasm, all with things going on out there and the distribution world, we appreciate it. Uh, Jordan, thanks for for for joining again. You think you come back for episode
Speaker 1
[00.29.07]
six? I think so, Ben. I think this is a good outlet for my salt. So hopefully the audience loves it. If we did you do the show.
Speaker 2
[00.29.19]
All right. Good deal. Good deal. All right. Well so look for a look for episode six, uh, next month. And with that take care everyone. Thank you for tuning in again to the Tiger team. We'll see you next time.
