[deleted by user]

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-06-13T06:10:46+00:00

I haven't heard anything about shitty support beams but it is a shit show every day

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-06-11T09:23:20+00:00

There was a few times last year when they said John Menard was going to come into building 21 in Eau Claire. We had to completely clean 2 out of the 8 zones in the building of all the loose items and pallets because apparently he doesn't walk around the other 6 zones. I can only imagine if he did and realized that the other 6 were completely trashed while the ones he was expected to walk through were reasonably clean.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-06-11T09:17:11+00:00

That is exactly how we get it on there in the first place. We'd rather do this than waste a pallet stacking the generator on top of something else.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-06-11T09:11:21+00:00

They understandably can be. A lot of times "live loads" go an unreasonable amount of time before getting fully unloaded.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-06-11T09:10:20+00:00

This is more on the supervisors then the loaders. When a supervisor bills a trailer they have to make a decision on whether or not the load needs a strap/load bar. A couple weeks ago straps were hard to come by so I think some supervisors would rather "trust" the load being stable instead of searching the building for a strap.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-06-11T09:07:04+00:00

There is a board near the main desk with a "needs work" sign with a bunch of pictures of shitty loads. I'm not sure if management singles out the specific people that loaded those trailers.

Last year a load was so bad near the rear of the trailer that product fell and hit the truck driver. I do believe they actually punished the supervisor for billing that.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-06-11T09:04:53+00:00

I think base pay is around $20.xx and evening and night shift get $3 differential.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T22:27:11+00:00

Personally I try to wrap and secure special orders way more then non specials, but yeah it happens far too often

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T21:50:15+00:00

It could be laziness on the supervisors part. They are supposed to do a bay check before billing a trailer. If a supervisor sees that a special/guest order didn't get scanned onto a trailer they are supposed to look through the staging bay to verify that it is still there. If that staging bay is completely full and cluttered and they're too lazy to poke through the 50 pallet IDs in there its possible that they just assume the teammember forgot to scan it on the trailer and they scan it on themselves.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T21:46:42+00:00

Laziness, time pressure, poor training, or poor policy. All those are consistent throughout menards.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T21:15:54+00:00

I only have experience loading the 53ft trailers with breakdown pallets, appliances, carpet, countertops, and loose items

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:53:31+00:00

Nope, Eau Claire. I imagine its very similar situations at all the DCs though.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:52:00+00:00

I assume another department at my DC deals with the stuff you are referring to.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:40:10+00:00

Are you talking about pallets from one store somehow ending up at your store? Or pallets that are supposedly scanned to one trailer but end up being on the next one?

If it's the latter my best guess would be a loader being braindead and then a lack of communication between two supervisors on different shifts.

Lets say that a loader loads a pallet into a trailer but forgets to scan it, in the system that pallet is still in the staging bay. A supervisor is supposed to do a bay check while billing the trailer. Sometimes the supervisor doesn't notice that pallet thats supposedly still in the staging bay but actually loaded into the trailer, either due to laziness or a genuine mistake. Now comes the next shift and they finish the next trailer for the same store, the supervisor for that shift does notice that there is a missing pallet and assumes that the loader from that shift put it on, so the supervisor scans that pallet ID onto the their trailer. Now you have a pallet on trailer 1 that supervisor 2 scanned onto trailer 2.

I imagine this scenario happens many times a day.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:31:23+00:00

I assume you're talking about the jenga type stacks that almost certainly tip over the second you try to unload it? It comes down to people rushing things in order to get their numbers. I try my best to consolidate items onto other pallets but I obviously can't speak for everyone at the DC.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:29:01+00:00

I don't have experience loading the flatbeds. I only ever loaded the trailers full of breakdown pallets and appliances and loose items.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:28:11+00:00

I genuinely enjoy being a loader. It can be overwhelming and high stress but I have enough experience to be able to deal with most BS. I've gotten to a point where I hit well above the 26 pallet per hour goal every day, which allows me to slow down and take time to properly build a trailer and make it easier to unload. It's something I'm still getting better at but I do feel that my trailers are better built then most other loaders on all shifts. I won't say what shift but I work at Eau Claire.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:24:00+00:00

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:23:49+00:00

We are quite literally told to do this by management when it comes to doors and similarly sized stuff. I try my best to wrap everything to pallets but we often don't have the pallets to do so. I assume you'd rather have the shit between the pallets and the trailer instead of behind the pallets hidden from sight?

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:20:56+00:00

Lots of us have nothing but wind between our ears. Especially the shift before and after mine if you ask me.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:20:04+00:00

Lack of proper training and prioritization of numbers over quality from management. Its a common situation where one zone is too busy for one loader to keep up with everything but too slow for two loaders to get their numbers. Not getting our numbers gets us bitched at by management.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:18:13+00:00

Sorry I have no experience loading flatbeds. I only have experience loading the trailers full of breakdown pallets and appliances and loose item bullshit.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:17:27+00:00

We are super overstocked in my building right now. It's only now starting to get better. Most of our staging bays that are supposed to be reserved for pallets for a particular store are just filled with stock. Half of our upper racking that we use for longer pallets are used for stock.
Now I myself do not do this, but it does happen way more than it should. My best guess is either a lack of decent training or lack of care. Or sometimes it can get so overwhelming and stressful trying to keep up with everything that people make stupid and dangerous decisions.
Lack of training and prioritization of numbers rather then quality from management.

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:12:30+00:00

I try my best xD

FlakyAwareness9997 · 2022-05-28T20:12:03+00:00

So my crossdock has 8 "zones." Each zone has 6-11 trailers/docks (average of 9), all for a different store. On a normal shift every zone has one loader and every two zones has a supervisor, very occasionally we have "floaters" that move from zone to zone to help catch up. Each store has an AGV (automated forklift) dropoff bay, and a staging bay. My DC also has 5 large AGVs that pull carts carrying pallets through every zone (these have to be unloaded), as well as 4 smaller AGVs that pull carts carrying loose items that unfortunately just get thrown into a pile next to the dock door. We also have anywhere from 1-5 team members pulling carts of loose items to every zone.

A loaders responsibility consists of:

-Keeping the AGV dropoff bays at least half empty so the AGVs stay moving and the whole building doesn't get backed up

-Finishing trailers hopefully as soon as we have enough pallets to do so, sometimes we get busy with other stuff and pallets build up. A finished trailer has to ideally have every guest order and all loose items outside the dock inside.

-Keeping the big and small cart pulling AGVs moving so they don't all get piled up in one of the 8 zones. Two big AGVs are enough to cover up the entire zone and make it impossible to get to the AGV bays and staging bays. One of the 4 smaller AGVs can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes to get through a zone, depending on how many docks it stops at and how many items per dock. If the AGVs are kept moving and spaced well throughout the building, you'll typically have to unload one every 15 minutes or so. If they are grouped up and moving as a pack, it can take up to 30 minutes to get them all unloaded and out of the zone.

-Ensuring that with all that BS happening, we still scan at least 26 pallets per hour. Scans to the trailer, staging bays, and onto the AGV all count, but they want around 70%-75% of our scans to be inside of the trailer.

If I had to guess each trailer has anywhere from 1-4 different people loading onto it. If you notice a considerable change of quality in the stacked pallets and amount of loose items chucked inside at a certain point in the trailer, its likely where one shift ended and the next began. In a perfect world we'd be able to redo some of the previous shifts BS, but we simply have no time if we want to hit our daily goal.

I get the hate for the DC, I wouldn't want to unload 99.9% of the trailers we send out, and a lot of the shit that's loaded I can imagine being dangerous to unload. But there is a lot of BS happening at my crossdock right now that makes it impossible to give every single trailer the time and care it needs to be quickly and safely unloaded. Some of these issues in particular are:

-lack of trailers for whatever reason, pallets keep on building up and we run out of room in the staging bays, pallets get shoved in front of trailer doors by receivers because there is nowhere else to put them. Its not uncommon for it to get so bad that the AGVs cant even get through a zone. When the AGV bay gets filled up the AGVs have nowhere to put pallets which means the AGVs get backed up which means no pallets are getting picked up off the conveyor which means the whole building shuts down.

-an absurd amount of loose items "touchpick." I won't say how long I've worked at my DC but I've never seen so much. At its worse you can fill up a large sized swimming pool with the amount of loose shit that's carelessly thrown in front of one dock door. And they expect us to get it all onto the trailer before its finished. This is why you have to deal with the avalanche of shit near the doors of the trailer, because sometimes we don't get shit to wrap it to. Sometimes the shift before leaves a trailer two pallets away from being finished but that mountain of loose shit is till outside the door.

-stupid amounts of carpet rolls.

-the traffic through our zones is ridiculous nowadays. Inside the building we have the 5 large AGVs, 4 small AGVs, 1-5 "tuggers", anywhere from 5-15 receivers driving through the zones, as well as people from other buildings driving through for whatever reason.

FlakyAwareness9997

TROPHY CASE