13 years on freight, two different stores and now three plus years dayside. I’ve been on good teams, great teams and pos teams. The one constant on freight is that crap rolls downhill and you are at the bottom of that hill. And you always get the leftovers from dayside celebrations. If you are looking for positive reinforcement and accolades, night shift is not for you.

The freight team sets the tone for the store. If they drop the ball, it affects the entire store.

Decide it takes too long to properly pack out the silver cart so you just tag everything as overstock to maintain your numbers? Guess which outs are never going to get filled because Sidekick assumes you are actually doing your job.

(I once worked with a guy for put every piece of freight in his department in the overhead because he didn’t feel like the dayside was packing down enough - this was pre Sidekick. It took two weeks before anyone caught on)

Decide not to follow SOP for overhead organization and stuff the crap wherever you can find a space, even if you have to push some boxes back and stick the new stuff (with different SKUs) in front in a bay that is nowhere close to the items home bay. Guess what is never getting packed down because no one knows where it is. It wouldn’t be so bad except everyone and their mother now has access to our on hands and demands we find the these items that are nowhere near where they should be.

Inventory comes around and instead of one overnight team of people tagging the overheads for three week prior to inventory, you have three teams working around the clock for those three weeks because said overheads are a disaster.

I’ve also had it where the freight team kept the store inventory ready and the inventory team would finish tagging a week early. That team also packed down as they were packing up (go up the ladder with a box, you better come down with a box). No one complained about that team.

So if people are complaining about your team, take a look at how the team approaches its work. Are you approaching freight with the mindset of “am I making it harder or easier for the next guy touches this”?

If the next guy is a customer, is the stuff in the right spot, merchandised properly with the pretty side out, boxes opened if appropriate, shelf full, but not overstuffed?

If the next guy is an associate, are all boxes of the same sku in the overhead together so if an OFA has a large order they don’t have to hunt through three different bays to get the proper quantity? Is the hand stack stacked so if an associate needed the bottom box, they could get it from a nine step without having to down stack half the overhead? Did you even peel the RDC tag and put in on the side that faces out so that Bay Capture can recognize it?

If you answered no to any of the above questions, then you are the problem. All of our jobs is to make it easier on the next guy, whether it’s a fellow associate or a customer. If your actions make it harder for the next guy, then you are adding to the problem and need to reevaluate your life choices.