What can brown do for you? Pen 9...the beginning

So I left off with me and the rest of the guys in the back getting banished sent to load side. I wanted to go back to the sort aisle so bad. In fact, the 1st week I was on load side, my pickoff didn't show. So I had to go up and be the pickoff. Now I didn't know anything. So I would stop the belt or send the package to the wrong loader. I knew that they would need to bring Robert M. out to run the belt because he knew it like the back of his hand. They did and I was able to go back to the aisle for the day. Well, that didn't last because I was pulled into the Bill's office (current building manager) and was told to find another pickoff and train him becuase I couldn't let this happen again.

It was at that point when I realized I was going to be out there for awhile. So my next plan was to show just how bad the back missorted. I thought " they moved me because of missorts, so let's show them that nothing has changed." Made sense. So I did daily tallies of the missorts, which ranged from a couple hundred to a thousand one day (found out they had like 3 new sorters up there that day.) Tom (who was the new unload/sort full-timer) would look at them and ask what they were. I told him that most were from Rancho (pen 8) and he said that those were transverse missorts. I said earlier that if the packages didn't get pushed to the far side that the packages could go to the wrong belt. Now when I was in the sort aisle no one called this a transverse missort. It's kinda like a mortal sin and sin...it's all a sin to me. SO Tom scoffed at the problem and then pointed out the number of Upland (pen 9 my belt) packages that were going back to the sort aisle. This day, there was close to 100 packages that were gathering in the back.

That's when I realized Shon (my full timer) was right when he told us, "take away their excuses, then they have to listen to you."

I had to find out why/what packages were going to the sort aisle. So I did something that was never...literally never done in the building. As a load side sup, I turned off the return belt...just the bottom belt actually, not the sort aisle one. It was unheard of. My loaders were pissed and in the beginning Shon was a little worried. You see there was a time during the sort, usually 15 -30 minutes before the sort ailse was clean, that we "put up divertors". This would allow the bottom belt to run, but no packages go to the sort aisle. So when we put up divertors, I turned off my belt. Now I was training a new pickoff (Mark), so when he was done on top he came done and moved around all the packages on the bottom belt. It was a mess the first couple days, but (once again not joking) there were like 5 packages on the bottom belt. It was a thing of beauty.

That was when I realized load side isn't that bad, but you need to be willing to try something new. I ended up doing some other "new" things, but I will get to those later.