Saturday, April 10, 2010

What can Brown do for you?: You might be a good supervisor, when you...

UPS liked to move people around a lot, that's why we got a new building manager like twice a year. Chuck replaced Lou and had some different philosophies about the sort. Lou tried to fix the missorts, where as Chuck didn't care how the packages got out of the trailers as long as they were unloaded it was fine by him. Chuck didn't care about missorts, he felt it would be easier to move them on load side than moving them back to the sort aisle.

Due to this, Chuck actually liked my missort carts. So one day when our new division manager, Mike G., was in the building he decided to take him by my belt. Now Mike G. was of the philosophy that no package should ever just be sitting; a package should either be in a feeder, on a sort belt, or in a package car. So when Mike saw the packages on the different carts he did a double take.

I explained to him what each cart was for and when we moved them to the different centers. I told him that by doing this we could keep the belt on and not worry about missorts from the sort aisle. He just took it all in and then told me "You know might become a good supervisor when you stop blaming the sort aisle for your problems. Missorts aren't a problem in this building and you just use them as an excuse. I don't ever want to see these carts again."

I looked at him and just said ok. We finished the day and went down clean. The next day I went in to work already pissed by what he said. SO I decided to just let the day die by not moving one missort. I told my employees that we weren't going to touch one missort and let them pile up at the back of the belt. The employees in the back were worried because they knew they would be buried by break. I told them that I was told missorts weren't a problem, so we shouldn't have to worry about them. They knew where I was going with this and were 100% behind me. I told them the only way this would work is that if we made sure 0 of the packages at the end of the belt were ours.

Within an hour the back of the belt was a mess. Chuck and John (Shon's replacement) came up and were like "What is all of that?!?" I gave a sort of curious look and said "You know I'm not sure, they aren't ours but they can't be missorts because missorts aren't a problem in this building." They both knew what I was doing and sent a bunch of people over to start moving them.

Mike showed up saw the mess and looked at me. I just kind of gave this look and he walked away. Most of the building was pissed because their missorts came late, like they used to. Chuck really hated it because he didn't think missorts were a problem either and that the load side should just "put it away". Mike G. then started asking him how he was going to fix the missorts. This was probably the beginning of the bad relationship with me and Chuck.

Looking back I know it wasn't the most mature thing to do, but that was the problem there. You had to do something extreme like this to get your point across.

The next day, I was told to put the missort carts back up on my belt.

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