It Shouldn't Happen In Logistics, But It Does

By Bob Jefferies

With tales of Chicken Throwing, Freezer Cricket, Door Slamming and Underwear. These true stories show what life is really like in transport, distribution and all areas of logistics. The business of logistics brings up new challenges everyday in ways that boggles the mind. With staff, managers and senior managers finding ways to corrupt the working process and either find ways of grabbing an extra ten minute tea break or creating new forms for the managers to make up. Hopefully this book will show what happens when control is lost and procedures are not followed. And some very stupid mistakes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291957167

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It Shouldn't Happen In Logistics, But It Does

It shouldn’t happen in logistics, but it does!

978-1-291-95716-7

©      Copyright 2014 by 36shortstories. All rights reserved. This book or any portion may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without express written permission except for the use of quotations in a book review.

About this book

Like any new sport, to read this book, it is best to open a page and jump in. Don’t stay too long before getting out, have a drink and rest for a while. 

There is no real structure to this work only a vague direction, the type country folk give when being asked how far to the next village. It may be over the hill or it could be three miles.

I personally find the book is best placed in the toilet, read on a commute or used when waiting for someone and the mobile is not picking up a signal.

All the stories are real but I have purposely made them slightly vague. No manager or company goes into one of these situations knowing where it’s going to end.

We all try our best and when stories come out it is all a bit of a shock. But in the whole, most staff want to do a good job, managers do want to make a positive difference and senior managers are under immense pressure to improve the performance, working relationships and come in under budget.

Hopefully you will read the stories, understand that it will never happen to you but keep an eye open just in case.   

BobJ

How to get ahead in Warehousing – Introduction.

Not many of us dream of a life in large sheds dealing with overweight forkies or drivers who want to be somewhere else. Most of us fall into the profession as a happy accident and try to make the best of it and pretend we know what we are doing. Like most I dropped into warehousing and suddenly it all made sense.  

*

I was lying around between two rows of peepers, green ones. My friend and I were smoking Israeli cigarettes and he was debating the idea that I should be around at his for seven and that we should both bring beers. Joining us would be Paul and Lucy, the new couple who had arrived a few days before.

It was already dark and cold as the heat was disappearing from the sand. I pulled on a hoody, wore it up and headed over to Lewis’s. He was a large South African who had been blown up several times in Angola. The fall out was that he stuttered and had spent the last four years living between Greece and Israel. We were both in the later, picking peppers for M & S, drinking vodka and smoking cheap fags.

Paul and Lucy joined us. We handed over some cans, threw a pepper on the fire and discussed going home. My life was about to change completely. For the last six years I had worked on the principle that I was destined to be a rock star, travel and dead before I was thirty. Six months before it had been made completely obvious that I was not going to be a rock star and thirty was only five years away. It was time to go away and think it through.

On this back story I had ended up in Israel picking vegetables and earning one pound per hour. Paul was and still is an Australian. This was his final stop before going home. He had spent the last year in Earls Court and worked in a warehouse in the North West of London. When you get back, pop in there, they are desperate and will take on anybody.

It was a passing comment but several weeks later when I arrived back at Gatwick and down to my last five pound note, his words came back to me.

*

After sleeping at a friend’s I woke early and caught the tube to Wembley. At the gatehouse I explained that I had come for a job and was given a pass and directed to the offices. Inside I explained to another security guard the same thing. He pointed to the lift and told me to get out on the third floor. I tried to make it clear that I did not have a job, but was in fact looking to start one. He took no notice and repeated his instructions.

Upon the third floor I discovered Brian, over worked, grey and nails bitten down. Fill in this form, can you start now? One of my guys has not shown up and I’m a person down. I shrugged and read the form. It was an on-site agency, this was the registration and the money was five pound per hour. I was happy.

Handing over the form he ready it briefly, signed it and then gestured for me to follow him down the back stairs. We arrived at a tall cardboard box where he sized me up and pulled out some overalls, they were blue and had been worn before, several times. The last person needed a shower.

My role for the day was to remove clothing from plastic bags. They were on a rail and the rails stacked back thirty or so deep. For the next few hours I pulled the plastic off them and after finishing each rail I pushed it to the side and grabbed another.

Just after twelve, as I was beginning to see the end, a lorry arrived and the rails were added too. No one spoke to me or each other and everyone else was Indian.

After finishing my shift at six, I popped up to see Brian, he sat back with a cigarette and asked if I could stay on for a second shift as he had been let down again. What the hell, I had nothing else on and would need the money, beside they had a discounted canteen and the food was good.