Not good enough yet, but getting better

MikeJ

TB Veteran
Credits
188
Hi guys,
What would a day or two be without a post on truckingboards?

Well this week I was able to knock my hours down from last week. I'm trying to work a 40-42 hour work week, that's what they want that's what I am trying to give them. I think this week I was at 45 or 47 hours need to get to 42 to get the route. So I'm not really very far. Actually this week wasn't bad Wednesday I couldn't believe it I did like 22 stops in like 6.5 hours I was done with my route at 10 minutes to two.

Actually I got legitimately screwed this week by 3 customers, who I had to go back to, to collect. Today that happened I was getting close to done with my route, and I was getting to the final 5 stops and one of my stops they said to me "Oh no managers are here you'll have to come back at 2:00pm" I was very annoyed at that and kind of let it show, I pretty much said "Seriously?"

Any how I also had another customer try to refuse half there order and make a big mess of it all. I told them "Look I can take, back some of this, but you want me to take back a lot and that's going to be a problem, you've left me no choice I have to call up stairs and the sales department is going to have to come out and straighten this all out."

Well they don't want to talk to the boss, so they quickly said "Never mind, will take it."

Not that some of these customers are innocent a lot of them like to play games and over order and play pick and choose, which is abuse of the system and eventually they do get dealt with on that level. The other thing too, is I can't count on the sales department to want to run out of there way to deal with some $150 dollar a week account that generates that salesmen, $1.00 of commission a week.

Any how it was very nice and cool the past couple days here in Cleveland, made working outside nice.
Here's some pictures:







I was waiting for a customer on Wednesday to open the door so that's my truck




That's at one of my stops in the flats.





 
It really cooled down here too, and you are good enough already, or were you talking about the weather?
 
No I was talking about me ha-ha! :LMAO: I guess they want me to shave off about 3-5 more hours. I mean I'll try my best, I've made progress.
 
I mean the rank I'm at now, I guess theoretically they could keep me at, it would literally be no skin off there back, I guess. I never thought about it like that, technically I am full time right now and I do have insurance and benefits.
 
Not good enough? 22 stops in 6.5 hrs is damn impressive!

Just remember that once you hit a certain level, even if you had to go to some crazy extreme to get that number, that's the watermark they're going to expect YOU to hit day in and day out regardless of what everyone else is doing. Have an off day or week and they'll be all up in your business. Been there, done that. Now when it comes to performance I don't try to be the superstar. Top half is good for me...better than avg, but not so fast they keep piling on more, and not so slow I'm in danger if they ever decide to cut some of the bottom guys.
 
Not good enough? 22 stops in 6.5 hrs is damn impressive!

Just remember that once you hit a certain level, even if you had to go to some crazy extreme to get that number, that's the watermark they're going to expect YOU to hit day in and day out regardless of what everyone else is doing. Have an off day or week and they'll be all up in your business. Been there, done that. Now when it comes to performance I don't try to be the superstar. Top half is good for me...better than avg, but not so fast they keep piling on more, and not so slow I'm in danger if they ever decide to cut some of the bottom guys.

Wednesday the stops I had all had payment and there were no major issues, but that's one thing I am worried about, I can't hit that all the time and a lot of the times these customers waste more of my time then anyone else. The company wants us on a 42 hour work week, the thing of it, is, is that's like impossible, because it seems once a week there is a warehouse loading issue and I don't know the whole thing seems a little off to me on their end. If paying by the hour in that county is such a problem for them, then I don't know why they don't just cut the hourly pay and go to a here is your flat rate we increased it by $20-$30 then what an extra board driver would make and here is your commission pay we upped that a little too.

I bet that's next, there only paying hourly+commission in one county. I don't know if there trying to be competitive with other distributors, actually where I work we have the best pay and benefits, as far as beer distributors go. However there are some other things that for many have outweighed the pay and benefits. That's the other thing to many people have transitioned out of that county into the none hourly paying counties.

Where I work I swear it doesn't matter even when my times were more and I was in the lower middle half (I've moved up to the middle now) they still added stuff on. I swear they just look at it more or less like "Steve is heavy so will take 5 off of him and ad those 5 to Brian") Usually when they ad stops on they seem to ad them on in 5s.

That's the other thing too, a light day for me is 18 stops I haven't had a day under 18 stops in a while. Now it seemed this week by the end of the week the case count was starting to drop off a tad. We were in my opinion to busy for to long and eventually the bottom had to fall out well it fell out this past week, I had two days in a row where I had customers rejecting entire orders because they had no money to pay. I had one customer light on money and tried to send to much of their order back, it can only be up up up for so long usually if there's going to be a catch somewhere.

That's the other thing to, the case count drops and now they can ad on more stops because there is more room.
 
Management will always want more, no matter what the goal. Do your best but don't compromise safety and professionalism for their numbers.

Guardrail
 
Today I had 22 stops from start to finish I got it all done in just a hair under 9 hours. I clocked out 7 minutes before I would have had a 9 hour day.

I was trying my best of course my first stop was all jumbled up duplicate order with some stuff added on the whole thing was kind of off stupid, my patience for these ridiculous sales errors that happen because the office isn't paying attention is starting to get on my nerves, unfortunately I do believe that, that is all part of the game, and I have to live with it.

The way beverage sales works is different a tad then food, like when I worked at the restaurant we would have our clip board and sheets and we would go and look at our inventory our selves and place the order over the phone our selves.

The beverage companies don't work like that, at least not really for the stores, for the restaurants and bars they do, but I don't get a ton of trouble out of the bars and restaurants because the bars and restaurants our placing the orders them selves. It's these small and mid sized c-stores that cause all the trouble, the sales staff goes to those stores snoops around asks a few questions...sometimes and I swear makes up some order, that goes along with whatever outlandish quota that needs to be met.

Or like at places like 7-11 between the sales staff, the store managers who don't communicate with each other and 7-11's automated ordering system that a lot of store managers don't like you get 3 different things phoning in 3 different orders and then they make some kind of frankenstein order out of those three things.

At that point you would think who ever has that account would say "Whoooa, no stop stop stop, wrong, call up the main man at the account and say, hey Jim said order 5 of what ever, you said order 3 of that same thing and the automated system said order 6 of that same thing, what do you want me to do?"
 
Management will always want more, no matter what the goal. Do your best but don't compromise safety and professionalism for their numbers.

Guardrail

Very good advice, all of us should listen, I think we all have looked the other way at things in the name of hurry up. The older and more experienced I get the less willing I am to do that, I still have my moments where I need to turn the burner up a bit, I am forcing myself to think beyond that brain lock we get when we toss safety out the window, as for professionalism, I won't compromise on that ever, I don't care what the powers that be think of us regarding being labeled unskilled labor, I am a professional, period.
 
Well today I had 22 stops got out on time, but the way things went not really anything I could help, I had 3 customers who were not where I needed them to be when I needed them to be there, that screwed the day. Ended up needing an 8 hour day on 22 stops and ended up getting a 10.70 hour day. I had one customer who doesn't like to get to there place until noon. Then I had a private club very very disorganized that was totally befuddled that I was even there even though last week they refused delivery because they could not pay once again very disorganized I asked the owners of this club when the bar manager was going to be there, they replied with "We don't know, when ever she feels like it is when she comes in and we don't have her telephone number here written down any where." This caused me to have to call the office get approval to drop the stuff there and let the sales department handle the rest so I had to telephone wait for approval drop the stuff, call customer service tell them what was going on. I can't win with stupidity like that. Normally none of this would bother me, but because I am trying and so far failing as hard as I can to get my hours down to get the route, but the problem is my job success is contingent on other people doing there job, and I can't do my job when 3 out of 22 stops can't be bothered to even show up for work. Like my third stop today and she actually pretty good, so I give her some slack, but I count on her to be there at 8:00am when I roll into the lot, when she's not there like today I have to skip go do another and drive back that all wastes time, but I'm not going to sit there either till kingdom come waiting for someone to show up and the way the route goes eventually I get further and further away from that stop so, I'm not going to come back way later in the day can't and won't plus the lots fine to navigate with out cars in it, but with cars in it, it's kind tight and hard to navigate.

So I had two today I had to skip over and repeat. The one stop though there is no excuse for, they just mosey in there at noon or maybe fifteen minutes after pretty much when ever they want, what's stupid about that is I have two other regular stops in that neighborhood bars that open around the same time yet at 10:00am-11:00am the owners and trusted side kicks are there ready to take deliveries.

There is no excuse for some of this blatant laziness, schedule your beer deliveries for the same day and that way when Tuesday comes so you have to get out of bed at 8-9am to bad. All I'm asking is that these people sacrifice (sacrifice, what's that?) one day a week of their lives that's it. My day is busy I have 22+ stops some days and some of them worth a lot more money as well, my company nor I have time for this stuff. Other bars in this neighborhood have people there at 10:00am sometimes because they know the beer trucks show up around that time.

I'll tell you what if it was my beer distributor I would tell that private club that I have that only orders $150.00 worth once every 8 weeks or more, I would tell them, "We've had way to much trouble with you in the past your not worth it, you want our beer then you have to come to Will Call and pick it up, your to disorganized for us to deliver to. You don't have money, your not there when you say your going to be there, you waste our drivers time, we do double the work to server you, your simply not worth it, phone the order in and pick i up at the Will Call door, as far as were concerned you have lost your delivery privileges."

By the way do you guys have any customers like that, where there so disorganized and so inefficient that the company told them, you have to come and pick it up your selves we can't deliver to you, your just not worth it?
 
I had a bar that didn't open until 4pm. Every week I'd call to explain I wasn't going to wait on 15cs and still have to drive across town to make more stops. Usually I'd be told to drop it at another place they own. Finally the bartender gave me her # so I just call her and she meets me.
Fun part: zero communication here so I can't get anyone in the office to add that # to the paperwork so that it's available for another driver in case I'm sick or on vacation. I finaaly gave up, the Friday before I'm off I give the # to another driver and ask him to give it to whoever's on my route that day.
 
The manager gave me her telephone number so now I can call her. So today I had 19 stops got back to the yard before 2:30pm. Then I got snagged checking out something with some stop last week I don't even know what they were talking about, I can't remember a delivery last week. I remember the place and everything was there, so I don't know what there trouble is. I think it was a glitch on our end. I don't know how I can get 42 hours a week as it sits right now I'm at 30 I just can't do it, it always seems like there is something that goes wrong sometime during the day I try as hard as I can, but between the people not being where they are supposed to be and who knows what other time wasting nonsense pops up I can't do it. Best I can do is maybe 45 if all goes well.
 
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