Monday, May 17, 2010

BloggeRhythms 5/18/2010

The past few entries have gotten me thinking about things learned in the "street" so to speak, or outside the general curriculum taught in even the best of business schools. And that brings me to an educator I met, Skippy McDonald, while working at Harborside Terminal in Jersey City, NJ

Harborside was the largest single warehouse building in the U.S. back then, a million cubic feet. This was the early sixties, and I was hired as Assistant Supervisor. My chores included assuring workers stayed busy -on ordinary days more than a hundred of them, all teamsters- and that freight moved in and out as quickly as possible.

My unit, one of Harborside's four, was designated 2 North. The unit's primary customer was Maxwell House coffee, and included other brands such as Bliss and Yuban among other assorted items from other clients. A hundred trucks or so would drop off or pick up cases of coffee daily at 2 North's twenty-five doors, and aside from the vehicle loading dock there was an indoor railroad siding, accommodating five standard box cars.

Crews working the rail side were assigned four to a car, and the cars were "drilled" in and out by the railroad four times a day, morning, mid-morning, noon and lastly mid-afternoon. At day's end, each worker had accounted for loading or loading one rail car. And, in one of those cars, on one of those crews, was Skippy McDonald.

I didn't know him very well at first, in fact knew just about nothing about him at all. I was aware he did manual labor all day, was quite large (picture Hulk Hogan with dark curly hair, younger and bigger, no suntan) and as far as I could tell, minded his own business, but that was about it.

Very shortly after I was employed, my immediate boss, the warehouse supervisor himself, was terminated for some transgression or other. In the ensuing hullabaloo I was asked to "temporarily" fill in until a replacement was brought on board. Under the circumstances, I did my best to learn what I needed to know as fast as I possibly could. The result of my efforts was that I held that job myself for a year and a half, then went on to something else.

Very early on in my new situation, Skippy McDonald approached me one day and said something like "Mike, I think your only real interest is that these freight cars get handled properly and on time, and that it really doesn't matter how that gets done. So, if I can guarantee that will happen, do you mind if I send one of the guys out during the day to run an errand for me?" I couldn't see the harm in trying this out at least, so I agreed.

It turned out that Skippy was a minor league bookie and back then there was no such thing as OTB. So, he'd send someone from a crew down to Monmouth Racetrack to make and collect on bets. As far as I was concerned, I couldn't care less about Skippy's sideline, because he kept that whole rail siding running like a top. And, it was a perfect business deal, both parties got exactly what they needed at a fair price.

Now, the truck dock itself was a very busy place indeed, in fact much busier than the rail head, freight rocketed back and forth on lift truck forks, vehicles continually moved in and out, people busily handled freight everywhere you looked.

The out-bound freight was handled by lift truck operators bringing pallet-loads of items and placing them on the floor of waiting forty-foot trailers -today called eighteen wheelers.

A "checker" stood by open trailer doors, verifying the number of palletized cartons before the truck driver began stowing the freight away. Most of the experienced truckers would review a "Bill of Lading" before the loading began and ask that the items be brought in a particular order to properly distribute the weight. Typically, when the load was laid out that way, there'd be two feet or so of empty air space above the cartons stacked on the trailer's floor.

On one particular day a truck driver approached me saying he'd been "shorted" a carton of coffee. The carton in question contained 48 two ounce jars of instant Yuban coffee. Therefore, he was absolutely refusing to sign off on the Bill of Lading and further told me in no uncertain terms that he planned to stay parked at my dock until he got what he wanted -said carton of Yuban- no matter how long it took.

I was flabbergasted and flustered, not knowing what to do at all. What was more, the checker who'd counted the load was Bob White, the most reliable performer that existed. And then, a brainstorm hit me.

I suggested the driver unload the Yuban in the trailer and Bob White and I would watch while he carefully recounted. Then, if he was right, my guys would do the reloading for him. He refused flatly, saying he'd already handled all that coffee once, and wasn't about to do it again. And beyond that, the Yuban was way up in the trailer's nose, the very first items he'd loaded, in fact. I said, "Then I'm sorry sir, but I don't see any other solution because my checker insists the count is correct."

Now, this driver was a big, beefy guy, certainly able to do some bodily harm. He took a step or two closer to me, practically nose to nose, and reiterated that he wasn't going to be satisfied until he got his case of coffee, menacingly insinuating that he was sure I understood what he meant. And then, the guy just disappeared. One moment he was screaming epithets in my face, the next he was gone. Poof! Like magic.

As it turned out, it wasn't magic at all. Because unbeknownst to me, Skippy McDonald had overheard the fracas and quietly came up behind me, then he'd reached around, grabbed the driver and tossed the guy like a rag doll into the open space above the trailer load of coffee. Then Skippy slammed the trailer doors closed, secured them tightly and began hammering on the closed doors with his fists. Then he raised his voice and asked the driver if was ready yet to recount the load.

Within minutes the driver said he was ready to sign the Bill of Lading because he'd crawled up to the front of the trailer and was able to do a recount himself. And gee whiz, he'd found out that Bob White's arithmetic was perfect after all.

Now, I don't know if warehouse management is taught in business schools today, about how to get things done right. But if there's a text in use on the subject, I think there's a very good chance that Skippy McDonald wrote it.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

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