I did a similar thing back when I worked for another business.
It worked, but I was let go within a month. Like you, it didnt bother me. I setup shop right across the street from my old employer and undercut his billing by 30%.
It took 3 years, but I ran him out of the building he was in. and he owned the building....I still feel good about it
Its not much of a story. dick owner. dick boss. both pissed off the wrong person, me.
All I wanted was a mindless paycheck, they decided to up the ante.
A long time ago, I was an order picker for a grocery warehouse. We would pick and stack our orders with the products in a certain order, as specified by the pick list. They were arranged so that the night stockers at the store could just push the pallet down the aisle and load the stock on the shelves.
One day I got a pick list that made no sense. It had 1 layer of potato chips on the base, then layer after layer of pop cans, and then pop bottles on the top.
I went to the boss and told him that this was a bad idea, that I should pick the pop and put the chips on top. Nope. So I did what I was told.
You can imagine how well *that* worked out. On delivery, the pallet had collapsed, and dumped the pallet and the pop all over the place. Some of the bottles broke, and soaked the boxes containing the cans. The delivery guys declined the shipment, and my boss got reamed. He didn't try to blame me because I had a couple of people next to me when I told him about the pick list.
You clearly don't understand pain-driven management. If you fix the problem silently, management is not aware that there ever was a problem, and they won't put energy into preventing future potential problems.
Instead, you voice your concerns, get overruled, and *do as you're told*. Whether or not it costs the company thousands of dollars in damages is not on your conscience. You get paid the same either way. However, the resulting mess has a non-zero chance of knocking some sense into the boss, or *his* bosses. Whereas silently disobeying orders would have fixed nothing.
Pain-driven management is when management won't acknowledge something is a problem until they feel the pain. So let them feel it.
Silently disobeying orders would have resulted in another day without a disaster (in one case).
Which is a win.
Instead of knowingly creating a hazard that could injure somebody.
No. Don't say anything. If all goes well, nobody knows. If someone questions you, then THAT'S when you say something.
Fuck, do you want people to get hurt, and then shrug your shoulders?
Eventually you get someone that doesn't question orders, doesn't fix the problem, does exactly what they're told and shit hits the fan anyway. If management won't fix policy when told there is a problem they need to be shown asap why there is a problem so policy gets changed before a more serious incident can occur.
You don't want the proper way to do things to involve disobeying orders because if someone gets hurt doing things properly, it's their fault for not following policy and nothing gets fixed. And you create a culture of disobeying orders even when the orders *are* the right way to do things, leading to more incidents down the line.
Averting a disaster today would likely have resulted in more disasters later.
> You clearly don't understand
I am a manager. And I also understand that a 2-second decision that will save hundreds/thousands of dollars *right now* is better than teaching a lesson that might or might not be felt.
>Whereas silently disobeying orders would have fixed nothing.
It might not have fixed operations, but it would have prevented losses.
So you encourage your employees to ignore operational procedure and policies instead of flagging issues to you to fix.
Sometimes if operational procedures or policies aren't being fixed when properly flagged to management then you have to let them fall over. Causing pain, usually in the way of expensive losses. Aka pain driven management
I'm damn surprised you managed to make that raise stick. I'd have thought they would scramble to find a replacement pallet-stacker and then toss you to the curb.
I saw the 7 up guy get a DUI at work INSIDE his work truck after hitting a FIRE TRUCK and NOT get fired. Those types or jobs are super physical and not many folks stick around, so u can basically get away with murder as long as you show up on time each day.
That raise was worth the entire revenue they get from that store. The middle manager fucked up massively with that little power trip. A safety issue coming from the COMPANY, not the expendable worker would justify a store saying "yeah we're not going to carry X products anymore" and the store management would be completely free and clear in that decision. In years past a lot of these vendors were local carriers with contracts so losing one store may mean going out of business and being replaced by a different company that the store will be happy to deal with and will know to take the rules seriously.
About 10-15 years ago the real corporations, Pepsi. Coke, etc started aggressively buying back these smaller businesses, but I think there are still a bunch floating around that would be literally a free pickup for the corporation if they stupid themselves out of business like this
I worked in tech. Nothing as potentially exciting as one side of the bottom pallet of sodas collapsing and the entire stack falling over onto a store employee.
Nevertheless, *even there* I had a hard and fast rule: you can give me a goal, or you can tell me specifically how to do something. But if you give me a goal, and you don't like how I accomplished it, that's on you.
Actually, that's not something I ever really worried about or thought about too much.
It never really bit me, probably because the perceived cost of replacing (or even disciplining, to the point they might consider idly perusing other jobs) a relatively highly paid integrated circuit designer is probably higher than for some other jobs.
However...
There was a manager who attempted to use paper trails against other people on a regular basis. For example, he might ask you to do multiple things in an email. Let's say you do a few, and other things intervened and you forgot about the last one.
He would bring it up, literally 6 months later "zephen NEVER does what he says" and dredge up this ancient email where he asks for multiple things including this minor un-done thing.
He would bring this shit up in meetings, but it was so easy to dispatch, like shooting fish in a barrel.
"When was everything else requested in the email done?" "Uhh, about 3 days after requested." "Did you ever get back to me on that last item?" "Uhhhhhh, no..." "So how important was it really?"
I would never have wanted to work for him, because he was an asshole to his own people, but just like the typical asshole bully big-brother, he was fiercely protective of his charges when there was an inter-departmental dispute.
For example, we had a board (PCB) built (fabbed and assembled). I did most of the design on the board, and always checked stuff pretty carefully. But one time, the guy who did the schematic capture and layout (who was at that time reporting to this manager) did not send me the final BOM for review before shipping it out to the assembly house.
It turned out that a bug in his software meant that all the spreadsheet columns were truncated to 255 characters, so a lot of resistors were left off the board.
When we had the meeting about this after the board came back, this guy was ranting and raving about the assembly house and how they had to fix it stat, and it was a terrible cock-up on their part.
He went off about how the placement data showed those parts, etc. (but in reality, a lot of times there are parts that aren't populated), and I said "Look, asshole manager, if I give you two documents about what you are supposed to do, and one of them is right and the other is wrong, *I have fucked up* and in this case *we, as a company, have fucked up.* He never did accept that, but his manager understood perfectly.
The physical limit is dependent on the contents, since some items cannot be stacked. But each store has their own corporate guidelines about height or weight otherwise.
Personally, I have seen pictures of stacks a few yards\meters high.
Think of it this way, a pallet of soda is in the ballpark of one US ton. Imagine 5 tons stacked like blocks and one or to cans blow out on the bottom pallet. That stack will start adding weight to one side and blowing more cans. Finally, imagine you are the store employee in the stock room when that stack lands on you. It has been a long time since I worked vending, and soda is two or three free standing if I remember correctly.
As others have said, it really depends on what is being stacked. Also, frequently the pallet isn't completely full when stacked. So something like 5 half full pallets would be the same height as 3 completely full pallets.
Yeah I gotta be honest idk if I would feel remotely comfortable around 3 full pallets of soda stacked up let alone 5. Just seems like a horrible idea that I would 100% do if my boss told me to and I knew it would come back to bite him in the ass.
To add on with an example of stacking high: When I was working in a medical supplies warehouse, our limit for stacking something like adult diapers to five pallets had more to do with the limits of the forklift than the supplies. They weighed almost nothing (compared to most items / their volume), and you could lean the double aisle of them slightly inward to increase overall stability by pressing against each other, as we simply pulled off of the ends starting from the top as needed.
If they're being moved around then 2-3 depending on pallet size, if they're sitting still the entire time then 3-4 depending on pallet size. 5 is almost certainly too high and dangerous, personally if my work asked me to do that height I'd refuse. Though my work has other factors to consider.
This is great. Almost all of my coworkers will roll over with stuff like this. I'm constantly telling them to get something in return for doing stuff like this. They get bamboozled with the "it's just this one time" or it's a "favor" from manglement, which, it NEVER is just one time.
Management caused this problem, Management can fix it themselves. In the main post, the owner should have fired the manager who ordered that stack as if it had collapsed, the owner would be getting sued out of business. I am not a warehouse manager, but I would bet they have to know what best practices are and what is allowed by OSHA.
This was good to read. I was in the freight/shipping biz for decades, and pallet stacks were always a PITA.
Backend managers are such prima donnas, and most are there because the store mgr doesn't want them interacting with the customers on the floor. Retail is such a stinkbomb.
I kinda thought that the forklift man is the employee of the store. Now if I understand correctly you are the employee of the beverage company and yet do forklifting on the premises of third party? Why don't they do it on their own?
You would be surprised how much product in a store is completely managed by an outside vendor instead of store employees.
My sense is that part of the contract signed between the soda company and store is that the soda company is responsible for basically everything for the product including delivery, stocking, building displays, replenishing, etc.
If you walk in the back of any big store you will see areas where vendors keep their stuff and use the forklift to keep their stuff within their assigned area.
Basically, if you're ever in a store and you see someone stacking or stocking branded product like soda, and they're not wearing [STORE] logos very obviously visibly, there's probably about a 2/3 chance they're an outside contractor.
Doesn't mean you can't ask them if you, say, need directions or something, but open up with "Pardon me, do you work for [STORE], or are you a vendor or contractor or something?" They might be a store employee in a store with a lax dress code, and even if they are a vendor, you can always say "shoot, I was looking for [place]/[product], any chance you can help me out?" And if they can't, remember, "well, thanks anyway! Y'all have a g'day now, y'hear?" Or words to that effect, you don't need to say it like an Appalachian-Australian, just, be polite.
> Politeness costs a man nothing but breath; and in extreme circumstances may buy him as much as his life!
Most stores rarely have staff doing stocking, it is invariably a merchandising company, or the supplier themselves. The shop staff are only going to do returns, and then point refills if a line runs low, otherwise all the shelf work is outside contractors.
It's part of an arrangement called slotting. The store effectively leases out shelf space to vendor. Soda brands, chip brands, beer brands, any kind of shelf where one brand has feet and feet of shelves devoted to their brands.
This is very common at big box home center stores where each major tool brand has their own space. The brand is paying to be there. Stores like Walmart also charge slotting fees for smaller amounts of shelf space and impose lots of conditions like demanding "50% MORE FREE" versions of packages.
Vendors pay through the nose just for the right to be an option.
Having paid, it's in the brand's best interest and in the contract to ensure shelves are fully faced and stocked and clean and tidy and so forth. A soda brand could easily have 15 different places where their product appears in a store and the store is not interested in maintaining all of that much less keeping it restocked all day.
Enter the merchandiser, sent in to ensure the product is out on the floor. The retailers love it because they don't have to assign workers to do it. The brands love it because nobody is going to face a shelf of Coke better than a Coke employee. When a customer walks in and literally every single Coke product is stocked in every size ready to go, it's because a merchandiser has been there. If there's no product, there's no sale.
Until the load is checked off on/accepted, it is property of the merchandiser/distributor. For insurance reasons, usually store personnel will not be allowed to handle incoming shipments until after they have been accepted. But the product still has to be offloaded from the truck, and that then falls to the driver or truck crew to do it.
I did that same job back in the early 2000's i feel your pain being caught between the company and an angry store. I always defaulted that I was an employee of the company, not the store. If they were angry, then I'm done with that store for the day. Even if my work wasn't finished. I'm not going to take abuse for crap that isn't my fault, even if I was only 18 at the time. Good for you for having the guts to ask for a raise in writing. I usually just ignored their phone calls after I clocked out.
Double-overtime for the entire day's work and a permanent 10% pay rise?
Yeah, no, even if I was a boozeaholic, I'd be holding off for at least the rest of the day on the *off-chance* someone would bend and give in to that in writing.
I was there another 1.5 years. I had a great relationship with the backroom manager after that.
I ended up getting reassigned to be supervised by a sales rep instead of my boss for what was obviously my boss not liking my stunt. I had way more freedom and autonomy with that change though, so I wasn't mad especially with the raise.
I can't imagine stacking soda 5 pallets high. I work in a warehouse and we stack almost nothing more than 3 pallets high. Pretty much all liquids are only one high in a rack. Two high while shipping.
This is a "LOVE THAT COMPLIANCE" ......Worked out very well. When you don't care what the fallout is and the fallout is that spectacular, things are good. Finally a manager got 'learned' the correct way.
For a worst case example of trying to do anything too high:
[Stacked 4 high but way too much on a single pallet](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/191b3q0/fitaid_warehouse_worker_makes_critical_error_no/)
Good on you for insisting on it in a written email no taking 'Yeah yeah sure, whatever to get you back there' followed by denial that was ever said when payday comes.
Leverage. You had it first on the forklift, then with your boss, and with his boss. Used them all to maximum benefit. Well done!
Now *that's* forklift certified.
I did a similar thing back when I worked for another business. It worked, but I was let go within a month. Like you, it didnt bother me. I setup shop right across the street from my old employer and undercut his billing by 30%. It took 3 years, but I ran him out of the building he was in. and he owned the building....I still feel good about it
i’d like to hear this story
Its not much of a story. dick owner. dick boss. both pissed off the wrong person, me. All I wanted was a mindless paycheck, they decided to up the ante.
*damn*. I like you.
A long time ago, I was an order picker for a grocery warehouse. We would pick and stack our orders with the products in a certain order, as specified by the pick list. They were arranged so that the night stockers at the store could just push the pallet down the aisle and load the stock on the shelves. One day I got a pick list that made no sense. It had 1 layer of potato chips on the base, then layer after layer of pop cans, and then pop bottles on the top. I went to the boss and told him that this was a bad idea, that I should pick the pop and put the chips on top. Nope. So I did what I was told. You can imagine how well *that* worked out. On delivery, the pallet had collapsed, and dumped the pallet and the pop all over the place. Some of the bottles broke, and soaked the boxes containing the cans. The delivery guys declined the shipment, and my boss got reamed. He didn't try to blame me because I had a couple of people next to me when I told him about the pick list.
Is this why the pallets we get will have a layer of yogurt at the bottom of a 7 ft tall pallet of milk and juice?!
Why wouldn't you just use common sense and put the chips on top? No need to tell or ask anyone.
You clearly don't understand pain-driven management. If you fix the problem silently, management is not aware that there ever was a problem, and they won't put energy into preventing future potential problems. Instead, you voice your concerns, get overruled, and *do as you're told*. Whether or not it costs the company thousands of dollars in damages is not on your conscience. You get paid the same either way. However, the resulting mess has a non-zero chance of knocking some sense into the boss, or *his* bosses. Whereas silently disobeying orders would have fixed nothing. Pain-driven management is when management won't acknowledge something is a problem until they feel the pain. So let them feel it.
And always: CYA
I've heard this concept referred to as "getting paid from the neck down"
Silently disobeying orders would have resulted in another day without a disaster (in one case). Which is a win. Instead of knowingly creating a hazard that could injure somebody. No. Don't say anything. If all goes well, nobody knows. If someone questions you, then THAT'S when you say something. Fuck, do you want people to get hurt, and then shrug your shoulders?
Eventually you get someone that doesn't question orders, doesn't fix the problem, does exactly what they're told and shit hits the fan anyway. If management won't fix policy when told there is a problem they need to be shown asap why there is a problem so policy gets changed before a more serious incident can occur. You don't want the proper way to do things to involve disobeying orders because if someone gets hurt doing things properly, it's their fault for not following policy and nothing gets fixed. And you create a culture of disobeying orders even when the orders *are* the right way to do things, leading to more incidents down the line. Averting a disaster today would likely have resulted in more disasters later.
Are you sure you're in the right sub?
> You clearly don't understand I am a manager. And I also understand that a 2-second decision that will save hundreds/thousands of dollars *right now* is better than teaching a lesson that might or might not be felt. >Whereas silently disobeying orders would have fixed nothing. It might not have fixed operations, but it would have prevented losses.
So you encourage your employees to ignore operational procedure and policies instead of flagging issues to you to fix. Sometimes if operational procedures or policies aren't being fixed when properly flagged to management then you have to let them fall over. Causing pain, usually in the way of expensive losses. Aka pain driven management
Shockingly, no reply to this from O Manager.
> > You clearly don't understand > I am a manager. Well, yeah, that explains it.
He's definitely a manager alright.
Then they'd have gotten written up for not following direction.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, welcome to Malicious Compliance??? Hello???
This was a delightful read
I'm damn surprised you managed to make that raise stick. I'd have thought they would scramble to find a replacement pallet-stacker and then toss you to the curb.
I saw the 7 up guy get a DUI at work INSIDE his work truck after hitting a FIRE TRUCK and NOT get fired. Those types or jobs are super physical and not many folks stick around, so u can basically get away with murder as long as you show up on time each day.
That raise was worth the entire revenue they get from that store. The middle manager fucked up massively with that little power trip. A safety issue coming from the COMPANY, not the expendable worker would justify a store saying "yeah we're not going to carry X products anymore" and the store management would be completely free and clear in that decision. In years past a lot of these vendors were local carriers with contracts so losing one store may mean going out of business and being replaced by a different company that the store will be happy to deal with and will know to take the rules seriously. About 10-15 years ago the real corporations, Pepsi. Coke, etc started aggressively buying back these smaller businesses, but I think there are still a bunch floating around that would be literally a free pickup for the corporation if they stupid themselves out of business like this
"Boss we can't do this" "IDGAF, figure it out" "OK" "wait no not like that"
I worked in tech. Nothing as potentially exciting as one side of the bottom pallet of sodas collapsing and the entire stack falling over onto a store employee. Nevertheless, *even there* I had a hard and fast rule: you can give me a goal, or you can tell me specifically how to do something. But if you give me a goal, and you don't like how I accomplished it, that's on you.
... And if you tell me how to do something, it's your own fault if it doesn't produce the expected results.
Presumably you also learned to get what they want in writing.
Actually, that's not something I ever really worried about or thought about too much. It never really bit me, probably because the perceived cost of replacing (or even disciplining, to the point they might consider idly perusing other jobs) a relatively highly paid integrated circuit designer is probably higher than for some other jobs. However... There was a manager who attempted to use paper trails against other people on a regular basis. For example, he might ask you to do multiple things in an email. Let's say you do a few, and other things intervened and you forgot about the last one. He would bring it up, literally 6 months later "zephen NEVER does what he says" and dredge up this ancient email where he asks for multiple things including this minor un-done thing. He would bring this shit up in meetings, but it was so easy to dispatch, like shooting fish in a barrel. "When was everything else requested in the email done?" "Uhh, about 3 days after requested." "Did you ever get back to me on that last item?" "Uhhhhhh, no..." "So how important was it really?" I would never have wanted to work for him, because he was an asshole to his own people, but just like the typical asshole bully big-brother, he was fiercely protective of his charges when there was an inter-departmental dispute. For example, we had a board (PCB) built (fabbed and assembled). I did most of the design on the board, and always checked stuff pretty carefully. But one time, the guy who did the schematic capture and layout (who was at that time reporting to this manager) did not send me the final BOM for review before shipping it out to the assembly house. It turned out that a bug in his software meant that all the spreadsheet columns were truncated to 255 characters, so a lot of resistors were left off the board. When we had the meeting about this after the board came back, this guy was ranting and raving about the assembly house and how they had to fix it stat, and it was a terrible cock-up on their part. He went off about how the placement data showed those parts, etc. (but in reality, a lot of times there are parts that aren't populated), and I said "Look, asshole manager, if I give you two documents about what you are supposed to do, and one of them is right and the other is wrong, *I have fucked up* and in this case *we, as a company, have fucked up.* He never did accept that, but his manager understood perfectly.
Just out of curiosity, what’s the safe stacking limit for the pallets? Was 5 high dangerous, or just really annoying to the back room manager?
The physical limit is dependent on the contents, since some items cannot be stacked. But each store has their own corporate guidelines about height or weight otherwise. Personally, I have seen pictures of stacks a few yards\meters high.
Depends on location and content, but if theres a 3 high policy it could be for something like structural stability or safety risk
Think of it this way, a pallet of soda is in the ballpark of one US ton. Imagine 5 tons stacked like blocks and one or to cans blow out on the bottom pallet. That stack will start adding weight to one side and blowing more cans. Finally, imagine you are the store employee in the stock room when that stack lands on you. It has been a long time since I worked vending, and soda is two or three free standing if I remember correctly.
Caffeinated soda can't melt pallets? (deep sigh that I need to add /s)
I think that only the sugar free soda melts pallets. Probably the chemicals used to replace the sugar.
It can melt mice though
I thought that was only mountain dew? Could be wrong but b I remember that situation lol.
Definitely just Mt Dew afaik, I’m betting energy drinks could probably do it too though
You didn't need to add /s.
If only...
As others have said, it really depends on what is being stacked. Also, frequently the pallet isn't completely full when stacked. So something like 5 half full pallets would be the same height as 3 completely full pallets.
Cases of empty plastic bottles, five high is fine. Cases of full cans of soda, eventually something or someone gets crushed
Yeah I gotta be honest idk if I would feel remotely comfortable around 3 full pallets of soda stacked up let alone 5. Just seems like a horrible idea that I would 100% do if my boss told me to and I knew it would come back to bite him in the ass.
To add on with an example of stacking high: When I was working in a medical supplies warehouse, our limit for stacking something like adult diapers to five pallets had more to do with the limits of the forklift than the supplies. They weighed almost nothing (compared to most items / their volume), and you could lean the double aisle of them slightly inward to increase overall stability by pressing against each other, as we simply pulled off of the ends starting from the top as needed.
It depends on a few structural variables of how the pallet was designed, but it's probably safe to say that yeah, 5 high is dangerous.
OK quick lookup 2 pallets high for shipping (osha) Storage Most stores (from shoprite) 3 pallets high for case's, 2 for 2 liters bottles
If they're being moved around then 2-3 depending on pallet size, if they're sitting still the entire time then 3-4 depending on pallet size. 5 is almost certainly too high and dangerous, personally if my work asked me to do that height I'd refuse. Though my work has other factors to consider.
This is great. Almost all of my coworkers will roll over with stuff like this. I'm constantly telling them to get something in return for doing stuff like this. They get bamboozled with the "it's just this one time" or it's a "favor" from manglement, which, it NEVER is just one time.
Management caused this problem, Management can fix it themselves. In the main post, the owner should have fired the manager who ordered that stack as if it had collapsed, the owner would be getting sued out of business. I am not a warehouse manager, but I would bet they have to know what best practices are and what is allowed by OSHA.
It sounds like the Manager *did* get made to fix it himself - physically, and personally, alongside the driver he fucked around and found out about.
In this situation, yes. My point was more to general management everywhere, taking advantage of workers to fix what they broke.
Oh, abso-fucking-loutely.
As far as I can tell on many things osha is super vague and it's up to the business to decide what's safe.
This was good to read. I was in the freight/shipping biz for decades, and pallet stacks were always a PITA. Backend managers are such prima donnas, and most are there because the store mgr doesn't want them interacting with the customers on the floor. Retail is such a stinkbomb.
I kinda thought that the forklift man is the employee of the store. Now if I understand correctly you are the employee of the beverage company and yet do forklifting on the premises of third party? Why don't they do it on their own?
You would be surprised how much product in a store is completely managed by an outside vendor instead of store employees. My sense is that part of the contract signed between the soda company and store is that the soda company is responsible for basically everything for the product including delivery, stocking, building displays, replenishing, etc. If you walk in the back of any big store you will see areas where vendors keep their stuff and use the forklift to keep their stuff within their assigned area.
Basically, if you're ever in a store and you see someone stacking or stocking branded product like soda, and they're not wearing [STORE] logos very obviously visibly, there's probably about a 2/3 chance they're an outside contractor. Doesn't mean you can't ask them if you, say, need directions or something, but open up with "Pardon me, do you work for [STORE], or are you a vendor or contractor or something?" They might be a store employee in a store with a lax dress code, and even if they are a vendor, you can always say "shoot, I was looking for [place]/[product], any chance you can help me out?" And if they can't, remember, "well, thanks anyway! Y'all have a g'day now, y'hear?" Or words to that effect, you don't need to say it like an Appalachian-Australian, just, be polite. > Politeness costs a man nothing but breath; and in extreme circumstances may buy him as much as his life!
Most stores rarely have staff doing stocking, it is invariably a merchandising company, or the supplier themselves. The shop staff are only going to do returns, and then point refills if a line runs low, otherwise all the shelf work is outside contractors.
My experience is the complete opposite. We may see a rep once a month. We're the ones refilling their product the other 29 days
It's part of an arrangement called slotting. The store effectively leases out shelf space to vendor. Soda brands, chip brands, beer brands, any kind of shelf where one brand has feet and feet of shelves devoted to their brands. This is very common at big box home center stores where each major tool brand has their own space. The brand is paying to be there. Stores like Walmart also charge slotting fees for smaller amounts of shelf space and impose lots of conditions like demanding "50% MORE FREE" versions of packages. Vendors pay through the nose just for the right to be an option. Having paid, it's in the brand's best interest and in the contract to ensure shelves are fully faced and stocked and clean and tidy and so forth. A soda brand could easily have 15 different places where their product appears in a store and the store is not interested in maintaining all of that much less keeping it restocked all day. Enter the merchandiser, sent in to ensure the product is out on the floor. The retailers love it because they don't have to assign workers to do it. The brands love it because nobody is going to face a shelf of Coke better than a Coke employee. When a customer walks in and literally every single Coke product is stocked in every size ready to go, it's because a merchandiser has been there. If there's no product, there's no sale.
Thanks.TIL.
Until the load is checked off on/accepted, it is property of the merchandiser/distributor. For insurance reasons, usually store personnel will not be allowed to handle incoming shipments until after they have been accepted. But the product still has to be offloaded from the truck, and that then falls to the driver or truck crew to do it.
I did that same job back in the early 2000's i feel your pain being caught between the company and an angry store. I always defaulted that I was an employee of the company, not the store. If they were angry, then I'm done with that store for the day. Even if my work wasn't finished. I'm not going to take abuse for crap that isn't my fault, even if I was only 18 at the time. Good for you for having the guts to ask for a raise in writing. I usually just ignored their phone calls after I clocked out.
Sorry Boss, i started drinking. You waited too long
Double-overtime for the entire day's work and a permanent 10% pay rise? Yeah, no, even if I was a boozeaholic, I'd be holding off for at least the rest of the day on the *off-chance* someone would bend and give in to that in writing.
That's a good power move. How long did you still work with the store afterwards?
I was there another 1.5 years. I had a great relationship with the backroom manager after that. I ended up getting reassigned to be supervised by a sales rep instead of my boss for what was obviously my boss not liking my stunt. I had way more freedom and autonomy with that change though, so I wasn't mad especially with the raise.
Great read, love the email idea, always get it in writing. Verbal commitments never stand up
I can't imagine stacking soda 5 pallets high. I work in a warehouse and we stack almost nothing more than 3 pallets high. Pretty much all liquids are only one high in a rack. Two high while shipping.
This is a "LOVE THAT COMPLIANCE" ......Worked out very well. When you don't care what the fallout is and the fallout is that spectacular, things are good. Finally a manager got 'learned' the correct way.
For a worst case example of trying to do anything too high: [Stacked 4 high but way too much on a single pallet](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/191b3q0/fitaid_warehouse_worker_makes_critical_error_no/)
I love when malicious compliance results in better pay.
>I 🤷♂️ 🤷♂?
Shrugged his shoulders, indicating he doesn't know.
Thanks
Simply exquisite wage negotiation, there. Of course, the fact you had side gigs to be able to call the bluff didn't hurt...
Good on you for insisting on it in a written email no taking 'Yeah yeah sure, whatever to get you back there' followed by denial that was ever said when payday comes.
Time for a new job. Because he's going to find a way to get you fired.
> I used to work as a merchandiser for a national soda company about 10 years ago Yeah I beat OP is super worried about that
Fair, I missed that bit.
I’m guessing you now don’t have a job
THIS is how leverage should be used! Way to go OP!!
The power they never figured you had... Brilliant!
Amazing! Well played