I enjoy writing about the experiences and anecdotes that make up everyday life, and since working in the warehouse at LL Bean is so different from anything I've ever done before, I wanted to try and capture what it's like. So if -- like me -- you enjoy learning about other things through the experiences of others, then please read on. Enjoy!
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At LL Bean we are in full swing now with peak season. Working Mon thru Sat is mandatory, and often Sundays are added too when needed (voluntary, but encouraged for anyone who can make it). On top of the 6-7 days/week, we also often work early starts and late stays when the workflow warrants it (you come in before your shift usually starts and work past the usual end time). Often it seems like I live at the warehouse now since I arrive in the dark and leave in the dark (in Maine it gets dark around 4pm this time of year). Mornings start early at our house these days, since my alarm goes off around 4:30am so I can make it to Bean by 6, and on the weeks when Tim is out of town (which is often), getting all 3 dogs and myself ready for the day (especially when my car needs to be dug out from the 10 inches of snow like we had this morning) -- well let's just say life gets pretty interesting! The early starts and late stays are not required but encouraged during the heaviest ordering days.
When I started in September, our orders were something like 75,000 things to be picked each day -- but at our update last Saturday they predicted the orders on Monday will be 260,000. Wow. As our workflow leader says, "Busy, busy."
After working as a regular picker for a few months like the rest of the seasonals, they've now trained and moved me to what is called "tagging." It's sort of like picking, but instead of picking items that are dumped right down the conveyor belts to go directly to shipping, we pick items where customers have requested some type of special service, such as monogramming or alterations.
I must have gotten my units-per-hour numbers up enough to warrant the new training, and since I'm still there, I guess that means I'm doing okay, although I'm pretty sure there are plenty of pickers out there who pick faster than me. However, where I seem to thrive is in the accuracy department. And for tagging work, accuracy is much more important -- because if we send something to be altered or monogrammed and we've picked the wrong thing, that costs the company money and the customer delays in getting what they ordered in the first place. I still do regular picking when they have an especially tight goal and "all hands" are needed, but I do prefer the tagging and am glad to be learning something new.
Since tagging is more varied it means we walk even more, and according to my pedometer I've increased my coverage from averaging 6-8 miles per day to now somewhere between 10-12 or more (my personal record so far is 20 miles in one day, but of course that was a 10-hour shift -- the maximum they will allow us to work at this pace).
In addition to the walking, taggers also do quite a bit of lifting since we work with heavy plastic bins that ride on the flatbeds we push around the warehouse as we collect merchandise to be altered in some way. When our cart is loaded with full bins and it's time to deliver the bins to their designated spot, that involves lifting they loaded bins from the flatbeds to the rolling racks or pallets where they are staged until special services (monogramming or alterations) is ready for them. Walking, lifting, bending, squatting, climbing -- it's all required to get the job done and it's a great workout.
Doing this 6-7 days per week at this pace (often up to 10 hours/day when we have a tight goal) could be considered grueling I suppose -- but I prefer to think of it as getting a great workout and getting paid for it! After all, I'm getting the same toning and aerobic exercise that many people pay a gym or personal trainer huge fees to obtain. I think my friend Kat described it well when she commented that it was "exercise disguised as a job." Pretty accurate.
And I have to admit, at 45, I feel pretty good when I see that I'm keeping up with those 20-something waifs who are much younger and perhaps a score or two lighter than I am (or perhaps that should be "a stone or two lighter"?). Each day I feel a bit stronger and I can zip up the stairs to the time-clock a bit faster. It's a good feeling.
And since I worked my way through high school and college working retail at Sears and dealing daily with customers, it's a great change of pace to work instead more in the "background" -- in the warehouse where I focus just on the merchandise and my other team mates.
And speaking of team mates, I really like the "environment" that LL Bean creates for its employees. Teamwork, personal responsibility, and working together is huge, and anyone who can't cut that doesn't last very long unless they are willing to learn how to be part of the team. It's great and it makes everyone's lives so much easier when we all work together and do our 50 percent.
And to me the entire process of warehouse operations is fascinating (of course I've always been easily entertained, but there you go!). I enjoy walking and pushing my cart from one end of the 650,000-sf warehouse to the other. I enjoy the sound of the hiss and clack of the conveyor belts overhead as they move merchandise-laden boxes to the "replenishment" department. These are the guys (because the job seems to attract mostly men) who lift those heavy boxes off the conveyor belts and load them onto their flatbed carts, and then wheel the carts around the warehouse looking for empty slots in the racks where new merchandise can go to replace a box emptied by the pickers (replenish the stock, hence the name). Often the empty slot is well over their heads, and the boxes they lift weigh 50-75 pounds each -- and they do this all day. These guys tend to be young and brawny, but I've been amazed to see a few men that are much older than me and not too beefy doing the same job. Pretty impressive. If it wasn't for the replenishment guys, we pickers wouldn't be able to do our jobs because of course there would be nothing to pick.
I also enjoy pushing a loaded shopping cart over to the manual singles packing line on the far west side of the warehouse. These are the items that must be manually packed, so for those items we don't empty our hoppers filled with merchandise onto the conveyor belts which angle down through large openings in the 2nd floor (where pickers work) to go to automatic packing on the 1st floor below. The manual packers on our floor carefully pack the items for shipping. The packing job tends to attract many of our workers who have immigrated here from other countries. Maine has a large per capita population of immigrants who have relocated from Somalia or Afghanistan and other countries. And it's great to stop to chat with the Somali women who work at the packing stations in their native dress of flowing robes from head to toe. I'm not sure I would want to be a packer because where we walk all day, they mostly stand in one place to do their jobs. But it's great to see how many opportunities there are out there for people who are willing to get out there and find them -- and I've been very impressed with the work ethic of the immigrant men and women who work at Bean and elsewhere. Those of us born and raised in the US take so incredibly much for granted, and I am reminded of that every day.
I enjoy the hummmmm of the computerized sewing machines that the monogramming staff uses, and when I deliver merchandise to their staging area -- it's interesting to see them standing behind their stations wearing their safety glasses and focusing on their work as they monogram some extra large tote or Santa Sack for some unknown person out there. Very cool to watch.
And being a person who's sewing abilities are limited to the lose button, I'm in awe of those men and women working in the alterations area. They seem to effortlessly command their high-tech machines to sew that custom hem in that pair of unfinished pants or specially tailor that dress shirt that someone may have bought as a gift for someone else.
As in any production or warehouse environment, safety is a concern because of course there are many ways to get hurt -- especially if you get careless. For instance, if I forget which step I'm on when I climb up the ladder attached to my hopper and step down too soon, falling backwards from a few feet in the air onto the concrete floor is a real potential risk. And this time of year when our aisles are a freeway of heavy rolling carts meeting at intersections and going in all directions, and aisles get narrower as they become filled with stacks of empty cardboard boxes waiting for recycling, or carts filled with merchandise staged for packing or altering -- then if we don't all look where we're going all the time -- we could hurt ourselves or someone else pretty easily.
But I think this is where LL Bean shines, because they stress the "just deal with it" attitude, and they expect everyone to take care of things a little at a time, instead of letting things pile up and becoming a problem because no one wanted to bother with dealing with it along the way. They expect everyone to clean up their own messes, so to speak, and not "leave the mess" for someone else or "pass the buck" onto someone else. What a concept eh? I identify with that "just deal with it" mentality, so for me, life at LL Bean -- and other places where people share that same "it's everybody's responsibility" attitude -- I find life there is pretty good.
And along with the team environment and the exercise I get each day, probably my favorite thing about working at Bean is that it's a great way to see all the cool stuff that LL Bean sells. Did you know they sold field coats for dogs? How cool is that? Considering we have 3 dogs I'm especially intrigued.
Pickers are also in a great position to know what is popular with LL Bean customers this season. Perhaps our information may not be as scientific as that from the marketing guys with their charts and graphs, but if you pick scores and scores of the same thing day after day, then you get a pretty good idea of what customers like. From what I've seen, the field coats are pretty popular (both for dogs and people); and right now I'm picking lots of robes, pajamas, Santa Sacks, stockings, and those famous LL Bean "boat and tote" bags for monogramming; so I'm guessing a lot of people will be getting those this Christmas. When I pick in the shoe area, I seem to pick lots of those "Wicked Good Slippers" and those cool backpacks on wheels for kids. And next to the boat and tote bags we pick so often, those personal organizers (like toiletry kits that hang) are probably the single item I pick the most. I think I bought Tim one of those about 10 years ago for his travel, but now they have many more sizes and colors than before; so apparently, lots of other people bought them too.
So that's it for this installment of "a day in the life of a picker/tagger". I hope you enjoyed the journey with me and I'll try to write again as things evolve. Until then, have fun doing whatever it is that you do everyday!
Cheers! cy
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