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We're on a 3 stage job. They're doing a cleaning of all the workstations so we're there to move out chairs, computers and other boxed cubicle contents. That's done on Friday, cleaners come in, we're back on Monday to put everything back. We could have come back Sunday, but the customer didn't want to pay the extra charge/didn't want to come in. We could have come in extra early, but the customer didn't want to get up that early. So we're in at 8:00 Monday morning.
This really isn't a problem because nobody starts rolling in until 9:00, and nobody actually starts working until long after that. But of course these people that I typically see socializing in the lunch room well after 9:30 and 10:00 pick this day to not only show up early, but to also diligently get right to work. Their computers and chairs are already at their desk so they can do 99% of their work, but of course they can't do a thing without that vital document that packed in the boxes that I'm still distributing and placing.
That was stage 1. Through it all I've got the co-ordinator riding my ass, because somehow stopping us and telling us that we need to go faster is going to speed things up. At the end, she asks if there's anything that can be done to speed things up in the next phase. I let her know three things: 1) place a label on each station, 2) use a numbering system for everyone rather than the people's names, and 3) get people to follow the instructions and place labels on the sides of boxes, NOT on the lids.
I need to explain each suggestion to her:
1) it's a lot easier to look for a label on the station than to track it down through the floorplan
2) we don't know where Bob sits, if it's numbered we can easily just count along
3) we can't see the labels when boxes are stacked if the label is on the lid
Even though she asked for my suggestions, she really seemed to get her nose out of joint because I dared to imply that she didn't do everything perfectly. She thought that because we do this all the time, we should be able to read a floorplan. Yes, of course we can, it's just more efficient if the stations are labelled. She really hated suggestion 2 because of the monumental task of coming up with a numbering system and why do we even need it. We don't know Bob, we have no idea where Bob sits, we've got to look at every station until we finally find his name. It doesn't have to be an elaborate numbering system, just start at 1 and go from there. It's a lot easier when we're looking for station 10, 10th one in, right between 9 and 11. She gave a look telling me that she still disagreed so I knew this was going nowhere. Surprisingly, she actually saw my point with the labels on the lids.
We're in for stage 2 and I see that none of my suggestions were followed. I quickly fixed the first problem by labelling the stations myself, but then it's right back to the inefficiency of wandering around trying to find a name rather than just going straight to a number. Plus with all the labels on the lids, we're handling each box individually rather that just grabbing a whole stack at once. And once again, I've got the ever helpful ass-riding to drag me down.
Stage 3, ditto. This time I think she was planning on putting in a complaint because of how "slow" we were.
I don't want to pretend like I know everything, for some people, maybe using names would be easier, but for us, the way we do things, we need a numbering system. When you come to someone and ask what they need to make things better, whether you agree or not, just follow the suggestion, it's obviously the way we're used to.
This really isn't a problem because nobody starts rolling in until 9:00, and nobody actually starts working until long after that. But of course these people that I typically see socializing in the lunch room well after 9:30 and 10:00 pick this day to not only show up early, but to also diligently get right to work. Their computers and chairs are already at their desk so they can do 99% of their work, but of course they can't do a thing without that vital document that packed in the boxes that I'm still distributing and placing.
That was stage 1. Through it all I've got the co-ordinator riding my ass, because somehow stopping us and telling us that we need to go faster is going to speed things up. At the end, she asks if there's anything that can be done to speed things up in the next phase. I let her know three things: 1) place a label on each station, 2) use a numbering system for everyone rather than the people's names, and 3) get people to follow the instructions and place labels on the sides of boxes, NOT on the lids.
I need to explain each suggestion to her:
1) it's a lot easier to look for a label on the station than to track it down through the floorplan
2) we don't know where Bob sits, if it's numbered we can easily just count along
3) we can't see the labels when boxes are stacked if the label is on the lid
Even though she asked for my suggestions, she really seemed to get her nose out of joint because I dared to imply that she didn't do everything perfectly. She thought that because we do this all the time, we should be able to read a floorplan. Yes, of course we can, it's just more efficient if the stations are labelled. She really hated suggestion 2 because of the monumental task of coming up with a numbering system and why do we even need it. We don't know Bob, we have no idea where Bob sits, we've got to look at every station until we finally find his name. It doesn't have to be an elaborate numbering system, just start at 1 and go from there. It's a lot easier when we're looking for station 10, 10th one in, right between 9 and 11. She gave a look telling me that she still disagreed so I knew this was going nowhere. Surprisingly, she actually saw my point with the labels on the lids.
We're in for stage 2 and I see that none of my suggestions were followed. I quickly fixed the first problem by labelling the stations myself, but then it's right back to the inefficiency of wandering around trying to find a name rather than just going straight to a number. Plus with all the labels on the lids, we're handling each box individually rather that just grabbing a whole stack at once. And once again, I've got the ever helpful ass-riding to drag me down.
Stage 3, ditto. This time I think she was planning on putting in a complaint because of how "slow" we were.
I don't want to pretend like I know everything, for some people, maybe using names would be easier, but for us, the way we do things, we need a numbering system. When you come to someone and ask what they need to make things better, whether you agree or not, just follow the suggestion, it's obviously the way we're used to.
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