So, I’m dealing with a bit of a situation at work.  For those that know what I do, and it seems to be quite honest that not many people do, including some of my best friends in Beijing…. let’s just say for now that I make the business I’m working for more efficient.
This is essentially because I know everything, or rather a theoretical understanding about everything in the business and how all the little pieces fit together, and because of this I know the general strategy of how we should move forward and what kind of direction we need to focus on and what not.  I know that sounds general, but I can’t give away too much without me getting in trouble I think.

I DO work in logistics, so there’s a certain amount of understanding Customs and the systems and communicating with the I.T. back in Beijing to make sure we are developing the correct systems that keeps our company moving forward; but also in improving communication channels for the company, which I can assure you, being a Chinese company dealing internationally….is pretty difficult.

Basically though, the 4th quarter of 2016 is the peak season for us. It means that although there are development things we NEED to do in the office, there are a lot of things that is just making sure that normal operations are plodding along nicely.

So part of my job now also involves helping out where needed and kind of trying to improve things in a very general sense.   This means kind of directing the Customer service team where possible, trying to be the bridge between the ourselves and our sister company, and unintentionally learning about all the little problems going on in the warehouse.  Which means that inadvertently I am learning about Dutch work practices.

Let me say, whenever I’ve been in the Netherlands for a business trip, or even just working in Beijing I’ve often overheard Chinese colleagues say “oh yeah, but you know Dutch workers… what can we do?”   just kind of inferring that Chinese workers work much harder.

Which I kind of took as the general Chinese ethnocentrism that is generally equivalent to ‘oh yes, we are the best, all other cultures are bullshit, let’s give ourselves a pat on the back’

So obviously I was a bit resistant to this claim.  Even though I’m not Dutch, because there’s the general notion that Chinese people don’t like foreigners.  And so even though they say ‘Dutch’ they probably mean all foreigners.

Plus, Chinese workers have a reason why they cherish their jobs more, and that’s because there’s no social security backup.  If they lose their jobs, they don’t get money from the government to stay afloat; …. there’s none of that.

But still, in terms of efficiency, there’s many cases that prove they’re not the most efficient either.

That being said…… Dutch workers…. Oh my god.

To be fair, our Customs compliance manager has a wealth of knowledge and is fantastic at getting the company on the right track.

But the warehouse workers…. Bugger me.  It’s kind of surprising finding myself agreeing with the Chinese management.

Case in point, we’ve got 1 guy who signed a contract to work in the warehouse.  And the job is simple, let me assure you of that.  I’ve worked in a warehouse before and it’s not a difficult job, it’s just a physically exhausting job.

One part is sorting… you just scan a box, listen for a destination, and then put the box with all the other parcels going towards that destination.

The 2nd part is ‘Palletizing’ it’s just scanning and putting all those boxes onto a pallet and listening out to know if there’s any errors, like Customs not released or something.

You have to stack the boxes nicely on a pallet.  If you’re decent at Tetris, then this is an easy job.

And then there’s some other things, like moving pallets around, or whatever…or maybe unloading a truck with equipment that was designed to help you completely.

So 1 guy tells us that he can’t work in the warehouse anymore because ‘it’s too stressful’  or was that the words he used?
Maybe he said that he’s feeling too much anxiety or he can’t concentrate in the warehouse.

Can’t concentrate?   Dude… you’re doing one of the easiest jobs ever. WTF is so difficult about that?
Plus you signed a contract for working in a warehouse so if you didn’t think you could work in a warehouse, why would you find a job where you were working in a warehouse???
That’s just dumb.

Plus stressful? Anxiety?  Can’t concentrate???

You drive to work, I think you actually need more concentration to drive to work than work in the warehouse….. don’t give me that bullshit excuse.

So anyway, he used this bullshit excuse to say that he’s now sick.  ‘sick’.  And then the operations manager said, ‘ok, you know what come into the office and work,  because we’d rather you do something until the end of your contract rather than doing nothing’

So this guy tells me ‘oh this job is much better’

Yes but you weren’t hired to do this job, you were hired to do a warehouse job.  We need warehouse staff, and you applied for the warehouse staff job….so do your fucking job, or we fire you.

But of course this is what he really wants. (to be fired)
Because under Dutch law, if you quit your job, you don’t get anything from the government.  However, if you get fired then the government allows you to be on unemployment benefits or whatever.

So…. Essentially when workers feel like they don’t want to work anymore, they just do a shit job until they get fired…and apparently the company can’t do anything to get the person to work and do the fucking job they were hired to do because ‘that would be unfair’.   Dicks.

Soo soo bullshit.

SO basically, they’re getting a reward for working like a piece of shit on purpose and then getting fired and going on government benefits.

I realise I am coming across like a bit of a dick here, but let me assure you I’m all for a social security system.  I realise that SOME people take advantage of the system…. But it really does help a lot of people get back on their feet, and allow them to look for a job that’s more appropriate and can eventually add more to the society as a whole.

However,….this system, is not Australia’s, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.  Workers should get a government payout ‘reward’ because they’ve chosen to be shit workers?

Plus, every time some warehouse worker gets a bit more responsibility they ask for a phone.  Wtf is up with that?  Their excuse is oh because I have to communicate with the air-freight team.

Yeah that’s sitting in the offices above the fucking warehouse.  Just go for a walk.
You’re telling me you need an iPhone because you can’t be bothered walking 5 mins to the office to speak face to face with someone.  Ridiculous!

Oh and then our warehouse manager.   Or warehouse team leader or something.  Now the point of a team leader/ w/h manager is that he’s meant to be ‘one of the guys’ but also has more responsibility that the average warehouse guy, because he has to organise shifts, make sure people are working well, come in early to be the first person on scene for unloading trucks…and all of this kind of stuff.   And….as a result is paid more than the average guy.

So he is one of the guys, but also not just a regular warehouse dude.

He’s meant to be the one that the management can directly talk to to get a clear picture of what’s going on in the warehouse.

Our warehouse manager… is…. I don’t know… not incompetent, because that would be mean, but he’s just making things bigger than they are.

Like I said the actual warehouse job is very easy, in fact I sometimes go into the warehouse to help out, I don’t take 1 day to ‘learn the system’, I know it, you’re working with full efficiency within 20 mins or so.  But yeah I kind of go and work in the warehouse sometimes to just chill out.

SO this team leader dude seems to think that his job is incredibly complicated.  Yes, he has to do more than the average guy…but that’s what he gets paid for.

He keeps saying he has to do ‘admin’ work, however our Operations manager is doing most of this work…because he’s been neglecting it.

He keeps saying he has to organise the workers…yet he keeps hiring absolute slow pokes.

Sometimes we use a work agency to get temporary workers, but some of the workers they give us are just shithouse.

Now a rational mind would be that 1st day…they’re slow because they don’t know the system,
2nd day if they’re still slow….then they’re just slow.
So 3rd day, don’t ask that person to come back.

Easy…   but no, not our warehouse manager.

Our air-freight team says ‘please finish Tianjin channel first because that’s the first plane that has to leave, and if we miss it, it’ll be another 3 days before we can get the flight.

But this guy is focusing on some other thing…for god knows what reason.

‘And then…people are shouting at me…why are people shouting at me?’ , he says.

Perhaps because you’re not doing your fucking job!

Perhaps because the management are all coming together to chip in and take the responsibilities from you that YOU’RE meant to be doing, which is why they have less time to be patient with others…so when you ask tell us shit like… oh yeah let’s hire the guy that’s really slow…we can’t hide the exasperation from our faces…that clearly says ‘dude why the fuck would that be a good idea????’

I went down the other day to get a cup of tea, and the guy says, ‘come and look at this…and shows me that some worker has taken a big enough shit that its clogged up the toilet’  and this warehouse manager is just shaking his head with exasperation…mumbling… ‘ah you see the kind of stuff I have to deal with….now I have to hire a plumber’

And I casually ventured… ‘do we have a plunger?  ‘

Ok the answer was no, but we did have a toilet brush.   So anyway he went away mumbling, and it was me that got in there and unplugged the toilet… with the brush. It wasn’t difficult, just you needed to try.

And then a few minutes later I told him ‘ oh yeah I fixed the toilet ‘   and he looked at me with exasperation again and signed  ‘ ahhh now we have to cancel the plumber’

Dude… come on, just .. just have a try, think about something, try to find the easiest solution, and then have a go.  You don’t need to ask for permission to do the easy stuff….but you probably should ask if you’re going to call a plumber.

And then about organising overtime.
Now if the warehouse needs overtime…sure, but we’ve had this situation where its busy at night,  we have our Service Level Agreements with our clients that state if they don’t deliver their goods to our warehouse before a certain time, then we can’t confirm that their goods will be ready to be exported that same day.  So it would be T+1 instead of T+0   so that’s the situation.   If the goods come later in the day, we work later in the day… , but if goods are not coming early in the morning and we have this Service Level Agreement, then we can work in the morning for the day before’s stuff….because otherwise there would be nothing to do.

But what does he want to do?   Yep, that’s right….work overtime at night to …his words  ‘make the warehouse nice and clean for the day after’

Fuck…so we’re paying overtime because of your preference to cleanliness.

Dude, that’s just ridiculous.

And he told me today…after we’ve been telling him for the last 2 weeks….we will be starting Saturday shifts for the next 5 weeks until Christmas.

It is his job to organise workers.

We don’t have a schedule or a forecast on how many goods will be arriving so it’s fair to say that we don’t know if we should have 8 workers, or just 3, so you can’t plan for that.

However, you’d think it’d be common sense that you’d at least get a skeleton crew…i.e. Minimum 3 people to confirm that they can work Saturday because… you know…. That would be fucking obvious.

If it’s more than 3 that we need, then we get agency workers… if not then 3 is about the minimum we need for a warehouse on ANY day.

So at least get 3.

He told me today…. ‘Oh yeah,  all of the workers have made other plans because they didn’t get a forecast.’

No you fucktard, it is YOUR job to ensure you at least have a skeleton crew.  If they all have MADE plans, it is because YOU allowed them to make plans.

I talked to them last week and quite a few of them said they’d be willing to work.

Just because we don’t have a forecast doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be any work.

Plus, even if there isn’t any work…. YOU GET PAID FOR BEING HERE AND NOT HAVING TO DO ANYTHING.

And then we see he’s been trying to claim overtime for coming in early in the morning.

So you came in at 7.30…why?

‘oh you know, I give my life to this company…. I can only do my best’

No man, that doesn’t make any sense…because there’s nothing to do in the warehouse at 7.30 am.  The first truck arrives at 9.00am.   why would you be here at 7.30am?

‘oh because I have to drop my daughter at school’

dude that’s not a reason.  It is a fact,.. but those 2 situations aren’t related.

Yes you wake up early, and you’re already out-and-about at that time, but that doesn’t mean that you have to come to work….mainly because there’s no fucking work to do at that time.  You can’t just book yourself overtime, because you ‘may as well be at work at this time’.

So no, you can’t get paid overtime for coming in for zero fucking reason.

And then he gets frustrated by our conclusions….

What a … I mean…. what kind of reasoning is that?

This is a nice guy,  but I’m sorry…when you’re not doing the job you were paid to do…and giving everyone else more stress because of this… then there’s a point in time where its… ok done.