Drawing from my personal experience of working at a major fulfillment center in Chalk Hill Rd, Dallas for a short time, I have come up with this list of Don'ts for your first day of work in a warehouse. I have tried my best to leave out the obvious points and only included the things that I think really need to be said.
Arrive early and check the place out without all the workers. Maybe find out where the washroom and the coffee dispenser are and get to know the housekeeping staff. And when it is time to go, please don’t be the first one to leave as it could be taken as an indication of your unwillingness to go over and beyond the bare minimum. In fact, be a good comrade and stay behind with the ones who are still working. There is perhaps no better social lubricant than shared work-weariness, and the post-clock-out time is the best time to have a chat with and get to know your new colleagues.
Always bear in mind that a warehouse is a serious place of work. If your reporting manager is being warm and welcoming, it is just to put you at ease before you take on the physically demanding responsibilities of a warehouse worker.
Especially, in the warehouses of industry-leading companies like Amazon and FedEx , managers are instructed to be extra nice to the employees in their induction phase. But please don’t let it make you take the job lightly. Do not get over-comfortable and slack off on your very first day, linger about the coffee machine, or start checking your social media (no matter how strong the urge is).
If you are reading this, you probably have or will read a couple of other articles on the internet talking about the dos and don’ts for your first day at work. You will find many of them talking about impressing your superiors which might give you the impression that you are supposed to dazzle your colleagues and superiors.
While it is perfectly okay and even advisable to be mindful of the kind of impression you create on the people you are going to be working with, going out of your way to creating a positive first impression can seriously backfire. If you have experience working in a warehouse, you should take extra care not to come across as a know-it-all and curb your urge to chip in during discussions. Unless asked, be humble and keep your suggestions and opinions to yourself, valid and useful as they may be. And if you are a beginner, please don’t ego lift.
On my first day, I was put with a team that was assigned the job of carrying cartons to a truck in the compound. I noticed I could carry them to the truck much faster than everyone was doing it and so, I started speed walking up and down the alley leading up to the truck with the boxes. After just ten-fifteen minutes I had to sit down for a breather as others steadily continued carrying the boxes for another half hour.
An unsociable co-worker may not be fun to work with, but a coworker who tries too hard to be friendly is a straight-up pain in the neck. Here’s a rule of thumb for you, avoid initiating non-work-related conversions on your first day. If the other person takes a conversation about work to a non-work related topic, you should definitely engage, but never be the one to steer the conversation to non-professional subjects.
And despite what the blogs on the internet say, don’t smile at everyone you meet eyes with. More often than not, people can sense it when someone is being disingenuous and if you’re anything like me, you’d much rather risk coming off as quiet or shy than fake. And if you are socially anxious, just remember this – it is way easier for others in the office to come up to you and say hello than it is for you to go to each one of them, and so, the burden of courtesy is never on the new employee.
Don’t shy away from asking questions. When you are assigned a task, clarify right there and then if there are any deadlines or particular requirements. If multiple tasks are assigned to you, ask if there are any priority tasks among them. If you have doubts as to who you are supposed to report to and who can and cannot give you orders, make sure to have it clarified by the end of the day. But remember to be sensitive to people’s egos while enquiring about the chains of command as people can get touchy about their ranks and positions.
So…there you go, that’s my list. For the record, these are just some things that I think you should not do on your first day at the warehouse. However, it’s perfectly alright if you do or already have done some of these things, they are no cardinal sins! And first impressions are not all that sustainable anyway, just keep working diligently and soon no one will even remember what you said or did on your first day anymore.
