Archived Outbound flexing

[targetdude1]

This has been a longstanding issue for me at my DC. Even though I have 16 years seniority Up until 2 years ago I was constantly flexed back to OB. I'm in my 50's and overweight so lanes became very difficult for me. Several times I was basically threatened with CA for failing to keep up with yellow lights. I was expected to run 100% lanes constantly despite being a flex. This really soured my attitude on target when I saw certain OB TM's flex to feed in breackpack, they would just talk with the girls and not even make an effort to keep up. No discipline was even implied for them, nobody cared. Another big issue was more flexing to OB by far than any other dept. MBP would flex to OB almost every day and rarely to other depts. Further, they would not train any new TM's to OB to relieve the load on the 2-3 of us who flexed to OB constantly. Even further it eventually got down to just me and 1 girl on the OB flex team, she never had to do lanes or anything difficult like throwing in depal when she flexed, she would just label in depal or at worst do non con sort. I understand she's female so I didn't complain, but still, I have a bad back and am old and overweight, and I wasn't given any quarter like she was. It really bothered me to see brand new (young, very physically fit) TM's with 1-2 years seniority chilling and never flexing anywhere while me with 16 yrs seniority was worked like a slave in OB.


Anyways I moved to a new key 3 years ago and was supposedly off the OB flex team. Except of course they kept trying to creep me back, they started flexing me back occasionally "just to sort". Eventually I threw a major tantrum to my GL, even threatened to go to HR. He has not attempted to flex me back since.

However I'm still worried constantly, that anytime I can be unwillingly drafted back onto OB flex. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme reason or pattern to who is on the flex team. They give us preference forms, but on my last one I dumbly put that I dont want to flex (rather than saying I wanted to flex to a certain dept, WH or IB). This apparently leaves me in jeopardy of being drafted back to OB, since currently I am not technically on any flex team. Although I flex almost more than anybody actually, because I flex E&F, but it "doesn't count".

The other day our GL came out and read some weird statement that I assume applies to the whole building, (I think from HR), hard to follow but the gist if I understood was something like: they dont have enough flex TM's. To correct this, now TM's on a flex roster will not be moved off to make way for new TM's (ever? What?). TM's can now be (involuntarily) on more than one flex team (aka say, both WH and OB). Now, if you post from another dept you are automatically added to the flex team of your original dept on that roster (example, you post to WH from MBP. You are automatically added to the MBP flex team in WH).

Basically I just want some feedback how things are done in other DC's. Are any TM's with tons of seniority forced to flex to OB? The statement above our OM came out with doesn't seem "legal" to me, it seems like just something where once again our DC thinks they can trample our rights and do whatever they want. Personally, I'm a Republican and hate unions, but things like these make me want to support a union sometimes. There does not seem to be any defined, written down, process for who is on or off flex teams. Is this the case in other DC's?

 

[downset00]

In my DC they don't necessarily go by seniority. We have a rotation flex list. For inbound we have roughly 10-15 team members cross trained in OB. When you flex, you move to the bottom of the list. We have just the opposite at my DC, most of our senior team members stand around while new team members get the brunt of the work. I myself have 13 years in and I just go to work and do just that, work. Tired of the slackers. Best of luck to you.

 

[targetdude1]

10-15 OB flex tranied? per key???? What the heck??? Are you in some mega rich DC?

For example in MBP we currently had about 12-15 WW. Of those usually 2-4 max are trained in OB. Since they pretty much never train anybody new in OB, this can even dip to just 1-2 people trained in OB. Those 1-2 can end up flexing 33-50% of the days they come to work (at least 1 day per week). OB is lazy and just always depend on flexes. Worse, they always take flexes out of MBP while say the IB OB trained TM's are never flexed.

Sure there is a rotation but what difference does it make when it's 2-3 TM"s and usually all of them have to go on the same day anyway. For example, 3 people trained on OB, you come in, all 3 are flexed to OB. Maybe just 2, but big deal. Rotation, lol. Rotation is everybody goes every day.

And like I said in my DC it seems they have no plan, I will say it's semi-new (2-5 years seniority) that currently go to OB, but many times they try to make it the MOST senior people. They actually went by REVERSE seniority at one point! In other words, most seniority went to OB.

The whole system is a joke. I just want to see if it's like that in other DC's.

 

[Hal]

I'm an Outbound TM who would get flexed to warehousing to do cartonaire. I did it for about 4 years and every fall season I would be there everyday from September until January, and they never cross trained anyone else. Now I'm a trainer in OB and I'm one of the most senior on my team and I couldn't get off the list to save my life for the longest even though I had 4 or 5 different GL's from my department promise to take me off the list before I finally got off last week. And that was after my equipment certification was expired. But apparently safety doesn't matter until you smash into a pole and then it's your fault they forced you to do something.

The final straw was when I kept asking if I could GPM or tug or even just pull bulk since I was trained on both pieces of equipment, and I know how to do both functions, and pulling cases of juice and cat litter all day killed my back and they told me no. Then they cross trained other OB guys specifically to do those 2 functions. Then instead of keeping their guys in warehousing to pull their freight, they'd send their warehousing guys to miniload while forcing me to pull even though I also could do miniload.

Honestly, you just have to make a lot of noise, and rationally explain why you should come off the list, to anyone and everyone and eventually they may take you off.

Nice to know that other warehouses make dumb decisions too.

 

[downset00]

Yes 10-15 team members cross trained. We have about 30+ team members per department. My DC is in the process of switching to a receipt center so we are actually hiring about 200 more across the board. They say that they aren't getting what they need so we are bringing temps back. As being a mega DC, we service about 70 stores, most of the large ones on the east coast.