- Joined
- Sep 5, 2025
- Messages
- 9
I'm an inbound and GM team member and we've had a particularly brutal Q4 so far. In the six years that I've been working here, we've never been hit this hard with toy freight. Or backroom is crowded with so many pallets of toys and for the past couple of weeks, our unload has ended with all team members helping to push in toys instead of their assigned areas. For today's 4 AM unload, we walked into the backroom with about two days worth of untouched freight, but our inbound leader just had us jump straight into unloading a nearly 3000 piece truck. Our unloads typically don't last longer than an hour and a half, but that 90 minute mark was where we were at when he started nearing the halfway point of the truck. Our inbound leader and two other TL's were helping unload, but then our SD got on the walkie and announced that breakfast burritos were waiting in the TL office and that all TL's were to report to the office for their TL breakfast. The leaders on the unload were happy to leave the unload without even giving the rest of us instructions on how to unload when we were running out of vehicles to use.
It didn't take long before we were completely out of flatbeds and U-boats. Everyone on the inbound team just stood around and left freight on the line while trying to figure out where to sort all of it. I've been on the team the longest and I was the one trying to calm everyone down and come up with a plan. I wanted to pull from the giant stack of wood pallets by the receiving desk, but our receiver has always been very protective of her pallets and she doesn't like them being used for anything other than receiving purposes. I argued with her that we needed the pallets more than her, but she wouldn't budge. I gave up because she's engaged to one of our front end TL's and I figured that I didn't need to piss him off. So the whole inbound team had all of this unloaded freight with nowhere to put it and none of the leaders were responding to our desperate calls for them on our walkies. It reached a point where one girl on the team just said that she was walking out and everyone else seemed fine with that, including me. So the entire inbound team ended up leaving just a few hours into our shift and left a half-filled truck with freight lying all over the floor and on the line.
I just went home and napped for a couple of hours and woke up to two missed calls from the store, but no voice mail left. I have the day off tomorrow, but we're all going in on Thursday for our next inbound shift and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little concerned. I feel a little bad, but then I think about how our store has been since roughly before the Holidays. For as long as I've been here, every weekend starting with Black Friday has always had the break room filled with all sorts of catered food for the team. We've even had some years where the food starts coming in starting with the first weekend of November. This store really used to take care of us for Q4, but so far this year, we've only gotten our Black Friday food, which consisted of cups of Ramen noodles and Ritz crackers requisitioned from the floor. And meanwhile, the entire leadership team had the entire Black Friday weekend of catered food like Olive Garden and Texas Roadhouse. Virtually every TM in every department has felt hung out to dry so far during Q4 and I think this morning's incident was the last straw. But now I'm here wondering what kind of trouble the team could realistically could into over this incident. Could we all be fired? Would we get into any trouble at all or would the SD actually reflect on how things have been and take pity on us? I know that's probably wishful thinking on my part, but still, what's everyone else's thoughts on this?
It didn't take long before we were completely out of flatbeds and U-boats. Everyone on the inbound team just stood around and left freight on the line while trying to figure out where to sort all of it. I've been on the team the longest and I was the one trying to calm everyone down and come up with a plan. I wanted to pull from the giant stack of wood pallets by the receiving desk, but our receiver has always been very protective of her pallets and she doesn't like them being used for anything other than receiving purposes. I argued with her that we needed the pallets more than her, but she wouldn't budge. I gave up because she's engaged to one of our front end TL's and I figured that I didn't need to piss him off. So the whole inbound team had all of this unloaded freight with nowhere to put it and none of the leaders were responding to our desperate calls for them on our walkies. It reached a point where one girl on the team just said that she was walking out and everyone else seemed fine with that, including me. So the entire inbound team ended up leaving just a few hours into our shift and left a half-filled truck with freight lying all over the floor and on the line.
I just went home and napped for a couple of hours and woke up to two missed calls from the store, but no voice mail left. I have the day off tomorrow, but we're all going in on Thursday for our next inbound shift and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little concerned. I feel a little bad, but then I think about how our store has been since roughly before the Holidays. For as long as I've been here, every weekend starting with Black Friday has always had the break room filled with all sorts of catered food for the team. We've even had some years where the food starts coming in starting with the first weekend of November. This store really used to take care of us for Q4, but so far this year, we've only gotten our Black Friday food, which consisted of cups of Ramen noodles and Ritz crackers requisitioned from the floor. And meanwhile, the entire leadership team had the entire Black Friday weekend of catered food like Olive Garden and Texas Roadhouse. Virtually every TM in every department has felt hung out to dry so far during Q4 and I think this morning's incident was the last straw. But now I'm here wondering what kind of trouble the team could realistically could into over this incident. Could we all be fired? Would we get into any trouble at all or would the SD actually reflect on how things have been and take pity on us? I know that's probably wishful thinking on my part, but still, what's everyone else's thoughts on this?
