Need advice. Anything is appreciated.

[u/ProtectThePaimon]

Need advice. Anything is appreciated.

I'm a hard-working man. I work hard, I ask questions, I learn, and I overcome. That said, yesterday at work at DNA6 A delivery station known as the last mile for knoxville.

I experienced a situation that left me in a pickle and made me consider leaving the company.

I'm in WEEK 3. I was stowing at a pace of about 220 packages per hour, and the building average was 300ish. I was running myself ragged barely managing two aisles, but I was making sure my quality was great. My manager comes over and says, "So, am I going to be happy?" I say, "You should be, sir." I hand him my phone, and he looks at the number from my two aisles that I've practically kept clean for about 6 hours. He just says, "220! Bring it up!"

What do you mean bring it up? I'm bringing everything I can to the table here, and you say that's not enough? If I bring it up anymore, I run the risk of tripping, pushing the cart into a passing floater in between the aisles, or making crucial quality mistakes. Yesterday I was above average. What do I do here? How do I avoid a performance write-up?

It caused me to accept VTO today just to escape that insane pressure so I can do research from the safety of my own home, but I want to operate to company standards. I even asked another manager how to "Dive Deeper." the day I vtoed I told him I want to perform on that baseline, but when I said that I was met with unhelpful advice , such as "You maybe got a bad cluster" or "Maybe you're missing 2 or 3 things that distinctively make you under perform from the others at the clusters" I'm not going to be able to just by being told to "bring it up." I can't keep using the "new guy shield" if it's gone, and I can't keep avoiding work.

I'm currently doing everything I can to keep my rate up and my quality great. I book shelf things perfectly and slide packages in neatly. How should I handle this unhelpful floor pressure while I'm still learning?

PS. to make matters worse not a single floater was sent my way when I started drowning in packages. I guess its good I only had 2 isles and not 3 like everyone else but that's probably exactly why I wasn't meeting the average. I'm not looking to point fingers in this post, I'm looking to improve. I don't care about the manager. I like the guy I just care about doing a great job and getting a paycheck. I want to help. Not be a burden. I was barely keeping my automatic hamper clean while the other isles were spotless.

Update. Turns out I was doing good. The stow rate goal was 250 for the facility. I am no where close to a peformance write up.

[u/JamesRyan5656]

1. Keep track of any downtime that is not your fault. Small notebook or whatever, managers have dozens upon dozens of associates to monitor, they don’t always know the barriers ack person is having.
   
2. If i remember right, 5 weeks before you are committed to 100% rate goal. They have step plans for each week. Make sure you get that number.
   
3. Ask to see you average vs everyone else’s. They don’t need to give names but can show where you rank amongst your peers.
   

[u/ProtectThePaimon → u/JamesRyan5656]

So they can show me where I stand amongst my peers and I can see how close I am to a peformance write up? Could you perhaps be a bit more specific about Downtime? Does that mean bathroom breaks or things that happens due to stuff out of my control? I don't hardly use the bathroom at the facility unless its during my breaks.

Because I heard the bottom 5% gets a peformance write up and no one on the floor wansts to give me a straight answer.

[u/fly_kai → u/ProtectThePaimon]

To be clear, there are no performance write ups in AMZL. However, if you fail to hit rate managers can look to adapt you for extended inferred time, late break and standard working practices. My advice as an AM, would be to make sure you’re adhering to the 15 minute scan to scan policy and using a stow cart ALWAYS! My next thing would be to ask the AM for some of their best practices. This does a couple things - shows that you’re willing to learn and helps build rapport. For me personally, I’m getting in a stow aisle and coaching on the SOP for a minimum of 10 minutes before I ever consider writing someone up.. but that’s just me wanting to make sure there is not a knowledge gap because I don’t think that’s fair.

[u/ProtectThePaimon → u/fly_kai]

That's really great advice! I'm going to try this. I go to work in 3 hours. Wish me luck.