Growing up working has given me a lot of experience. I have been able to see many sides of busienss and in the United States bribes are not legal, but in a way they still happen. You can bribe with kindness and with Christmas gifts in order to get ahead in the world. I have seen it all and It has been a rather interesting ride considering I have worked in many industries. The different industries have been anywhere from white color to blue color jobs. But many of the lessons that have helped me in my white color jobs were learned in the lesser jobs titles that I held. One of those titles was a warehouse manager of the parts department at a car dealership. This was all in all a rather easy job that was based more along the lines of managing people to do a remedial task over and over again. I actually hated it. The largest lesson I learned was from a long term warehouse worker who was good friends with most people in the store. He told me on day one to befriend all the drivers of UPS and USPS and my life would be easier.
At the time I didn't know what he meant, but I did it anyway because I am a nice guy and I like knowing who works with me in all aspects. I took this man's advice and was rather friendly with our local delivery drivers for all companies. They dropped off orders every single day to our store and took our items that we needed to send to other companies who purchased them from us. The last manager apparently was a bit of a rascal and never learned who the drivers were or how they worked. This meant that the people who delivered and picked up all our goods in his eyes were a waste of his time. He saw them working slow and making his job worse. When in reality he had the whole idea wrong. It turns out that the drivers of these companies had a lot of control over our business. They could show up after hours or deliver items damaged and vise versa. These guys had a lot of power on the goods they were driving.
The little experienced advice helped me get my department more efficient. We saved money. This man was not a smart guy and he knew it, but he was a pretty good dude and that paid off. The fact was that he was only able to do manual labor because he chose that for himself. But his experience was life-changing in that I knew now that even the smallest person in my own company or involved with my company could have massive impacts.
I got to know our delivery drivers well and they got to know me. I am still fond of several of them and it turns out that our damaged goods bill went down 70% when I started to manage that position. That meant that cars were fixed on time much more often and our entire store was shined upon. So be kind and think about all aspects of your job. Some little parts may end up being a huge saving.
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