Advice

Are you ready for a warehouse shift?

Twelve things that really happen, taken from the situations shift managers actually talk about. Most take a few seconds and none is a trick.

  • Twelve questions. Most take a few seconds and none is a trick.
  • IT IS MARKED IN YOUR BROWSER. Your answers do not come to us, they are not stored anywhere, and there is nothing at the end asking for an email address.
  • No employer sees this and no employer ever will. WE DO NOT SCREEN CANDIDATES and a test that fed us a score would be exactly that.
  • The score is not the point. The explanation after each answer is, and that is the part worth taking to a shift on Monday.

1. You are asked to use a reach truck. Your ticket covers counterbalance only. The supervisor says it is quiet and it will take two minutes.

2. Halfway through a pick you find a pallet in the racking with a split wrap and stock leaning.

3. You realise a pick you did an hour ago went out with the wrong quantity. The wagon has left.

4. A box on the pick face is heavier than you expected and awkward to get hold of.

5. The fire alarm sounds while you are up on a picking platform with a part finished order.

6. You are on a hot order for a customer waiting on the phone. Your normal sequence has three older orders in front of it.

7. You notice a leg of racking with a fresh dent in it, about knee height.

8. Somebody nearly walks into your forklift path. Nobody is hurt and nothing is damaged.

9. You are agency and you are asked to work through your break because the shift is behind.

10. A colleague is working in the yard with no hi vis on.

11. The scanner says the location is empty. There is clearly stock in it.

12. It is the end of a twelve hour shift and you are asked to do one more hour. You are tired enough that you have started making small mistakes.

Nothing is sent anywhere.

What a low score means, and what it does not

It does not mean you cannot do the work. Most of these are learned on a shift rather than before one, and half of them are about whether you will say something rather than whether you know a rule.

If one of the explanations was new to you, that is the test working. Read it once more and you are ahead of most people walking in on their first day.

Then the useful part

What a forklift ticket actually is, including who sets the expiry date and why the counterbalance one does not cover the reach.

A finished warehouse CV you can work from, with the ticket expiry dates where they belong. Warehouse jobs live now, every one with the pay on it.

What you are owed and when, and what to do if something is badly wrong.

Know somebody starting in a warehouse? Sending it costs nothing and it is how a small board grows.

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