Manager not at work today.
I show up and there's lots - too much - to do.
I get started on pulling what I call a "technical" load.  That's either one that has to have some thought in how to try to get all of it onto the truck or one that has a lot of "special" material that we don't stock and is sitting in various tag and hold areas.  This one was the latter.

The material was all over the place and I had to check each piece by numbers.  It was dark, hard to see anything and time consuming.  When the inside salesman showed up - taking the manager's place - he offered no assistance whatsoever. When you have a day ahead of you that is full of deliveries with orders that have not been pulled, that is not helpful at all.

I was pulling the material and kept getting interrupted phone calls, contractors and people asking questions.  I finally got the truck loaded and headed out - on down to Coolidge.  When I got there, I found out they had no equipment to unload the truck.  Hardly exciting.  2 sticks of pipe at 500 pounds a  piece; 3 valves at 250 pounds a piece and a much larger valve at almost 600 pounds.  Various fittings ranging from 75 pounds to 300 pounds and other, heavy material.

They wanted to unload it by hand.  When faced with taking an entire truck loaded with material back to the yard and having to unload it and then - reload it for future delivery? I'll take unloading by hand any day of the week if the contractor is down for it.  We got it all off of there, including that giant, heavy valve.  I simply pulled the truck next to and then straddled the trailer over a large pile of dirt and we dumped it off of it.

Back to the yard to find out that the next delivery was "supposed" to go out first. It really wasn't, but the salesman acted that way.  The contractor had been calling and calling him, where's the material.  Well, the inside salesman running the show today was supposed to pull the order - excepting the pipe - and have it ready.  He had pulled half of it and had told them that the load would be out there by 1:00 pm. It was 12:15 when I got started on it.  I informed him that 1:00 pm was a non-happening event.  He started to walk off and  I asked him if he could help out to get it done quicker.

Nope.  My manager will hear about this tomorrow.  When it comes to deliveries, they take precedence over everything.  That inside salesman should have dropped what he was doing and helped me get the rest of the order pulled. Instead, he went back inside and was doing his thing.  I understand he has a full workload already, but if they are going to send someone to run the shop when my manager is gone and that person is not going to help out, they need to find someone else to come out.

My manager will drop whatever he's doing to pull orders.  The only thing that really takes precedence is if a customer comes into the store.  I could have gotten a lot more done today if he had helped out instead of pushing a lot of it off until tomorrow.

Whatever the case, it's time to go to bed.

ben