The second day after starting work, Mr. Bieber began busy recruiting new staff.
Bieber had said yesterday that he would interview five people, and all five had a very high probability of being hired and competing with Ryan, but this was actually false. Even if all five of them were hired, not all of them could become delivery personnel. It was highly likely that two of them would become order pickers, because in yesterday's work, the order pickers were busier than Ryan, the delivery person.
Bieber, and indeed the entire Oriental Amazon, had to admit in their experience summary after the first day of work that they had underestimated the job of an order picker.
Oriental Amazon believed that one order picker was more than enough for two delivery personnel, as order pickers only needed to stay in the warehouse, pick orders, and would not be too busy.
However, the reality was the exact opposite. Because Walmart sold so many products, each order had a large number of different items. At the same time, Americans generally purchased in large quantities when shopping at supermarkets. Moreover, regardless of how many items were in an order, the delivery fee was the same. Therefore, from the user's perspective, the more they bought in one order, the more they gained. Thus, an order often had more than ten items.
This led to order pickers often having to go to more than a dozen different places in the warehouse to pick items for an order, which made the side paths required for picking very long.
At the same time, there were also a large number of fresh products that needed to be picked from the warehouse to the cold storage, which greatly increased the time required for picking an order.
And picking goods was only one part of it. Next, they needed to reconcile the goods with the warehouse management personnel to confirm the quantity of items taken from the warehouse.
After that, they needed to pack the goods into suitable shopping bags and tie them securely. Then, they also had to attach labels to the outside of the shopping bags. The labels would record the delivery address and the delivered goods in detail.
This was not the end. When all orders were picked within an hour, and the computer started calculating the routes, the order pickers needed to affix large numerical codes to each shopping bag. This would allow the delivery personnel to find the corresponding packaged goods as quickly as possible when delivering according to the routes planned by the computer.
Otherwise, just finding the order address among a pile of goods and handing it over to the customer would be a very time-consuming task.
In summary, the workload of the delivery personnel was too great, to the extent that Bieber himself had to urgently join the order picking position to help the poor order pickers complete the delivery work.
This also led Bieber to suggest to the company that each location should be equipped with at least 2-3 order pickers. Then, the order pickers would divide the work, with some specializing in finding goods in the warehouse and others specializing in outbound packing, so as to meet the work requirements.
The headquarters quickly gave a positive reply, asking Bieber to recruit more order pickers as soon as possible. After all, it was not just Bieber's location; almost all locations were reporting the difficulty and challenges in order picking to the headquarters.
Fortunately, with the experience of the first day, the work on the second day could be smoother, giving Bieber time to interview new staff.
However, when Bieber and the delivery personnel arrived at Walmart, ready to start the second day's work, they learned from the留守 employees of the Walmart warehouse that all warehouse staff had been temporarily called to the branch for training, leaving only one employee to guard the warehouse.
"That's great, you can still go for training. I still have to run around the warehouse today!" the order picker said enviously.
"Um, most of the warehouse employees are not here. Is it convenient for you to work? Do you need us to help you find the goods?" the sole留守 employee said with some concern.
"It's okay. I've gotten familiar with your warehouse over the past few days. I know where everything is, so you don't have to worry!" the order picker said with a smile.
This was true. During the half-month preparation period, the order picker's job during the day was to frantically familiarize himself with the location of various goods and materials in the warehouse. Coupled with a day's work experience yesterday, finding goods was not a problem at all.
On the contrary, because almost all warehouse employees had been transferred, leaving only one person to guard the warehouse, the vast warehouse was left for the order pickers to move around freely. Moreover, the only electric pallet truck in the warehouse, being unused, was lent to the order picker for free by the留守 employee.
This greatly increased the order picker's picking speed. However, when it came to verifying the outgoing goods, a new problem arose. Because the留守 employee had many responsibilities, he did not have time to verify the goods.
Under normal circumstances, this would be a big problem. If the goods could not be verified in time, they could not be shipped.
However, the留守 employee was very straightforward and handed over his operation password to the order picker, allowing him to verify the goods himself!
"Is this okay? Aren't you afraid I'll betray your trust?" the order picker asked in surprise.
"Come on, we've been drinking together every day. Don't I trust you?" the sole留守 employee grinned and said. For the past half month, the warehouse employees had been working with the Oriental Amazon people almost every day. Both sides had become very familiar with each other and understood each other's character well, knowing that they would not steal.
Moreover, according to company regulations, order pickers were not allowed to leave the warehouse except after work. Even if he stole some items through false verification, he could not take them out of the warehouse.
There was no benefit for him in doing such a thing. Although such behavior could help Oriental Amazon save some costs, the company was not his, so why would he take such a risk of going to jail?
Finally, and most importantly, Walmart's warehouse stored many items, and not all fresh products could be sold. Therefore, a lot of fresh products were damaged every day and were directly sold as feed to farmers or simply thrown into the trash.
So, as long as the unmatched items were written off as waste, there would be no problem. The Walmart warehouse employees had always done this, so they hardly needed to go to the supermarket anymore. If they were short of anything at home, they could directly take the soon-to-expire goods that were about to be thrown away from the warehouse. This could be considered an invisible welfare of the Walmart warehouse!
Therefore, the留守 employee did not have to worry about the discrepancy in verification at all. As long as he was willing to turn a blind eye, everything would be fine.
Thus, with most of the warehouse employees gone, the order picker's work efficiency actually increased, allowing Bieber to free up more time to interview new staff.
Interestingly, that afternoon, employees from another Walmart supermarket arrived to temporarily take over the warehouse and replenish the stock at the front desk supermarket. They suddenly found that because the warehouse layouts of the two supermarkets were different, and many goods were placed in different locations, they could not find those goods for a while.
The留守 employee had disappeared somewhere, and it was the order picker who took the initiative to guide these temporary employees through the warehouse, helping them understand the specific locations of each product, and earning everyone's praise.
Well, all the grassroots employees of Walmart had held various social events with Oriental Amazon, so as soon as they heard that the order picker was from Oriental Amazon, both sides immediately became as familiar and enthusiastic as old friends who had not seen each other for many years, with no barriers at all.
Even when the fact that the order picker was verifying goods for himself was exposed to them, they wore indifferent expressions. After all, they were only here to fill in for a few days temporarily, and this was not their base, so they wouldn't bother with too many things.
Therefore, the second day's work ended smoothly. Except for Ryan, who was still tired as a dog, everyone else wore a smile.
The order pickers felt much more relaxed and happy without the hassle of verification and with the help of the electric pallet truck.
Bieber interviewed five employees. Although one employee was rejected due to a terrible personality, the remaining four employees were successfully hired. All of them were people who bore the burden of supporting their families. One of them was a single mother, so there was no need to worry about the stability and diligence of these employees.
In fact, Ryan, who was tired as a dog, was also happy. Because there were too many orders today, the usual quitting time of 6 p.m. had to be extended to 7 p.m.
Bieber generously calculated all orders after 5 p.m. as overtime orders, allowing Ryan to earn an extra dollar per order for delivery fees. This made Ryan feel very happy. He seemed to see himself taking his family on a happy vacation by the sea, spending freely, enjoying the envious glances of people from other countries, and the happy life of a middle-class person.
The only one who was unhappy was probably Tucker. He had been paying attention to the town where Bieber was located all day. He had even arranged for more than a dozen people to disguise themselves as customers and place orders.
The plan was that as soon as Oriental Amazon experienced order delays of more than four hours in delivery, or if there were defects or damage to the delivered goods, they would immediately stir up an online public opinion storm.
However, to their surprise, all of these dozen orders were delivered on time. Even the slowest one was delivered an hour in advance.
At the same time, the delivered fresh products were extremely fresh. When delivering, the delivery person even asked their people to confirm that there were no problems with the goods in the order before signing for them.
Moreover, this delivery person was even carrying a voice recorder, claiming that it was to improve customer service quality and that recording was necessary at any time. How could they be blackmailed?
They simply couldn't be blackmailed!