Pros
The culture of the North Dallas Inbound team is unmatched.
Praise is public, and anytime someone makes a mistake (forgetting to load part of a shipment, etc) your name will be called out over the P.A. by a supervisor, but only in the context of “Hey (name) come see me”. That method of calling people to see a supervisor is also used for routine stuff, so there’s no stigma around having your name called out. Whenever I’ve made a mistake, the supervisor would point out the error, provide a solution (go pull that freight off the trailer [since you’d easily recognize it] and put it in the trailer next door) and there’s an understanding that human error happens and that we’re all just glad we caught the error when it was still easy to fix.
There are meaningful incentives for doing good work and staying safe. I don’t know who cooks the burgers for the 30-days injury free cookouts, but whoever does should do that full-time, best burgers anywhere!
Mike, “Smitty”, Kieth, Theresa and Adrian are all superb supervisors. One of them brought home-made cookies to share with the entire crew (that had to be an all-day endeavor) and there’s a sincere friendliness behind each “Good Morning!”. The production goals are incredibly realistic but still challenging (don’t expect to hit it every single day), and not every single dock-worker, but the vast majority will pitch in when help is needed. If you have 2,000 pounds of truck parts or large sacks of flour fall over because it wasn’t secured properly during transport, you can always ask for help, but usually if it spills over on the dock or if the toppling over is audible, you don’t even have to ask because you’ll usually have help within a few seconds.
While Michael Lancaster (not exactly sure what his job title is) does have a great sense of humor, one time my badge wouldn’t let me through an office door to return a piece of equipment and I said something along the lines of “Oh, I guess I’m not important enough to go in there”. Without missing a beat, he fired back “No, you are important, even if the door isn’t smart enough to recognize it”. Having not made the board of employees hitting a certain number (again, attainable if you work at it) for a couple days like I usually had, this was good to hear.
Cons
Like any job, there’s always some little things like a couple employees that think honking more times than someone else gives you the right-of-way, a limited number of employees with trailer-keys can get tedious, and if you’re late, you might be stuck with a forklift with bumpy tires or slow hydros that might make your day unpleasant, but of the dozen or so jobs I’ve worked, this is the first where I come home more energized than when I went.
The waiting list to get a full-time position is long, everyone I know that left this job did so in order to get full-time hours elsewhere.
