Catching a breather....

Time flies when you have something to do. I've been working at my Dad's new cold storage warehouse for a week already. Logistics work is tough, especially when you're responsible for the safekeeping of your customers' products...and to make things worse, in a minus-18 degree environment.

There is almost no hierarchy in this newly established company yet, very much due to understaffing and insufficient knowledge of the logistics business. The bosses have to do the manual work themselves, and I suddenly found myself tasked to be some sort of foreman and store checker. This is where the welfare of your ground level staff is of utmost importance. If one of the forklift drivers fall ill, it could badly impair the efficiency of the daily operations. And being a new company in the process of widening its customer base, competitive prices and quality service are imperative to keep the company going. Ok i'm speakin' as though i'm the big boss or something. The bosses are my dad, my uncles and my "Bao Ka Liao" cousin who's preparing for his wedding next week, so i'm pretty much a helper running errants and doin' all the menial jobs for him.

I must say the kind of job i'm doin' now is literally an "industrial attachment". The warehouse is located in Jurong Industrial Estate and because the company is new, there is plenty of room to exercise some planning and control of the logistics operations that require smooth and systematic work processes to enhance the company's efficiency and credibility. Who says blue-collared jobs don't need to use brains?

The peak operational hours are usually at night when customers come and select their frozen food in preparation for the next day's delivery to restaurants, supermarkets etc, and also at around 6 o'clock in the morning when the freezer trucks come and pick up their goods. I'm lucky i don't have to work during these odd hours so there's still time to catch enough sleep after those incapacitating worldcup late nights.

Catching a breather now actually cos it's lunchtime...Thanks to my cousin, the whole office is all LAN-ed up so there's always cyberspace for me to chill out. Otherwise during offpeak hours, I will be looking at the indian workers and they will be looking at me...and then the only things missing are perhaps some coconut trees for us to dance around.



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