Your enthusiasm is contagious! Ear to ear grin through the whole thing...until..."WAIT! T.V. rabbit ears are usually brass? Whaa?...Scrapyard dude told me they were stainless!" Tempted to whip him with one if it wasn't my fault for not checking. Derrrrp! :&
Thanks for the tip! I'll pass it on....nicely. o:)
So. Boss asked me the other day if I wanted to go to the other yard to work with the other guy to bail cardboard. Sure, no problem, change of pace and all that. Wellllll...apparently that guy quit so I've been there every day this week except Monday. Looks like I'm gonna be over there for a while now.
Not sure what the other guy actually did but it was a mess. first thing I did was organize things my way. Took me 2 days and I'm still not done.
but now, I'm the only one in the whole warehouse, the boss will help if needed but for the most part its all ME! Yikes!! Do I know enough? Will I screw something up? I don't think I will but I definitely have more responsibility over here than I did at the other place because now its ALL me! From helping customers to sorting and bailing and getting full gaylords ready to go on the truck.
MUAHAHA....maybe a monster is born! All this space! All the possibilities for this space!
Then, the first choke - 4:30, ''Cindy, lock it up.''
Uh, where are the light switches? 8-l:&
Lol
NA,
You just keep on going up! You are quite the lady!!
I was wondering what is happening in your yard with all the doom and gloom. Is the boss laying people off? Maybe he is more into non ferrous which is not hit quite so hard?
Does your yard use one of those big excavator/crane type machines with the 5-tine grapple? We need a picture of you running one of those monsters!!
Come across any new treasures? Theres gotta be something you've come across you've wanted for a long time!!
Anyway, good luck in the new efforts!
Time to start thinking about your own buziness....
Jon.
It's great to hear you are getting new challenges and are considered worthy of it. Best continued luck, Mike
We are down to 3 people, bare minimum. Now though, there are only 2 there since I have been at the other yard. I do know my boss has been calling around for scrap to buy as well as other yards calling my boss for scrap to buy but nobody has anything. Where we were loading trucks couple times a week we are loading once every couple weeks (not counting the yard truck which makes small runs).Quote:
Originally Posted by sawmilleng
And no, we don't have the grapple, just a Cat which I keep sitting in and pushing buttons and the warehouse Mgr said ''if you're smart you'll get in it and get your own stuff with it'' but....its scary!!!! Lol, I've progressed to sitting in it, playing with the control sticks and turning some buttons on. One of these days I'll actually, uh, move it with me driving! Heck, as scared as I was of driving a tow motor, this should be a piece of cake if I can run a backhoe right?
Drive that Cat!
NA,
The bigger they are the easier they are to run!! At the coal mines not far from here running the big 100-ton trucks is an "entry-level" job.
Do you know the prices that cardboard is going for now? Better than steel?
Jon.
Jon, I asked about the cardboard and if it was even worth paying me to go over there to bail it in the first place and he said no, they only get like $40.00 ton for it.
Lol, well, maybe it is worth more than steel in some places now but I don't see how spending the gas to go get it and paying me to bail it can make any kind of profit.
My boss over here is a good teacher, I now know more about brass than just the fact that there is yellow and red lol. Lordy all the subcategories, I still don't remember them all 100%.
nobody would teach me at the other place so this is wonderful.
I have made the warehouse my own. I've set up an electronics breakdown area, a staging area and I've finished arranging all the gaylords how I want them, I've started barrels of some items that weren't there and should have been that nobody seems to have noticed/cared.
Today I started on a rolling tool cart. I took a rolling shelf unit and have started sorting all the haphazard tool boxes / tools and am making this cart the way I want it. Gonna take me a couple days of sorting and organizing and personalizing but it gives me something fun to do in the down time.
There is no stress here, I have two bay doors I can work during a rush which is great! I just zip between the two halves of the building/customers and it works out perfectly and smoothly!
the big buyers and sellers that come here don't look down on me because I'm a gal, they just sit in the office with the boss while I load / unload their trucks.
the boss puts no pressure on me, he knows I know what to do and just lets me do it. he walks around every now and then just to see how things are going and what we've got and will help if I need something but for the most part I am loving being able to do it all here. This fits me better than being stuck doing one thing only like I was mostly doing before because it utilizes all my talents as a scrapper/scrap yard worker. it all just works out at the end of the day and when I go home now I am even more tired than I was before but boy I tell you what, I go home happy and ready to come in to work the next day all excited again!
I did tell the boss I was a bit frustrated with not understanding 100% some of the brasses / other alloys by the end of my first day there but he said don't sweat it because it took him years and he still doesn't know everything 100%.
I noticed though that when I go out to help a customer bring in scrap they are surprised, like, I didn't expect someone to actually help lol. I like to help everyone bring stuff in that comes to us, its just the nice thing to do. If I'm not getting a rush of customers that is, then they are on their own lol.
NA,
Is this the yard where you were sent over to do cardboard? It sounds like you have moved to another company or something, the way you describe it! You need to fill us in a little!
I really like reading your enthusiasm! It is contagious!
Jon.
Jon, no, this is the big owners second yard. Its a different name but same owner. Its funny because this place (they just moved to this building from down the road) was where I would take my scrap when they first opened up by me. Its close to where I used to live before I moved. I was so happy to see them open because it meant I didn't have to drive 15 miles to the other yard I was using at the time. I never knew at that time that they had the yard I started working at after I moved which is closer to where I live now. Now I'm driving back to where I used to live which is 40 minutes but like I said, I love it here!! I feel like I've come full circle with this place, I mean, I used to sell them my scrap and who knew someday I'd actually be working there!!
Its just a different set of people, more relaxed, not as stressed and not worried about actually teaching me things! Even my boss here said that was crazy because it helps the business for me to have knowledge!
We don't have a Cat here so I have to actually climb into the roll offs to move things around after a few dumps. One of them doesn't have a ladder on the outside so I have to use 2 AL ladders for that one- one to climb up into and one to climb back out of.
The big difference between the 2 yards is that where I'm at now, everything gets tossed into self dumping hoppers rather than tossed on the ground (steel) so if its busy and I'm not able to watch, most times the only time I can look for things to pull aside is IN the roll offs lol.
One really nice guy actually carried all his stuff in and when he put it on the scale he put usable tools, a tool box and stuff to one side and said ''keep all this stuff you can use it its all good and workable!'' I was like ''oh yeah awesome sauce!'' lol
Oh, I got my first $5.00 tip Saturday from someone here. I used to get them at the other place but this was the first tip here.
newattitude
So the new boss is giving you a brass 101.
Did he mention Nickel silver AKA German silver AKA white brass? Just as white and silvery as silver but it's 60%
copper.
Oh geez, no he didn't.
That german silver almost got me a few weeks ago. I thought it was silver and there were a bunch of rings at an auction that said it but luckily I googled it before I wasted my $Quote:
Originally Posted by Abuilder
Boss comes out at 4 pm and says a guy called and said he is going to be the As$@#!e that comes in 15 minutes before closing time but we will like his scrap. True to his word he pulls in with a flat bed truck and he's got siding, romex, copper, all kinds of stuff. now, I don't get paid over time for staying past 4:30 no matter how long it is but I want the business because it pays the bills.
When he pulled in another truck pulled in with large pieces of steel duct work. so, got one truck in one bay and the other guy in the other. I'm running between the two weighing the duct work and answering copper/brass/etc questions from the flat bed guys. They proceeded to sawzall their copper/brass until their saw died but I had a helper today and things went real smooth. I stayed calm, answered questions, directed directions, pointed to appropriate gaylords or areas on the floor to put things and what I thought might end up being a 30 minute free over time only ended up being 10 and that included shutting the place down.
the guys weren't Ah@@@s, they were very nice and I even fit in a regular who pulled in while this was all going on past closing time.
I don't sweat the small stuff because this is the nature of the business and I had actually forgotten that *I* used to be part of that end of the day last minute rush lol. Even though its happening close to closing time, we appreciate the business and this means things are looking up!
I'm glad you don't mind a few right at closing. I'm one of those guys because I will work all day breaking stuff down and never actually get done, just have to quit and head to the yard because it's about to close. I usually can't wait till the next day because I need my trailer empty for work.
What I do is tell the yard workers that I got it and I unload and weigh everything myself. That way only the owner has to stay a little over and she's usually ok with it. I've even locked up the yard gates several times. Last one to leave turn out the lights!!
I do find all your posts about your job very interesting. Keep 'em coming.
I'm like you Pnutfarmer. Sometimes I need the trailer tomorrow, but I can always throw a few more pounds on it today. No matter what my good intentions are, I usually drive up to the gate about a half hour before closing.
And this is the problem with written tickets..............
The other day I waited on a regular, he only brought 14 lbs of cans in. I wrote up his ticket and told him to sign it as I threw his cans in the hopper. Couple minutes later the boss came out and asked the new guy where the hopper of 314 lbs of cans were. he had no idea what he was talking about. I followed the boss back into the office and he said the secretary had said ''well that was a nice ticket'' so he came to check on it.
I looked at the copy of the ticket and the guy had added the ''3'' in front of the 14. You could clearly tell the guys writing was not the same as my own.
Police were called and they know who this guy is. So far I hadn't heard anything on the situation as of today.
Now, I am using different colored pens and making them sign in a different color than I write the weights in with.
The guy mite have gotten away with it if he wasn't so greedy. 114 pounds mite have gone through?
Adding 300#!? Who wouldn't notice that one?
I hate to say it, but you're probably right with using a special signing pen. I can't believe all the stuff that these people try to pull!