Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The fun & fascinating stories of Supply Chain & Logistics.
Bryndis 0:03
Hi, my name is Bryndis Whitson, and you're listening to the Zebras to Apples podcast, the fun and fascinating stories in supply chain logistics. Today, we're talking with Mike Borthwick, and what are we talking about? We're talking about, what is it like to be a roadie? What is it like to work in a warehouse, some things that you wouldn't expect that are supply chain logistics, and a few things that you would be surprised actually are. And that's exactly what the goal of this podcast is. Is to showcase stories that you wouldn't normally or necessarily think are supply chain logistics, and yes, they are. Please enjoy this episode with my friend Mike. It's really a lot of fun.
Hello. I'm here with Mike Borthwick, and we're going to be talking about a whole bunch of fun areas that people don't necessarily think are logistics, but totally are so.
Mike 1:02
Right on. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Bryndis 1:05
Okay, tell us a little bit about your career and what got you where you've been.
Mike 1:10
Sure. Okay, so when it comes to logistics. I had my first introduction to professional logistics in grade nine working in a professional theater as part of the drama club. Originally, I joined drama club in grade seven, but we didn't have a real stage back then, so we had to shuffle things around a lot, just just in order to get enough kids to make it feel like a stage. And then in high school, attached to our high school or church High School and Airdrie, we had a 450 seat professional theater, professional lighting, professional sound, professional everything, and a professional loading dock. Was the first time I ever got to use an actual loading dock, but it's kind of funny, because most of the bands that we would get to come in, and most of the plays that would come in didn't drive the size of truck that would need to make use of a real loading dock. So was a little lost on us at the time, but there were a lot of times bands or shows would come in, and by the time we had them all loaded up again, they'd find they had an extra two feet of space in their trailer, because we made it a certain point of pride in our group, that when we loaded out, we would make sure that everything was packed as tight as possible, so that nothing would fall over. Like that's one of the secrets to getting a good load out is making sure that everything is packed tightly, so that nothing gets damaged in transport. But that's the first time I started doing load in and load out for for bands and professional shows and things like that. And I would be there after school seven days a week, pretty much working on it, working on matinees, learning how to hang lights, learning how to run cables, how to do sound, how to replace bulbs, how to hang from my ankles above the audience, while doing all those things. And I only dropped my Crescent wrench once. But of course, it landed in the seat next to the theater manager, I got a bit of a talking to, you know. So that experience got me my first job in a warehouse, because I already knew how to run and load up and things like that. But it also got me a job when I was into University of Calgary, helping to load bands in and out. And in fact, one of the first shows I ever loaded in, it was, I was just remembering this. It was for the Headstones. They were playing the Black Lung as part of the stress management 101 session, which was really just an excuse to get $20 in lab fees from your parents so that you can go to the stress management 101 and spend it on beer, right. And then they played the opening set at the den downstairs from the Black bomb. And then I also helped them load in at SAIT across the way for where they were playing the headlining spot. So they played their set three times in one day. I loaded them in and loaded them out three times in one day and that's how I got to meet Hugh Dylan and all the rest of the guys in the band, and they actually introduced me to their record labels rep, who asked me if I might be available to help load in and load out other bands. And so then it went from being just, you know, 50 bucks in bar tab and then free admission to the show, to actually getting paid by a label to travel all over southern Alberta with the bands as they came through. So usually the cycle would be, you know, you you either go to a venue in Edmonton and load them in and then load them in in Red Deer or Calgary or Lethbridge and Banff like, oh yeah, Wild Bills in Banff has the most notorious staircase to load in on, and it's always slippery for some reason. I don't know why, but you know, half the time it's winter time, and that could probably account for it, but I don't know why it was slippery in the summertime.
Bryndis 5:45
And especially as you're going up, that would totally be, you know, maneuvering up it, yeah, up a staircase, plus trying to make sure you don't, you know, slide down.
Mike 5:55
Yeah, well, if you're carrying a four by 10 speaker cab, which, please don't go on tour with a four by 10 speaker cap. They're heavy as hell. And, you know, as strong, as strong as I was at the time, it's hard to get somebody to help you with that stuff, you know. And there's not a lot of people like everybody thinks, Oh, it's great. You get backstage, you get to meet all the bands and but first you have to load in all of their heavy ass gear by the time you're done, you pretty much hate them, because they all buy the heaviest equipment you could possibly find. But of course, usually before the show, they're not even on site, they're off, they're getting dinner, they're getting cleaned up, they're getting changed. They're doing whatever. They show up, they do sound check and then, and then they hang out. But during sound check, you're not backstage anymore. Everything's already set up, and so you're generally out in the audience. But there are some opportunities in there to get to know the band. Sometimes, sometimes they just don't want any of the local talent, I'll use the polite term, any of the local talent in their dressing room before the show, and sometimes, in fact, most times, they don't want anybody local after the show. But of course, there's other other bands who are all about it and think that this is just part of the lifestyle. This is just part of the fun. Let's, let's bring in the locals. Let's hang out with them. Let's have some beers. Let's get to know them. But a lot of the times, especially the lead singers, they need to rest their voice after show, and so after doing three shows in one day, you know, the headstones invited me to come back, and Hugh Dylan had actually tossed me as harmonica from the stage during the show, just just as a thank you. And then I got to go backstage, and his voice was just trash. He could barely whisper.
Bryndis 7:49
And, oh, I can imagine, especially after three concerts.
Mike 7:54
Yeah, you gotta, you gotta keep your instruments safe there. And it goes the same, like, the load in for a singer is always the easiest, but sometimes the load out is the hardest. That's an interesting one. So we're talking about logistics, right? And the logistics of these shows. So I also ended up joining Ayatsi, the union that manages all of the staff at the Saddledome for the big shows.
Bryndis 8:25
Oh, really interesting.
Mike 8:28
And so I got to load in for Aerosmith, and I got to load in for I did three shows with them. And then when I got my paycheck, I was like, I owe you money. How does that work out? So I left Ayatsi and I went back to doing just the side gigs for the smaller bands and just the regional stuff. And but I have, I have had that experience.
Bryndis 8:53
Well, and when you were at this, I'm sure with the Saddledome piece, it was probably a lot on a different scale. To an extent.
Mike 9:04
It is, it's much more professional. It's choreographed. It reminded me more of when I was working in a warehouse on night shift, picking orders and loading them on trucks. I don't know if everybody's had that experience, but I'm sure your listeners have, or are aware of those jobs.
Bryndis 9:24
Exactly. But we'll get into that in a second too.
Mike 9:26
Yeah, you know, you pull them off with the pump jack or the power skid. You break apart the pallets, which are so perfectly packed, custom made boxes for all of the gear. Everything gets stored in a certain way, so that, as you put things on, when you load it out, everything gets reversed so that it can come off in the way that you need you need it in the next show, yeah, but they don't do the reversal on the way in, of course, because that wastes time that you might not have if you're running late, if you get there late, they don't mind letting us work later if we have to, if things go wrong. Or if things are going to tack on extra time, they try to work that into the end of the load out phase, rather than up front in the load in phase, right? So everything in the truck is perfectly ready to go, unlike, you know, a five band crew that tries to stash everything in an old 1970s Boogie van, right? Like that's just the crazy mic stands are poking through drum sets, like it's not, it's not, it's not at all that. And yet, I think every band starts there to a certain degree with that, with that band hitting, hitting the road, and certainly some of the mystique, the mystery and the adventure is all around having that kind of an experience. As far as logistics go, when you're in a small band and you're just starting out, when it gets to a more professional level, a lot of that interpersonal play like I never met Aerosmith, you know, I never met Bon Jovi, but you know, I was, I was doing the smaller bands, doing the college circuit from 1991 through to 1999 and I met everyone like I got to meet Rob Thomas, hang out with him. I got to hang out with Eye Mother Earth, who else was big back then, Headstones. I did so many Headstone shows. Oh yeah, the probably the biggest one, though, is Nickelback, because they were a local Calgary band, and they worked their asses off. And I know that they're kind of a hot take. They sell a lot of records, but nobody seems to really like them, but yet, but other people-
Bryndis 11:44
But we love them too!
Mike 11:46
They had a real hole, I think it was an old station wagon, and they had all of their performance gear in the station wagon, ready to go at all times. And the running gag. It wasn't even really a gag, because it was 100% true, but it was kind of funny at the same time that you know, everybody in every venue in southern Alberta knew that however long it takes to get from from Calgary to Lethbridge, they'll be there a half an hour less than that, and they'll be ready to play. if you have, if you anybody, canceled, anywhere, or if there was a snowstorm. And this is a true story, again, with the headstones they were playing at SAIT for a spring show. I think it was the St Patrick's Day show. There was a huge dump of snow, like it was a giant Blizzard, and they were the first ones there. I have, I have no idea how, how they made it in, in that old station wagon, which I'm sure had bald tires on it, right? Like, I have no idea how they made it there, let alone made it there first, like they beat the guy who had the keys to open the back of the stage. And I was just coming, I was coming from just a few blocks away, and I walked over, so it wasn't too bad. So I was there shortly after them, and then the sun came out, everything started to melt and turn into a giant mud pit. So we were loading in through the mud. That was crazy. First it was snow, then it was mud. Sound check went great. Show was amazing. Yeah, there's a little tip for any bands out there who want to try and get as big as Nickelback and just work your ass off and just-
Bryndis 13:45
Show up, yeah, yeah, well, and especially that snowstorm, because it was a lot of snow.
Mike 13:49
Oh, yeah, sure, that was, uh, I think it was two feet of snow, but it might have been four or five, if my memory is correct, you know, like it seemed like there was so much more snow than there really was.
Bryndis 14:01
It did. It really had that extra layer of, yeah.
Mike 14:07
Thick and heavy and wet and difficult to drive on, and it was difficult to walk on. People were walking with their bikes up the hill because they couldn't pedal. Yeah, there was a pile up, like, I think there were 22 cars that got into a pile up at the bottom of the hill over by SAIT, there on 14th Street.
Bryndis 14:27
I remember even, like, the buses in Strathcona on the Hill that I was in, they got stuck, like, right at, like, I think there were four backed up, you know what that spot so there's no going anywhere for most of the morning, let alone the afternoon. But my dad still navigated us to the airport past probably your event, past the concert.
Mike 14:56
We had a good time that day. Oh, here's an interesting one, for the people who work backstage, on logistics or in warehouses, you get to know, you get to know a band by their gear, right? You know who uses the four by 10. You know who uses a particular thing? And most bands put stickers on their gear. If you're a small town, small town band, you put other band stickers on your stuff. If you're a big band, you have your logo professionally put on all of them. And so Canadian bands notoriously refuse to do that last step, even though they get big like maybe Rush, but I doubt even Rush does. So there is, there used to be this Molson Canadian blind date tour where you would buy a ticket or win tickets from the radio. I think it was, yeah, you could only win them, I think. And they would have some band show up, and they wouldn't tell you who it was until they walked out on stage. And it was just such a cool idea. And I got to work a couple of those, and both times, I knew who the band was just by loading in their gear. And really, and I was sworn to secrecy. I wasn't supposed to tell anybody anything, and I didn't want to tell anybody anything, either, because it would really ruin that moment, you know, when the curtain comes up, or, as the one band did, the singer just walked out. It was 5440, he just walked out on stage, and he was like, hey, you know what? The best thing about this show is, it's not promoted. We don't have a new album. We're not promoting anything ourselves. So what do you guys want to hear? Audience just started just requesting all of their back catalog, they would just play it. And I think they played Sheila twice, just because somebody came in late and missed it. So they played it again for her. Oh, my goodness, that's so cool. It was such a great show. But yeah, I knew who the band was just because I had loaded them in 20 times before. I knew all their gear and and they were one of those bands that never got around to putting their own professional logo on their own, hand crafted stuff. You know, they never did that. I could, I could always tell what kind of atmosphere was going to be set by the band, just based on that, and also what the rider said. So the rider is a little document that you get from the label, before they show up, and it says, where they want everything set up, how they want their stage setup. And actually 5440, would come in, and they would play, and we would set it up the way that they asked us for. But then we would say, hey, you know, given the acoustics of this particular environment, it would actually be better if we moved your monitors and if we moved the stage speakers so that you'll hear your monitors better. And they always said, Yeah, okay, you guys, you know, you know your venue, you know what to do. And so they always sounded so good when they came in. They were just so good. And that show was not in the usual bar venue, but it was in a professional stage theater for plays. It wasn't even really wired for sound or anything like that. And so we did a lot of homework when we were setting up the gear and testing it, and so we knew where we wanted everything to go, but you don't break the rider ever. Oh, yeah. You know, there's a famous story about how they want a bowl of M, M's, but there can't be any green ones in it. Yes, they just want to know that you read it and that you were paying attention, because otherwise something else might be missing, right,
Bryndis 18:40
Right? And so that explains me. Okay, yeah,
Mike 18:45
There's a reason why bands need things in certain places, and it usually has to do with how they move and interact with each other and the audience on stage. And it usually has less to do with audio quality or for technical reasons, let's say, and they're not idiots when it comes to the technical side of performing. I mean, I think every band out there, like even Slash used to have to load in his own amplifier at one point, right? Like, everybody in a band has to know how to load in, because otherwise you're not going to get your first gig. And so we would always try to have those riders set up in two ways, the one that they wanted and one that we thought would be best for them. Sometimes they went with us, sometimes they didn't. It's usually how they say no that that sets the mood. So there was one particular band gaining popularity in about '93,'94 and when we made the recommendation, they came back with like, Who the f do you think you are to tell us how to set up our gear and ours? Age. And I was like, this is not good people. You jacked. Let's get out of here, you know. And and sure enough, with the exception of the bass player, who is the coolest, coolest guy in that band, though, nobody would know, because kind of shy, they were just a nightmare to deal with through the beginning, the middle and the whole thing, we were happy to see them go when they were gone, and we never booked them again. As big as they got, we never booked them again. But yeah, actually, the bass player was the guy who first taught me how to string my bass guitar, because I just started playing bass at that time. It was really kind to take the time and to help me out with that. But of course, there's also you can have a great band and a great band, and you can, you can work with them repeatedly, and then one day they'll come in and the road gets to them. And this is maybe not so much logistics, but I think dealing with people is part of this job, and you have to be able to deal with that lead singer who's a great guy and just didn't sleep for two days and because stuff back at home, right? And the girlfriend's moving out while he was away on the road, and he can't break his contract to go home and talk to her, and he's just having an absolute meltdown. And it's like, how do you help somebody like that? You got to get them on stage. They got to do their show. They got to do their job. And it's times like that when you watch somebody get up on stage and sing a wicked happy tune the same way they sing it on the album, and the audience doesn't know anything about what's going on behind the stage. And that, just that, to me, was just, here's a key mark of what the difference is between an amateur and a professional.
Bryndis 21:51
Yeah, because you have to balance the two dichotomies almost.
Mike 21:57
Yeah, yeah. You never really know what you're going to get when they walk up the bus, even if you think you do, and you never know what you're going to get when you open the back of a truck. So open it slowly, and carefully, you know when, when you're those roll up gates, especially like you just throw them open, something's going to land on top of you, and it'll probably be really heavy, you know, right? So you can't, you kind of have to jiggle the door a bit. And if you jiggle the door and it jiggles, you're probably okay. But if you try and jiggle it and it doesn't move, you know, something's shifted in the truck during the drive, and you need to open it really carefully, not only because you want to protect yourself, but because you want to protect whatever that cure is you don't want, you know a symbol come crashing out at the back of a truck because it will bend and now it's not playable.
Bryndis 22:48
That would not be good. Yeah, yeah, probably something in that, rider contract.
Mike 22:54
Open the door carefully. Another interesting thing to note is that a lot of bands will rent their gear, rather than load it on a trailer or put it in a van or whatever. They'll go to a local music store, and they'll just rent their gear. And so a lot of the time, they like to show up early. And the one shop we worked with, they would let them in at eight o'clock, but the store didn't open till 10, and so they could sit there, and they could try out different instruments that are on the wall, and then they'll just, they'll rent them, and then, and they'll be and then they come back, the store will drop off their gear, we'll load up, or, sorry, we'll unload set stage, and then they'll show up to do the sound check, and usually at that time, it's when they really get to play with the instruments for the first time. And if there are any musicians out there listening, imagine it's just how much time you want to take for that sound check to really play with it and hear it and and play with it some more, and play with all the knobs and the tools and and the pedals. Your pedal board right like it's somebody else has just built you what's supposed to be an identical pedal board to what you want based on your specs, if they have the right pedals, sometimes they don't have the right pedal. So they have to give you something that's similar, that maybe you've never used before, and now you're trying to get that, that sound that the audience is expecting off of equipment you've never used before, and you've only got a 10 minute window for a sound check. That's not, that's not easy to do. I've seen bands do it in five minutes, and I've seen bands do it in an hour, and the hour long ones are like, it gets to a point where it's like a kid in the candy store and they're playing and they're having fun, and they got this new tool because, you know, gear acquisition syndrome is a real thing, and so you gotta get, you gotta get the time in on the equipment, for sure. Yeah, but if it's not working, it starts to get frustrating, and that smile starts to go away, and you try to do the best you can to help those people. And I know the one guy that I used to work with, he had a collection of microphones, like a really good quality, high end collection of microphones. And if there was a singer there who hated the microphone. You know, he'd have six other ones in his truck. He could run out and he can go get one. He could set it up differently. We could run effects on the soundboard if we absolutely had to. We could use preprocessors backstage to help on the vocals, to bring out whatever tones that he was looking for. And we will work as hard as we could to make sure that every single one of the instruments were where they needed to be in the mix as well. Because I'm not an audio engineer, I played one on stage once, but I did. I did learn how to use a mixing board, and I did learn how to do the lights, and I could jump in whenever, whenever I needed to.
Bryndis 26:02
Because you would have to, in case suddenly someone didn't show up for someone who was better at something.
Mike 26:09
Somebody has to run home and get a special microphone for somebody, you know.
Bryndis 26:14
Probably having more than once, I have a feeling, yeah.
Mike 26:16
I always got to do, like, I shouldn't say, I always got to do the soundtrack when that happened, but sometimes I would get to do it, and it was always such a joy for me to get to do what I was trained to do. It's interesting because I never went into theater professionally. It was there. It was an option. I had all the recommendations from all of my teachers and theater manager, and even though I almost dropped a crescent wrench on his head. Sorry Rob. I’m still sorry about that.
Bryndis 26:47
Yeah, I bet,
Mike 26:48
I considered it, but I decided to go and pursue the dream of becoming a weatherman instead. Okay, yeah, that didn't work out,
Bryndis 27:02
No, but then you got to but every adventure leads somewhere else, too, so.
Mike 27:09
This is true. I had a lot of adventures, yeah, yeah. In university I was doing that. I was also working part time in a warehouse, just taking orders, loading them up on the trucks. I got a job in a liquor store managing the warehouse because, you know, translatable skills, right? Pallets of beer, pallets of gear. It's pretty close.Y
Bryndis 27:36
Yeah, each one and each one, if you position it incorrectly can have pretty dangerous side effects.
Mike 27:49
I don't know if your listeners can relate to this or not, but when you're running you know one and a half million dollars worth of whatever product it is through your warehouse on a daily basis, the phrase treat it like a safe just continues to ring through my mind, because when I got there, the owner and the manager both told me multiple times, treat it like a safe treat. It's like a safe treat. It's like a safe. And, you know, I think there's, there was one particular case where one of the newer employees tried to go out the back door, and I had to redirect her to say, No, you got to go out the front door like everybody else. And there was a bit of a scene that was not cool, but she ended up going out the front door. Just took her a little bit longer. I wonder why. So when I then ended up getting a job selling bearings, I was working. I started in the warehouse, because that's how you that's where you start in a career like that. You get to learn the product. You get to go on training. I got certified for two different companies for selling their products. Those are great, great fun. But I had always, since the day I started there, the habit of, you know, treating it like a safe treat. It's like a safe treat. It was like a safe; it was already there. And the sales guys started to get a little bit angry, because I wouldn't let them take product out on a sales call unless they had a printed up piece of paper and sign that said that they're taking x product? Because otherwise, if they took the last of something and it came in and it got sold, I would go to the shelf to pick it up, and I wouldn't know where it was.
Bryndis 29:31
Yeah, because you have to have an inventory of that.
Mike 29:35
If you're missing it, you can't sell it. And so many times, I think everybody out there, even if you haven't worked in logistics, you know, if you're standing there in a retail store and they check stock at another store and they say they have one left, but it's on the other side of the city, what do you do? Do you drive all the way across the city to find out they don't have it?
Bryndis 29:56
I think we've all done that at least once.
Mike 29:59
You know, you always call and you say, can you put it aside for me? But when you're in a more professional business to business type place, and you're selling bearings to other businesses, or in our case, you know, the one time it happened, it only happened once was in that first week that I worked there. Somebody had taken it out a week before that, and they forgot that it was in the back of their car, and they've been driving around with it in the back of their car for over a week now, and I had to go and sell it. And it was an emergency rush. They paid an extra $150 extra to get it right away. The guide to deliver it was already on his way to our warehouse to pick it up so he could take it to the city, because it was that urgent. You know, I don't know what pipe burst, but I'm pretty sure it was a gross one if it was that urgent, you know? Yeah, exactly. So we were calling around all the sales guys to see if they knew where this last one was, and sure enough, it was in this other guy's car. The funny thing is, the City of Calgary was one of his clients, and he was there on a sales call, and so we totally covered up by saying, Oh, I've got one in the back of my car. Thanks. So it totally worked out, but yeah, only because he got lucky. That was nice, yeah?
Bryndis 31:11
Well, even when you think of that actually, that just leads into just an aside, just that moment, like the City of Calgary recently, you know, had the water main break, yeah, and then they had to figure out where to actually get the material to replace it. And I think they found two in, like San Diego or something like that.
Mike 31:31
Yeah, it was down in California. My understanding is that Calgary, base is a lot of their infrastructure stuff based on what's done in California. I have no idea why. I don't even know who to ask to find out that answer to that question.
Bryndis 31:46
I don't know, but that's another question for another day. That's an idea. Yeah, well, and you know, with that inventory, it's so key and crucial to have that knowledge, just as a funny aside, we're talking stories and warehouses. My favorite story is from a friend who was working in a warehouse, and he was, they were selling phones and stuff like that. And this lady calls, and she's like, I need a zero button, and because my zero button isn't working on my phone, and my friend was very keen and very eager, and he sent her the zero button, and she calls a few weeks later, and she's like, thank you so much for The zero button, but I only needed one, not 10,000.
Mike 32:51
Yeah, that's a lot.
Bryndis 32:53
Yeah, I think she did send it back, but yeah, he just, like, sent the entire box, as opposed to just one little item within that box. But then that being said, it was one of those, you know, I don't think they were used to selling like one item. So, yeah.
Mike 33:12
I had the exact opposite scenario. I had somebody call and ask for the price of a 2308 linear actuator. And as I looked it up, the price of one is 1295, I was like, okay, didn't hear from him. Didn't hear from him, didn't hear from about a month later, he called me back. He says, okay, so that's that linear actuator that you gave me the quote on. It's like, Yeah, is that price still good? Yeah, that price is still good. This is no discount for bulk orders. This is just for one off the shelf for somebody we don't have an account for named Rob. So it comes through, and I get a purchase order number from them, and I recognize from the format of the purchase order number that it's for a very large company here in Calgary, who I don't want to say the name of, yep, and it's for 3000 of them at full price. And I'm like, do I tell them? I don't know, but what there was, we didn't have 3000 of them. I checked stock and other locations across North America. We had 300 Oh, I had, I had the back order, 2700 and then we ended up getting a bulk discount, which brought our cost down significantly, so that I could reduce his costs significantly. And so we put the order together. Some paperworks was signed. I signed him on as a client, because we didn't work with them before this. And now comes the question of these things are eight feet long, and they weigh 100 pounds each, right? Where do we put 3000 of these things in our warehouse? Yeah. And this happens so rarely, but it does happen sometimes. Yeah, where a bulk order will get purchased, because the price is just so good. And so when I was working at the warehouse at the liquor store, for example, we had a case of, if you bought by the truckload, you would get a really good price. And so we don't know what truckload means. We just know that they bought a truckload and that we should expect a truckload while the 53 foot trailer came along. Just, we're just a small little liquor store, like we do, a lot of volume, but there was, like, we had pallets all stocked out, all blocking the lanes and the aisles in the in the actual liquor store itself that was attached to the warehouse, and we still didn't have that thing half empty, so they ended up finding some space in another place that they could just store a whole bunch of beer and and then it happened again. When I was working at, oh shoot, what was I? Oh yeah, it was the industrial products place. Somebody had mistyped in or misunderstood what the unit ordering was, and so he needed 100 pieces, but he ordered 100 boxes, and they're not small parts either, and the boxes were pretty big, and so we had nowhere to stay all of this stuff. So we actually ended up unloading it all into the parking lot. Fortunately, it was, it was like summertime, and the weather was okay, and we called a hot shot with a giant trailer to come and pick it all up and take it back to the originating warehouse, which was like a half a day's drive away. So we were able to deal with that. But, man, that, but like everybody who's listening right now has got to have an experience like that. That's what's going to happen. Oh yeah, my brother, my brother, Vinnie. He still works in, in, yeah, in shipping, receiving. He recently had a case where the owner made friends with one of the owners, the CEO of a company that manufactures dishwashers, okay? And got a great deal on 100 dishwashers. Okay, that's a lot of dishwashers to deal with in a small warehouse. So he's, I think he's still tripping over those right now.
Speaker 1 34:23
I would imagine so, because, I mean, they're not hard to-
Mike 37:28
Yeah. They're pretty bulky, yeah.
Bryndis 37:31
One of the grocery distributors, and we were getting a tour of their spaces and in the fridge/freezer section. And so it was like, minus 10 stuff like that. But they were talking about, like, how they have to rejig the entire warehouse in the back twice a year. And why do they have to rejig everything? For the turkeys! Because of the frozen turkeys. Frozen turkeys can't get stored differently than everything else in the warehouse, and so they have to move everything around so that they can have the turkeys ready for Thanksgiving, Christmas.
Mike 38:12
Oh, you just reminded me my second real job was actually working in a warehouse. I remember it, and I was 13 years old, and they gave me a power jack to drive. So a power jack is, it's like a pump jack, but you can actually stand on the side of it. It's got a big, giant battery electric motor and a throttle like a motorcycle, and a brake like a motorcycle, and so you can fly around on those things. And I thought I was doing 100 kilometers an hour, like I thought it was going super fast. I was probably only doing five, but I thought it was the coolest thing. I just run in there, and I hit the button, then I pull the skid out, and I go, and I park it, and then I go back into the truck, and I pull it out, going back in. And, yeah, yeah. Twice a year those turkeys would come in, and we would have to redo the whole thing. And we were working in the cooler and the freezer all the time. And we worked on reefer units the whole time. And so we're smashing into the frozen turkeys, and we're taking them out. And one guy, he took the corner and he cut open the side of the box, and a bunch of frozen turkeys went flying all across the floor. And when they're frozen, there's like, they immediately get that, that layer of frost on the outside. And so there's like, zero friction, and those things flew, and they would rebound off of other things, and there's just, it was crazy. But that wasn't the worst one. The worst one was when I was working in dairy. And the same thing happened, and a pallet full of milk went over, and a bunch of it broke open, and there's just milk all over the floor, and we're trying to clean it up. We're trying to clean it up, but more people would run their power jacks through, oh no, all the milk. And so all of the power jacks are covered with milk, and there's a trail of milk that's just that, you know, the same shape of the wheels is going down, down the thing and and then, like everybody knows that, you got to be careful around dairy, because there's a spill, and you got to slow down when you come around the corner out of the freezer. And sure enough, one guy comes flying out of the freezer, I think he had ice cream, and he hits it, and he does like a 180 in, and he skids all the way through, and then he smashes into one of the one of the legs for the racking and the racking, and because there's all stuff packed three stories high in the racking, they had to evacuate the whole place because they didn't know if it was going to fall over, right and but this is a night shift, and we're not allowed out. Like, yeah, when you work the night shift in that place, they're really worried about theft, so you're not allowed outside. They have special permission from the city to have a smoking room inside with special ventilation and stuff like, like, like, really, you're not allowed outside. But for this, we had to go all the way down to the far end. And so there's 300 people all crammed at the far end, and everyone's pant legs got covered in milk. And so the whole place just slowly starts to get this warm milk and body odor smell. It was a very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable scene. And we hated to leave it like that. But, you know, there was an hour left in our shift, and that wasn't going to get fixed until the next day, because that whole thing needed to be replaced and rebuilt. Oh, yeah. So yeah, the day shift ended up having to clean up after the night shift. And boy, did they leave us a note.
Bryndis 41:44
I bet they did.
Mike 41:48
Actually, that was like my third or fourth, last shift at that job, too.
Bryndis 41:52
Oh, wow. Well, so in night shifts, Was it, was it like an eight hour? Was it a 12 hour?
Mike 41:58
I did 410s okay, it was like, 8am till 6am or, sorry, 8pm till 6am or something like that. I would get home and Stargate would be on. So I was, I would watch Stargate and then go to bed. Yeah.
Bryndis 42:16
So yeah exactly, because there's a lot of, like, the shifts and stuff like that, because some are, so it's four, four on, four off. Some of them are a whole bunch of different ones too. So-
Mike 42:26
Yeah it was, it was okay. Job would have been better if I could have listened to music while I was doing it. But I was, I did all of this stuff to help pay the bills while I was going through college. And so when you get to the point where you're working four jobs, but also going to school full time. All of those jobs either need to be, you know, evenings and weekends, or incredibly flexible, like, show up and help whenever you can. I had one of those that was another shipping job. Actually, we would show up like, usually I would show up about three or four on Friday, and I would unload trucks until midnight. Then I would go and work my other job until about three on Saturday, and then I go to the other job, back to this one job. And there was one time in the winter time. Then this is before. This is in the 90s. And so this is before satellite tracking on trucks was a thing. We had no idea where any of these trucks were, and so they would just sort of show up whenever. And if people were there to unload them, they were happy campers. We would unload them. And if nobody was there to unload them, then they would have to wait. There was a phone number, the manager guy would call, call everybody in and say, hey, who can make it? Who can't? And you would show up if you could. And then there were times where they'd be like, okay, they're leaving Toronto on Tuesday at 7pm that means they should be in Calgary, blah blah time two days from now. And so you show up ready for those trailers, not knowing that there's a blizzard in Winnipeg, and they all get stopped. Oh, right. And so sometimes we would just, you know, we knew that they were coming, but we didn't know when. And so we would get paid to sit around and play cards, yeah. And so we would sit around and play cards. And then we found we got a phone call from one of the trucks. He was in Regina, thinking he was going to be there in about eight hours, or something like that. I forget what it was, but there were still three other trucks. We had no idea where they were, so we knew one was going to be there in eight hours, which was about seven o'clock that morning. So we ended up taking the giant rolls of bubble wrap, and we rolled out a bunch of layers of it, and yeah, and that was my bed for the night.
Bryndis 44:42
Oh, because you wouldn't know when it would show, yeah.
Mike 44:44
We didn't know when they were going to show up, or if they were going to show up, and so we had to be there. Somebody had to be there to help unload those trucks that we knew were coming in. We just didn't know when they could have shown up at midnight or 3am. They didn't show up until three o'clock the next day. So I. I literally got paid to sleep for eight hours.
Bryndis 45:04
Okay, was bubble wrap actually comfortable?
Mike 45:07
It was, it was a little sweaty, but yeah, it was, it was soft. It was comfortable. You don't want to roll over too much because, you know, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, you know.
Bryndis 45:22
True, and then you're waking everyone else up exactly, yeah, still one of, what a what an experience that fully.
Mike 45:31
We had somebody at that job set off a fire extinguisher once, and it's one of those powder ones. Oh, man, that got everywhere and it got into everything, and we were shipping high end clothing for that job, and so like all of those suits got to, got to the mall, and all the staff there had to vacuum down every single one of those suits to get all of that white fire extinguisher stuff off them, yeah, we got notes.
Bryndis 46:07
Well, and that's always the thing that I always kind of, whenever I was talking to clients or anything like that, it was like, every piece in the supply chain is really crucial, and every piece affects the other pieces. Sometimes you know why, and sometimes you don't know why.
Mike 46:31
When you open the back of a truck and you can see everything's the way you would stack it, and nothing's shifted, everything's still good. You know that unloading is going to be a snap. It's going to go really easy, but then you open some and it's like, oh, this was packed by a drunk, unsupervised rookie. This is not this is no good.
Bryndis 46:54
Well, and those moments lead into, like, a lot of more, probably, damage too, on top of, yeah, yeah.
Mike 47:03
We actually had somebody put a box of cleaning supplies on the top. And, of course, the bottle of bleach broke open. Oh no, and bleach just got over absolutely everything. And all of the clothes underneath that, they were all written off there, was all completely damaged.
Bryndis 47:21
Oh, fully could because, yeah, it would stain everything, yeah, let alone, like especially the clothes.
Mike 47:28
I mean, cardboard is going to shelter some of that, but it's still cardboard. It's going to soak it up. It's going to soak it in, and eventually it's going to get into the clothes that are inside of the box.
Bryndis 47:40
It was an unintentional tie dye.
Mike 47:43
Unintentional tie dye in a pinstriped suit, yeah, yeah.
Bryndis 47:47
Exactly, not exactly what we're looking for, especially in the 90s power suit.
Mike 47:51
No. I mean, if it was the jean jackets, it might have been okay.
Bryndis 48:00
So if you were kind of giving someone advice, if they were thinking of entering, whether becoming a roadie, working in a warehouse, anything in those kinds of areas, what would you give as a piece of advice?
Mike 48:15
That's a good question. Stretch, take care of your back. Lift with your legs. Taking care of your own physicality is incredibly important, because you're going to be working your body really hard for a long time. Like it sounds easy to drive around on a power jack, but it takes coordination, timing and attention to do it safely, and so everything that you do kind of really needs to be oriented around safety, you know, carrying heavy amps up the backstairs of Wild Bills in Banff for your favorite band. You mean, yeah, there's a cool sort of experience that you're having, but in that particular moment, you kind of need to put away what's cool about it, and be the professional that you're getting paid to be to load that gear in, and if, if you're, if you're not into working out, start working out, because it's going to make your days go a lot easier. I had been working out for several years before that, and I was already, you know, I stopped going to the gym once I started working 60 hours, loading in, oh yeah, and loading out and carrying heavy boxes and doing all that stuff, because now I was getting paid to work out. But you still have to approach it like a workout. And so when you lift, you need to be aware of your form. You need to be aware of what your hands and arms and neck and legs and back and knees and hips, all of those things, you need to be aware of what you're doing. And so when you first get started, go slow, if people are pushing you to go faster, you know you need to make sure you have the focus on what your body is doing and doing it in the correct way. Going to a gym and working out, you can get some special instructions, sometimes from it, from a trainer who can teach you those things if you don't already know them. That was an important thing for me to bring into that job that you can get right now, even before you go into that. So my son right now is learning how to lift, and so we've got him watching YouTube videos so that he can do it properly without hurting himself, and get his body motions in line, because it is such a physically demanding job.
Bryndis 50:32
Very much. So, yeah, what a great piece of advice.
Mike 50:36
Safety. Safety third, right?
Bryndis 50:39
Safety first. Well,
Mike 50:42
I do believe it is safety third for two reasons. One, sometimes something needs to happen and it might not be safe, but you can still try and get the safety element in there. Police Officers, for example, you know their entire job is literally not safe, but we need them to do their job, and we need them to return home safely. And so even though they're going to do something dangerous, their training is there to help them try and stay as safe as possible. Yeah, completely that guy who gets paid a ridiculous amount of money to go and change the light bulbs on the top of incredibly tall towers. Safety. Third, right.
Bryndis 51:21
Right. And that's so key in different ways that I don't think people would necessarily think, but I think it's really key, and what a good way to kind of focus in a different way and put everything back into perspective too.
Mike 51:41
Yeah, you got a reason to get home at the end of the day.
Bryndis 51:44
Really, I think this was so fascinating. It was so much fun. There were so many different things that you didn't even think of, and a lot of laughs, which was really important. But also, I think it, it really showcases for me, kind of exactly why I'm doing this podcast is there are logistics and supply chain and so many different things that people don't even realize. And thank you for helping me showcase that.
Mike 52:14
Hey, that was fun. Thanks a lot. I look forward to listening to the other episodes in your podcast.
Bryndis 52:19
Yeah. Thanks.
Thank you for listening to this Zebras to Apples podcast episode. I hope you enjoyed the showcase of the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could give it a rating and review. For more information about this topic, you can go to zebrastoapples.com or follow Zebras to Apples on the social media platform of your choosing, whether that's Instagram, Facebook, TwitterX, Blue Sky or LinkedIn. You can support the show on Patreon. Also check out the show notes below. Please join me again for another episode of Zebras to Apples. Have a wonderful day.