After the test and interviews I returned to work at GE. The manager asked how applying for work at HWI had gone. I had not told him why I needed off that morning, so I was a little surprised that he knew.
He said he had also seen the ad in the paper. I told him I was sure they would call me and I would get the job. He laughed in a manner of disbelief.
I can’t remember the amount of time between the application process and the call asking me to come to work at HWI. I do know the call was received in late May 1971 asking me to start work on June 1st. I had to tell them I could not start on June 1st, I was in the Missouri National Guard and we had a two week training program and I could not get out of that training.
I was then asked if I could start on June 14th. I told them I would be happy to start on the 14th. I remember that when I returned from the 2 week training I decided to drive to the HWI building to actually see where I would be working. The building was not complete. The roof was only covering about ¾ of the floor; the front office did not exist. I pulled into the front drive and a security guard came out to meet me.
I explained that I was coming to work here on Monday and he gave me a tour of the building. I was glad he gave me a tour but I am sure he should not have done that.
Since the front office did not exist he showed me where the receiving office was. The receiving office was used by everyone and that was where the only phone in the building was located. No one had cell phones in those days so the receiving office was a busy location.
Monday morning I arrived at work and did some paper work. When I had finished with paper work they took me to Jim Murphy, the manager, and he said, “You know how to check merchandise, don’t you”? I told him I did and then he asked if I knew Mike Whitson. I indicated that I knew Mike so Jim said, “Mike has a shipment of U Brand pipe fittings in the center back of the building. He has been working on it for 2 days, will you see if you can help him”.
As I remember it, I walked to the back of the building and found an open area where Mike had a shipment of approx. 50 pallets of U Brand spread through the area. I explained to mike that Murphy had asked me to help him. He was at a point of almost giving up. I asked Mike to show me what I had done; the paper work was a big mess.
In those days product was checked in using the paper purchase orders and a hash mark would indicate a carton. After about 10 minutes of review and discussion I explained to Mike that we would need to erase all the pencil marks.
He almost panicked saying he had worked on this for two days. I assured him we could fix this but we needed to start over.
With all the pencil marks removed I showed Mike how to check in this shipment. Together we checked in the first pallet, recorded the cartons on the PO and then we moved the pallet away from the others. I believe Mike had checked many of the cartons twice.
By separating the checked product from the unchecked we would be accurate. We completed checking the U Brand in about 3 hours. From this point on, I was one of the go to people for unloading and checking.
There was a situation in the Cape building and it was “the union”. Since all the companies building the center were unionized, HWI employees being nonunion were not allowed to operate the fork lifts. That meant union workers would sit on a lift at the back of the trailer and watch the HWI staff member working with the truck driver. We would load product onto pallets. When the pallet was loaded the union forklift driver would move the pallet out of the trailer to a checking area.
HWI staff could use pallet jacks to move product in the center but not power equipment. Speaking of pallet jacks these were push and pull pallet jacks and it was not unusual for an employee to move 1500 pounds many times in a day.
Also I feel it is necessary to say we would deliver a pallet full of product to a drop area and on the return trip we would ride the pallet jack like a scooter. We would stand with one foot on the pallet jack and push with the other foot. This was a time saving way to get back to the checking area. In today’s more, “safety conscious world”, the employee would be terminated for this “unsafe action”.
The initial Cape management team will be discussed in the next posting.
Don Ford
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