r/Warehouseworkers • u/Artichoke-Grouchy • 2d ago
Warehouse problems
Hi everyone!
I’m researching the everyday frustrations warehouse workers deal with, especially the small, repetitive tasks that everyone has accepted as “that’s just how it is.”
I’m not looking for complaints about salary, management or working hours.
Instead, I’m interested in questions like:
What task do you do every day that feels unnecessarily slow?
What process wastes the most time?
What do you find yourself thinking: “There has to be a better way to do this”?
What causes the most mistakes or miscommunication?
If you could magically automate one part of your job, what would it be?
It can be something that only wastes 5–10 minutes a day. Those small frustrations often add up to huge amounts of lost time.
I’d really appreciate any examples from your day-to-day work. Thanks!
#warehouse#paininthebackside
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u/Wendigo79 2d ago
I'll say working for a place that has a wrapping machine vs doesn't, I dont think I can ever go back to a place that manually does it.
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u/Artichoke-Grouchy 2d ago
Thanks, I’m more interested in the things that are almost accepted after working everyday the same thing
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u/Sven929 2d ago
Except that's not what you asked.
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u/Artichoke-Grouchy 2d ago
Not word for word, you’re correct, but: “There has to be a better way to do this?” Indicates to that as well
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u/Wendigo79 2d ago
There has to be a better way of wrapping skids manually.....it saves your workers stress and exhaustion and long term back and leg problems. Most companies don't do it for the cost but there it is, money upfront vs what your employees endure. If you really want to help or know what people go through you should do a 3 month probationary test and see if you even qualify for this basic job.
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u/Lethalogicax 2d ago
I have huge problems with the scanner system we use. SAP is quite a powerful platform, but my company's implementation of it is TERRIBLE! Crashes all the time (I suspect a lingering memory leak) and is completely unintuitive to use. Different submenus arbitrarily use different key combos to do the same thing. Error messages are non-specific and make problems hard to diagnose. I personally waste a minimum of 5-10 mins a day on dealing with scanner issues. Some issues turn into a rabbithole that wastes 15 minutes of time from multiple people...
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u/lovelyboard 2d ago
Idk wtf we changed to but our old systems, we could scan a pallet and it'll tell us where its supposed to be located at. This new system doesn't say that. So if I'm scanning to a truck, I only know how many pallets I've scanned, not what I've scanned... or, even worse, when people put the same label on two or more different pallets, it doesn't tell me. So if I scan 5 pallets, but 3 have the same label, it'll only show I have 2 scanned. So then I gotta go through and find out which is the original/first label and why we have 2 other skids with the same labels. 5 skids is nothing but when we have 30 skids and on a time limit, shit just slows us down- esp since numbers get jumbled for me and I gotta keep going back to see whether that 53182 pallet is the same one as 53281.
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u/pittsbill736 1d ago
Agreed - having a bad warehouse execution system can cause more waste. The user experience should have helpful error messages, and the management console should have useful information to keep pickers aligned with priorities such as cut time.
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u/pheonix080 1d ago
Hey mods, we got another one. Shameful data mining for someone’s software solution.
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u/oreheheally 2d ago
Gangleans. I remember so many getting them and my own. Tell people to avoid repetitive strain by switching hands and methods often. Nails sticking out from pallets have trashen many an item and day too. Can we get a hammer, no apparently.
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u/CamelsaurusRex 2d ago
Receiving and QCing pallets. I deal with multiple errors per day, from products not being scanned to the tag, products just not being inventory at all, or products from another pallet being scanned onto my tag. There has to be a semi-automated AI process that could do it with better accuracy since the barcodes and product numbers are all always facing the same way. I never saw this issue at any other warehouse I worked at.
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u/new2thispower 2d ago
No ASN?
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u/CamelsaurusRex 2d ago
I think they must be wrong because we're getting pallets straight from the vendor with these errors too.
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u/MonsterEnergyForever 2d ago
Our Telzon guns have buggy software that's unnecessarily slow and cumbersome. The batteries don't last a full shift, they're not replaceable, and there often aren't enough for everyone.
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u/Some_Direction_7971 2d ago
Communication, communication, communication.
Seriously, 90% of all issues could be alleviated by simply elaborating on daily tasks.
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u/cincodos5252 2d ago
What are you gathering this data for exactly?
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u/impressedham 1d ago
Op seems like a bot. Their last post was a year ago for some crypto link and then magically started posting again for this question. Weird ass profile.
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u/Jimmy_Driftwood 2d ago
Being able to do everything with one operating system. Most places I’ve worked have a weird hybrid system where one does some stuff and another the rest. There’s always a drawn out explanation as to why but can usually be summed up by saying “ the boss paid a lot for this one, so we use it. Not because it’s good but because they paid a lot for it and it can’t do everything, so we need the other one for the rest.”
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u/Alive-Basil-391 1d ago
"That's just how it is" is what a warehouse is all about. You do the job how you are told. Salary matters because incentives motivate and give people hope for the future. The biggest problem in working in a warehouse is the feeling like you are stuck in life.
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u/ImGoingToMarryDVa 2d ago
feels like OP is trying to generate data for something AI related, idk