A Great Place to Start

I got my job at My Father’s World when the father of a good friend of mine reached out to me looking for summer help. This is the first job I’ve ever had, so, I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was ecstatic at the opportunity for a summer job and some pocket money. I was told to come in one day to look at the warehouse and to meet some of my future coworkers. Everyone was very open and friendly, welcoming me into the company.

My first official day on the job, I went in at 8 am and 7-9 other employees and I gathered to start the morning with prayer. After prayer, we socialized for a few minutes and then got to work. My work in particular is picking the orders we have received from customers. During the first few days, one of my coworkers, Joel, provided a lot of help. He showed me how to use my scan gun and what to do when something would go wrong. At first, that was usually just give it to him and he would fix it. He showed me where each of our products were and slowly introduced bigger orders to me as time went on. I still remember the first ECC package I picked because it was a big deal to get to pick what we call the “partials” or packages that include a pre-built portion of materials.

When you order a package or an item we sell, our software system sends it my scan gun. I find all the items in the order, put them in a box and give it the person who ships our packages. Our warehouse isn’t particularly massive, but it has a lot of items, so getting used to everything took about 2 months. When the busy season hit, I would sometimes get 60+ orders in a single day just on my list, and it would take the majority of my day picking all of those. I am one of only three people who pick our orders, so it can get overwhelming during the summer time when we have an uptick in orders. When I first started at My Father’s World, picking was my number one priority and, when we are busy, it still is. As our warehouse manager says, “It is, and always will be, everyone who pick’s number one priority.” But now I also get to ship the packages and build our partials which is a whole different process.

What I’m currently learning is how to pick retail and school orders when they come up because they are done with a different method than homeschool orders.  The retail and school orders are extremely large so they require a lot of time, space, and intense focus. I am still the newest person in our building, but I have moved from temporary summer help to a full-time, permanent employee and I just received my own office. Moving forward, I will start learning how to use the computer software systems and how to look at products systematically.