I did my job shadow at Riley Blake Designs, who sell fabric out of the wholesale called

Christensen’s Wholesale, and on the warehouse manager Jason Welch. Jason is in charge of

all operations that go on in the warehouse. Everything including freight, shipping, invoicing,

order picking, and inventory. I followed him around for about half of his shift that day. He

moves around a lot, from being in his office checking things to then helping invoice orders and

even pick orders. At the end of the day UPS comes in and he and other employees put all of

the finished orders on the truck to be shipped out to their customers. The employees he is in

charge of include all of the warehouse associates, who all have different jobs. He is one of the

people in the warehouse that is licensed to drive a forklift, so he sometimes has to help order

pickers get overstock down with a forklift. A day starts as he has a meeting with all of his

associates around 10am to discuss goals and if they are meeting those goals and to challenge

them to exceed them. Then he goes on to check new orders. In the fabric business there are

higher priority customers that must be treated first, such as fabric.com. These customers can

sometimes be picky about things so Jason just make sure their needs are met. Some

customers will not take a bolt of fabric above or below a certain amount, others prefer certain

stickers and other things on the shipping boxes. If there is someone gone that day, he usually

fills in their spot no matter what their job is in the warehouse and helps out. For example, if an

invoicer is gone, he will fill in and be an invoicer most of that day to keep up with many orders.

This happened recently when one invoicer went on a two week vacation, Jason would have to

fill in a lot on those days that he missed. Jason also has to account for employee safety. With

the help of the director of employee relations, there are rules made for the warehouse. FOr

example, because of the frequent use of forklifts, headphones and phones are not allowed in

the warehouse so that associates can hear the forklifts coming down the aisles, so that no one

gets hurt. Only speakers and ipods are allowed to be able to listen to music while doing the
tedious work. Finally, he has to look over inventory of the warehouse. There are aisles A-F,

which all have different numbers and locations depending on the type and/or design of the

fabric. This is a simple system which makes it easy for order pickers to find the right fabric for

their orders and allows for minimal to no mistakes. All in all it can be stressful at times being a

warehouse manager, but Jason loves his job and has worked for this company for over 10

years.