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The Cost of Comfort and Complacency

I heard of three individuals, in 3 different states, losing their positions this week, and that bothered me a bit. Two of them I’d worked with on and off over the last year. All three were right at the year mark in their positions, and each believed they had found their long term if not their retire from organization. What struck me as odd was that as all 3 shared their thoughts with me, each used the word comfortable when explaining what had happened. Two of them stated they had messed up, quit paying attention to their tardiness, probably had gotten a little laxed in regard to the rules and procedures, one even mentioned he had quit thinking of or being focused on safety to the degree he should have. The third guy, although admitting he’d fallen into routines and probably fell into the drama the breakroom can expose us to, he felt like, him being a long-term employee, he’d been working there for 14 months, he felt that he should had been given another chance.  Now all three shared that they had been spoken with at least 2 times or had a couple of coaching’s in their file on attendance, tardiness, and I think 1 of them had been coached on gossiping or speaking about others personal lives in the workplace. Like I said earlier, all 3 had said something like I had gotten too comfortable at work, and one added the thought or word complacent to me.  So today, I want to talk about something every warehouse professional will experience at some point in their career, comfort. Now, don’t get me wrong, being comfortable in what we do isn’t necessarily bad. It can mean we’ve mastered our craft, we’ve gained confidence, and we can get through our tasks with efficiency and ease.  But here’s the catch, being too comfortable can be dangerous. It can slow us down, cloud our judgment, dull our attention to safety, and even limit our growth.  In the light industrial world, in warehousing, production, manufacturing, distribution, and transportation, we depend on routine. But routine, if not managed with purpose, can quietly become complacency. And complacency is what costs people their jobs, it can affect their safety, and sometimes even their careers. Being comfortable in your job means you know your equipment, your process, and your role. You’re confident in your ability to perform your duties safely and efficiently. You’re reliable. You’ve earned that comfort through experience, repetition, and effort.  But complacent, that’s when we may stop paying attention. We start cutting corners because “we’ve done it a thousand times.” We stop double-checking our surroundings. We stop asking questions or looking for ways to improve.  Complacency feels a lot like comfort, but the difference is small, and dangerous. One helps us grow; the other quietly holds us back.  When we first start a new job, we’re alert and focused. Everything is new, we’re learning procedures, meeting coworkers, and trying to make a strong impression. We check our pallet jack twice before using it. We double-check labels, counts, and load sheets. We want to get it right.  Then time passes. A few months in, we’ve learned the ropes. A year or two in, we can do it with our eyes closed. That’s when the risk can creep in.  It’s human nature, we settle into patterns. But in our world, that pattern can dull our edge. Productivity may hold steady, but initiative fades. We stop asking “why” and just focus on how. That’s when opportunity starts passing us by, those same people who started after us might start moving ahead, taking the lead or trainer positions, while we’ve quietly stayed in the same spot. Stuck in our routine.  It’s just a fact. In warehousing and operations, growth rewards attention. The person still learning, still questioning, still improving, that’s the person who gets noticed, especially by the frontline management team.   From an operational view, complacency costs companies more than most realize.  Take safety, for instance. A comfortable but inattentive operator is more likely to have a preventable accident. Maybe a forklift operator forgets to sound the horn at an intersection. Maybe a selector doesn’t double-check their pallet cube or height and ends up tipping a load. Or maybe a loader forgets to secure a pallet or bulkhead, load bar or e strap because I’ve done this a thousand times before.  All it takes is one overlooked detail to turn a good shift into an incident report.  Operationally, being complacent can cost in other ways too. Decreased productivity, we may stop pushing for efficiency. Quality issues, incorrect counts, wrong product being pulled or loaded, or labeling errors. Oh, and my biggie. Missed opportunities: we may stop volunteering for new tasks or training because of the old, it’s not my job mindset.  When a team becomes too comfortable, improvement stalls, and that affects the entire operation’s performance metrics, from CPH (cases per hour) to on-time percentages, and our thr...