{"id":670,"date":"2011-01-19T17:24:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T22:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/?p=670"},"modified":"2013-04-29T22:53:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T02:53:11","slug":"insights-from-a-cherry-picker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/insights-from-a-cherry-picker\/","title":{"rendered":"Insights From a Cherry Picker"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 241px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.raymondcorp.com\/5400-Orderpicker\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  \" title=\"Cherry Picker\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raymondcorp.com\/images\/specs\/orderpicker-5400-specs.jpg\" alt=\"Cherry Picker\" width=\"235\" height=\"217\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cherry picker. Not me.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Picture a forklift with a really high mast, so that its forks are up about 25 feet in a warehouse. There&#8217;s a four-foot platform between the forks and the mast. See the little guy waaaaay up high on the platform, pulling boxes off of the pallets in the shelves? Yeah. That&#8217;s me at work. Hello down there!<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, this job has given me a few lessons you can apply to life. Here goes:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bring together all the resources you need: <\/strong>The boss man wouldn&#8217;t  like it too much if I came back with only half the boxes I was supposed to be  picking. Besides that, what would the store in Kalamazoo do if they  didn&#8217;t have their weekly shipment of laptop coolers? Make sure you have  all you need to complete any project you pursue.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Face your fears:<\/strong> Believe it or not, it&#8217;s a wee bit frightening to look down from a few stories up. At times I was scared stiff &#8212; yes, sometimes literally; I froze high in the air, hanging  on  for dear life as the platform swayed back and forth. Panicking isn&#8217;t fun at 20 feet. Eventually, though, I got used to it (Hint: Don&#8217;t look down!), so that sky-high box is almost as easy to get as one on the floor. I couldn&#8217;t have gotten to this point if I hadn&#8217;t mastered my fears.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Aim for the sky:<\/strong> Anybody can pick the low-hanging fruit. It takes a special kind of person to go past the low places where the crowds are, climb higher, and pursue the top eschelons. That&#8217;s what gets the client, the promotion, the medal. And hey, even if you don&#8217;t make it all the way up, at least you&#8217;re at the fourth-level ink cartridges. Or something.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Just fake it: <\/strong>It takes a while to master a skill. I had to force myself to keep  going up, even when I was  afraid to put my foot way out far on the  pallet to get   that last box  on the top level. Picking for ten hours a  day gets you used to it real  quick,   though, so it&#8217;s not too big a deal  anymore. I would have never  been able to succeed at my work if I hadn&#8217;t  worked up the courage to  go for it time and again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Go for the peanut butter fudge: <\/strong>It may not be related, but it&#8217;s still good advice, nonetheless. Yum!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Picture a forklift with a really high mast, so that its forks are up about 25 feet in a warehouse. There&#8217;s a four-foot platform between the forks and the mast. See the little guy waaaaay up high on the platform, pulling boxes off of the pallets in the shelves? Yeah. That&#8217;s me at work. Hello&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":965,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions\/965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}