It's a great job, mine, excellent.  I'm the despatch department!  My
Approximate daily Schedule:

*I drive 30miles to arrive in Chester at (or near) 7.30 a.m.
*I electronically create a set of lists of all despatches due to go out
today, and glance at what I might need to do tomorrow
*I compare these lists to a) orders produced and b) orders to be finished
within the next n hours (depending on circumstances)
*I schedule vehicles to come in and collect my total tonnage for the day,
based on the total tonnage identified in (a) and (b)
*I compare (a) and (b) to a pile of Orders Completed paperwork and identify
(c), which is a list of
Orders-Said-To-Be-Complete-But-Mysteriously-Absent-From-My-Desk
*I compare (a), (b) and (c) with (d), which is a list of what OUGHT to have
been produced, and identify any orders which therefore OUGHT to be in (a)
,(b) or (c) but are Even More Mysteriously Absent
*I step out into the factory and look for (c), which I usually find strewn
around here and there, awaiting this or that (another roll of lead, a box of
something, you get my drift)
*Around this time I try to make time to jump onto a stack of pallets and do
a little dance.  (This tends to cause my colleagues to throw things at me.)
My bosses are unusually tolerant of this action, which is a good thing, 'cos
I'd do it anyay.
*having satisfied myself that I can account for everything in (c), I return
to my office and try to explain (d)
*Having satisfied myself that (c) and (d) don't include anything that can't
easily be dealt with, I'll don gloves, grab required tools and head back out
to the shopfloor to finish off (c)
*In the middle of carrying large heavy objects about, or kneeling to nail
something to something else, or shrinkwrapping a bag to a pallet, someone
will come up and ask/say something annoying.  I will be very rude to them.
*A wagon driver will appear, insult me and ask if his load is ready.  I will
realise that it's now 10.30 a.m. and will wonder where the **** the morning
has gone.  I'll race back to the office and try and work out what to put on
the vehicle.  Someone will attempt to interrupt me: I deal with them firmly.
*Someone from Sales will ring me.  I will have already ignored them four
times by now, and will guiltily answer the 'phone.  They ask something
idiotic: I try to retain my professional calm (such as it is).
*the Loader will come in and ask if Driver A's load is ready yet.  After a
flurry of unnecessarily specific abuse exchanged between all parties, the
load will be calculated and loading will commence, while I try to calculate
loading for the rest of the day's vehicles.
*Interruptions will be many and varied, and my level of approachability will
diminish exponentially throughout.  If you were to represent this on a
graph, you could at the same time plot my Increasing Level of Foul Language:
the two lines would form a perfect X.
*All loads more-or-less calculated,  I'll return to the floor and attempt to
finish all of (c).  There'll probably be more dancing, though not on a stack
of pallets: more freeform by now, as I glide gracefully from one (c) to
another.  There will be booing and heckling, which I'll Rise Above.
Peasants.
*Some time during the afternoon, a driver will arrive whose load includes
some pallets which I haven't finished.  There will be Acts Of Temper on my
part.
*3.30p.m. may have arrived around this point.  As I've worked through lunch
again, I *could* now down tools and go home.  I don't, because I'm nowhere
near finished.
*By 4pm all vehicles will have been loaded.  I'll get back to my desk, flop
down knackered, deal with all the day's paperwork and make some effort to
ready myself for tomorrow.........

It's great fun, honest, and I love it.  Thing is, I'll have been there two
years this time next month, and I think it's probably time to move on, so
I'm taking steps to find my next move.  Wherever I go, I'll miss this job.
I've had a great time.  Before RA took me out of the job market altogether
I'd always been an office worker, and I baulked a bit at working in a
factory.  Now, talking to my long-term buddies, I find that many if not most
Office Jobs consist of a lot of sitting by a computer and agreeing with it.
I really don't think I could do that any more........

Well, we'll see, I guess.

AlanF (despatch department)

2005-10-13, Responding to Jayne...

[...]

FWIW...

Taps should really have accessible isolator points so you
can indeed isolate them if they go wrong like this. If you
don't have them, I'd suggest you think about fitting them.
You can save a lot of potential grief, trust me. ;\