The week started slow. I went into work Monday and had a fairly productive day. I was finally able to get some time with my boss. The meeting did not go how I had expected it to go. I decided that I had made enough progress on my current project and that I should pivot and work directly with one of my coworkers on a new project he had just been tasked with.
Our task primarily revolved around streamlining our tracking of maintenance for our fleet. Although we are an official partner of Amazon and receive some of our fleet vehicles like the large Rivian vans from Amazon Tree Logistics is directly responsible for the maintenance of our fleet. For the vehicles provided by amazon we receive an annual vehicle maintenance budget. However, Amazon provides only about fifty percent of our fleet. We are directly responsible for the maintenance of the rest of our vehicles. The fleets size typically hovers around forty-three to forty seven vehicles however this number could be past sixty during peak seasons like Prime Day or Christmas.
Do to the variety of ways we obtain our vehicles, their maintenance record were scattered. Embarking on this project was no small feet and it required a substantial amount of tedious work. Thankfully, I had the time since my personal project was put on hold and passed onto another local intern who would be with Tree Logistics at least through the end of the fall semester. We began with sorting and cataloging our paper files. All non-amazon provided vehicles in our fleet had physical copies of their maintenance and registration stored in our office. I was given the tedious task of sorting through this, digitalizing and cataloging all these files. The reason we went about it this way was because all of our amazon licensed vehicles’ records had already been digitized.
This took about a day to do. After completing this task, we were able to sort through and spend the following day (Tuesday) noting what immediate maintenance needed to be done, extending registration for vehicles that needed it and noting priorities for future scheduled maintenance. One challenge my coworker and I faced was that neither of us spoke German. This caused us some difficulty since the documents were in German, so we needed to use google translate or our colleagues at times to fully understand some of the records.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent going over the digital damage reports that we had access to and linking them to the vehicles. This only covered major damages that typically involved another car mainly vehicle on vehicle accidents. This would be things like major dents, and all of these would have been filed through insurance so there was a large paper and digital trail for us to track. This was difficult work because we faced the same challenge again since most of the documents were mostly in German. This project was something that I had advocated for since I started at Tree Logistics 7 weeks ago. By the end of the day Thursday we had made major progress and had digitized all files. The next week would be spent sorting them. However, my colleague other work to do so I was responsible for doing the sorting remotely.
My boss gave me and my fellow intern Friday off because it was the fourth of July and we had completed our work ahead of schedule. One of the many things I enjoyed about German work culture compared to American work culture was that you were responsible to complete your assigned work and then you were done. This allowed my colleagues and I to not have to always spend the full eight hours in the office and since we had finished our work for the week (by working longer Monday – Thursday) we were able to take the day off. We spent the fourth of July in a park grilling and hanging out with a few other Americans who had gathered. A friend of mine who attends University in Texas was travelling across Europe and we spent the Friday and Saturday together. It was a great time.
The communication style in Germany is very different than in the United States. Communication in Germany is typically done in a more formal tone. Even inner company chats were structured in a formal tone. Also, in Germany you do not tend to hear praise from your boss. If you are succeeding, then you will just not receive feedback. If you are struggling or if they notice something my colleagues tended to be blunt and almost harsh about things. This is more of a culture thing and was never intended in a negative way. I had prepared myself for this, but it was still a shock to witness.