Our store had this new worker for a while and he is very slow. He has been in training for a little over a month now and doesn’t remember things that we have been telling him since he started here.
His memory is the biggest problem. Somethings he will remember and somethings he won’t, or he’ll remember today and forget the next day. I’ve tried many different ways of teaching him, but nothing seems to work consistently. It feels like he isn’t even trying, but I have no way of knowing that because I don’t have any medical grade knowledge of how bad his memory is.
The reason we have been training him for over a month is because the Boss feels bad for him and doesn’t want to fire him. His last job had him doing custodial work for way less than minimum wage, and did not exactly give him the utmost respect.
He is a nice guy and he follows orders well, so I would love it if I could get him to learn the work. The work, BTW, is stock work. You just have to take a list of the items missing on the self and find them in the back of the store and bring them out. We have the items arranged in sections in the back (with signs and everything), but he always forgets that the sections exist and keeps looking at random places.
What he has learned is how to write down the items so that he will know what to look for in the back. So that is progress I guess.
Anyone have experience with teaching slow learners? Any advice?
I train a lot of people at my job, and while I wouldn’t say I myself am a slow learner, I would say that I have a harder time learning new things than I should because I have ADD. The advice I would give would be to teach him one task at a time- have him do it over and over until he has it down (test him!) before you move on to another thing. Try different ways of teaching him- written instructions, hands-on work, picture instructions, etc. Hell, maybe even put the instructions into a little song- people learn in different ways.
I have zero experience with slow learners. But here’s a suggestion that seems logical to me: try giving him only one item at a time, not a list.It may be much less confusing for him.
Also,maybe organize his work for him by shelf/area. Take his list, and re-organize it by similar items. Send him , one at time, to get each item. You know that each item is in the same place as the previous one, but he will have to think about it, and gradually learn each area of the stockroom.
just a suggestion, I have no idea if it will work.
Can he read? Is there a book or master list of where things are in the stockroom? Can you make it his responsibility, if he can’t remember where something is, to look it up in the book? It is always hard to get people to learn something when the alternative of asking someone who knows is readily available.
This is what I do when I train slow learners in my department. We have one girl who has numerous learning disabilities. It takes her a long time to learn a new task, but if she repeats it over and over again, it’ll stick to her like glue.
There is a computer that tells you how many bottles (this is a liquor store) we have in stock. From that number it is easy to deduce how many bottles are in the back of the store (total amount of bottles minus bottles on the shelf), but he can’t seem to understand that. The problem isn’t even that he can’t remember where the bottles are, he doesn’t understand that there are sections for each bottle. No matter how many times I tell him to look for vodka in the vodka section, he will just look anywhere at random the next time he has to find vodka.
He can read, but very poorly. That wouldn’t matter if he could remember what the bottles looked like. People have learned the job without speaking a word of English, they just memorized what the bottles look like.
To give you an idea of how bad his memory is, he can’t even repeat three items right after I just mentioned them. I would tell him that this section has tequila, whiskey, and scotch, and then ask him what is in that section. He never knows the answer.
I will try to get him to learn one task at a time, no matter how simple it might seem to me. That seems like a good idea.
If he really is as learning disabled as your examples show, I’m not surprised he has struggled to do your re-stocking.
I’m no pro, but I’ve done a little bit of work with folks like this and it’s very hard to really get into their head enough to understand & accept just how limited they are. And also to understand how uneven their limitations can be. They’ll have small bright spots in the dimness that’ll amaze you.
In his mind you’ve asked him to learn a thousand tasks. Find the Canadian Club 1.5 Liter size. Find the Canadian Club 1.0 Liter size …
Normal humans take for granted the ability to find the common elements in tasks & can reduce all of restocking to “Notice what’s missing on the shelf. Go to the corresponding place in the warehouse & get more. Bring it back.”
He (probably) can’t make that generalization any more than you can do tensor calculus in your head.
Perhaps you could focus on one small area. e.g. The front half of the first aisle out front has all our vodka. In back, that’s all within a 6 foot span of shelving on the left. Make him the vodka king for a month & have somebody else do the rest of the store. Yes, a month.
IF that succeeds, add another line. If the second line befuddles him & he can’t even do vodka any more, go back to vodka only, start training from scratch (it’ll go quicker this time), & accept that’s about as far as you’re gonna take this guy.
It can be frustrating as hell for you and for him. Between the boss, you and him you may end up with a simple charity case, where he does what “work” he can to feel good about himself, while you & the others do the real work (some of which is undoing what he did), and the boss pays for it all so he can feel good about himself. And that’s not an altogether bad arrangement.
Slow learning isn’t the same as memory problems. Memory problems will be a bigger hurdle than a slow mind. For the last case, training at a slow pace, without distractions works. Don’t have on a radio while your talking about how to do a task. Ask your question and give them some time to respond, without you speaking, or going on to the next step.
I worked with a guy that I repeated the same basic instruction to like 20 times and never got it. Memory problem. One of my good friends is kinda slow, but is eager to learn if he invests the time to, and usually accomplishes those things.
If you keep telling the guy 2+2=4, and he repeatedly comes back asking why he gets 5… something isn’t sticking somewhere.
Basically what ParentalAdvisory said. The slow person I know can handle jobs, that are fairly complected, and you need to give him time to breakdown what you said and respond. I give him about fifteen to thirty seconds to start responding to a question.
Obviously, you have many different kinds of vodka bottles so knowing what “vodka” looks like wouldn’t help. If he’s illiterate, knowing how to read VODKA is out too, especially if each brand uses a different font. But what about knowing what the sign for “vodka” looks like? Tape a big sign that says “VODKA” over the vodka section in the stock room. Or choose a color or shape for each kind of booze and make a chart that he carries around.
As for sizes, why not set up a shelf that has an example of different sizes. “1.0 Liter” “1.5 Liter” “2 Liter” and let him match his bottle against that?
You could also just take a moment to mark boxes - 1.0 Liter Vodka = square + X
That way, he doesn’t have to learn concepts so much as symbols/matching. Don’t a lot of illiterate people get by knowing what a word looks like, instead of knowing how to read? They’d know what a STOP sign is because of the shape, or what “Men” is shorter than “Ladies.”
Does anyone know how I can deal with a memory problem? Maybe just repeat things ad nauseum until they stick?
The signs are there, but like I said before, he doesn’t know he is supposed to look for them. Whenever faced with a bottle he is supposed to find the question is always “where do I find this”, it’s never “what type of spirit is this”. Then when I tell him “well this is a vodka, where would you find that”, then he looks at the signs.
Besides memory problems and slowness, lets not forget the “doesn’t give a damn” attitude. Do you suspect that at all? I mean, who can’t find vodka? Everybody knows where the vodka is.
It might be helpful to make a written list or flowchart for him, explaining step by step what he should be doing. This is broadly what they do at my son’s school for the learning disabled, and they use this technique for job training. If he knows how to read the chart and always has it available then he will not forget. All he has to do is remember to use the chart.
