When did shipping orders start feeling like running an ops company?
Nobody really warned me that past a certain order volume, the job stops being "fulfillment" and basically becomes ops management.
Like yeah, labor costs scale, everyone knows that. But the thing that caught me off guard was just how much mental space it starts consuming. You're not shipping orders anymore, you're tracking down why inbound is two days late, figuring out whose fault a mispick was, fielding a carrier issue at 9pm that somehow became your emergency.
I remember the exact week it clicked. We had a smooth pack day and I still ended the week feeling completely cooked. Realized it wasn't the physical work, it was just constant low-level problem management that never fully turned off.
I wonder if others had a specific moment where they noticed that shift. Was it a volume threshold, a staffing change, something else?