Field notes
Notes from live boards
Short pieces from notebooks, not lectures on ‘how to run a firm’.
These notes come from sits we have been allowed to write about, or from habits we see often enough to discuss without naming a host.
What to leave on the desk before we arrive Monday
A short list for hosts: which trays to leave messy, who to warn, and why a cleaned board produces a false map of dispatch flow.
When a second dispatcher makes the board slower
Adding a chair for Friday peaks can grow the pile in the gap between two people. How we tell a useful extra pair of hands from a split that leaks returns.
Reading a Friday night run sheet in Footscray
What a marked-up sheet from a distribution yard still teaches after the vans have gone, and why we copy it in pencil before anyone tidies.
Why the radio and the phone should not share an elbow
When both handsets live on the same arm, unfinished paper falls on the floor. A walk-through of reach on a narrow Melbourne desk.
The first ninety seconds after the phone lifts
A job is usually won or lost before the driver is named. Here is what we watch in those first seconds on a live Melbourne desk.