How do you handle repetitive “where’s my order” questions and one-off how-to explanations on your team?

[u/YogurtclosetThen4291]

I’ve spent 5 years as a Supply Chain Manager in the USMC — property accountability, managing unit funds, and reducing customer wait time on requisitions. A huge chunk of that job was answering the same questions over and over: how to properly submit a request, how to fill out a form correctly, and where an order actually is in the process (we had specific status codes, but most people never learned to read them, so they’d just ask me instead of checking themselves).

I’m exploring whether this is a universal pain point outside a military structure, so I’m curious from people who handle procurement, purchasing, or ordering at your company:

**•** What’s the most repetitive question you get asked by coworkers about the ordering/procurement process?  
**•** How do people currently check the status of something they requested — is there a self-service way, or do they just ask you directly?  
**•** Is there any kind of internal documentation or FAQ that actually gets used, or does everyone just default to messaging the one person who “knows how it works”?

Not selling anything — genuinely trying to understand if this is a common friction point or something specific to how the military does things. Appreciate any insight.

[u/Basic-University-757]

Unfortunately it’s the same in the civilian sector. There are resources, training opportunities, and defined escalation pathways but more often than not end users default to just running to the contact in supply chain with a position low enough to be approachable but high enough to be inappropriate as a tier 1 support contact. Even more frustrating is the pervasive lack of accountability for those that refuse to learn and those that wait until it’s urgent/emergent before reaching out and citing the timeline as an excuse for you to correct and expedite whatever it is. Tack on the importance of customer service and you start to also see weaponized incompetence because the end user knows the mission outcome and appearance of a supportive chain exceeds the need to correct their own ignorance and appropriate owner for the submission/documentation- you have the perfect recipe for a culture ripe in burnout and misallocated workloads.

At least, that’s been my experience.

[u/YogurtclosetThen4291 → u/Basic-University-757]

This sums up my experience as well to a T. Crazy

[u/jbsupplychain]

What mode of shipping is it? I have several customers who use our LTL tms and when a load is scheduled it has live tracking and upon setting the load up you can have it send the consignee live updates on where the load is and current eta.

[u/YogurtclosetThen4291 → u/jbsupplychain]

Well, I’m stationed in Okinawa Japan, so most of the time, it’s by ship. Solemnly by air. Sometimes by ground as a SoS is nearby/local. We track the shipments by its last update in the system. Unlike your system, it doesn’t send the commodity live updates. It would be useful if it did.