yes, that icon truly represents me
Man, the last couple of weeks have been truly sucktastic with this week being the suckiest of the sucky.
Inventory. What a gigantic pain in my entire body. Inventory anytime is crappy, but the level of crappiness was increased by several factors.
Firstly, inventory this year was about 2 months later than the years before. That translates into a much busier time of the year: freight increased almost exponentially and more shoppers getting a jump-start on Christmas because we began layaway nearly a month earlier than last year.
Secondly, like I posted about before, our stockroom and the procedures had slipped quite a bit and took nearly 2 months to straighten out.
Thirdly, no freaking employees! They gave us a nice neat little binder over a month ago with all the steps and procedures for getting ready for inventory but most of us had to hop, skip and jump over a ton of them because we had no employees to work the metric shit-ton of freight coming in the back doors, so we had to work it ourselves. No time for anything else.
Last week my right knee began really giving me trouble again. Thursday and Friday by the time I left work I was nearly crying because it hurt so much.
Then we learned that, due to the fact that we had no employees, dept mgrs needed to work the weekend (our days off) to prep the backroom. Anything not on the floor has to be pre-counted by us before inventory.
Resentful as I was to have to come in to work in pain on my days off because the company is too fucking cheap to hire the employees it requires to do the job adequately, I came in for 6 hours on Sat. (6 hrs OT) But I drew the line at Sunday. I needed at least one day to rest my knee.
Monday I worked 7 am to 7 pm. (4 hrs OT)
Tuesday I worked 7-4 but all department mgrs were required to return at 7:30 pm to zone (straighten the store). Usually we get out by 10 or so. This year not until 11:30. (4 hrs OT)
Wed was inventory. But before my work day even began, I had a flat tire. Luckily it was in my own parking lot. And it's my own fault. That tire has a very slow leak that I haven't taken care of and Tues night I saw that it was low but I was so freaking tired I figured I'd get air in the morning. I didn't even make it 10 ft before the tire came completely off the rim. At 6:45 there was no one around. So I dug through all the crap in the back of my little station wagon and pulled put the jack and my spare (which thankfully had air in it - I'm bad about checking that shit). It's been almost 10 yrs since I changed a flat and my tiring changing skills were as rusty as apparently my car jack was. Since I was steps away from my apartment I came back up for my trusty can of WD-40 and to use the computer to transfer money from my savings to checking to cover a new tire. For an arthritic, out of shape woman on the shady side of 50 I didn't do too badly. Even stopping for more air in the spare and going to the auto center at work to have the tire replaced and the oil change I've been putting off, I was only just over an hour late for work.
Inventory day for us is a mixture of standing around and doing nothing and scrambling to find code numbers for all of the product that's missing labels or inventory that's fallen out of the system and has to manually be re-entered (something we should have had time for in the weeks before inventory and didn't), and misc crap that for one reason or another can't be scanned by the inventory team. Even though we had a huge inventory team and they were actually pretty damn fast, we still didn't get out of the store until after 8 pm. By the end of the day we all felt as though we'd been beaten with a stick. I stopped on the way home for Arbeys (which I haven't had in years).
As I was sitting in my apartment, eating and trying to unwind slightly, I heard to raucous screech coming from a few feet away! *heart attack imminent* Phouka, who'd been sitting beside me and trying to get some cuddles perked up like - oh yeah! and scrambled over the the TV stand (antique treadle sewing machine). There was another screech and when I investigated I found a bluejay! I threw Phouka in the bathroom, moved some stuff and the bird flew out and perched on the drapery rod above the open balcony door. The bird was only half grown. I opened the balcony door wide and sat down to resume my dinner hoping the bird would find its way out. What it did was launch itself to circumvent the living room, nearly getting itself caught in the active ceiling fan. I hurried to turn off the fan and tracked the little guy into the corner where he'd flown. Fearing for my fingers from that viciously long, sharp beak bluejays have, I still managed to get a hold of it. It once again attempted to break my eardrums but didn't gore me. I let it go outside and it flung itself to the railing, but just as quickly it flew back toward the balcony door and clung to the screen door! I realized it was pitch black outside and most birds don't fly in the dark. I let it do its thing and came back inside. After a minute it blundered its way along the building until it made its way off the far side of the balcony. I hope it made it. That reminds me, it's time to start filling the bird feeder again.
I was finally in bed by around 9, but I was so tired and achy that I didn't sleep well at all (for the 3rd day in a row). (another 3.5 hrs OT)
Yesterday was another tedious day of tracking down all the mistakes made by the inventory crew or confirming that yes, our inventory was off by that much. We learned that our inventory was actually, astoundingly, better than last year - percentage-wise. Two of my 3 departments actually were slightly plus in inventory and the third was just under the store percentage. So I'm happy. The inventory crew said that we were a record volume store for them. The largest inventory the crew had worked before was $9.2 million. On Wed our store had $9.8 million dollars of inventory in it. Just under $10 million. That's a little mind boggling. I got off work about 4:45. (45 min OT)
Last week Dave (the store mgr) told us we could either keep our overtime or take Fri off. I was originally going to work and keep it all to mostly pay off my camera on layaway (and then to pay for my new tire), but Wed night I realized I could still take today off and have over 9 hours of OT. When I approached my ASM yesterday that I wanted to take today off she just looked at me blankly until I reminded her of what Dave said. She made a notation on her pad and then treated me rather pissy the rest of the day. According to my schedule on the Walmart website I was still scheduled to work today. Of course my schedule online still shows that I was supposed to work a full day on Sat instead of getting off by 1 pm. I'll have to make sure that doesn't blow back on me on Monday.
For some bizarre reason I didn't go to sleep until nearly 2am this morning. But I slept until 11:30am today. It was glorious! I missed all my shows this week so I'm going to catch up this weekend and do nothing but long overdue laundry. I have next week to work like a dog to get my departments in good shape and then I'm off for 10 days. The bro's B-day falls during my vacation so I'll go pick him up for a long overdue visit and make him a sumptuous meal of his choice. That and prepping my balcony for winter is the extent of my plans for vacation. (I brought plants I didn't want to croak in last night when I got home because fall moved in big-time yesterday. It's supposed to drop below freezing tomorrow night.)
Maybe I'll do a little long overdue cleaning on vacation. Maybe.
What I really want to do is get back into a writing grove and do
mini_nanowrimo again this year.
But more about that later. Time for a nap.
Inventory. What a gigantic pain in my entire body. Inventory anytime is crappy, but the level of crappiness was increased by several factors.
Firstly, inventory this year was about 2 months later than the years before. That translates into a much busier time of the year: freight increased almost exponentially and more shoppers getting a jump-start on Christmas because we began layaway nearly a month earlier than last year.
Secondly, like I posted about before, our stockroom and the procedures had slipped quite a bit and took nearly 2 months to straighten out.
Thirdly, no freaking employees! They gave us a nice neat little binder over a month ago with all the steps and procedures for getting ready for inventory but most of us had to hop, skip and jump over a ton of them because we had no employees to work the metric shit-ton of freight coming in the back doors, so we had to work it ourselves. No time for anything else.
Last week my right knee began really giving me trouble again. Thursday and Friday by the time I left work I was nearly crying because it hurt so much.
Then we learned that, due to the fact that we had no employees, dept mgrs needed to work the weekend (our days off) to prep the backroom. Anything not on the floor has to be pre-counted by us before inventory.
Resentful as I was to have to come in to work in pain on my days off because the company is too fucking cheap to hire the employees it requires to do the job adequately, I came in for 6 hours on Sat. (6 hrs OT) But I drew the line at Sunday. I needed at least one day to rest my knee.
Monday I worked 7 am to 7 pm. (4 hrs OT)
Tuesday I worked 7-4 but all department mgrs were required to return at 7:30 pm to zone (straighten the store). Usually we get out by 10 or so. This year not until 11:30. (4 hrs OT)
Wed was inventory. But before my work day even began, I had a flat tire. Luckily it was in my own parking lot. And it's my own fault. That tire has a very slow leak that I haven't taken care of and Tues night I saw that it was low but I was so freaking tired I figured I'd get air in the morning. I didn't even make it 10 ft before the tire came completely off the rim. At 6:45 there was no one around. So I dug through all the crap in the back of my little station wagon and pulled put the jack and my spare (which thankfully had air in it - I'm bad about checking that shit). It's been almost 10 yrs since I changed a flat and my tiring changing skills were as rusty as apparently my car jack was. Since I was steps away from my apartment I came back up for my trusty can of WD-40 and to use the computer to transfer money from my savings to checking to cover a new tire. For an arthritic, out of shape woman on the shady side of 50 I didn't do too badly. Even stopping for more air in the spare and going to the auto center at work to have the tire replaced and the oil change I've been putting off, I was only just over an hour late for work.
Inventory day for us is a mixture of standing around and doing nothing and scrambling to find code numbers for all of the product that's missing labels or inventory that's fallen out of the system and has to manually be re-entered (something we should have had time for in the weeks before inventory and didn't), and misc crap that for one reason or another can't be scanned by the inventory team. Even though we had a huge inventory team and they were actually pretty damn fast, we still didn't get out of the store until after 8 pm. By the end of the day we all felt as though we'd been beaten with a stick. I stopped on the way home for Arbeys (which I haven't had in years).
As I was sitting in my apartment, eating and trying to unwind slightly, I heard to raucous screech coming from a few feet away! *heart attack imminent* Phouka, who'd been sitting beside me and trying to get some cuddles perked up like - oh yeah! and scrambled over the the TV stand (antique treadle sewing machine). There was another screech and when I investigated I found a bluejay! I threw Phouka in the bathroom, moved some stuff and the bird flew out and perched on the drapery rod above the open balcony door. The bird was only half grown. I opened the balcony door wide and sat down to resume my dinner hoping the bird would find its way out. What it did was launch itself to circumvent the living room, nearly getting itself caught in the active ceiling fan. I hurried to turn off the fan and tracked the little guy into the corner where he'd flown. Fearing for my fingers from that viciously long, sharp beak bluejays have, I still managed to get a hold of it. It once again attempted to break my eardrums but didn't gore me. I let it go outside and it flung itself to the railing, but just as quickly it flew back toward the balcony door and clung to the screen door! I realized it was pitch black outside and most birds don't fly in the dark. I let it do its thing and came back inside. After a minute it blundered its way along the building until it made its way off the far side of the balcony. I hope it made it. That reminds me, it's time to start filling the bird feeder again.
I was finally in bed by around 9, but I was so tired and achy that I didn't sleep well at all (for the 3rd day in a row). (another 3.5 hrs OT)
Yesterday was another tedious day of tracking down all the mistakes made by the inventory crew or confirming that yes, our inventory was off by that much. We learned that our inventory was actually, astoundingly, better than last year - percentage-wise. Two of my 3 departments actually were slightly plus in inventory and the third was just under the store percentage. So I'm happy. The inventory crew said that we were a record volume store for them. The largest inventory the crew had worked before was $9.2 million. On Wed our store had $9.8 million dollars of inventory in it. Just under $10 million. That's a little mind boggling. I got off work about 4:45. (45 min OT)
Last week Dave (the store mgr) told us we could either keep our overtime or take Fri off. I was originally going to work and keep it all to mostly pay off my camera on layaway (and then to pay for my new tire), but Wed night I realized I could still take today off and have over 9 hours of OT. When I approached my ASM yesterday that I wanted to take today off she just looked at me blankly until I reminded her of what Dave said. She made a notation on her pad and then treated me rather pissy the rest of the day. According to my schedule on the Walmart website I was still scheduled to work today. Of course my schedule online still shows that I was supposed to work a full day on Sat instead of getting off by 1 pm. I'll have to make sure that doesn't blow back on me on Monday.
For some bizarre reason I didn't go to sleep until nearly 2am this morning. But I slept until 11:30am today. It was glorious! I missed all my shows this week so I'm going to catch up this weekend and do nothing but long overdue laundry. I have next week to work like a dog to get my departments in good shape and then I'm off for 10 days. The bro's B-day falls during my vacation so I'll go pick him up for a long overdue visit and make him a sumptuous meal of his choice. That and prepping my balcony for winter is the extent of my plans for vacation. (I brought plants I didn't want to croak in last night when I got home because fall moved in big-time yesterday. It's supposed to drop below freezing tomorrow night.)
Maybe I'll do a little long overdue cleaning on vacation. Maybe.
What I really want to do is get back into a writing grove and do
mini_nanowrimo again this year.
But more about that later. Time for a nap.