Work
Bonnie had asked for Saturday off so I filled in as ICM. It's so much more peaceful than Dairy. I would still want to eventually quit, but I wouldn't be as anxious, if I was ICM full time. I still have a lot to learn. I am ICM certified, but I still don't know enough. Course Bonnie has been doing this for about as long as I've been alive, so of course I wouldn't know everything. Like a recent event wherein Meat Dept got in expired product and Bob didn't do anything about it for over a week until one of the other meat guys mentioned it to Julie and now we're struggling to get credit cause we missed the 24 hour window that we're supposed to get credits submitted into. Bonnie had to submit all that and I don't even know who to send that to. She also had to submit everything to get credit for that produce load that came in frozen (about 20,000 dollars lost between the two stores up here). She puts in FCB Adjustments. And just a lot of stuff. Anything I didn't know I could just post on the question thingie, though. And I know right now I say I would love to quit being Dairy Manager and switch to ICM but I know that if I did it for a year or two I'd start to hate it too. I'd end up like Bonnie, spending my day complaining about how no one throws their garbage away, and no one organizes behind the store, and etc. She's even more neurotic than me sometimes.
Anyway, Bret proved once again that he's insecure about Dennis's store. Dennis our old store director who took the position of store director of the Super 1 that opened across the street. Bret is obsessed with that store. They had a 5 hour sale so we took their add and had it posted all over saying we would match their prices during those five hours. Everytime I passed one of the signs saying that I winced. I keep getting the feeling that when we do these things we're crying out, that we're saying, "We suck, we can't get customers on our own merits so we have to lie, cheat, and steal to get you guys to come here cause we're such a lousy store we can't do it any other way". Or at least that's the message this behavior sends to the customer. So no one knew about it cause no one told anyone. I almost ran out of yogurt. And Bret freaked out at Williams Inland cause he said we almost ran out ice cream and that they were stupid because they get their ice cream from Helena and didn't have any up here right now (he made me call them and find this out). Course when the merchandiser came in he said we had plenty. Bret just freaks out, that's all. It's just so tacky to steal their adds like this. Course I mean, I suppose they did start it by spying on our adds to match our prices, but that doesn't mean we have to keep it going.
And on Saturday Anita told me that Bret was giving away vitamin water. She said that Dee was holding some and that Anita had told her she should have bought it when it was on sale, and Dee said that Bret had given it to her since he'd bought a bunch when it was on sale. Suspicious. So I told Bonnie about it today and she said that there had been a coupon that made the vitamin water free. But since it's a coke product and our Coke Rep and Bret are drinking buddies Bret got a bunch of coupons and used them to get free product to give his pets around the store.
Overall Saturday was relaxing. I checked in the vendors, did all the paperwork, and had an hour to spare.
Yesterday I had the same fun I always do on Sundays, a small family with silly girls going aisle to aisle in front of me as I did Zhaun's shelf review.
And this would be the second Sunday I was asked to look in the back room for a spice. Spice. That's like looking for a needle in a haystack! So I did what I always do in those situations (where I know it's impossible) I went in the back room and stood there for a few minutes pretending to look (I was glancing around in case I happened to see it but I wasn't hopeful) until I'd waited long enough then I came back and said no. The only product I'm likely to find in the back are larger boxes. Spices are very small and come packed in 6s. Some of them are specialty which means they'd be in the totes and there was a pallet of grocery totes that I was not digging through. So even if I was familiar with the product (which I'd never heard of and had to be told was a spice) I wouldn't have been able to find it unless it just so happened to be on top and obvious.
I had to check in a pizza delivery on Sunday because we were almost out of pizza.
At one point I was called to check but no one needed it. Anthony sent me to 4 and Mike dragged someone in off the aisles for me to check out. I guess. I mean, I don't know where the customer came from but he found someone for me to check out. Maybe he took someone from another lane and helped them put their groceries back in their cart so he could take them down to me. I don't know.
The cheese in my egg case is gone, finally. On Sunday there were two facings left, one of which was expired so I had to take that to the meat cooler. I turned the markdown bin sideways and put the rest of the cheese there besides it. This morning I found that Darby had filled that cheese. No. She had an empty spot where her pie shells go so I moved it over there and turned the bin back right. Now she has no where to put it back in my egg case.
I found markdown cereal on a display table... and the markdown bin was besides this display table. They couldn't have put it back in the bin? Or perhaps they moved it there to look at something under them? They couldn't put them back?
We got in the rest of the stuff for my holiday door on Wednesday. I haven't had time to put any of it out. And I don't know why Dustin didn't. It was him and Chad on Wednesday all day. They had the load all broke down before I left that day, which means the two of them working together threw the entire load and all the backstock. So on Thursday Dustin didn't have anything to do besides work the milk load (which takes him 45 minutes at the most) and put up the rest of the holiday door. I don't know what he spent all day doing but he didn't put up the holiday door and he didn't work the backstock. So there's 7 hours and 15 minutes unaccounted for. Anyway, I was going to do it myself yesterday but a truck showed up!
This truck was Knight Transport who comes about twice a year with seasonal product. He had more Christmas stuff for NonFoods. He showed up at 6:15PM. He was supposed to get here between 7AM-7PM on Saturday. His excuse was that "No one can leave Phoenix, Arizona on Friday morning and get to Montana by Saturday evening!" He was Mexican. Do I really need to say that every single Knight delivery we've ever gotten has been out of Arizona? And that we have never had a delivery from them on a Sunday before? Me and Mike yelled at him for a while and I started offloading him. He started to stand there and watch instead of helping so I gestured to the five jacks clustered off to the side and told him to help me or I was leaving at 7 regardless if we were done or not. And it took up until 7 because all the pallets were too high to fit out the door. Some of them I had to take the stacker into the trailer and get the top pallet down with it. Which was real fun as all the pallets were in sideways and the stacker isn't wide enough so I had to get them all pointing the right way with a lot of power jack usage. (ramming the forks into the corner to spin the pallet) You know, if nothing else my ability to run the power jack as well as I do is a good recommendation. Just my truck offloading experience alone might get me a job somewhere else. After a while you get a feel for which ones stand and which ones fall, and what tricks to use for each pallet to get it out standing. And it's not even really something you can teach, I mean, you can't stand there and point to one wobble or another and say that that means it'll stand or fall. It's more instinctual. Like once I was pushing on a pallet, which sometimes makes it straight enough that you can get it out. But something about the way it swayed made me run. And I was right. On it's way back towards where I had been standing it kept going until it fell over. And then you get the ones that look fine until you pick them up, like one I had this morning I had to get one of the guys off night crew to come help me with. George was helping too, the driver, and it took all three of us to get it out. And then the ones you just look at and you know you'll have to downstack it. Occasionally you can save those ones but not usually.
Anyway, today Bonnie found all the shelving Zhaun and Dennis made Timmy put behind the store where the returns go. They needed the containers for Christmas stuff and had to take the shelving out. I told them to put it down on the other side of the containers but they said it would get stolen over there. It'll get stolen where it's at too. We keep getting people stealing the wheels off the bread racks, and milk crates. I've lost more milk crates in the last few weeks than I have in the last few years. Anyway, she wasn't happy about it at all. But oh well.
They did start on the remodel today. And I hope this isn't their normal pace. All they did last night was take out the wall between the bank and floral and strip the decorations off the walls around half the store. Well maybe they're not all up here yet, maybe the rest of the crew flew up today.
I saw Cris, our floral manager, arrive for work late last night (around 6:30 is when I saw her) and so all night I kept having nightmares that they would schedule me for an overnight shift when my department gets remodeled and that I was saying I wouldn't do it and then in my dream Bob was mad at me cause he had had to come in late and Nora was looking at me all disappointed cause she had had to work overnight as well, and Zhaun was threatening to give my job to Dustin if I wouldn't do it, and I dreamed that I was trying to negotiate, and it didn't work and I had to come in the day after for a normal shift and I was wondering when or how I'd sleep. And I was considering accidentally on purpose dropping somewhere to sleep, like in the office or back room, in the hopes that someone would discover me and send me home. But it was all a dream and they wouldn't really tell me to work overnight, right? I don't even know that's what Cris did. She wasn't there this morning and by 6:30 she already had all her floral stuff down which means she had probably been there a while. She normally comes in around noon, which indicates she works till 8, so maybe I just hadn't seen her. It's possible, I often go a week or two with only seeing her once or twice for a brief moment.
Bob was complaining to me about Darby that she leaves him notes. Wall Deli and Meat share a cooler. Darby leaves him notes about how he isn't picking up his pallets, whining about them throwing their stuff on hers, and etc. He's getting really, really irritated with her and how she conveniently works nights so he can't confront her. I helpfully told him that she often comes in to order around 2 or 3.
We have chocolate half gallons going on a 3 day weekend sale next week. The Mountain Dairy brand. Which means a plus out. Indeed, they sent me two pallets. Today. I can't sell them till Friday. So for almost a whole week they'll be sitting in my back room in the way. And the dates aren't getting any better either. Milk comes with 10-12 days on it. It had to be produced and shipped, which means 10 days probably. This means by Friday there'll be five days left. The sale ends Sunday, which means on Monday I'll have to go straight to markdown at half of cost plus a penny (cheapest we can go) and try to sell through them in their remaining two days. I hate this. Why can't they plus me out on a Wednesday? No one wants milk so close dated. And this hurts me as a customer because I want some. This means I'll probably only buy two cause I can't drink more than that before they go bad, what with how early they sent me these. And two pallets! They never send me that many, they only ever send me one and I never sell through it. Two? I'll be donating about half of it to the food bank probably.
Costumes
I did the flat felled seams on the shoulders of my vest and then decided to edit the sides. The arm holes weren't big enough so I had to alter that. What I did was I put my tunic on the dress form and then my vest on over that. I then pinned the hem of the tunic sleeve to the neck of the dressform so I could see better. Then I cut the armhole bigger by starting at the bottom of the tunic sleeve and following the seamline of the armscye all the way up, edging my way back into the regular armscye of the vest. Then I copied that to the other side. I did the same with the back. then I wanted the side vents to be a little more obvious so I cut away a bit on either side. The side seams themselves were four inches long on either side, from under the arm of the tunic to just above my hip. All I need to do now is hem the vest and sew the frog on. I need to put the trim on the tunic. And I need to finish my lightsaber. I glued the bottom on but I don't know if it will stay. I need to swing it around hard and see if it flies off.
Halloween
We watched our first Halloween thing. Yes, we're getting a late start. We watched one of the Simpson's Treehouse of Terror (horror?) episodes. What I really want to watch before Halloween is the Peanuts special. We'll probably do that tomorrow. I want to watch Nightmare Before Christmas, which works for November so that's when we'll see it. It's kind of a November movie anyway. There's not really any scary movies I wanted to watch. I do like Halloween Tree, we should watch that at some point.
Oh, and I have the 1994 Frankenstein
, which was actually pretty good and fairly faithful to the book. It always makes me twitch when someone says the Creature is named Frankenstein... although they are correct in assuming that Frankenstein is the monster, because he is. That's part of why I like this version of it is because of the mountain top scene between the Creature and Frankenstein. Here are some quotes from IMDB:The Creature: What kind of people is it in which I am comprised? Good people? Bad people?
Victor Frankenstein: Materials. Nothing more.
The Creature: You're wrong.
[Picks up recorder]
The Creature: Did you know I knew how to play this? From which part of me did this knowledge reside? From this mind? From these hands? From this heart? And reading and speaking. Not so much things learned as things remembered.
Victor Frankenstein: Slight trace waves in the brain perhaps.
The Creature: Did you ever consider the consequences of your actions? You made me, and you left me to die. Who am I?
Victor Frankenstein: You? I don't know.
The Creature: And you think that I am evil.
...
The Creature: You gave me these emotions, but you didn't tell me how to use them. Now two people are dead because of us. Why?
Victor Frankenstein: There was something at work in my soul which I do not understand.
The Creature: And what of my soul? Do I have one? Or was that a part you left out?
But I believe the quote has something to do with having two hands, but not being told how to use them, not emotions. I don't think that was in the book. I will admit I only read the book originally to help out someone with a school project because they didn't want to read the book themselves. But upon reading it I realized that the green monster with bolts who terrorizes villages has nothing to do with the reality it's based upon. The Creature is a sad character, to be pitied. The Creature did not have a bad character, it was not his nature. He wanted to be peaceful, to help others, to love. He became a product of the world, and their treatment of him shaped him and molded him. Among the lessons learned are thus: Take care what you create. And take care how you treat others. No matter how wrapped up you are in something make sure you're not dragging down others, stand back and think about it.
I highly recommend this book to others, it's deffinately one of my favorites. Now I almost want to go read it again. You know, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown can wait, it's a half hour at most, we can watch it after work on Wednesday. Maybe we'll watch Frankenstein tomorrow. I don't think I ever showed this version to Victor before. Not that I've really seen a whole lot of versions of this, I'd just heard that it was close to the book so I watched it. Besides. Anything with Helena Bonhan-Carter is well worth the viewing, she's awesome. There is one scene I don't agree on and that's when Frankenstein brings whatshername to life, that wasn't in the book and I don't think it really belonged in the movie asides from another way for us to know that Frankenstein himself is the bad guy (by being so selfish as to not make the Creature's wife but to bring his own back to life).
Cats
Boney just did something really cute, funny, and naughty. Victor's sleepy pants have a draw string on them. Apparently Boney was stalking the loose ends because he jumped up and attacked Victor's thigh as he was standing there just now.
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