Inventory

I. Hate. Inventory. And even though the counting is over the fun sure isn't! Today I have to help receive vendors, I have to help them go over my paperwork if I need to, I have to pray my positive shrink outweighs my negative shrink or there will be trouble. And the fun doesn't even really stop for nearly a week, Bonnie has to help go over all the paperwork, and everyone has to wait for final figures, and then three or four days after inventory we finally know who gets to keep their jobs for another year. Sometimes it's evident right away, as in the case of non-foods a few years ago. They had an inventory so incredibly bad (something like 72,000 dollars went missing) and they had the inventory crew stay the entire day and help Dennis and Brad (nonfoods managers) recount their entire department. No one got fired over that, though, so I guess they found some of the money. I got in trouble for losing 40,000 dollars once, but I guess they found some of that too cause I never got in any real trouble.

Anyway, yesterday, I got in at 1:56. Yay me, I was early. :p I saw that the truck hadn't shown up yet. That was bad. Then I went to the office to start on my order only to have Zhaun come in and tell me to go count Coke. And he's all hovering and trying to tell me how to do it and I'm just like, "I know, I've done this before." Last thing before he left he asked me to stay until I was done counting no matter how long it took. I just looked at him. "I know." This is my 6th inventory, I think I have it figured out. He ended up leaving around 2:30, and he came back at 10:00. He only went home to get a few hours sleep before coming back. Bonnie left at 3:15ish and she went back in at 2:30AM. Anyway, while doing Coke the truck showed up and Dustin offloaded it. After Coke I went to do my order, and I started on yogurts as always and Bret walked by and freaked out about the yogurt being empty. Well, it's not my fault. He said Howard (corporate guy) was upset about it being empty. Well, great, you tell Howard that if he has the magical ability to predict when people are going to randomly buy 10-20 more cups of yogurt in a day than normal then he should have told me to order big for Friday. It didn't really bother me, though. Also, it wouldn't look so empty if people weren't so stupid. I leave empty cases on the shelf (cause yoplait is case-fill) and that way it doesn't look empty because you've got stuff there to catch the eye. Also it helps with spreading out on it because if you don't have an empty case there and I put 6 cups of yogurt two-high in that spot it looks empty still. If I've got an empty case there and do the same thing it looks stuffed full.

So while doing my order I was called to check twice, but one of those times Dustin got it. I was nearly done with my order when Pepsi came up to me at 3:45 to tell me he was ready to be counted. And I know right now we didn't count it right. He was a newbie and I had to keep pointing things out to him. I know there's at least three 12pks that didn't get counted, possibly more. He would have passed right on by a handful of 20pks and the credits if I hadn't made him do them. Why couldn't they have sent me a rep? At least their next inventory won't be so bad, because they'll have positive shrink on at least two or three 12pks!

After that I finished my order and got on filling the milk. Dustin stayed about 40 minutes to help me out, which was so nice of him. He could have bugged out at 4:00 exactly. He was called to check on overtime and he did it.

So they kept calling me to check over and over. Finally at about 6:00 I was so frustrated and upset. And they were telling me to turn my light on. Julie came over and told me we were on shop and I had to turn my light on. I was not happy, and she knew that. It was inventory! Deana does this to me every inventory. She knows I have to stay till it's done so she underschedules the checkers to make sure I have to check a lot. I would have come home probably nearly an hour earlier if I hadn't had to check. I do feel satisfied that my checker number was used so much yesterday, because they track this now, when they have to call dairy to check.

I cried a tiny bit and decided to skip my break. I did get better really fast, though, all it took was mountain dew. White out, to be exact. I was also going to take a naproxen because my shoulder/neck was bothering me but I didn't have any. Inventory always wears me out.

I didn't finish breaking down the load till probably after 6:45ish or so. I started counting about then too. I started with butter and worked my way down. Also didn't help that the warehouse decided to send me 60 cases of sunny delight I didn't need. I'm still trying to get rid of the last plus-out they sent me back in October or sometime. And the only reason I'm really pushing to get rid of it is because I still have four cases in backstock plus what's on the shelf that expires tomorrow. And they send me more? I hope that means it's going on sale on Wednesday.

I finished counting around 9:50. But I didn't leave until 10:00 cause I printed out shelf reviews and hung them. I was bad and counted expired product. Because I simply could not afford to add any more to my milk shrink for this inventory cycle. I'll add it to the next one. I will take care of it, today in fact, but with 127.33 going into milk dumps for this week I couldn't put any more on that.

I'm not like Darby, though! I took my yogurt wheelers out in front of the yogurt case to scan the shelf so I didn't have to open every case of yogurt, and Darby was taking tons of cookie dough off the shelf while talking to this woman who runs uscan (who I thought was a csm but I don't think she is) and what made me start listening was that Darby was talking about marking down cookie dough that expired on January 3rd and that everyone else does it and it's still good. I couldn't catch much of what she said but I did clearly hear this bit: "If it's on the top shelf I can pretty much guarantee that it's not being rotated." I just don't know what to do with that information. I can't tell Bret and Julie because it's my word against hers and I'm not perfect, she could turn around and tell things about me. I know Virgina's been keeping an eye on Darby's product off and on, so maybe I'll approach her with it. I'll tell Bonnie for sure, though. I don't do anything in wall deli except face it occasionally, so I couldn't reasonably date check her. Maybe when I do face it I'll keep my eyes open. Though most of the bad dates are probably way back behind the good dates. I can sorta understand her reasoning using expired product as a spacer, except if she needed a spacer and didn't want to fill the entire top shelf get empty boxes and use those. I wonder how she'll get rid of all that cookie dough. She can't sell an entire cartload of it before this morning, and if there is cookie dough in the markdown bin I'm taking a look at it. If she throws it away she'll in trouble for shrink, if she scans it out and then throws it away she'll be in trouble for high scanouts. She might box it up and put it in backstock and count it that way, then slowly get rid of it over the course of the next few months. I do that sometimes, get rid of things slowly. I even told Bret sometimes if I'm running a little high one week I'll save some scanouts for the next week, and he's ok with that.

After I got home I had a bowl of chili and some sleepytime tea then went to sleep around 11:30ish. I slept until 9:00. And I feel horrid. I feel kinda shaky and like I could sleep more but I don't think I actually could. I'm saving a soda until I get to work. I go back in at 10:30. Inventory basically means your life IS work for a few days straight. And I didn't even get the worst of it. I worked 2-10 yesterday, 10:30-7:00 today, 6:00-2:00 tomorrow. Zhaun was there till 2:30 yesterday, and had probably been there all day, back in at 10:00 last night and he probably won't be going home till 11 or noon. I remember one year he was so bad off I offered him a ride home. He didn't take it though, he apparently only lives in a straight line down the street from work, and it's a one-way street, so I let him be and stopped worrying.

I suppose I should get breakfast so I can start getting ready for work. Blackveil comes out today. But I can't start reading it until tomorrow. Might not even be today that I get it anyway, the tracking information says that it was in California at 6 this morning. You'd think new release book, they'd have had it at the store by yesterday. New releases are supposed to reach stores before the release day. Cause by time it makes it's way up here it'll sit here overnight till it gets sorted onto a truck and sent out for delivery tomorrow. I mean, not like I was going to read it today, but it would have been nice to come home to see it on my desk so I could have touched it and read the back cover and stuff.