Multiply 365 Day 19 - Finders Keepers

I better get cracking if I plan on putting an entry in for today. Sorry I was a little distracted there, but I have once again been tinkering with Diablo 2 on Battlenet. I was talking about the game with Clare at work the other day and it has again sparked my interest in playing. Of course it has been so long since I have played the online version that all of my characters are out of date so I had to start at the beginning, which is fine I guess. Worse fates have befallen far greater men.

Today had the makings of a sucky day. I got to work and it started okay, everything was moving along at a decent pace. Sammy and I got all of the coolers stocked early enough, which is good because the Pepsi rep was due in to place an order and I had to put in a Coke order. We used to have a Coke rep but Ed kicked him out of the store so the burden of putting together a Coke order falls squarely on my shoulders. In any event, since the coolers were done I decided to go ahead and put together a Coke order and call it in. Just as I am on the phone discussing said order Sammy gives me a buzz on the walkie talkie saying that our new open air cooler arrived.

Yes, I am now carrying a walkie talkie at work. Actually it was my idea, we had a pair of them in the office that weren't being used, so I took it upon myself to see if there was a problem with them or not. Turns out there wasn't, they just needed charged up, so I went ahead and did that and then I gave one to Sammy and kept one for myself to wear while we are at work, that way we can be in touch with each other without the hassle of tracking people down, which can be troublesome at times because there are times where I am at the other store downtown, or one of us is sent of on an errand to Office Depot or something and the walkie talkies so far have proved useful and good enough that we have been able to keep in touch where we are downtown.

Anyway, the open air cooler was supposed to arrive on Monday, when it didn't show I assumed that it would be coming next week. Bad assumption on my part there. It was coming from the same people that do our grocery deliveries, so if the cooler was there so was today's delivery and I was stuck on the phone doing a Coke order. I managed to get through it as fast as possible, which isn't all that fast because after you place the order they read everything back to you and when you are getting 61 cases of product it can take a few minutes. But I did get done in time to find that they were taking the new cooler off of the truck, though I didn't get done soon enough to help clear out the old cooler. But we got the new cooler into the store after a bit of a hassle getting it off of the truck and through the door. We got it all situated where it was going to go, grabbed the plug to put it into the outlet only to find it didn't fit. It is the wrong line, a 220 line and the outlet isn't set up for that. Had they let us know ahead of time we could have had our electrician come in and rewire the outlet, but since they didn't we now have a three shelf cooler sitting on the floor with no product in it.

Next was the grocery order, which wasn't too bad save for the fact that as soon as we started checking it in and putting it away Brian shows up and he needs some people out as his Range Rover because he picked up plastic bags for the store and salt for the sidewalk. Yes it is that time of year around here as evidenced by the following video from yesterday, when it was just warm enough to rain a little overnight, but the ground wasn't warm so the rain would hit the pavement and freeze creating situations like this.

So now Brian's stuff is in the store and back to checking the grocery order in. There was more stuff to go down to the stockroom than usual because I spent part of yesterday downsizing the dollar section. We have a few items that retail for $1, the thing is hen we buy them we have to buy an entire case. It sells okay, there are some items like microwave popcorn, spaghetti sauce, mac and cheese and laundry detergent in there that sell pretty well, but I am in the process of building a new section for Pepsi where we will sell 12 packs of cans and 6 packs of 24 ounce bottles so I needed the shelf space. Items that used to have two or three rows were condensed down to one row, meaning all of the excesses ended up in the stockroom for the time being. So any dollar items I bought today (and there were a few) at least half of their cases ended up going downstairs, so more lugging of product for me. Yay!

Finally the Pepsi rep arrives, but before I can begin walking through tomorrow's order with him, I have to sit through a meeting with him and Brian while they discuss the particulars of the pending new Pepsi section I wish to build. Lots of price points and CMA money discussions. CMA money is the money we get for allotting space to Pepsi in our contract. They get X amount of cooler space in the contract and we get Y amount of dollars for providing it for them. The issue is whether or not by giving them shelf space as well that counts toward our space allotment for the current contract. If you think it is boring reading it, you should try living it sometime.

Between the time in the meeting and the time I started going through the order with the rep I was interrupted no less than 5 different times. I would like to think it is because I was popular, but I am not quite that foolish, so it took all of my nerve just to not scream at people to tell them to leave me alone. I mean it was obvious I was a tad bit occupied, there was nothing happening that was so earth shattering that it demanded my immediate attention. So by the end of the day I was pretty annoyed. Then a funny thing happened. I started finding stuff.

First there was the 42 cents I found while putting groceries away. Then it was the 26 Coke Reward points I found (two caps, two 12 pack codes), then it was another 3 cents on my walk home from the bus stop. Then when I got home my mailbox was full of cigarette coupons, which I can take to work and get cash for. $11.63 worth to be precise. That will make a nice dent on my charge sheet at work. I even got another survey to do online to add to my MySurvey account, which is closing on $5 now. The only thing that didn't show up was my books once again, despite the fact that according to the tracking info they were sent to my place yesterday morning. Perhaps they had a fender bender like a few other people.

Oh well, that's pretty much it for today. I need to finish this off and get some sleep.