Did you ever have one of those days where you are tired and it doesn't even feel like you did anything? That is pretty much the boat I am in right now. Not a good way to start the week.
It really didn't start all that bad either. I got to work and was busy stocking coolers in pretty short order. I had managed to bang out four of them without a hitch, then I had my 7 Up truck show up, again no problems. Got the order put away and the invoice broken down and all was still good. Then the Sledd truck showed up. They started unloading our grocery order for Monday, I put the cigarettes away after they were counted in, put away a couple of other items when I got to something new I had ordered. Any more I have been taking one of those items and immediately putting it in the system, so that there were fewer items that didn't ring up at the register when people went to check out. Now I can do this from one of the registers on the floor provided I am logged into in (or someone else with supervisor privileges) or I can go down to the office and use the main computer down there to do it. Since the office is the easier way to go (I can use a real keyboard and mouse as opposed to everything being touch screen) I decided to go ahead and load it into the system. I got down to the office and Ed said he wanted to speak to me. This was the conversation that I was dreading, one I knew was coming but wasn't looking forward to. The “you don't order enough back stock” bit that I expected for months now. Much like the swallows coming back to Capistrano, it is expected the minute Ed comes back. The fact he waited almost a week for it surprised me. Still I knew it would happen, I was already prepared to take my tongue lashing for 15 minutes or so and then be done with it and everything would be back to normal.
And that is exactly how it went down, but after that Ed wanted me to work on another project, which is another thing that happens a lot when Ed is around, he just starts piling up the projects. The fact I had an entire grocery order on the floor was lost on him, so I had to leave the entire truck to Sammy, while I was stuck in yet another meeting, as I no more than got my meeting done than Brian came strolling in, at which point Ed decided to call a manager meeting, which I guess I am now one of since I was not kicked out of the room. Rather I was a part of it, however indirectly. Ed had given me another project, I was to work on revising the deli menu, which I was trying to do when the topic of not having enough stuff in stock again came up. It wasn't directed to me this time, moreso to Brian, who tried defending me, which just prolonged an issue that for me had already been settled. And when Ed and Brian start going at it it can be quite loud, so I stepped in and took the bullet and said it has been discussed, I screwed up, my fault, let's move on. That mea culpa seemed to be enough to move the meeting forward, then it was an issue of being able to track our deli sales. Most of the items on the deli menu are already in the system, but we do also make some sandwiches that are pre-made and can be just bought right from the cooler rather than going to the deli counter and placing an order. Those items are not in the system for one main reason, there is no way to determine what will and will not be made. Those creations are really at the whims of whoever is working in the deli. So the issue became how do we accurately track those sales. I had four different managers talking about what could and couldn't be done, and while they were talking I was actually doing. Now we don't have any handbooks or anything in regards to how the system should work, so a lot of it has just been me training myself on the system and hoping I didn't fuck up too bad. Yet by the time all of the complaining about what could and couldn't be done had finished, so had I. I had created a new key in the register system that allowed for ringing up miscellaneous deli items just by pressing one key and having a box pop up that would allow the cashier to enter the price, and the item would then be credited to deli sales.
Shortly thereafter the meeting broke up, and Ed asked me to go if I could fix the menu prices again. He was under the impression that if I scanned in a copy of the menu (which I did a few blog entries ago) all I would have to do is take a copy of that scan down to Office Depot and have them edit it and create a new menu. First he asked if I could do it and I had to explain that a scan isn't like a file, it is more like a photo and some things, including editing photographs were just a wee bit beyond my technical skill set. He asked me to see if I had a copy of the menu if Office Depot could then scan it and do the editing. In what may be the good news, bad news portion of the day, it turns out Office Depot is just as technically inept as I am, so I could revel in the fact that they couldn't do anything I couldn't do, but that didn't solve the whole new menu dilemma. Instead it meant that I had to retype the entire menu with the new prices (a sign of how technically inept we are is that no one thought to get a hard copy of the menu file to begin with, which would have made changes 1000 times easier). I started to work on this project, when Ed decides he wants the name of some new suppliers for register tape and could I go online and find him some suppliers who might have what he is looking for. This meant first I had to get the right type of paper (3 1/8” x 230 ' thermal paper) and then make sure that the paper worked with our register printers. I started this project and got roped into dealing with Western Union, apparently the printer was voiding a large number of money orders so I was stuck on the phone with their tech support (who actually spoke English without the Indian accent) and was walked through the process of cleaning the printer in hopes that would solve the problem.
Then it was back to the office to work on the menu some more and I no more than got restarted when I was asked to make a sign for some fake marijuana product we are selling. More crap work. I finished that, went back to working on the menu and managed to get it all typed in but couldn't get it to fit on one page, so I still have some editing to do, but before I could do that I was then selected to do the deposit run. The whole day was just a clusterfuck.
The thing is, when it comes to work, I pretty much hate being on the computer, not that I hate computers per se, but because to me it just doesn't feel like work. If I am not doing real manual labor I feel like I am not doing anything at all. No matter how much I may actually be doing, top me it is all busy work, I would rather be stocking a cooler, or running trash, or just busting hump as opposed to sitting around typing most of the day away. Which is making this blog entry even more painful, I think I have typed enough for one day so excuse me while I return to my dinner, a simple pizza. And at this point I think I would rather eat it than type about it so toodles.
No comments:
Post a Comment