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| My blogging bench |
Me, well I am hoping that I do not get smacked will a falling acorn while I am here. One of the gifts of fall no doubt, among the many gifts this season provides. There is the changing of the leaf color before they fall off of the trees, the briskness in the air, enough so that while it is sunny out and not necessarily cold, you can tell that much colder weather is right around the corner. It is not unlike that feeling you get when you swim in a crowded pull, the water may be cold but there is that warmer feeling you get within the pool when you are near someone who is peeing, it may be warm outside right now, but someone is peeing colder air underneath that warmth. The result is a weird combination of some people wearing long pants and jackets, while still others are opting for more of a shorts and t shirt motif. Heck, I just saw a guy jogging by with only shorts and no shirt on. I suppose I could have went for similar attire, but it probably wouldn't look all that good to see a half dressed, pale skin, fat white guy hanging around next to a playground. People might talk, you know.
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| Fall in Schenley Park |
I just wanted to get out of the house though. This is technically my first day off in the last three weeks and I didn't want to spend all of it indoors, so I figured I would venture out to my spot and see if I could write something. Not that there is a whole lot to write about, things in my life have all but returned to somewhat of a routine status, most days I get up around 6:30 - 6:45 and grab a shower and get dressed. I am usually out the door around 7:30 or so, one of the small perks of being promoted to manager is my days now don't start until 8am (or later), so I can actually sleep a little later than I used to. I walk up my street (McKee Place) until I get to the gas station on the corner of McKee and Forbes Avenue, where I grab a coffee before continuing my walk into work. Usually during the week Connie is working, she is a friend of mine who I occasionally will see in my local dive bar after work. I say occasionally because I might go out once every few weeks after work, if that often.
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| Checking out fish in the Aquatic Garden @ Phipps |
Anyway, I grab a coffee and hand over my coffee card, if you buy 7 coffees you get one free, and Connie will either charge me less for my coffee or will just add extra punches to my coffee card, depending on who she is working with and how much they are paying attention. I leave the gas station and continue walking down Forbes Avenue to Gus Millers, our store located in Oakland, which is all of maybe three blocks from where I get my coffee. Once there, I start by opening the instant ticket machines, running a shift report on each which tells us how much money has been taken in by the machines since the last shift report, and emptying the bill acceptors in both machines. If all goes according to plan (and it almost always does) the amounts in the machines will match their corresponding report numbers. Next I head upstairs to the office, where I have to run a few different sales reports. First is the z readings, where I check what each cashier did sales-wise the day before, both in total sales and in cash. The second report I run is the daily cash for the system, which gives me the total sales numbers for the store, as well as how much we did in cash versus credit/food stamps and the total amount we owe in taxes for the day. The last report I run in the office is the sales department analysis report, which basically breaks down all of our sales by department because the profit margin on an item sold varies by department. On a pack of cigarettes we may make 9-10% whereas on a candy bar we would make in the ballpark of 40-45%. As a result all of the items sold can't just be lumped together, they have to be separated into their respective categories. Once I have finished that, I come back downstairs and grab the report on phone cards sold, and Bobby, the manager at Gus Miller, will usually have the money order report and the report for the lottery numbers games already pulled for me. So after gathering all of the reports, as well as the invoices for anything that was delivered to the store the day before,I open the safe and collect all of the sales money inside. After that is done I gather my things and walk up to Fifth Avenue, one block from the store and wait for a bus to take me downtown so my day at Smithfield News can begin.
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| The spot Hope and I would hang out, the fountain is actually on |
The good thing about where I live is that buses are pretty plentiful when it comes to getting between Oakland and downtown. At my bus stop I can take any of the following to get to where I need to be; 61A, 61B, 61C, 61D, 71A, 71B, 71C, 71D, 67, 69. So usually I am waiting no more than five minutes before I am on a bus and headed into town. The ride is usually pretty short and I can be downtown in about fifteen minutes.
Once I get into the store I usually put the stuff from Gus Miller on my desk then head upstairs to check our instant lottery machine, running the shift report, removing the money in the machine and replacing any tickets that may have sold out the day before. I take that money down to my desk and count it, making sure that the total again matches the amount on the report and then give that money to Dee, because she usually will do all of the books for Smithfield. Then I go about emptying the bag of goodies I got from Gus Miller, giving the mail to Ed, putting the invoices in a bag to be picked up by our accountant, and separating the monies into three categories; the instant ticket money, the lottery number games money and the sales money. I usually start by verifying the instant ticket money, and if the numbers are correct I go ahead and prepare a deposit for the lottery account at the bank. Next I check the numbers games, looking at the report and subtracting all of our credits (lottery coupons, validated cashed winning tickets) from the total sold ticket amount so I can determine how much money we should have. If the amount dropped in the safe is the same, then all is good, if it isn't then I have to pull money from the sales to make it balance because at the end if the day the lottery is a bill, they will come looking for the money they are owed for the tickets we ordered, as a rule we only make 5% on lottery sales, the rest goes back to the PA lottery. I then take all of the cancelled tickets that were voided and check that total with the number of cancelled tickets on the lottery report and if those numbers match I staple the cancelled tickets to the report and file the whole bundle away. We have to keep lottery reports for at least 30 days, just in case the lottery comes and does an audit. If they do then they will want to see all of the reports for the last month as well as any cancelled tickets during that time span. Finally is the sales numbers, and before I can do anything Ed looks at the sales by department numbers to make sure they are correct or if he needs to make any adjustments. Once he is done, I start counting money, doing each cashier's drop separately, first counting their total money dropped, then comparing it to the money they should have dropped on their z reading. Hopefully those numbers will balance, if they don't then I have to make a note of it and continue to the next cashier. After all of them are done, usually we will have four of them per day, I continue onto our sales sheet, where all of the sales by department numbers are placed on one report for our accountant. I tally up all of the department totals, add the sales tax we collected and subtract any payouts we may have made to incoming vendors to get a sales total for the day. If everything works according to plan, that total should be equal to the money the cashiers have dropped in the safe plus and credit/debit card transactions. If the numbers are relatively close, I can go ahead and prepare that deposit for the bank, if not then I have to go looking for errors, did I get the report numbers right, were there any overrings I didn't account for, was a specific register short of the total that should be there. Suffice it to say, my life is much easier if things balance the way they are supposed to.
Once all of that is done, I take the three deposits that I have put together off to the bank. It is was passes for a break in my day, to be able to get out of the store and go for a walk. As long as I haven't screwed up any of the deposits it is a relatively uneventful trip to the bank and back. What happens next is really dependent on what day of the week it is, sometimes I will end up doing a grocery order, sometimes I will end up working with a vendor on another order, I could end up breaking down incoming invoices at my desk for the accountant, I could end up catching a truck, or putting away an incoming order, really the possibilities of what it will do next are almost limitless. My day usually starts coming to a close with a phone call to Gus miller, where I get a list of the instant lottery tickets they have sold out of that day. If there is more than two different games I need I will take them with me and go back to Gus Miller and reload the machines, if it is two or fewer I will just take them home with me and reload them the following morning. There you have it, it was my first day off in three weeks and I spent it talking about work. I am such the social butterfly if you couldn't tell. Anyway, I need to make some dinner, yes I do cook on my day off, and then settle in for the football game tonight. Toodles!
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