B365V3.15 - A not so day in the life of.....

This is what I would call an atypical, but not surprising day in the life of.......me.  Where oh where to begin.

First I did myself no favors by waking up late.  As I have said before, I technically do not have a scheduled start or finish time, but it is on me to get my things done within certain time limits, like making the bank run by 4 pm when they close, beyond that my checkout time is when I finish.  Some days that is early, this is not one of those some days.

I get into work at 10, first thing I am greeted with is a call off from one of the deli people who got in a fight with her boyfriend and is residing in the county jail a opposed to being at work.  By 10:30 I get my first delivery of the day (and only one, thank goodness), two brand new debit keypads for a couple of our registers.  Seems they both quit working right around the same time some employees took it upon themselves to switch accessories between the registers.  Thing is if you plug a keypad in without first shutting off the register, you can blow the circuit board inside them, and they are not cheap, $110 a piece to replace.  I ordered them a couple of weeks ago, but the payment processing co pant screwed up and never sent out the order.  I fixed that particular dilemma on Monday, and by Wednesday (today) I had two brand new keypads in my hands.  I noticed the newer model had a different connector, the old ones had a multi pin connector attached to them, the new ones were with a usb connector.  So I shut down a register, plugged one if the keypads in to the now non operating terminal, turned it back on and magic of magic, I was getting power to the new keypad.  But the software we operate with still wasn't recognizing it, so I sent a quick email off to our cash register people, explains the problem, I had new pin pads, same model but different connector and what did I need to do to make them work?

The reply was that they started working remotely on our system from their location, which meant they took down the entire register system right in the middle of lunch, and right in the middle of me getting my paperwork done.  After all, no system means no sales reports.  While I am juggling this mess, a rep from Cor Mark comes in.  They are a grocery distributor and since the store parted with using Sledd, we have been using ABL out of Ohio.  The only problem with them was they don't carry Freal milkshakes, and we are owners of a Freal mixing machine, so we have been on a weeks long search for a vendor that does carry them.  Cor Mark is one such company, of course they were supposed to meet with Brian last week, not today.  In the interim we managed to talk ABL into carrying the milkshakes, so when the rep arrived I told him Brian wasn't available (which is true, he was at Restaurant Depot at the time) but if he wanted to come back Brian may have some time to talk.    So he comes back in the midst of my chaos, it ends up being a very brief meeting and by the time he left I had the register system back up and running, though the debit problem has yet to be resolved.

Brian, who was already cranky from going to Restaurant Depot, and having an employee call off earlier, tried  to get tickets to a concert at Consol Energy Center for his son.  As part of our 7 Up contract we are granted a certain allotment of tickets to Consol, so Brian calls the regional manager at 7 Up to ask about getting tickets and they say they don't have any extra tickets for that event.  That pisses Brian off, now he doesn't want me placing any 7 Up orders unless they come up with tickets. I hate these pissing contests with vendors because I end up cleaning up the mess afterwards, I finally managed to get the mess from switching from Sledd to ABL under control, getting the store reset with the new vendors tags and now getting some of the new items we are getting into the register system.

Brian leaves all cranky and shit, which is fine, I still had plenty to do.  I get the sales numbers from the system, usually Brian goes over them once I get certain numbers tabulated, makes a couple of minor adjustments, transfers of money to cover Western Union and what not and then he gives me the final numbers.  When he is at home I fax him the numbers, which is what I had to do today.  So I try faxing him, three different attempts each time I get no answer on the fax call.  Finally we go over the numbers on the phone, I call him with the numbers and he calls me back with the adjustments.

About 2:30 or so I have the numbers finished, I am about to go to the bank with the deposits when my phone rings again, Ed is calling me.  He placed an order with Navajo Distributing, we get some odds and ends from them like ear buds, phone charging cables, etc.  Ed called to say that Navajo lost our sales tax license information and our order has been waiting for a week pending that information.  So if I could fax them the information, they will express mail our order.  Once again I am back in the fax machine trying to send something and getting no answer on the other end.  So I check the phone line and there is no dial tone on it.  This day is now reaching epic levels of frustration.

I bust out my trusty flip phone and take a picture of the sales tax license and try emailing it to them.  I get an email back saying they couldn't make out all of the numbers on my flip phone photography,McCullough I send it again.  I resend the information, go to the bank and drop off the deposits.  No issues there, my math was on point, but coming back from the bank my phone chirps again, a text message.  Another person on the 3 to 11 shift is now calling off.  I don't like leaving one person to run the store by themselves, so I text Brian this most recent info, thinking he may call someone to get them to come in.  Of course that doesn't happen, I end up staying until about 8 pm tonight before feeling like I had gotten enough stuff done so that one person could handle the rest of the shift.

I keep telling myself these extra hours are going to help with my next vacation but I am wondering how much longer that excuse is going to last before I burn out from this nonsense and just start snapping on people.