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Finally, I've decided to sit down and share my week of work last week, where I subbed for the receiving clerk while she took a day of vacation. I may be a bit off on the actually days things happened.
Monday was uneventful except for this guy.
Tuesday:
Twas my first day of having to do receiving duties. I came in to find a sheet on the desk outlining the return procedures for fireworks. The sheet said we would either receive a packet of UPS labels in a UPS delivery and have to ship the fireworks back via UPS, or we would be called 24 to 48 hours in advance by the truck driver going to various stores picking up their fireworks returns. So I pulled all the fireworks off the power grid they were stocked on, counted them, and boxed them up for return...
...and in doing so raised the hackles of our planogram specialist, who told us those fireowrks are "guaranteed sale", whatever that means, but it evidently means corporate wants them available for sale as long as possible. It wouldn't be stooping to a new low for a corporate suit to walk off the store, decide to look for our fireworks display, and after not finding it rip somebody a new asshole for removing them from the floor. Worried, I told my manager if this would be such a big deal, I would unpack all the fireworks and put them back out on the floor, but she told me that wouldn't be necessary. If anybody said something, our story would be we just misunderstood the return instructions.
Wednesday:
Another Damn Senior Day.
Had I been out on the floor and not sequestered in the receiving office all day, you would've seen a lengthy post form me. It was cuckoo crazy busy. One carryout after another, non-stop calls for backup cashiers. The old folks were all going for patio furniture, which we had just taken our first clearance markdowns on.
As I was running something out to the floor, one of the floor people asked for me to help her with a carryout. I told her I couldn't because I had to wait for UPS and Fedex. So naturally she went complaining that I wasn't willing to help her.
In our UPS delivery we got a couple boxes of jewelry from a vendor, and after counting the contents of one of the boxes 7 or 8 times, found we had been shorted one piece listed on the packing slip. Concerned, I called up Moon Unit, since all jewelry invoices eventually end up with her. She told me to just take the jewelry out to the department, where the person working the jewelry counter would have to count the order herself before putting the jewelry on sale. I came to find out later this person probably did not count the order, and just put all the pieces in the case for sale. Oh well, I did my part.
Also on Wednesday, I had to retransmit two 7UP invoices, one for product delivered and one for product credited and taken out of the store, due to the ever-popular "errors found during their transmission." This wasn't such a hassle, but it was still 10 minutes wasted that didn't need to be.
Thursday:
The day started out with this fine lady.
Later, I got a call from the distribution center. A vendor in the next town over had ten pallets of stuff ready to ship, and they couldn't get any empty space on any trailers going back to the DC for this stuff. So we became the last resort and had to remove enough pallets of repack totes, defectives, etc to leave ten "skid marks" (retail terminology is fun sometimes
) for this product. I assigned this to a couple guys on the unload crew who came in at 11:30. Because they worked so slowly, they were still taking stuff off the truck when the driver came to drop the trailer to be unloaded that night.
The there was the register fuck-up outlined here after I left for the day.
It's Friday, Fridaaaayyyyyyy:
Friday we had to do the truck that came in Thursday. It didn't go very well. We got it done, but it took longer than it otherwise would due to a couple guys screwing around with nobody to keep them in line.
Around 7:30 our magazine delivery for the week came in, and we were shorted one measly stinking copy of Woman's World. Costs us a dollar and change from the circulation company. I briefly contemplated saying we got in our full allotment, since we get Woman's World in massive quantities anyway, and what's $1.35 to the company anyway. But that is one way shoplifters justify ganking things, so I called the circulation company's customer service number to find out how to file a shortage claim. The recorded message said I had to mark the title we were shorted and the quantity, and then fax in the invoice. So I had to waltz on over to pharmacy to use their fax machine.
I also got a note from my manager saying the driver picking up our fireworks return called and would be by sometime that day to pick up our returns. So I had to call the receiving clerk at her home, and have her walk me through the process for doing a Return to Vendor. In between her screaming at her grandchildren.
I was also supposed to go to pharmacy and pick up some stuff delivered by an outside company, check in the stuff that went out on the floor, and put it out. I did this half an hour before I left and they still hadn't gotten to working on the delivery. I told them not to drop everything and do it just for me.
Oh, and the number on the little plastic seal that came off the trailer didn't match the number given on the bill of lading. Yippee, time to go on the computer and file a trailer seal discrepancy report. I submitted the report and got an auto reply from the guy at the DC who handles those reports saying he was on vacation and to contact somebody else.
I was ready to pick up the phone and make that call, but then we got an e-mail from somebody else at the DC who told me they had done a seal audit and we passed. Yay for me.
Saturday:
I was off Saturday, which was another crazy busy day. Not much got done during the day, but things died off by the evening.
The two floor people working that night were supposed to fill planograms in seasonal with school supplies. They couldn't operate the forklift, but we had plenty of stuff downstairs they could work on; mainly bulk stuff like notebooks, glue, 24-count Crayola crayons, and colored pencils that everybody goes for. Between the two of them, I figure they filled maybe two cases of crayons and a couple cases of glue. Everything else was sitting in carts in the back. The backroom was trashed. So was the salesfloor.
Sunday:
Ad set to start off the day was a total PITA, and the fact we were short a person did not help. Autopull was massive because of how busy it had been Saturday. By the time we were done with those things, we had all of two hours to fill the carts of school supplies left for us.
But before I could even do that, I had to change the detergent and paper in the special paid-space areas, because nobody bothered to do this Saturday. Corporate suits and vendor reps are known to walk off stores early on Sunday mornings to make sure the correct products are in these spaces. I got everything out and went to print up sale labels--and found the sheet directing the products to be placed out had the wrong toilet paper and paper towels listed.
So I had to take it all off the shelf, schlep it back to the backroom, and bring out the correct stuff. We ended up leaving the backroom still in a mess Sunday afternoon, and my supervisor was coming back from vacation the next day. 
I swear, anything that could've gone wrong last week did. Anything that could've been snuck past me on an audit or shortage was.
Monday was uneventful except for this guy.
Tuesday:
Twas my first day of having to do receiving duties. I came in to find a sheet on the desk outlining the return procedures for fireworks. The sheet said we would either receive a packet of UPS labels in a UPS delivery and have to ship the fireworks back via UPS, or we would be called 24 to 48 hours in advance by the truck driver going to various stores picking up their fireworks returns. So I pulled all the fireworks off the power grid they were stocked on, counted them, and boxed them up for return...
...and in doing so raised the hackles of our planogram specialist, who told us those fireowrks are "guaranteed sale", whatever that means, but it evidently means corporate wants them available for sale as long as possible. It wouldn't be stooping to a new low for a corporate suit to walk off the store, decide to look for our fireworks display, and after not finding it rip somebody a new asshole for removing them from the floor. Worried, I told my manager if this would be such a big deal, I would unpack all the fireworks and put them back out on the floor, but she told me that wouldn't be necessary. If anybody said something, our story would be we just misunderstood the return instructions.
Wednesday:
Another Damn Senior Day.
Had I been out on the floor and not sequestered in the receiving office all day, you would've seen a lengthy post form me. It was cuckoo crazy busy. One carryout after another, non-stop calls for backup cashiers. The old folks were all going for patio furniture, which we had just taken our first clearance markdowns on.
As I was running something out to the floor, one of the floor people asked for me to help her with a carryout. I told her I couldn't because I had to wait for UPS and Fedex. So naturally she went complaining that I wasn't willing to help her.
In our UPS delivery we got a couple boxes of jewelry from a vendor, and after counting the contents of one of the boxes 7 or 8 times, found we had been shorted one piece listed on the packing slip. Concerned, I called up Moon Unit, since all jewelry invoices eventually end up with her. She told me to just take the jewelry out to the department, where the person working the jewelry counter would have to count the order herself before putting the jewelry on sale. I came to find out later this person probably did not count the order, and just put all the pieces in the case for sale. Oh well, I did my part.
Also on Wednesday, I had to retransmit two 7UP invoices, one for product delivered and one for product credited and taken out of the store, due to the ever-popular "errors found during their transmission." This wasn't such a hassle, but it was still 10 minutes wasted that didn't need to be.
Thursday:
The day started out with this fine lady.
Later, I got a call from the distribution center. A vendor in the next town over had ten pallets of stuff ready to ship, and they couldn't get any empty space on any trailers going back to the DC for this stuff. So we became the last resort and had to remove enough pallets of repack totes, defectives, etc to leave ten "skid marks" (retail terminology is fun sometimes
) for this product. I assigned this to a couple guys on the unload crew who came in at 11:30. Because they worked so slowly, they were still taking stuff off the truck when the driver came to drop the trailer to be unloaded that night.The there was the register fuck-up outlined here after I left for the day.
It's Friday, Fridaaaayyyyyyy:
Friday we had to do the truck that came in Thursday. It didn't go very well. We got it done, but it took longer than it otherwise would due to a couple guys screwing around with nobody to keep them in line.
Around 7:30 our magazine delivery for the week came in, and we were shorted one measly stinking copy of Woman's World. Costs us a dollar and change from the circulation company. I briefly contemplated saying we got in our full allotment, since we get Woman's World in massive quantities anyway, and what's $1.35 to the company anyway. But that is one way shoplifters justify ganking things, so I called the circulation company's customer service number to find out how to file a shortage claim. The recorded message said I had to mark the title we were shorted and the quantity, and then fax in the invoice. So I had to waltz on over to pharmacy to use their fax machine.
I also got a note from my manager saying the driver picking up our fireworks return called and would be by sometime that day to pick up our returns. So I had to call the receiving clerk at her home, and have her walk me through the process for doing a Return to Vendor. In between her screaming at her grandchildren.
I was also supposed to go to pharmacy and pick up some stuff delivered by an outside company, check in the stuff that went out on the floor, and put it out. I did this half an hour before I left and they still hadn't gotten to working on the delivery. I told them not to drop everything and do it just for me.
Oh, and the number on the little plastic seal that came off the trailer didn't match the number given on the bill of lading. Yippee, time to go on the computer and file a trailer seal discrepancy report. I submitted the report and got an auto reply from the guy at the DC who handles those reports saying he was on vacation and to contact somebody else.
I was ready to pick up the phone and make that call, but then we got an e-mail from somebody else at the DC who told me they had done a seal audit and we passed. Yay for me.Saturday:
I was off Saturday, which was another crazy busy day. Not much got done during the day, but things died off by the evening.
The two floor people working that night were supposed to fill planograms in seasonal with school supplies. They couldn't operate the forklift, but we had plenty of stuff downstairs they could work on; mainly bulk stuff like notebooks, glue, 24-count Crayola crayons, and colored pencils that everybody goes for. Between the two of them, I figure they filled maybe two cases of crayons and a couple cases of glue. Everything else was sitting in carts in the back. The backroom was trashed. So was the salesfloor.
Sunday:
Ad set to start off the day was a total PITA, and the fact we were short a person did not help. Autopull was massive because of how busy it had been Saturday. By the time we were done with those things, we had all of two hours to fill the carts of school supplies left for us.
But before I could even do that, I had to change the detergent and paper in the special paid-space areas, because nobody bothered to do this Saturday. Corporate suits and vendor reps are known to walk off stores early on Sunday mornings to make sure the correct products are in these spaces. I got everything out and went to print up sale labels--and found the sheet directing the products to be placed out had the wrong toilet paper and paper towels listed.
So I had to take it all off the shelf, schlep it back to the backroom, and bring out the correct stuff. We ended up leaving the backroom still in a mess Sunday afternoon, and my supervisor was coming back from vacation the next day. I swear, anything that could've gone wrong last week did. Anything that could've been snuck past me on an audit or shortage was.