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Handheld Hell
Today is Wednesday. At my store, that means ad change day.
We had roughly 2500 price changes today. We had all our 125+ Stupendous Deal items (which ran for 2 weeks) coming off ad and all the stuff going on ad for the 4th of July ad to activate.
For the past few weeks, our computers aren't allowing us to activate all our batches at once (new change from Kitty Corporate) which means we activate in the computer one at a time, and then when the previous one is showing on the Batch Status screen as a C (for complete) only then can we select the next one.
Which takes additional time. And now the earliest we can activate is around 6:30 am.
Despite that, Ma and I were doing pretty darn good on the tags (she had a huge stack of tag pulls, which are for off sale items that we simply pull the bottom half of the tag off of and scan the item to return it to regular shelf price)
By 11 I was on the candy aisle after taking care of the drink/snack aisle, frozen food, glass/condiments, canned veggies/pasta/baking and HBA aisles. Had just hanged some tags and was scanning the items with the handheld in Scan Activation mode under the Price Change menu when . . .
Screen went blank. Completely blank.
I press the clear button to go back and instead I get a the small message box that says Finding Network Connection . . . .
Then it freezes up. I reboot the machine and get back to main menu. I then entered my login info and then get the dreaded message:
Communication Error . . .contact store technical services
I rebooted again, as sometimes if you reboot a second time, the message clears out and you can proceed to the menu selections.
Not so. Same communication error message.
Shit. Hell. Damn. Fuck.
Pull my cell phone out and call the Helpless Desk (whose number I have programmed in) and fortunately didn't have to wait long for a rep to answer.
While I'm on the phone, Ma came down the aisle with her handheld unit . . .which it turned out had went down as well.
Double fuck (sorry Irv.)
We go to the back to check on the rest of the handhelds while we're on hold (again while the rep is trying to text someone to get a response as to what's going on) and check the remaining two (which were both charging in the cradles.)
Neither of the other two were booting up either.
We let the rep know, who then after keeping us on hold for a few more minutes finally heard back on his inquiry.
Turned out it was a company wide issue . . . other stores were flooding them with calls of the same problem. Corporate was aware of the issue and IT was working on the matter to get it solved ASAP.
When I finally got off the phone, it was after 11:30. I'd been on the phone for 32 minutes (love that call timer when I disconnect. I see exactly how many minutes I've used.)
In the meantime, Ma was on her phone, texting a couple of other stores to see if they were having the same problem. They both sent texts back to her saying yep . . . they were down too.
So, after letting Nature Boy know what had happened and listening to the ensuing shitfits we heard from both Butthead and Dairy Guy (who had to finish stocking what came in this morning and do their maintenance aka scan their holes as well as what they're heavy on or low on and double check the on hand quantities - before the next CAO order goes off tomorrow) we went to lunch for an hour.
Nature Boy's response was basically the same we had: go to lunch and then check back after we'd come back sounded like a good plan to him (I'm loving this guy more and more - he's basically rolling with the flow and when we have a glitch, he comes up with a plan. Might not be the greatest plan, but it's a plan.
)
Came back an hour later, clocked back in and went to the handhelds to see if they would boot up while Nature Boy was next door in the breakroom trying to get a quick bite to eat.
The guns were back up and running . . . YAY!!!! Throw a party and bring some beer.
Thank goodness the rest of the day went without a hitch. Don't know what caused the outage, but at least it's straightened out.
Let's hope this doesn't happen again any time soon . . . of if it does, at least not on a Wednesday.
We had roughly 2500 price changes today. We had all our 125+ Stupendous Deal items (which ran for 2 weeks) coming off ad and all the stuff going on ad for the 4th of July ad to activate.
For the past few weeks, our computers aren't allowing us to activate all our batches at once (new change from Kitty Corporate) which means we activate in the computer one at a time, and then when the previous one is showing on the Batch Status screen as a C (for complete) only then can we select the next one.
Which takes additional time. And now the earliest we can activate is around 6:30 am.
Despite that, Ma and I were doing pretty darn good on the tags (she had a huge stack of tag pulls, which are for off sale items that we simply pull the bottom half of the tag off of and scan the item to return it to regular shelf price)
By 11 I was on the candy aisle after taking care of the drink/snack aisle, frozen food, glass/condiments, canned veggies/pasta/baking and HBA aisles. Had just hanged some tags and was scanning the items with the handheld in Scan Activation mode under the Price Change menu when . . .
Screen went blank. Completely blank.
I press the clear button to go back and instead I get a the small message box that says Finding Network Connection . . . .
Then it freezes up. I reboot the machine and get back to main menu. I then entered my login info and then get the dreaded message:
Communication Error . . .contact store technical services
I rebooted again, as sometimes if you reboot a second time, the message clears out and you can proceed to the menu selections.
Not so. Same communication error message.
Shit. Hell. Damn. Fuck.
Pull my cell phone out and call the Helpless Desk (whose number I have programmed in) and fortunately didn't have to wait long for a rep to answer.
While I'm on the phone, Ma came down the aisle with her handheld unit . . .which it turned out had went down as well.
Double fuck (sorry Irv.)
We go to the back to check on the rest of the handhelds while we're on hold (again while the rep is trying to text someone to get a response as to what's going on) and check the remaining two (which were both charging in the cradles.)
Neither of the other two were booting up either.
We let the rep know, who then after keeping us on hold for a few more minutes finally heard back on his inquiry.
Turned out it was a company wide issue . . . other stores were flooding them with calls of the same problem. Corporate was aware of the issue and IT was working on the matter to get it solved ASAP.
When I finally got off the phone, it was after 11:30. I'd been on the phone for 32 minutes (love that call timer when I disconnect. I see exactly how many minutes I've used.)
In the meantime, Ma was on her phone, texting a couple of other stores to see if they were having the same problem. They both sent texts back to her saying yep . . . they were down too.
So, after letting Nature Boy know what had happened and listening to the ensuing shitfits we heard from both Butthead and Dairy Guy (who had to finish stocking what came in this morning and do their maintenance aka scan their holes as well as what they're heavy on or low on and double check the on hand quantities - before the next CAO order goes off tomorrow) we went to lunch for an hour.
Nature Boy's response was basically the same we had: go to lunch and then check back after we'd come back sounded like a good plan to him (I'm loving this guy more and more - he's basically rolling with the flow and when we have a glitch, he comes up with a plan. Might not be the greatest plan, but it's a plan.
)Came back an hour later, clocked back in and went to the handhelds to see if they would boot up while Nature Boy was next door in the breakroom trying to get a quick bite to eat.
The guns were back up and running . . . YAY!!!! Throw a party and bring some beer.
Thank goodness the rest of the day went without a hitch. Don't know what caused the outage, but at least it's straightened out.
Let's hope this doesn't happen again any time soon . . . of if it does, at least not on a Wednesday.
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