Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Surviving Inventory


I promise, this is my last inventory related post. I swear. It's just that this event has been the center of my 50 - 60 hour weeks at work, so it's really the only thing going on right now... And you people will have to deal with it for just one more post.

So I did it, I survived inventory. I even got to go home 45 minutes early, which is a miracle. Right now, I'm happily laying on my couch, fantasizing about how I don't have to worry about inventory for another whole year.

Surprisingly, being put in a tiny cage in a forklift and raised up about 30 or 40 feet so I could lean out and take down paperwork wasn't as terrifying as I'd psyched myself up for. I think part of the reason was because I asked (begged) that my driver be one of two people, both of whom are friends of mine. Another part had to be that the person in the cage the row opposite of me was one of my close friends, and he felt it absolutely necessary to shout things at me to try and make me laugh. I won't lie... I was hanging onto the bars on the side of the cage for dear life, and I did have one freak-out moment, but other than that it wasn't so bad. Dare I say it? I actually had fun...

As always, though, actual inventory night was a controlled debacle. Do you know how frustrating it is to spend an entire week cleaning, organizing, and counting only to have a group of illegal Mexicans and people on supervised work release come in, tear everything apart, and count things wrong? My "I'm-going-to-punch-you-in-the-face" moment came when I was counting in the freezer and I had a series of 3 coolers where the person doing the counting had under counted inventory by like 40 to 90 units. Seriously, I looked into one cooler and saw 4 boxes of 12 units, another box with 10 units, and 5 boxes of 6 units (for the kids counting at home, that's 93 units), and the counter, an obvious rocket scientist in training, put the total of units in the freezer at 38. I'm looking at the freezer, just staring and wondering WTF? How can you mistake 93 units as only 38? Is that even possible?

So I call the department head (who's also the close friend who was shouting at me while I was in the cage) over to verify, and we were both dumbfounded. They were obviously counted wrong. After standing in the section for awhile, we realize the error was probably because the delinquent they had counting the case couldn't have cared less about the job she was doing, and she was far more interested in flirting with everything with a penis as opposed to counting. Our department head ended up calling over their supervisor, who was as stupid as these counters only he had a title, and he went on and on about how we had probably counted wrong, how most of the time their counts are right, and if there's an issue, it'll come out during the verification process. I just wanted to punch the guy in the face... Obviously I was there doing the verification and obviously the case was counted wrong... He just didn't want to do his job and adjust the inventory count. Freaking idiot.

All and all, aside from the morons in the freezers, the whole event wasn't that bad. The two zones I was in charge of both were managed by my two good friends, which meant I didn't have somebody riding my butt the whole evening, and the Home Office sent over somebody from another branch to help us with the count and he ended up being a riot to work with. Wouldn't you know, he's an avid gamer too... So my friend, the transfer guy, and I ended up screwing around a lot more then we probably should have. And we walked away from the night with a new Xbox buddy, which is always wonderful.

When all was said and done, I was finished by 11:15 (which is better than the 1am I worked until last year), in bed by midnight, and I didn't have to worry about work until 1pm. I don't know how long the department heads had to stay, though. I'm guessing until about 1 or 2am. Nice thing is the later they stay, the less of them there will be at work the next day, which means I have a built in day of screwing off.

And it's exactly 1 year before I have to worry about having to do inventory again. Freaking awesome.

2 comments on "Surviving Inventory"

Unknown on March 24, 2009 at 9:11 AM said...

i'm glad it all went well and you got something out of it.

Wasn't so bad was it?

Xbox Maven on March 24, 2009 at 10:04 AM said...

No, I guess it wasn't *that* bad... Thank God for friends at work to fuck off with. :)

 

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