Retail Reality Check

One of the real nightmares of retail is INVENTORY. It doesn't matter if it's once a year or once a month... it still sucks! And having another company come in to "take care of it for you" isn't a blessing. Usually, it's worse!

I currently work for a company that "likes" to do inventory counts once a month. Luckily, the stores are small. Unfortunately, this particular company also likes to conduct "random audits" throughout the year. I got screwed 2 months in a row!

Two months ago, my Area Manager decided that he should "visit" and perform his official invenory audit. Like I said, lucky me. Under normal circumstances, I usually have a good portion of the store "pre-counted" so that we don't have to stay too late at night. Of course when someone with a title is in the store, we can't start the festivities until we close. It has to be "by the book". (Damn that book, I hate it!)

So the next month rolled around and I thought things would be great (and by great, I just mean "no visitors"). Boy was I wrong...

A nice gentleman strolled into the store at about 10:30am... amd proceeded to introduce himself as the Internal Auditor from our corporate office (which is located in another state). Again, lucky me! Fortunately, all of the paperwork I had with our "pre-counts" on them were not in plain view. I quickly discarded then when he wasn't looking, and prepared myself for another fun evening.

Crap... two months in a row. I was waiting for lightning bolts, flash floods, earthquakes, and other assorted calamity. I would say that Lady Luck must have been on vacation... she sure was avoiding me.

In the end, it all worked out. Twice.

As a nation, we are hovering at 10% unemployment. Totally unacceptable! I recently had to go thru the process of hiring someone to fill a part-time sales position. What an eye-opener for our current predicament with the jobless.

An ad was placed online with one of those job search engines... you know, Monster or Career Builder. It specifically stated the following items: part-time (approx. 15 hours per week), retail sales, hourly pay rate of $8.50, and "click here to apply online".

I learned that some people just can't follow simple instructions. Apparently, "click here to apply online" was confusing to some. And for those who did actually figure that part out, it got even more interesting. Some people did not even bother to include contact information! How do you expect me to get in touch with you if you don't provide a phone number or address?

All sorts of people applied. We got hundreds of responses. Most went immediately to the shredder. If your salary requirement is $80,000 per year, what we were offering clearly wouldn't cut it. Is your math really that bad? And this was a part-time sales position for a retail store... so I appreciate that you can operate a fork-lift and drive an 18 wheeler, but that doesn't fit the job description.

And if every other word on your resume is spelled incorrrectly, maybe you should be applying for continuing education, not a job.

I know the job market is rough, and sometimes we have to "think outside the box". But reality still needs to part of the mix. Be creative in your job search, but be realistic. Good luck in your search. There is something for everyone out there... and I hope you find it soon.

As for me, I got lucky. I found a person who fit the qualifications of the job and he is doing great. A definite asset to the store!

But the fork-lift operator/truck driver got me thinking... maybe I'll go to truck driving school in my spare time. I've been wanting to travel more, and it would be a great way to see the country. Honk, honk...

Once a week I have to complete my "weekly notes" and email them to my bosses. There are several categories that I have to comment on... Marketing, Merchandising, Operations, Inventory, Staffing, etc. The upper-cheese levels just want to know what's going on in the field without actually being in it, so they ask us to send them weekly updates.

It was a particularly slow day today, so I had the pleasure of reading thru old "Updates" that were saved on the computer. There were reports dating back three years!

Bottom line... I stood there laughing most of the afternoon as I read the memos! It seemed as if the former manager must have been on the brink of a meltdown. His comments were priceless.

He told the Big Cheeses that they were "creating monsters by letting the customers combine offers when it clearly states that offers can not be combined." He went to say that our company motto should be borrowed from that hamburger chain (Have it Your Way!). He told of one incident where a customer got upset because we were out of stock on an item, so the customer "threw the ad at him and cursed at him as she left the store". His next comment was "Great working conditions".

And once you create monsters, you can never get rid of them!

He also snuck in a little gem after stating that they had been waiting five weeks for a computer that was supposed to be there in three, but corporate promised it would be there the next week. His reply to that was "I won't hold my breath".

Apparently, he went out of his way to help a customer, and bent the rules a little by giving the customer a small discount on an item that wasn't on sale. The next day he got a "nasty-gram" (as he put it) from someone at Corporate asking him why he did what he did. His reply to Corp was "It's called Customer Service, or don't we do that anymore".

Don't know how this manager met his demise... but his comments were hilarious. I could totally relate to his total disgust for the drama that surrounds retail. Not sure if the customers drove him crazy, or if corporate did. Hope he's enjoying a padded cell somewhere. He seemed to earn it.

The way I see it... the bigger the company, the more problems you can expect. It's a concept that applies to most lines of work, but in retail it gives new meaning to "lack of communication". Sometimes I wonder if the right hand even knows that the left hand exists.

Let's start at the bottom of the food chain. You have your basic, run-of-the-mill salespeople (and actually, they are the backbone of the company).Then typically you have the Assistants and the Manager. Consider yourself lucky if the Manager spends any time at all on the salesfloor. I worked for one recently who claimed she "knew everything that was going on in the store" yet she was rarely ever visible in it. In her eyes, her "favorite" Assistant could do no wrong and she had equally strong opinions about several salespeople. Funny thing is, her "favorite" Assistant was a Loss Prevention nightmare, constantly falsifying documents and frequently spending the bulk of her shift balancing her checkbook or shopping online. Her "favorite" salespeople had the worst attendance records and spent their days looking busy while doing next to nothing. So much for being omnipotent.

Next up the chain you have your "middle-management"... Area Managers, District Managers, Regional Managers, etc. They are basically the buffers between the slaves in the store and the primadonnas who sit in cushy offices and have no clue.

But the real problem is usually at the top. The number of "Departments" (Marketing, Product Development, Sales, Visual, Distribution, Payroll, Inventory Control, Human Resources and so on...) is staggering. Then you have a plethora of sub-categories amongst them. AND NONE OF THEM COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER!

So, "Merchandising" wants you to feature Item A. But that competes with Item B which "Marketing" is trying to promote. And "Distribution" can't get you what you need anyway because "Production" is behind schedule. But that's too bad because the sale fliers have already been sent out. And oh yea, there was a misprint and the price is listed incorrectly and the expiration date is wrong. And don't forget you get no extra "Payroll" hours to staff for the expected onslaught of customers generated by "Advertising". (And you might as well just plan on doing the 6 hour floor move that "Visual" requires after the store closes.) And if that weren't enough, don't forget reviews are due to "Human Resources" by Friday. And you will be having a visit from the lucky "V.P. of Whatever" who won the corporate raffle and gets to use the company jet this week.

Bless our middle-management-mouthpieces. The message they deliver at this point is "Just make the customer happy". Ok, no problem. How 'bout this: One Day Only... Everything is Free!!! While Supplies Last.

Seriously people, perhaps the problem is that we have too many "layers" of people who apparently can't coordinate diddly. Right Hand... meet the Left Hand.

It's a good thing you don't have to put in a change-of-address card with the post office everytime you change desk locations at a job. I was a real Cubicle-Hopper, and not by choice.

At one point in my life, I thought it would be "fun" to have a regular Monday thru Friday job. You know, 9 to 5, the whole bit. So I "retired" from retail, and got an office job where I became a cubicle-dweller. And let me just say this... humans should not have to be sequestered into tiny "offices" where you can hear your neighbors every conversation due to the paper thin walls of cubicle-ville. Don't be fooled. Cubicles are NOT offices, no matter what they tell you.

I worked for this particular company for about 18 months. And it that timeframe, I had 8 different desks!

Early on, I realized that having "personal items" in my cubicle would just hinder the never-ending moving process. So I had no pictures, candy dishes, etc etc. The biggest issue (and pain in the neck) was moving the computer equipment and then trying to remember my new phone extension. Luckily, we had an IT guy who made the job easier.

When I was moved to what turned out was my last desk, I found out that the phone line didn't work in that cube. (Actually, we called that particular cube's location "The Gates of Hell" as it was right outside of a V.P.'s office and she was coincidently named "The Devil"). As for the non-working phone, I kept my mouth shut for as long as I could. The peace and quiet was like bliss in a box (the box, of course, being the cubicle.)

And when I left that job, all I needed to do was take my purse and leave. No need to pack up any personal items... there weren't any.