winning

There must be something wrong with me lately, as I have actually been working hard. I really got a lot accomplished today. I'm thinking that it may have something to do with the fact that I recently saw my doctor and got a refill on my happy pills. Holy shit, life would be so much easier if everyone were medicated all the time.
     The real reason though, is that my annual full-store inventory is tomorrow. I am most decidedly not looking forward to it. I like doing inventory on my own. The narrowing of one's focus into counting and following numerical order is strangely calming, and sometimes can be almost zen-like. Sometimes I take the phone off the hook and inventory a product line when I'm stressed out. It seems like busywork, but I really do enjoy it sometimes. When the numbers and letters all line up, there's a certain sense of beauty to it all.
     This is very different, though. This one counts (no pun intended), so it almost feels like I'm preparing for a final exam. I'm just not sure what it counts for, since my final numbers were a bit off last year, and I have yet to feel the wrath of any of the implied repercussions. My boss takes these annual inventories very seriously. He makes is seem as if the process is a life or death matter. I can only imagine that there's some sort of bragging rights that occur farther up the corporate ladder that I am not privy to.
    All the managers are required to attend and help out at inventories for all the other stores in our group. Since we are salary, it's really more like forced volunteering than "helping out". I think that the general idea is to shame us into working towards a good result so that we aren't embarrassed in front of our fellow store managers. I think that's supposed to be my motivation. I think I'm supposed to be embarrassed if I don't do well. However, we as managers have developed this unspoken brotherhood where we don't allow our bosses to browbeat us with their corporate bullshit. We know what matters, and we stick together. We all do our jobs exceptionally well, so to hell with what the bean counters think. There is a whole forest out there, even if some people can only see the trees.
     Tomorrow I'm going to be a good little manager and play the game like I'm expected to do. I'll play the corporate game and act like it's the end of the world when my final numbers don't quite add up. I'll take my lectures and scoldings, because when it's all said and done, I'll probably still have a job on Monday.
     I'm going to be wrong no matter how it turns out, that's just the way it works for us corporate slaves. We make their world spin, but we also take the blame for everything that goes wrong, no matter how trivial. The trick is to just accept that sometimes you have to take your lumps, for better or for worse. Tomorrow is going to be a long day, but I've been through it before. As one of my drivers likes to say, "you win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you dress for every occasion". I'm on the spot tomorrow, so wish me luck. Failing that, I have my happy pills.