choke on it, 2011

With today being New Year's Eve Day (are we really so obsessed with holidays now that we have begun naming and celebrating the Eves?), I followed a long standing tradition of getting up and going to work and doing nothing for four hours since 98% of my customers were closed. According to standard corporate operating procedures, if we stand a chance at making even one penny of profit, we shall be open for business.
     After getting a visit from my Dad which yielded a bag of powdered sugar donuts, I went back to doing mindless year-end reports until I was politely interrupted by one of the few customers who actually doesn't annoy me. He was out running errands with his wife and girls, and they were thoughtful enough to bring us a dozen donuts. I don't know where this particular dozen came from, and I know that beggars can't always be choosers, but I'd really like to know who the hell it was that thought putting lemon filling into a chocolate donut would be a good idea.
     Completely tweeked out on coffee and sugar, I finished up my reports and proceeded to wasting time on the internet. A few visits to popular news sites revealed that just about everyone is compiling Top Ten lists for 2011. I quickly got bored with the usual, so me being me, I started browsing for lists that hail from a few miles off the beaten path. Here's what I came up with, which I am calling "Scott's Anti-Top Ten List".

10. Detroit Lions Moments

http://www.mlive.com/lions/index.ssf/2011/12/top_ten_detroit_lions_stories_3.html

9. Something about soccer

http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/usa/lists/top-ten-who-impacted-us-soccer-fox-soccer-2011-list-clint-dempsey-hope-solo-abby-wambach-122811

8. IT Issues

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/TopTenITIssues2011/228654

7. Sex & Tech Headlines

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/2011s-top-ten-sex-and-tech-headlines/913

6. Emergency Management

http://www.emergencymgmt.com/emergency-blogs/alerts/Our-2011-Top-Ten-122811.html

5. Royal Weddings

http://storify.com/clarencehouse/our-2011-top-ten

4. Golf Equipment

http://www.squidoo.com/top-ten-golf-irons-2011

3. Pagan News

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2011/12/top-ten-pagan-stories-of-2011-part-one.html

2. Diet Pills

http://pricesexposed.net/

1. Anti-Semitic Slurs

http://www.jewishjournal.com/nation/article/2011_top_ten_anti-israel_anti-semitic_slurs_20111213/

So there you have it. My Top Ten list of the most unusual top ten lists I could come up with. I was going to post only the titles, but I though maybe people wouldn't believe some of them. I provided links so you can go see them all for yourself. I really don't think I could have made these up anyway. So read, enjoy, and ponder why someone would chronicle Anti-Semitic slurs while you wait for Dick Clark's ball to drop. I have a bottle of Johnnie Walker that needs attention, and a whole lot of boring-ass 2011 to forget.
    

adventures in warehousing

Sorry for not posting anything lately, I've been feeling lazy and I forgot my password so I couldn't even login for a while. It was funny to hear people complain about me not posting new blogs, though. I'm not used to people listening to what I have to say, let alone wanting to hear more. There really hasn't been much interesting stuff going on at work anyway lately. It's the holiday season, so we've all been taking turns using our vacation days before the end of the year, and it just hasn't been busy in general. I managed to squeeze an afternoon nap in between doing sudokus the other day, which just about sums it up.

     As I muddle through my daily routine, I find things that amuse me and in a new effort to not forget them so I can regale all of you, I have started taking notes with my iphone. Today's blog will just consist of random notes which may or may not include elaboration.

•      My job involves entirely too damn much typing. I probably spend 1/3 of my day sitting on my fat ass ticking away at my keyboard at a blistering 19 words per minute (or something like that). It's really ridiculous that in this day and age, with all of our technology, that I have to enter so much inventory by hand. I either need a more modern computer system, or a sexy robot secretary. 
•      Part of my duties include receiving account payments. Today I got a customer's check in the mail for $1.50. I appreciate the honesty and the effort to keep one's charge account 100% current, but it hardly seems worth the postage or even the ink I used to endorse the check. Just let it ride until next month, bro.
•      One of my drivers told me today that his left turn signal wasn't working. Not a problem. With the mileage we put on our vans, we burn out bulbs all the time. I went to change it and discovered that the lens was cracked and water had gotten in. I explained to him that since water and electricity don't mix, light bulbs are rendered inoperable when submerged. I pointed out the locations of the three mirrors the van is equipped with, and politely suggested he use them when backing up in the future, as to not damage the tail lights again.
•      Auto mechanics are a proud bunch, and many of them will flat out refuse to admit when they've made a mistake. When a part they've ordered does not fit the car they are working on, it is NOT THEIR FAULT. Usually the stupid parts counter person is to blame. When said mechanic respects said counter person's ability to do his or her job, the only solution is to blame the part. It's true that auto parts packages accidentally get labeled incorrectly at the factory, and sometimes a faulty part will pass through quality control, but when I deliver three of the same part to the same customer for the same car and none of them fit, I am forced to conclude that the mechanic is the one who is defective.
•      Cupcakes are awesome.
•      I am working on a new theory that I call "The Four Digit Threshold". Everything in my warehouse that has a number of four digits or less is shelved neatly, and always easy to find. Every time I look for something with a part number containing 5 digits or more, it's usually in the wrong place. For example, a part numbered 380017 can sometimes be found next to a similar part numbered 38017. A simple mistake, sure, but the six digit number should actually be about 10 shelves further down. My guys seem to have some weird attention deficit where their brains can only hold up to four digits at a time. Perhaps more to follow on this later...
•      One of my accounts is a small used car lot. It is family owned and operated. There are usually at least three people in the office, and zero people who know what is going on at any given time. It's a pretty entertaining conglomeration of idiots, when viewed by an outsider. The owner usually shuffles his ample frame into the office in the afternoon, and yells at everyone for not doing things right when he himself really has no clue what's happening. He is a big fat buffoon, with a mouth larger than his brain. I love it when he writes us a check, because they usually feature amusing misspellings like "evelen" and "tweevle". Now when something mysteriously goes wrong in my store, we blame it on a fictitious person named Evelyn Tweevle.

     I think that covers my notes for now. The coherent ones, anyway. I take some pretty interesting notes before I've had my coffee. Being Christmas time, I'll also sum up my experiences with the holiday. Tons of food, PIE, three days of naps in front of the fireplace, two cats and a dog, opening presents at noon, good booze (someone may or may not have been swigging Wild Turkey from the bottle), family, old friends, new sweatpants, Red Ryder carbine action two hundred shot range model air rifles, and best of all, no work for four days. Never fear, my loyal readers. I shall be back in action soon and will undoubtedly have more tales to tell. Until then...
   
   
     

no really, i'm listening.

I walked in the door today and was immediately assaulted with Christmas music. Captain Chaos is a giant child, and gets silly and giddy for Christmas. He blasts that sappy shit on the radio from the moment the local stations start playing it. I don't mind it so much, but I really can't handle it at high volume in a warehouse for 9 hours, so I immediately put a stop to it. What the hell are they doing playing it this early anyway? It usually doesn't start until Black Friday, and even then, it's waaaaaaay too early in my opinion. Christmas has already swallowed Thanksgiving and is quickly encroaching on Halloween territory. This sparked a debate amidst my uneducated minions, (as my rantings usually do), but I didn't get involved. This was one of those mornings where my iPhone music library and headphones came in handy. You may call me a Grinch or a Scrooge, but...I can't think of a way to finish that sentence.
     Other than that, the morning was pretty uneventful. Stock orders here, deliveries there, people interrupting my efforts at Facebook-ing and YouTube-ing, a phone call from Chuck Norris, you know, the usual.
     I did have a couple of annoying things happen after lunch. We have a relatively new customer who hasn't filled out his new account paperwork yet. When he orders something, we invoice him on a generic cash account, and he pays COD. Today he finally realized that he is paying sales tax, and had a small meltdown. I politely tried to explain to him that taxes are as equally certain as death, but he wasn't impressed with my Ben Franklin reference. Plan B was to suppress my natural sarcasm genes while I reminded him that if he had filled out and returned the paperwork I sent him THREE MONTHS AGO, he would have an account by now and his wholesale tax exemption would be in effect. Furthermore, writing his state and federal tax I.D. numbers on a Post-It note doesn't help me. Sadly, I refrained from telling him that if I had any control over taxes, I probably wouldn't be working for a living. So I left it as a shortage when closing my cash drawer with a note to my supervisors in my paperwork saying that my drawer was short $5.11 because this guy thinks he is above the law. I'm looking forward to the e-mails I'll be getting on Monday morning.
     I had another crabby excuse for a human come in later and whine about his pricing. Pretty much all he buys from us is batteries, and our battery supplier recently raised prices on us, which means we get to stick it to our customers, too. This is actually normal for the ridiculous roller coaster that is the auto parts supply chain, but what isn't normal is that the company I work for almost never bothers to inform its paying customers of an upcoming price structure change. When Mr. Crabshit came in to spend his hard-earned money on an obnoxiously heavy thing that I hate selling anyway, I had the pleasure of ruining his day by telling him that the same part # he bought last month just increased in price by a good 15%. I used to hate having to bear the burden of giving customers the bad news, but since I don't have a choice, I've decided to start enjoying it. I got the usual tirade about taking one's money elsewhere, and possibly something about customer service, but I wasn't really listening. The nice thing about being behind a counter is that the customer can't see your computer screen. There's something deeply gratifying to me about playing solitaire while I'm supposed to be getting a verbal thrashing. In the end, I got his money. I always get their money.
     I did get a visit from a nice customer. He has a good sense of humor and we pick on each other regularly. I haven't seen him in almost two weeks, so I asked what he'd been up to. When he replied that he just had surgery on his hand, I couldn't help but to ask if he'd finally gotten his thumb removed from his ass. It's funny how fast the overall mood can change in my store.
     Things slowed down in the afternoon, which is always welcome on a Friday. I like to think I'm a relatively lenient manager, and when things slow down I let my guys slack off and basically do nothing for a while. I find that it's good for morale to not be constantly driving them like slaves. It's also hard to be strict when I'm laying on the couch playing Angry Birds, but I digress.
     The only bad thing about the slow periods is that the Human TiVo has a captive audience. This guy must be really lonely, because he almost never stops talking. It's verbal diarrhea in its purest form. I have never in my life known anyone who can endlessly ramble on about inane bullshit like this. It's really amazing to see. One of these days, I'm going to discreetly take a video with my phone and share it here, just in case any of you think I'm exaggerating. We have taken to calling these slow afternoons "story time". Today it was endless blah-blah-blah about baseball players from the 60's that no one has ever heard of, living next door to Loni Anderson (who used to sunbathe in the nude!), and a defunct drive-in movie theater that I'm pretty sure didn't really exist to begin with. Again, the headphones came in handy.
     We close at 5pm, so of course we had one customer order something at 4:45 that they absolutely had to have delivered today, or else demonic horsemen would swoop down and rain destruction upon the world and riddle us with fire and brimstone. So I reluctantly dispatch a driver to deliver parts that I know won't be installed on a car today anyway, and start shutting down computers and turning off lights. My other remaining driver goes out to park his van, and THE SAME CUSTOMER calls back and needs something else. I really wanted to tell him to go suck a bag of dicks, but being the good corporate robot that I am, I quickly reviewed his monthly sales in my head and calculated that his overall business is worth a little Friday afternoon aggravation. So now I have to send a second driver with only ten minutes left to close. I really think people do this on purpose just to irritate me. I was already resigned to leaving at 5:10, now I have to wait until 5:20 for the second driver to return before I can go home. I know it's just twenty minutes, but that's a long damn time when you've already been at it for nine hours. Furthermore, it places twenty more minutes between me and my big comfy recliner.
    Speaking of, it's calling me from the other room. I'm gonna go park my lazy ass on it, have a drink, and pet my dog (who mercifully does not require auto parts).
     Viva la resistance.

Tito

 Today started off rather slow, which left me with the hope that it might be a nice, easy Monday*. The coffee was hot, there were only a few deliveries to go out, and even Captain Chaos was pretty calm. After listening to Human TiVo tell everyone about a show he watched last night, (apparently Thomas Edison and George Jefferson were integral to the signing of the Declaration of Independence) I sent them all out on deliveries and reveled in my quiet store and hot, fresh coffee.
     I expected it to be short-lived, but to my surprise, things went pretty smoothly until about 11:30 or so. There's been an interesting phenomenon happening with my customers lately. They have begun ordering en masse between 11:30ish and 1:00ish. It seems that people like to place orders before they go to lunch thinking that when they come back from their break, their parts will have been delivered. This is not a bad idea, but the problem comes in when thirty or forty customers all start doing it. Factor in that my drivers all need to take lunch breaks too, and we end up with a pretty hectic 90 minutes. This may be somewhat beside the point, but I think it's also worth noting that old farts who get paid minimum wage can get very crabby when they're hungry for their "noon-day sammich".
     Being busy is one thing, but what really irritates the poop out of me is when we're unnecessarily busy. For example, Tito's Auto Service needs brake pads and rotors for a car they're working on. Their customer cannot wait so they need us to deliver the parts quickly. Fine. I'll be happy to dispatch a driver to bring you what you need. In some cases, a mechanic can be too hasty and place an order for parts before he's looked at the whole car. So while we're delivering the pads and rotors to Tito, he calls back and orders mounting hardware for the brake pads, and of course, he needs them as soon as possible. SHIT. Now I have to send a second driver to the same damn place, while the lunchtime rush orders continue piling up.
     I would like to tell the fictional Tito what he can do with his second order, and that he has no business getting mad at me because it took two deliveries to get him everything, but I can't. I have to sit there and apologize for wasting his precious time. Why? Because if I get one single complaint about our service, I get 273 bosses descending on me and angrily asking why my store is having customer service issues. In this event, I usually relate it to pizza. If you order a pizza for delivery, then call them back after the delivery person has already left and demand that they add breadsticks to your order because you're hungry, and you need your food right now, you are complicating everything for the people that are just trying to help you. Not to mention that it's inconsiderate and just flat out rude. This usually seems to get my point across, and leaves my bosses free to go about their business of harassing some other poor, corporate slave. It also leaves me free to continue the conversation I was having about the plausibility of masturbating during Leonardo DiCaprio's death scene in "Titanic". (Hypothetical, of course.)
      I often surmise that I must be part masochist to subject myself to all of this, and ask myself why I don't find another job. I start thinking about other things I could do, but pretty much every job in the world comes down to customer service. It's a consumer's world, and if you don't keep them happy, they'll go somewhere else and you may find yourself without employment. I guess I'll stay in my comfy little rut for a while. I've been here long enough that I'm now the manager, so I'd hate to have to start over somewhere else and work my way up the corporate ladder of pain. I'm also kind of lazy. So I soldier on, trying to help people and getting yelled at for stuff that isn't my fault, until the day I'm deemed an "cost-inefficient asset" by someone in a suit who knows absolutely nothing about the automotive industry. It's alright though, I already have my next job lined up. I'm going to go work in a pizza shop, just so I can spit on Tito's breadsticks.

*I intended to post this on Monday, but I wasn't happy with it. A few edits later, I suppose it's passable.

    
  

Thank God it's Monday

     I went to work a little late today (intentionally, and for reasons I cannot disclose) and walked in the door to something both amusing and irritating at the same time. My ASSisstant manager, who's life could be a blog all its own, usually listens to sports talk radio all day long. He is pretty obsessed with football and listens to this particular radio station at an annoyingly high volume, lest he miss an insignificant tidbit of "news" about his gridiron heroes. Aside from the volume issue, this is fine with me. We have all argued over workday radio stations in the past, and generic sports news is something that we can all agree on. Being a manager, I approve of homogeneously happy employees, so 93.7 it is.
     This has become the daily background noise, so imagine my surprise when I walk in the front door and hear Lady Gaga belting out a chorus of "la la oh ga ga, rum ba oh ma ma, wasabi robots". For some reason, he had decided on top 40 radio today. For those of you that know me, just imagine me being hit by this at 8 AM. I didn't even have a chance to get any coffee. Just...wasabi robots...right in the face. (She says "wasabi robots" at the end of the chorus. Don't argue with me, I'm the manager.)
     Onward.
     My lovely assistant opens the store in the morning and goes home earlier in the afternoon, whereas I come in a bit later and stay until we close. We have begun calling him Captain Chaos, since he has a short fuse and usually can't handle simple multitasking without at least going to DEFCON-3 . I usually arrive to the aforementioned chaos only to have everything settled and in proper order within 15 minutes or so. The rest of my guys have been around the block enough times to know that our jobs are not worth raising one's blood pressure over, so they just quietly laugh and shake their heads while he has his daily morning meltdown.
     I had a small epiphany the other day, about how our attitudes affect our surroundings. My store is usually a shambles in the morning, but my guys have remarked lately at how amazing it is that everything quickly calms down and falls into place once I arrive and take over. It makes me wonder how some people have made it so far through life when they are so unorganized and, well, chaotic. Life is just too damned short to be that damned upset.
     Enfeebled musings aside, I must say that I've begun to hate Fridays. Yes. I hate Fridays. "Why?!" you ask? Oh, allow me to explain. Friday, for most people, is pay day. With the advent of online resources and shows like "Pimp My Ride", automobile owners have begun taking it upon themselves to fix their own cars more than ever. Factor in that the economy is tight and that we all can't afford the hundreds of dollars it costs to have a car repaired anymore, and you end up with what we in the auto parts industry refer to as "do-it-yourselfers". Since we auto parts peddlers only exist to steal your hard-earned money, DIY-ers have to wait until pay day to buy parts for their cars, hence, they all come see me on Friday afternoons.
     Today happens to be a Friday and true to form, the DIY masses routinely interrupted my attempts to master the newest installment of "Angry Birds". Spanning the spectrum from "my wife is so hard on my car" to "my mechanic says I need a muffler bearing, do you have one in stock?", and the ever popular "your competitor has the same part for 19 cents less", they all zeroed in on me and regaled me with their automotive woes.
     I have noticed that standing behind a counter does something to people's perception of you. It somehow infuses them with the belief that you care. In the same way that a bartender has to listen to stories of people down on their luck, an auto parts counter person has to listen to the entire saga of everything that has ever broken on every customer's car. I really don't care that you've put brakes on your turdheap twice already this year, or that your turn signal bulbs keep burning out, or that you just can't figure out what that squeak is. Do you want to buy something? It's been a long week and I have shit to do. Yet I put up with it. I listen to their stories and their complaining. I play the pricing game. I deal with it, because that's what I'm paid to do. I even manage to do it all with a polite smile on my face, despite the malevolence that is churning behind said smile.
     So here I sit, drinking beer, telling you tales of everything that bothered me today as if you were my personal bartender, and eagerly awaiting Monday, when I can slack off in peace and quiet. Now buy something or get out.

Coffee good. Work BAD.

Today was a rather slow business day at the store, which was two things: unusual for a Monday, and fertile ground for humorous slacking. I began my morning with way too much coffee in a short period of time, so that didn't really help matters.
One of my minions is a rather lonely gentleman (and I use that term loosely) who lives by himself. He loves watching TV, and spends most of our workday hours telling everyone about shows he watched the night before. We call him The Human TiVo, as he will recount the minutes of a show like he's at a damned city council meeting. This is usually bearable since he at least watches good shows, but on Mondays he has a whole weekend of TV watching to catch us all up on.
He has become a fan of "Ancient Aliens" which sparked a discussion on whether or not extra-terrestrials exist. We eventually decided that they do, but Earth is essentially the "ghetto" of the galaxy, and that aliens fly past us with their doors locked only stopping for fuel, or some chili dogs, or whatever. John Travolta was cited as evidence.
A little while later, I heard the dreaded sound of a diesel engine and a back-up alarm. This means that a big truck is backing up to my loading...zone...area. Perhaps I should explain why this is "dreaded". My store gets re-stocked from our serving warehouse on a nightly basis. Any time something is delivered via an external carrier, it's usually a large shipment of inventory. This means work on my part, and work = BAD.
So I discover that I am to receive three pallets of brake cleaner. This is, as the name implies, a chemical that is used to clean brake parts before installing them on a vehicle. It comes in aerosol cans, and smells like a mix of nail polish remover, gasoline, and Taco Bell farts. Most garages go through it like water, so we sell quite a bit. Someone high up on the corporate ladder apparently got a discount and decided that my store was a good place to keep it. (They do that to me sometimes).
After using the forklift to unload all three pallets and drag them back into the store, I heard a faint hissing sound. Some investigation on my part revealed that I had punctured a can on the bottom of the pallet whilst moving it around. I have two options here: break the entire pallet down by hand to remove the leaky can, or just let the whole thing leak out and stink up my loading...area...zone. Since we have already established that work = BAD, I decided to let the cursed thing leak out into the air and hope no one would notice. When that didn't work, I fork-a-lifted the whole damn thing back outside. OSHA be damned.*
Since most of this shipment was to be broken down and distributed to the retail stores in our area, I spent a good bit of time writing on the cases with a black magic marker. That plus the fumes leaking from the broken can resulted in a pretty sweet buzz, so even though I had to do some work, it was worth it.
Later in the day, I spent a good half-hour watching two of my guys fiddle with their "goddam" cell phones. Two of them have recently upgraded from relatively simple flip-phones to a touchscreen and a smartphone. If you have never watched a stubborn, cranky old codger fiddle with a smartphone, my God, you owe it to yourself to see it. I didn't think it was possible to cram so many curses in to one sentence. I suppose I could have helped the poor man figure out how to open solitaire, but the coup-de-grace came when he yelled "Aww fuck it!" and shoved his phone back in his pocket. It was especially funny to me since I had been breathing brain-damaging vapors not long before.

To sum up, the three things I learned today are:
1. John Travolta is an alien (and possibly a "commie")
2. Brake clean and coffee make things funnier.
3. Work = BAD.

*Brake parts cleaner has been found to cause cancer in the state of California. Fortunately, I live in Pennsylvania.

40 strange hours

Hello and welcome. My name is Scott and I sell auto parts for a living. Specifically, I manage a wholesale warehouse with a cursed retail counter that we all hate (more on that later, I'm sure). I began this venture in high school working part time in a warehouse, sweeping floors, emptying garbage, performing general dirty jobs, and basically getting treated like the garbage I was tasked to remove. I did it for about two years, but eventually quit because my boss was just kind of a mean person. Okay, he was a colossal dick. Most bosses are supposed to be dicks, but being 18 years old, I didn't really understand that and just thought he was picking on me so I quit. During that time, I learned a great deal about auto parts, so I blindly continued along that path. I started with my current company as a minimum wage delivery driver in the spring of 2002 and gradually worked my way up the ladder to the moderately more glamorous position of manager.
     I now oversee a crew of six employees, five of whom are drivers, and one who is a driver/assistant manager/weirdo. Actually we're all a bit weird, which, as anyone who has ever worked in the auto parts industry knows, is a prerequisite.They are a fairly hard working bunch, very loyal, somewhat intelligent (they get their shoes on the right feet every day, so I guess that counts for something), and absolutely nuts. I have never met sillier, funnier people. For all the daily aggravations we suffer from being in a customer-service driven business, we have an equal amount of fun. We all spend a healthy amount of each day laughing at the stupidest shit, which I think is why we're all able to survive the ol' forty hours.
    Not long ago, one of my minions said that we should turn our store into a reality TV show. I doubt anyone would watch our ugly faces, but I thought maybe a blog would be interesting. If nothing else, it will make me use my brain for something other than a hat rack, and perhaps amuse me for a while. If I'm lucky, it will amuse you, too.
     I often remind myself of Al Bundy, shuffling home from a long day at work with my head hung low in the classic pose of unfathomable shame and spectacular failure, yet with still enough spirit left to be able to laugh at the absurdity of the world of corporate consumerism. It is in that spirit that I present this blog.
     I have to die someday; I'm pretty sure it will either be from stress or laughter. Welcome to my world.