Since it's November 11th, I should probably be writing a tribute to all of our fallen, and not so fallen soldiers. The ones that have fought in wars to keep our country safe, etc.. I'm not going to do that. Not because I don't feel appreciation, for what they've done, but because I wouldn't be any good at doing something like that. There will be a memorial service at the mall today, if it's not too busy I am going to leave the store in my co-workers capable hands and go to that, if it is, well, then I guess I'll just have to miss it. But, I do appreciate everything.
Now, onto something I know I can talk about.
For the month of December, we were supposed to lease an extra store across the hall from us to run a clearance store. We had the promise of all these great books which would be free to us, so the only costs would be the rental of the empty store, and fixtures, registers, and of course paying the staff. It doesn't sound that difficult, does it? Until you realize that you barely have enough staff to cover the store that's already open for the Christmas season, which means you'd have to hire an entirely new staff for one month. And you'd have to train them....sometime. Really it would be a huge pain. One that we didn't really need.
So, the manager and the Regional Manager discussed it and decided against it. We all breathed a sigh of relief. And then one day on a conference call the Regional Manager said even though we'd cancelled our offsite, he hadn't cancelled the books that we'd ordered. That's 15 skids of books.
Let me explain. There are approximately 30-50 boxes of books on a skid depending on who packs the skid. At the bare minimum that is 450 boxes, at the maximum 750. The boxes are about the size of a 24 of beer. Our backroom is about the size of...well, I can't think of what to compare it to, but it's not big.
On Tuesday we got a phone call from one of the other managers with a heads up. The delivery guys were coming with 5 skids for us. The manager went to the backroom to clean things up so that there were places to put these books. And we now have way more than half of our backroom stacked to the ceiling with boxes of books.
Yesterday I got a phone call from the dispatcher at the delivery company. He said to me "Now Michelle, before you freak out, I know the size of your backroom...." and I said "Yes, it's small, and full of 5 skids of books you dropped on us yesterday" He said "Yes, I know. I have 10 more."
Remember, this is 15 skids of books we no longer need. The Regional Manager didn't cancel the order because our region seems to be short on clearance books so he thought he'd get them and then we'd have a stockpile. In theory this is actually a great idea. However, they can't all land at our store.
So, I asked him to hang on to them and I'd call him back. I then called our RM and said "Help!" Well, I was a little more eloquent than that, but he called me back shortly and said he was working with someone at head office to find a storage space somewhere in the area that would hold the books. So he asked me to call the dispatcher back ("I don't know how well you know him", he says)and sweet talk him into holding the books until tomorrow. And that he would have an answer by end of day as to where they were going to go.
I thought to myself, I don't know this dispatcher, why would I? But, whatever, I can do this. Rick the dispatcher is fantastic, he has them on a trailer and will leave them there overnight and will wait to hear where they're to be delivered. I call the RM back and report the good news.
And all is well with the world. Although, the backroom is still stacked to the ceiling with books, which I fear may fall on my head every time I go back there. Now the only question is, when they come with our regular shipment where they're going to put those boxes. This worries me too.
Posted by Michelle at November 11, 2004 08:02 AM | TrackBack