the Strangeness that is my life

[salamanca]

Ok, tomorrow I set up the calendar booth for the mall season. Yep, way too early. I know that but corporate and the franchiser want to get going and "make some money" (how they do that by paying me to stand there for 8 hours to sell 4 calendars a day in early october, I will never figure out)

So the boss just called literally a minute ago. He wants to know if I got a crew together to assemble this thing. Now, the truth is I have had a hell of a time doing that. Not only did my reliable staff quit (see above posts) but it also happens to be the night of the Indians baseball playoff game. And this is a win or go home wildcard game for a team that has not made the playoffs in 6 years in a town that has not had a legit playoff contender in forever.

People that don't even like baseball are making plans to watch.

But I got 4 guys. and the only one that has done this before needs to leave within 3 hours of our start time. So we need all the help we can get. Turns out the boss also has 4 guys counting himself. Now I am thinking 9 guys is a great number. The boss wants me to call a couple guys back and tell them we don't need them. I spent time begging and asking and cajoling to get them now he wants me to ditch them.

And these are guys I am planning to try and talk into working for us.

Then he drops the big bomb. we apparently open the game booth on Monday which means we have to set up Sunday night. This means I need to assemble a second crew for Sunday. as in 5 days from now. as in, I really wish I had time to warn you so you could ask for that night off when the made your schedule a week ago but I need help this weekend.

And a sunday set up means a friday delivery of the booth. which I have nobody available to cover. So a certain calendar booth will be totally unwatched for at least 30 minutes while I am in the shipping dock unloading a truck.

All because somebody won't share their information with the staff that does the actual work. (because we don't need to know anything)

(and I can almost guarantee that the company will not stock me with Zombie related products until after halloween.)

[salamanca]

You can note the time of this post. Just got home from assembly. Ended up with 7 man crew. Which would be nice if the boss could stick to assembling the lights and register and let me handle the crew. It would also be nice if anybody except 2 of us new where anything in the building is (like trash dumpsters or storage) instead he keeps walking off with half finished projects to lead the lost sheep. I have a ton of work to put in tomorrow correcting every calendar on the shelf. It was just too late in the night to try and follow a planogram layout so everything will need moved. I am pretty positive I could have done the whole thing alone and only taken another 2 hours. Get to test that sunday with the game store.

[Black Jack Rackham]

I can't decide whether you're just a glutton for punishment or, like me, you have some demented desire to see just exactly how screwed up this whole thing can go (and be there to watch from the sidelines when it all blows up).

[salamanca]

I'm just the guy that is aware enough to realize how it should work and is stuck with bad help because the good help was already scheduled eslewhere. If I was given advance notice, I could get competant assembly. Today I had a truck due to deliver that game store between noon and 3. I had help scheduled for that time... Half the delivery showed up yesterday unannounced and the rest arrived at 10 before my help was here. If I was Doctor Doom I could zap those fools and the new guys would follow their schedules correctly. But the law won't let me kill a member of the set up crew to inspire speed and competance. I'll have a longer post about day one later. It was epic in fail.

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Talk about strangeness.

The other day I was at work, and one of my fellow workers came over to tell me that there was a woman behind my display on the phone.

Now our flower display takes up a good size wall as you enter the store on our side, and we have it pulled away from the wall about 2 feet, so that we can put our "extra pieces" we use for the display behind it, so that we can expand or shrink it depending on our seasons, so we don't like people behind it, as they can cause some problems, either by damaging our display or hurt themselves.

So I go over to check, and there the lady is, squatting down, head turned toward the wall, chatting away on her cell phone. I try to get her attention, but she ignored me, continuing talking on her phone. I tried a couple of more times, but she still refused to acknowledge, as she was too busy yelling at whomever she was talking too on her phone. So I look around for a supervisor, and of course couldn't find anyone, had planned to page one, but was distracted by a customer. Checked again after I helped the customer and she was still crouched behind the display yelling into her phone.

What I figured was she had been looking for a "quiet" place to talk, but I don't understand why she just didn't walk out the 6 feet to the door, and go outside and talk in her car, if she wanted quiet, because it was a busy day and with the way noise bounces around our area, there is no such thing as quiet on a busy day. I never got around to paging the supervisor, as I was too busy with my customers, but she sat behind there for at least an hour before I noticed she had finally left.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Boy do I have a cold rage building after reading that Laura.

[salamanca]

I just box those people in with shipping cases. When they complain I point out they are in an employees only area. Actually, after she ignores the first excuse me, you should just tell her she can't be there. Then when she ignoeres that point out that she needs to leave the area or the store, her choice.

[salamanca]

Ok, so I got the ol' game booth squared away and operational. The home office only sprung 2 major construction changes (unannounced and w/o directions) so it went fairly easy. They did however reformat our planogram. (for the worse) we lost our "brainteaser section" (rubik's cubes, metal puzzles, rushhour type games). We still have all those products, just no place to put them. We lost our "best sellers" section so all the top games are no longer in a highly visible and easy to pitch in a row area. (in fact, of out top 10 from last year, only 3 have shelf spots). Instead we get another area full of jigsaw puzzles and a section of activity kits. That means my "game" store is now 30% puzzles. I have no qualms about the activity kits except it should be in a differnt shelf section and it is HORRIBLY understocked with 6 versions of the same "make your own robot" kit wasting half the layout. All I want is diverse products. I also lost the best sellers for "liscensed game product" which means a key selling point holds nothing but 6 versions of "trouble", "go fish" and "dominos" each with ninja turtles, disney, spiderman, batman or dora on them. IT'S THE SAME FREAKING GAME!. Meanwhile I cannot even order Agricola, Alhambra, Ingenious or Carcassonne for in store sales (they are web exclusive with no contact info to give the customer).

[Black Jack Rackham]

Yea but I heard you have the most awesome party game EVER now in stock! (btw I nearly wet myself when I read that)

[salamanca]

Not in stock (and I am going to avoid ordering it) but we are now (as a company) carrying the "Fifty Shades of Grey Party Game" and expansion pack. The world's coolest Hot Topic manager pointed out it was not a game to play with your siblings or consenting cousins.

[Rebecca Iavelli]

I figured out why you lost the "brainteasers" part of your games. People are afraid if they use their brains, they will hurt themselves, so they decided not to send them. You know, the same way they are banning playing Tag and ball games in schools so the kids don't hurt themselves.

[salamanca]

I will be honest about it and admit I do not miss that section, I just wish it had been used for games instead of jigsaw puzzles. Apart from the Rush Hour puzzle from thinkfun and the rubik's cube, the section was nothing but stuff that makes for a bad and impersonal gift from Aunt Ida who can't remember if you are a boy or girl.

[smafdi]

1. I'm happy I've never had the pleasure of working retail.
2. Some of these stories remind me of my days at subway, sometimes I miss the interesting but full of rage and fail stories of years past.
C. I still wonder why you put yourself through all this punishment.

Great times were had by all, except for Dave. Seriously that sucks.

So..... if I'm reading this all correctly you have a "games booth" but there aren't really any "games" per say on it?....... que?

[salamanca]

We have games but not GAMES in the sense regular gamers would view the term. It's more like the accumulated pile of Hasbro, Pressman and liscensed knock offs. So we sell Apples to Apples and Logo and Fact or Crap as well as Monopoly (in 23 variations), Scrabble and a ninja turtle Trouble knock off. We even get the core set of Catan but forget about other Mayfair or Rio Grande Products. As for lack of games, the shelving includes 16 sections and 8 endcaps out of those: 2 endcaps and 7 shelves are occupied by games. The rest are puzzles, toys and battery powered barking animals. A decade ago it was 13 sections and 5 endcaps of games. The frustration of pushing for new and better products is nasty but last year I also got to put a D&D beginner set in the hands of a 10 year old who had the same look of awe I had getting that basic set back in 1979. And about once or twice a week, I get to put the perfect game into a customer's hands and THAT is awesome. Yesterday I had a retired lady that was looking for something but didn't know what. She talked about tripoly, sequence, and some old card placement games from the 60's nobody has ever heard of. I never said a word about anything we carry. I just picked up Blokus, handed it to her and described how pieces get played. She was hooked before she paid for it. Drawing possible plays on the cover art with her finger, forming strategy, etc. Her husband told me it was the first time she smiled since they sold the house last spring. That is why I keep doing this. (well that and helping a disabled guy finish his total christmas list in a single trip. But he drops in every year to do that and is buying calendars). Yesterday was a terrible sales day, the mall was empty, every store was lagging but I made magic for two people out of paper, plastic and ink. The only cooler job in the mall is "build a bear" where you get to hand a kid their new best friend.

[smafdi]

It's people like you that we need more of in retail. It's that human component of someone who knows the product, and not just some snot nosed teenager who knows crap about anything, that makes visiting retail irl instead of just purchasing online. Back when there used to be waldenbooks that was my favourite part of going shopping for a new book. Talking to someone who knew about the area i was looking through having some small chit-chat and getting a decent recommendation out of it.

On a side note I'm apparently old enough to be from the 60's now. I played tri-ominos, sequence, and stuff like that when i was a kid..... I bet she even mentioned rummicub. >.>

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Hey! No ditching the 60's, that's my era, lol, and yes, I remember those games too.

[salamanca]

Well all those are still in print (just like Racko). She was talking old 3M games like Jumpin' and Twixt. Now the boss showed 10 minutes early with 25 minutes of work for me (he finally brought the email with the discounted items). Now this list is total incoherent randomness. Somebody in marketing randomly grabbed 30 calendars and shouted 30% off until we change our mind. The games, on the other hand, are stuff that has been woefully overpriced and/or just doesn't move well. And there were a dozen pages of games and puzzles on that list. We had maybe 15 of those items. But it pointed to a bigger problem. There is stuff on that list that is NOT on the master order list. Stuff that at half price, I would buy for me and could sell (stone age, Lords of Waterdeep, etc). But I can't even order it without the company product number.

[salamanca]

Ok, today's weirdness from the mall. If you spend the better part of 8 hours staring at the "Build a bear" logo, it starts to look like cariacatures of George W Bush. And if you rewatched Watchmen recently, you want very much to add the blood spatter over the eye. Item 2: our store neighbor, Maurice's (dealers in casual ladies clothing) is hosting all sorts of events for breast cancer awareness this month and raising money. So every weekend is a theme. This week it's a bake sale. So every hour or so, out marches Josie the manager with a different tray full of something asking if I want to buy some goodies for charity. Cookies, brownies, dipped apples...and I have to say yes to not be the bad guy. (for the record, all but the cookies were redistributed to clerks down the hall for my own good). Item 3: today was the biweekly visit for the adult special needs center. And the staff unprofessionally left the crew on their own without supervision. So I spent a good 40 minutes with 19 adults with Down's syndrome who don't understand hugging me is a bad thing (that back injury from last summer is still a painful issue). Sweet people but they need somebody keeping an eye on them. ITEM 4: HOT TOPIC STAFF CELEBRATED THE WALKING DEAD BY DRESSING AS ZOMBIES!. Their district manager showed up in costume. It was awesome.

[salamanca]

Almost forgot, I have 2 new favorite future customers. I have a young lady waiting to get paid next week that totally loves all things about Nightmare before Christmas AND Marvel Comics. Cooler still, her boyfriend, who was tagging along, worked security for Chris Evans during filming of the Avengers and Captain America 2. Customer #2 is named Ricky. He is "almost 7" and went gaga over our skylanders monopoly set. Then he saw our other skylander themed board games and target shooter. Young Ricky scooped them all up in his little arms and asked mom to "use the card". Mom wisely reminded the lad that the new skylander set was out on sunday and he could have these or wait. Ricky opted to wait then shouted, "I GOTTA HIDE THESE!" and proptly started stashing every copy behind stuff he very correctly thinks will never sell. This kid is my hero.

[Rebecca Iavelli]

If your back is still hurting you, then maybe there is still something wrong that they didn't find originally, and you need to let your Dr. know. Might be pinching a nerve or arthritis could have developed.

[salamanca]

Some injuries are not worth the risk of repairing. I am perfectly aware of what is not aligned, damaged and/or permanently altered. You eventually learn to tolerate the limitations. (or avoid them).

[spizio]

Zombie management sounds rather apropos.

[salamanca]

Ok, so today was the monthly mall managers/marketing meeting. Typically, it's a chance for the mall staff to tell us in person what events are scheduled to promote the mall and beg us to give them yet another pile of products to give away with no direct benefit to ourselves. Instead we got a visit from the local cops explaining what they can and cannot do for us when we have shoplifters (and it's so restrictive I am considering a career change to crime). Said officer failed to comprehend we are on a tight schedule with these meetings and droned until we had to leave to open stores. Which gave the mall manager a chance to spring his big news with no chance of response. The mall has decided to follow Macy's lead and open at 8PM on thanksgiving and stay open until 11pm on friday... That is a 27 hour scheduled day. There is not a single store in the mall staffed to handle that except the department stores. I heard comments from managers today (all women, mind you) that included phrases I have never heard drunken sailors willing to use. (many anatomically impossible). Even the "rah rah support the mall" managers gave him the "Samuel L Jackson" stare. I'm betting next year they stay open for standard hours on thanksgiving. (plus the overnight garbage). I'm thinking of starting a "go to bed, nothing is on sale until 7am" campaign.

[Black Jack Rackham]

I don't know what you're grumbling about. This seems like the perfect opportunity. Mall is open so you can get in at a time where staff is likely to be unfathomably tired or even better asleep. And you with your new thief career just needing a big score to start out. Seems like a perfect storm to me

[salamanca]

Well mostly that the mall doesn't have anything I want to take in it. Forever 21 doesn't even carry my size (or men's clothes for that matter) and that game kiosk has nothing good on it.