Wherein Irv wishes he had a neutron bomb

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Seriously. Today made me an angry Irv.

We had a brief, but intense snowstorm today. Snow started falling shortly after I got up at 2:45 this morning and pretty much ended by the time I left work at 12:30, but in that time we got about 9 inches of Frosty's DNA.

To start, I just about wiped out again coming into work. The streets were pure ice.

Then, at work I discovered the truck crew didn't bring any freight to the floor, didn't take furniture and bulk off the trailer, didn't separate Christmas storage items as we asked them to (there was a shitload of it on the truck), and didn't leave us a note to tell us what got done or didn't get done that night. So I had to separate everything and bring it to the floor myself, and in so doing almost ended up being buried numerous times under merchandise falling off the pallets because the truck monkeys stacked the pallets as crappily as possible.

Secondly, remember these? The remote car starters that caused me so much consternation last weekend? They're pictured in our next two ads, but we don't have them in stock, aren't getting them in anytime soon, and have a huge-ass stack of rainchecks that will need to be taken care of first when the car starters finally do come back in.

I made a bet with my helper that somebody would be in shortly after the store opened looking for those car starters, in spite of the heavy snow and white-out weather conditions, and I wasn't let down. A few minutes after we opened, some guy came tromping down the aisle and asked me "Where are the cart starters in you ad here?"

Me: "Sorry, we don't have them in at the moment. Rainchecks are available at the service desk.

Customer: "Why do you advertise things and not have them in stock? This was going to be a Christmas gift to my wife and you ruined it!"

This is another Christmas I've ruined, you say? Go Irv, go Irv, it's your birthday, go Irv....

Next, Numbnuts version 2.0 (That's what I'm going to start calling our regular autopull guy, who started out as a good worker but is now one of our worst) came in to do the morning autopulls and as usual took forever doing them. While we were hard at work filling stuff, I saw Numbnuts 2.0 push his shopping cart with all of one item in it over to an endstand in toys, and then he stopped and started looking at stuff on the endstand, with his hands in his pockets.

Our supervisor told him to get back to work and make sure he's actually pulling items instead of just saying he is and not actually pulling them. He told her in a really snotty tone "I AM!"

Actually, no he wasn't. We have been suspecting he hasn't been pulling stuff for a while now. This was confirmed when he had over 30 SKUs in linens, enough to fill up an entire domestics bin, but he just took down a shopping cart with a couple sheet sets in it and a box of pillows. Management has been told about this.

And then our infected sphincter boil of an electronics specialist came in and we brought out his freight. Included was a flatbed with about 15 stereo systems on it. He returned the flatbed to the backroom without touching the stereos and told us they were backstock.

We took them back out to the floor and fit every single stereo system out there. They were on a special price just for today, and although it was slow this morning things began to pick up as the snow ended, so it's a good thing we got them to the floor.

Additionally, we found several big TVs in the backroom being held for rainchecks, which electronics specialist did not call; thus we were sitting on them and losing even more sales. Plus he's just dropping his security cases wherever he pleases and not taking them to storage where they belong. These have also been brought to management's attention.

Next, Numbnuts the First came in for his shift at 9:00, punched in, and spent the next 10 minutes shoving a bagel into his gaping maw while the store manager was trying to find him so he could shovel the sidewalks. Must be nice to scam extra breaks when you're not supposed to have them.

And finally, my car got stuck in the snow in the parking lot because the plow left a big ridge of it in front of my car, and again on the way home. It is a good thing I have the weekend off because I've been working five days straight, I need to finish my Christmas shopping and I need some time off already!

[digilight]

Irv, fix that damn sig allready would ya. If ya fuck up three christmases then get that score card right please

Oh yeah, and kick that damn electronic douchebag in the sack for me. Just hearing about your moronic fucktards of coworkers pisses me off...damn meds haven't kicked in yet.

Hope things get better. And good luck ruining a couple more christmases and maybe even a Hanuka (however you spell it, I'm to lazy to google the spelling)

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Irv, fix that damn sig allready would ya. If ya fuck up three christmases then get that score card right please

Oh yeah, and kick that damn electronic douchebag in the sack for me. Just hearing about your moronic fucktards of coworkers pisses me off...damn meds haven't kicked in yet.

Hope things get better. And good luck ruining a couple more christmases and maybe even a Hanuka (however you spell it, I'm to lazy to google the spelling)

1. Just did.

2. If I were to kick him in the sack, I'd probably have to aim for his adam's apple, since he likes to wear his pants about that high. I dunno if my foot can reach that high, so it'll need to be a punch instead.

3. I've got three more shifts before Christmas in which to destroy other people's Christmases. I'd best get cracking.

[froglet]

Stick a shovel in your trunk to dig yourself out of those situations, it'll come in handy. Better than rubbing your muffler off in the parking lot.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Stick a shovel in your trunk to dig yourself out of those situations, it'll come in handy. Better than rubbing your muffler off in the parking lot.

Bought one today. It has a telescoping handle so it fits conveniently in the trunk of my car.

Now good luck trying to fit anything else in there. I have junk in my trunk, believe me.

Also, I bought a new winter hat. Fashion tip for guys: Chicks dig earflaps. Trust me.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Also, I bought a new winter hat. Fashion tip for guys: Chicks dig earflaps. Trust me.

Oh, you've got dog-ears. Sexy.

[I_Hate_SCs]

Customer: "Why do you advertise things and not have them in stock? This was going to be a Christmas gift to my wife and you ruined it!"

That's when I'd say "You can thank corporate for not sending us enough to sell. You can complain up front." What is sad is these SCs still blame you as if you personally ordered the items, while I would be like "look, if I had my way I'd have a whole department full of this one item, but corporate didn't send enough." That is such faulty logic, though: why advertise it if its out of stock? Isn't something out of stock normally IN STOCK? These are probably the same idiots who do their xmas shopping on xmas eve and expect everything to still be in stock like its July!

And then our infected sphincter boil of an electronics specialist came in and we brought out his freight. Included was a flatbed with about 15 stereo systems on it. He returned the flatbed to the backroom without touching the stereos and told us they were backstock. We took them back out to the floor and fit every single stereo system out there.

I can only imagine how frustrating that was. In my store, it was the opposite: We'd get like 5x what would fit on the shelves in the autopulls, and the backroom team refused to backstock them because they claimed it fit in the shelf spot, but they never actually been on the salesfloor to see themselves what fits or not. They simply put it on a tub and brought it out with the next set of scheduled autopulls, then wondered why they kept on getting the same amount of items back time after time: because they don't fit, damn it! haha

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Oh, you've got dog-ears. Sexy.

And there's little tassels hanging down from the dog ears!

I had two pairs of female co-workers help me decide: I had a hat without the earflaps and the one I eventually bought. They were unanimously in favor of the earflaps and it didn't take them long to reach that decision.

I can only imagine how frustrating that was. In my store, it was the opposite: We'd get like 5x what would fit on the shelves in the autopulls, and the backroom team refused to backstock them because they claimed it fit in the shelf spot, but they never actually been on the salesfloor to see themselves what fits or not. They simply put it on a tub and brought it out with the next set of scheduled autopulls, then wondered why they kept on getting the same amount of items back time after time: because they don't fit, damn it!

We have the same problems with autopull being off all the time, for the following two reasons:

• People saying they pulled items but not actually pulling them. However, this is sometimes necessary because:
• The autopull system doesn't subtract items coming in on a truck when the manifest is acknowledged. So what happens is we fill everything and backstock the excess, and then the autopull system requests the items we just finished filling and backstocking, because as far as it knows those items just came in and are needed on the shelves.

Our autopull people won't just keeping bringing the items out time after time though. They'll just stuff them in another product's space, or remove the label for an adjacent product and stock the item there (this used to be mandatory under my former wanker of a boss), or toss the item on a high rise (top shelf on a gondola normally used to hold overstock merchandise).

We didn't even get to use high rises this year because of exactly that problem--the highrises were getting to be a mishmash of various items people didn't feel like backstocking, and corporate's standards mandate that the highrises be used for items you have a lot of, so you have a maximum of three different items up there in significant quantities and it "makes a statement."

Not fun. The backroom was jammed about as full as it could possibly be because we weren't allowed to place items on highrises except for Black Friday.

[Becks]

Chicks dig earflaps.

Rowr.

pics?

[Chromatix]

Instead of earflaps, I overlap a normal hat with a turtleneck scarf. Covers up the ears even more effectively.

But is it sexay?