Distractions
Let me distract you.
Avoiding distractions so that I can get actual work done has been a lifelong challenge. I’ve been known to successfully distract myself away from urgent tasks for an entire workday. When I was a graphic artist, I’d check out a few websites “before I got started”. One link would lead to another and then I would discover it was time to go home.
I wish that was a joke. When I stopped being a graphic artist, one of the reasons I gave was that I had read the internet. It was time to move on to something else.
These days, I’m a little more worried about distractions. I don’t want to do something innocent, like sort through my book collection, and then discover it’s time to die. I know me. That could happen. “What? I’m a 102? Yeah, I guess I read more than I thought.” That’s how I plan to live to be 102, by the way, I’ll get really distracted for a few decades.
One of the ways I used to really distract myself was by reading the news. I was a news junkie. These days, the news has really stepped up to stop me by being consistently awful and horrible. I’ve learned that if I miss the morning horrible story, it will be completely forgotten by the time the afternoon horrible story arrives, let alone the next day’s horrible story. Of course, the individual horrible news stories are usually connected by an overarching horrible news story revolving around the Big Bad. The news has turned into a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I should really be thankful that I have no desire to catch up on…oh, look at all of these wonderful Substack accounts! Excuse me, I’ll just check out a few before I get started.
“Your website says it’s here” is actually on staff Bingo cards. I’ve seen them. The website lies. Many customers do not trust the website. Many customers are correct. Many customers weren’t born yesterday.
Why are so many store websites inaccurate? I don’t know. I’m not involved in tech support. I’m sure that there’s a very solid explanation that could be given by somebody in tech support and I’m almost equally sure that the answer will involve money.
There are customers who will never be happy and you can see that the moment they walk up to you. What you do is give them the most delicate, professional, and easy to understand explanations that will help them walk away with the least amount of anger simmering in their brains. Then you realize that you are actually treating them better than you do with a happy customer and you will search for a banana creme pie so that you can hit yourself in the face with it.
Sometimes all I have to do is walk into Walmart. I don’t know about every Walmart, but the Walmart near me will no longer give change unless a transaction is involved. Cashiers can’t open the drawer without a transaction.
Some readers were surprised to see Tabby’s indifference to this, but you have to pick your battles. The inability to give change, sadly, is not a hill worth dying on.
I can’t emphasize the horror of the training videos enough. Do you want to deal with an angry customer or watch the required videos? It really is a tough decision.
You have to accept the help you can get, but I really just wanted to use the word Snickerdoodles. I don’t think I could pick a Snickerdoodle out of a police lineup at the Keebler factory, but I have a deep respect for whoever named that cookie.
Is there anything worse than looking forward to relaxing after a tough day at work only to find out that you have to go to some event? Yes, of course there is. Too many to list, really. But out of the mild, everyday worse things it’s really the worst.
If you’re dog tired and just need to make it through the workday, that’s when things happen that would tax you even if you had the best night’s sleep of your life and a hearty breakfast. I’ve done a lot of field work on this bit of wisdom. Trust me, it’s a solid fact.
Product reviews in person are always highly entertaining. You may not agree with the customer’s one star review, but you can’t deny their passionate delivery.
My lifelong friend Jim (hi Jim!) thought this might be about him, but it winds up that knees are a common weak link in the human anatomical structure. If you stand a lot at your job, make sure you have good shoes, decent posture, and a solid chair than nobody knows about.
Another one inspired by Walmart. One fine Saturday, a drunk took out every monitor in the liquor area by throwing bottles of alcohol at them. Say what you want at the company, but the workers who have managed to thrive at Walmart are warriors forged in battle. As an observer, thankfully, it was merely entertaining.
I always feel a bit sad when I walk into Walmart. The staff always looks depressed, probably because they are struggling to survive on the crumbs they are paid. Even the shoppers look a little down, like feral animals searching for a deal. The only time I've ever seen a smile was when I told the staff of the pharmacy how much better their service was than their competitors.
I don't directly support the websites, but as someone who supports the warehouse management systems that report inventory to the websites I can tell you a few of the reasons that the website will be wrong about on-hand inventory in the store. (Hint: the words "user error" apply to more than one of these.)
1. The product was not properly counted during the scheduled cycle counts. Someone said there were x in that location but really it was x - 1. Or they counted eaches instead of cases. Or some other counting error.
2. The product was shipped incorrectly from the warehouse and/or received incorrectly by the store. This can happen when stores do "blind receiving" which assumes that everything that is supposed to be on the truck is really there. Sometimes that assumption is wrong.
3. The inventory was received but hasn't been put in the correct location yet.
4. The inventory is in the wrong location.
5. The inventory system doesn't update in real time with sales. So the inventory it thinks is in the store is already sold.
6. The inventory system was not set up to account for online sales. (This causes the opposite problem: inventory on the shelves that the website says is already sold to a different customer.)
7. The website and the inventory management system have achieved sentience and hate you. I haven't seen this one yet, but I can't rule it out.