The near State tv we have now just makes everything seem so normal while the world churns. It makes news so boring. I long for then good ole days when news might be upsetting but it could be trusted.
I’m an ANCIENT Walter Cronkite fan…every day at 6:00 P.M. And the “daily news” was about 23 HOURS shorter every day‼️ And then you went on to do what were called “Other Things”
I’ve watched a bit of historical broadcasts on YouTube, and would welcome that type of reporting to return in a heartbeat. Differentiating between opinions and facts seems to be a lost art.
I totally relate to your strips about inventory. I worked for a company that used to do inventory once a year by hand. That ment hours of tracking down every single item like we were out tracking fugitives and bringing them to justice. Inventory was pretty much, more or less, accurate then. Then they got the bright idea to only keep inventory by using the tags on the boxes that supposedly accurately described the contents and an electronic system that tracked the location. Soon nobody knew where anything was at and had to track it down like they were seeking a fugitive to bring it to justice. Perfect.
That’s a perfect description. I was once at a place that shall go nameless. Let’s just call them AT&. The folks at AT& couldn’t find several motherboards that were worth well over $100,000. There was some speculation among higher ups, who were sitting comfortably with coffee and donuts, that they could’ve been thrown away.
Guess who they sent into the dumpsters to dig through the trash?
A few years ago it was suspected a hand scanner got accidentally tossed down the hole in the wall ( the dumpster all non cardboard got tossed into for compacting until it couldn't fit more. From all areas of the store, so seafood, meat, produce, public restrooms, breakroom, random pieces of metal fixtures....) My store manager told my boss to assign someone to go slide down the chute, with a rope tied to them and someone else to go in through the outside hatch, with a rope tied to them, to look for it. In summer.
My boss reminded my store manager it violated the three rules of our union. It was unsafe, illegal, and immoral (ordering someone to risk death for a at the time $600 scanner). Store manager argued the request was none of those and started eying me. I'm starting to use my store phone to page my shop steward when my boss then pointed out the massive lawsuits that would follow and how corporate frowns upon the upward mobility of store managers who bring on massive lawsuits.
It became our phantom scanner, on the books, but always "someone, somewhere is using it and they forgot to submit out! Bad person!"
I think the blood drained out of my face as I read that he wanted someone to go down the chute. No, no, noooo….
I’ve worked at one place where the employees revolted and joined a union. Every place else has gone on an and on about how unions aren’t necessary. I think this story is Exhibit A on why unions are a good thing.
Thank every higher power you can that of my boss shut that down. Because, after decades of retail I'd be "fire me and enjoy the lawsuit!!!!!" but I work with people who would have done that.
We call our union a baby union. We are not as powerful as the UAW or Teamsters, but they do protect us from a great deal of abuse. It boggles my mind that newer stores that are opened by my company vote against the union, especially because we have been union since 1957 with the blessing and urging of the founder, because individuals think they can work hard and that is enough.
We would have a third party come in and count for us. Then after they were done, we would have to fix their mistakes. My favorite was the transposing of numbers and trying to figure out what they missed, since their number did not exist.Also counting the first item on a peg, and thinking the items behind it was the same. One year we were over 200 black pens and short 200 red pens.
My business still prefers cheques! We’ve lost thousands to credit card fraud and $0 to cheque fraud. There’s no charge like there is on credit cards, and e-transfers are dicey not only for security but because people do them casually. Rabidracoon62@whatever.com sent you 103.50. Yay. Which account and invoices does that pay?
Direct deposit, cash, and non-fraudulent cheques please and thank you. 😉
I’ve seen, this is true, several checks with Mark Zuckerberg’s face on them. People get sent these things and they try to cash them, thinking that Mark Zuckerberg has singled them out because he just has too much money.
The worst check fraud is made by people offering work at home opportunities. They actually interview people, “hire them”, then send them a huge check in a standard FedEx envelope to purchase equipment. If you’re actually able to cash one of these checks, they’ll ask for most of it back. One guy in San Francisco spent his life savings on lawyers when he was arrested at the bank when he tried to cash one of those.
But for point of sale purposes, we’re saved from all of that. Yay!
Oh, yeah, ok, that shit! Wow. Yeah our cheques come from, like, the Salt Shaker Deli. If there was an issue I could pop in to the deli, probably buy a pizza because yum and I’m there anyway, and ask about it.
A friend spent their new year in hospital. They were attacked by the Shingles. Unexpected in their age group so at first they thought it was allergies. So, Shingles is no laughing matter and it was even a rarer situation, the one known for getting into your facial nerve near your ear.
Your sign "please make sure we sell the item before trying to return it.
Because I've worked in planogram for so very very long everything and anything no one else understands gets dumped for me to find in my backroom every weekday morning. Why, yes, I have the unicorn retail schedule of no weekends 6am -2:30pm, and I will do anything to keep it thank you kindly. I spend about two or three hours a week researching not our store items, that were returned, talk to the service managers, where are all agree this is a pointless conversation when the policy is to accept anything for return in good condition and not to argue or shame customers, but I have to research and track down the nefarious clerk who took back a Christmas mug with the house brand of our competitor on it. Eye rolls ensue. Due diligence part 1 is done.
Due diligence part 2 is going back to receiving and explaining this is salvage and to scan it with this random Christmas upc and send it to wherever salvage goes. That way it is accounted for, out of the store bye bye. Then the ten minute discussion where the receiver will, yes absolutely, die on the hill that this by now 90% Christmas mug should never have been accepted, it shall not be scanned out, it shall go to loss prevention! Oh, and since you're going that way, can you take it to LP's office, 'kay thanks bye.
Somewhere between receiving and my backroom and LP's office the mug sadly slips from my butter fingers.....
I don’t know which part is more hilarious. The fact that a competitor’s mug was accepted as a return, your description of it all, or the fact that it was going to wind up in Loss Prevention. Somehow, they’ll cite this when not giving out good raises.
Thank you!! It's been an especially crappy week at work and your words make me smile.
Every four years during contract negotiations we are told if we want bigger raises next time we really need to help.out and reduce internal shrink even more. Of course,that goal post is ever moving!
And, because I have been labeled the font of all knowledge, I will have eager new service desk clerks call me up to prove a brand isn't ours. I always answer the same. Big smile. Happy voice. "Gosh! I don't recognize that brand. But! We carry so many it could be something new to us! Or something another store carries! The stores do not all carry the same merchandise. I know, it's odd, but that's how it goes. Oh gosh, I'm not a manager, so if you are not comfortable doing the return ( which hint hint corporate is ok with you doing) please call T to authorize it."
T.(Rex) is the service manager who just wants to put her last couple of years until she can retire and does not want any unnecessary drama, like eager new service desk clerks bucking the return policy posted in big letters behind their heads......
Well, thank you. You’ve painted a very vivid picture of life there. I’m happy to make you smile. They always bring up shrinkage with employees. They accuse you of doing the shrinking or assume you have Terminator-like efficiency in stopping it. Thank you for sharing this.
Good strips! I did not understand your comment about the posterboards (whatever those are!). If the manager counted each posterboard, that would have been the opposite mistake to Todd's, not "this [same] mistake." No? Or what did I miss? Last week, I got a great idea for your strip, but I didn't write it down, and now I can't remember it! Something to do with Tabby. Sorry! I'll let you know if it comes back to me.
Poster board is a sheet of thick, heavy stock paper used for presentations, signs, and classroom projects. The managers before me counted a box of poster boards as a quantity of one. What was really needed was the quantity of what was in the box. Instead of one, it should have been 100.
The computer, being innocent and all as a computer, automatically ordered more to make it more than one. Then another manager would make the same mistake and the computer would order more again. That went on for a couple of years.
I arrived to find boxes and boxes of poster board. There was no clamoring public to buy all of those and they gradually found new homes. I think I also made some pretty impressive paper airplanes.
I think I remember now, but- you're going to laugh - now I can't tell whether it was my own idea or one of your own strips coming back to haunt me! It has to do with an angry customer complaining about a squeaky shopping cart. Please enlighten me!
Its meaning has been lost to the depths of time. Some say it’s a statement of isolationism. Others argue that it’s the exact opposite, and a plea for cooperation among us all. Many say it’s simply the first draft of lyrics to the song When You Wish Upon A Star. We may never know.
Small businesses (usually run by older people) require checks to pay them, otherwise I'd probably stop ordering them altogether. Also some utilities that take checks or permanent access to your bank account (which doesn't send me to my happy place). I somehow crossed into being part of the cashless society before that was supposed to happen.
You'd be surprised at how wonderful everything is if you never watch the news.
We should be grateful that filters have been installed on most of the news so very little of the bad stuff leaks through.
The near State tv we have now just makes everything seem so normal while the world churns. It makes news so boring. I long for then good ole days when news might be upsetting but it could be trusted.
All of the people I trusted were fired or resigned.
I’m an ANCIENT Walter Cronkite fan…every day at 6:00 P.M. And the “daily news” was about 23 HOURS shorter every day‼️ And then you went on to do what were called “Other Things”
(AKA “get a life” 😎)
I’ve watched a bit of historical broadcasts on YouTube, and would welcome that type of reporting to return in a heartbeat. Differentiating between opinions and facts seems to be a lost art.
I totally relate to your strips about inventory. I worked for a company that used to do inventory once a year by hand. That ment hours of tracking down every single item like we were out tracking fugitives and bringing them to justice. Inventory was pretty much, more or less, accurate then. Then they got the bright idea to only keep inventory by using the tags on the boxes that supposedly accurately described the contents and an electronic system that tracked the location. Soon nobody knew where anything was at and had to track it down like they were seeking a fugitive to bring it to justice. Perfect.
That’s a perfect description. I was once at a place that shall go nameless. Let’s just call them AT&. The folks at AT& couldn’t find several motherboards that were worth well over $100,000. There was some speculation among higher ups, who were sitting comfortably with coffee and donuts, that they could’ve been thrown away.
Guess who they sent into the dumpsters to dig through the trash?
Ewww😳
I instantly assumed they were stolen. Did you find them in the dumpsters?
To be clear, it was a dumpster mostly filled with discarded boxes. Mostly. I was not the hero that day. I found nothing. It wasn’t for lack of trying.
A few years ago it was suspected a hand scanner got accidentally tossed down the hole in the wall ( the dumpster all non cardboard got tossed into for compacting until it couldn't fit more. From all areas of the store, so seafood, meat, produce, public restrooms, breakroom, random pieces of metal fixtures....) My store manager told my boss to assign someone to go slide down the chute, with a rope tied to them and someone else to go in through the outside hatch, with a rope tied to them, to look for it. In summer.
My boss reminded my store manager it violated the three rules of our union. It was unsafe, illegal, and immoral (ordering someone to risk death for a at the time $600 scanner). Store manager argued the request was none of those and started eying me. I'm starting to use my store phone to page my shop steward when my boss then pointed out the massive lawsuits that would follow and how corporate frowns upon the upward mobility of store managers who bring on massive lawsuits.
It became our phantom scanner, on the books, but always "someone, somewhere is using it and they forgot to submit out! Bad person!"
I think the blood drained out of my face as I read that he wanted someone to go down the chute. No, no, noooo….
I’ve worked at one place where the employees revolted and joined a union. Every place else has gone on an and on about how unions aren’t necessary. I think this story is Exhibit A on why unions are a good thing.
Thank every higher power you can that of my boss shut that down. Because, after decades of retail I'd be "fire me and enjoy the lawsuit!!!!!" but I work with people who would have done that.
We call our union a baby union. We are not as powerful as the UAW or Teamsters, but they do protect us from a great deal of abuse. It boggles my mind that newer stores that are opened by my company vote against the union, especially because we have been union since 1957 with the blessing and urging of the founder, because individuals think they can work hard and that is enough.
We would have a third party come in and count for us. Then after they were done, we would have to fix their mistakes. My favorite was the transposing of numbers and trying to figure out what they missed, since their number did not exist.Also counting the first item on a peg, and thinking the items behind it was the same. One year we were over 200 black pens and short 200 red pens.
I have PTSD from pens.
*starts twitching from resetting a 36 foot run of pens, without a scanner, because *someone else needs it more*"
My business still prefers cheques! We’ve lost thousands to credit card fraud and $0 to cheque fraud. There’s no charge like there is on credit cards, and e-transfers are dicey not only for security but because people do them casually. Rabidracoon62@whatever.com sent you 103.50. Yay. Which account and invoices does that pay?
Direct deposit, cash, and non-fraudulent cheques please and thank you. 😉
I’ve seen, this is true, several checks with Mark Zuckerberg’s face on them. People get sent these things and they try to cash them, thinking that Mark Zuckerberg has singled them out because he just has too much money.
The worst check fraud is made by people offering work at home opportunities. They actually interview people, “hire them”, then send them a huge check in a standard FedEx envelope to purchase equipment. If you’re actually able to cash one of these checks, they’ll ask for most of it back. One guy in San Francisco spent his life savings on lawyers when he was arrested at the bank when he tried to cash one of those.
But for point of sale purposes, we’re saved from all of that. Yay!
Oh, yeah, ok, that shit! Wow. Yeah our cheques come from, like, the Salt Shaker Deli. If there was an issue I could pop in to the deli, probably buy a pizza because yum and I’m there anyway, and ask about it.
The Salt Shaker Deli is also safe because they’re not trying to get anyone to work from home.
A friend spent their new year in hospital. They were attacked by the Shingles. Unexpected in their age group so at first they thought it was allergies. So, Shingles is no laughing matter and it was even a rarer situation, the one known for getting into your facial nerve near your ear.
Aaah! I wish them a full recovery.
Intellectually I know shingles is a disease, but when I read your comment I immediately thought of a gang of animated roofing shingles attacking you!
I hope you are doing well.
Your sign "please make sure we sell the item before trying to return it.
Because I've worked in planogram for so very very long everything and anything no one else understands gets dumped for me to find in my backroom every weekday morning. Why, yes, I have the unicorn retail schedule of no weekends 6am -2:30pm, and I will do anything to keep it thank you kindly. I spend about two or three hours a week researching not our store items, that were returned, talk to the service managers, where are all agree this is a pointless conversation when the policy is to accept anything for return in good condition and not to argue or shame customers, but I have to research and track down the nefarious clerk who took back a Christmas mug with the house brand of our competitor on it. Eye rolls ensue. Due diligence part 1 is done.
Due diligence part 2 is going back to receiving and explaining this is salvage and to scan it with this random Christmas upc and send it to wherever salvage goes. That way it is accounted for, out of the store bye bye. Then the ten minute discussion where the receiver will, yes absolutely, die on the hill that this by now 90% Christmas mug should never have been accepted, it shall not be scanned out, it shall go to loss prevention! Oh, and since you're going that way, can you take it to LP's office, 'kay thanks bye.
Somewhere between receiving and my backroom and LP's office the mug sadly slips from my butter fingers.....
I don’t know which part is more hilarious. The fact that a competitor’s mug was accepted as a return, your description of it all, or the fact that it was going to wind up in Loss Prevention. Somehow, they’ll cite this when not giving out good raises.
Thank you!! It's been an especially crappy week at work and your words make me smile.
Every four years during contract negotiations we are told if we want bigger raises next time we really need to help.out and reduce internal shrink even more. Of course,that goal post is ever moving!
And, because I have been labeled the font of all knowledge, I will have eager new service desk clerks call me up to prove a brand isn't ours. I always answer the same. Big smile. Happy voice. "Gosh! I don't recognize that brand. But! We carry so many it could be something new to us! Or something another store carries! The stores do not all carry the same merchandise. I know, it's odd, but that's how it goes. Oh gosh, I'm not a manager, so if you are not comfortable doing the return ( which hint hint corporate is ok with you doing) please call T to authorize it."
T.(Rex) is the service manager who just wants to put her last couple of years until she can retire and does not want any unnecessary drama, like eager new service desk clerks bucking the return policy posted in big letters behind their heads......
Well, thank you. You’ve painted a very vivid picture of life there. I’m happy to make you smile. They always bring up shrinkage with employees. They accuse you of doing the shrinking or assume you have Terminator-like efficiency in stopping it. Thank you for sharing this.
What can be more wonderful than reading the comics everyday.Also, what happened to the new hire?
I’m not sure which new hire you mean. It takes awhile to circle around to everyone. A lot of new hires are new recently quits.
The one that was asking about being good weird or bad weird
Well, it was just an interview. Half of the people who are offered jobs don’t accept them.
BS"D
Good strips! I did not understand your comment about the posterboards (whatever those are!). If the manager counted each posterboard, that would have been the opposite mistake to Todd's, not "this [same] mistake." No? Or what did I miss? Last week, I got a great idea for your strip, but I didn't write it down, and now I can't remember it! Something to do with Tabby. Sorry! I'll let you know if it comes back to me.
I appreciate the thought.
Poster board is a sheet of thick, heavy stock paper used for presentations, signs, and classroom projects. The managers before me counted a box of poster boards as a quantity of one. What was really needed was the quantity of what was in the box. Instead of one, it should have been 100.
The computer, being innocent and all as a computer, automatically ordered more to make it more than one. Then another manager would make the same mistake and the computer would order more again. That went on for a couple of years.
I arrived to find boxes and boxes of poster board. There was no clamoring public to buy all of those and they gradually found new homes. I think I also made some pretty impressive paper airplanes.
BS"D
I think I remember now, but- you're going to laugh - now I can't tell whether it was my own idea or one of your own strips coming back to haunt me! It has to do with an angry customer complaining about a squeaky shopping cart. Please enlighten me!
Why Mr. Beals, what is a helpful olive in a pickle jar?
Its meaning has been lost to the depths of time. Some say it’s a statement of isolationism. Others argue that it’s the exact opposite, and a plea for cooperation among us all. Many say it’s simply the first draft of lyrics to the song When You Wish Upon A Star. We may never know.
Just a splendid reply!
Small businesses (usually run by older people) require checks to pay them, otherwise I'd probably stop ordering them altogether. Also some utilities that take checks or permanent access to your bank account (which doesn't send me to my happy place). I somehow crossed into being part of the cashless society before that was supposed to happen.