The Aftermath (is still hard)

Here we are at Consecutive Workday #9, and I am exhausted. Inventory is over (in name, at least), and I managed without a meltdown. Hooray?

Not to say that things went smoothly, or hitchless - in fact, I learned today that I had an error of my very own. Scanning, not counting (I can manage zero just fine, thankyouverymuch), and looking at the area, I know the timeframe and exactly why that would be the time I screwed up: it was either immediately before or immediately after dinner. Sigh.

But the "fun" of inventory isn't my shortcomings. No, it's the incredible laziness and/or stupidity of my peers. Shall we get to some of the highlights?

The traditional pre-inventory kindergarten lesson of what's expect of us during the count, how to mark the boxes, how to scan in barcodes, etc. is met with almost audible eyerolling. Only one question is asked during the Q&A section, and it's me with a request: [paraphrase] Please, please, PLEASE for the love of (INSERT DEITY HERE), take the 5 extra seconds and check if there are boxes behind what you're counting, make sure those boxes match what you just counted, make sure those boxes are sealed and complete. Please. This was a major source of recounts last year. [/paraphrase] The response from my immediate right? "Good idea. Use common sense, right?" Flash forward to the Saturday recounts, where I'm finding uncounted boxes behind the items the very same individual who called my statement "common sense" was counting. I reminded her of her previous statement. She got very sheepish. (For the record, most of the recounts I was sent to check on that turned out to be incorrect? Missed boxes behind product. Something something deaf ears something.)

Other recounts were just baffling. On the plus side, I got to yell things into empty aisles such as "DEAR MORON: EIGHT IS NOT FIVE." "I GUESS THE RIPPED PLASTIC WASN'T ENOUGH OF A GIVEAWAY THAT THIS WAS A PARTIAL?" and "WELL, THERE'S THE DOZEN WE'RE COMING UP SHORT. BEHIND THE BOX. IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD MENTIONED THAT CHECKING BEHIND BOXES MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA. MAYBE NEXT YEAR!" On the minus side, we still have people who somehow add up 5+5+3 and get 7. People who look at a sealed case of 80 and count it as 1. People who insist that they can't possibly reach that product without a ladder, and if a ladder is available? Suddenly, they can't use a ladder at all. Sad, really.

Still, the reason I didn't have a meltdown this year (aside from basically only scanning in what I counted) was the first half-dozenish recounts were spot on. No stupid counting errors. No mistaken units of measure or skipped cases. Just an accurate physical count, even if there was a discrepancy between what we physically had and what we were supposed to have.

This brings us to Sunday. As the standout problem-fixer from the crew of counters and re-counters, this marked the third consecutive year where I was brought in for last minute recounts (thirds, fourths, FIFTHS even) and assistance with the external auditor. Aside from having another "warehouse associate" there for the recounts (manager's idea due to the amount of counts he was unhappy with, but I got to pick the cohort. It was a short list. Of one.), things went as they usually do.

Until we started the spot counts with the auditor.

Second item checked out of 45? Wrong. Counted and scanned as a box, it was actually a case of 6. Strike one.

Fourth item checked? 12 over from our count. Because? Yep. THERE WAS A CASE BEHIND THE BOX THAT NEVER GOT COUNTED BECAUSE NO ONE MOVED THE FIRST BOX. (If only someone had mentioned that checking behind boxes might be a good idea. Maybe next year.)

This is the point where the auditor mentions that if we hit 5 miscounts out of the overall list of 90, we're going to have to do the whole thing all over again. Management is visibly shaken at this point.

The auditor tells us a delightful tale of an audit done on Christmas Eve. When he was finished, the whole company was starting their 2 week holiday vacation. People had coats on waiting for him to finish his runthrough. The counts were so far off, they had to do the whole thing over again, pushing back vacation.

Did I mention management was visibly shaken at this point?

The rest of the count goes by swimmingly. Until the last 2 items, that is. The first of these is a duffel bag, effectively. We counted 15. System says we have 14. One case on the overstock. Sealed on the top and the bottom, labeled QTY 15. Cut and dried - except for the gaping hole in the side of the box. Almost like someone without a blade needed just one more bag, and in a fit of slothful rage found the easiest solution to their problem.

There's the easy way. There's the correct way. Rarely are they the same thing.

Fortunately, the auditor gave us the benefit of the doubt, assumed it was a handling error (instead of a "this is easiest for me" error), and credited us the 15. (The next day, we split it open out of curiosity. Of course, 14 inside. Score one more for my theories.)

The final item came up without a location. This was a problem.

Something that I noticed over the course of several recounts this year: some of the oldest, deadest stock had just been purged from our system. Counts reduced to zero, locations stripped away. Of course, they still got scanned and counted during the physical inventory process. Then it became my job to track down where these rogue items might be stashed and discover exactly how many we had.

This final item was a container that we had not bothered recounting during any of our earlier recounts - and it could be anywhere in the warehouse.

Did I mention management was visibly shaken by this point?

While he went off to do some computer-sleuthing related to our scanning, I set off on foot. 3 minutes later, I'd found the item, verified the count, and written myself up a post-it to relocate it come Monday morning. 3 minutes after that, management came back with a rough timeframe as to when the product had been scanned. I let him know it'd been taken care of.

The auditor was kind. We did no additional counts, and I got to leave earlier than anticipated.

Now, just because Inventory Weekend is over doesn't mean that everything is fixed. Our recounts were only assigned at a certain dollar threshold, so there's plenty of items still slightly off. I've sent over a dozen products to be adjusted in the past 2 days.

This is what I'm good at. A sense of curiosity (why is this count off) and rational theories about that "why" fix problems. I realized today where that comes from. My gaming hobby.

Hear me out. I've been solving problems for years upon years now, from how to get that 1-Up mushroom to the perfect assembly of lines to score a Tetris to optimal sentry gun placement in Team Fortress 2. From how to win this game of Magic when the opponent has a Platinum Angel out to successful tactics for surviving a horde of orcs in D&D to making a shrewd building placement in Settlers of Catan. Everyone else at work doesn't share this passion. It's sports and reality TV and watching/listening to others doing things and not having to work things out for yourself.

I solve problems. They don't try.

Math is hard

If GenCon has become my Christmas, then this weekend is well, that day when your taxes are due and you have a dentist appointment and, by the way, you accidentally ran over a kitten. And a puppy. It's time at work for INVENTORY.

If anyone out there remembers last year, that was the weekend I had a bit of a mental breakdown and held an impromptu mathematics lesson after finding over a dozen miscounts in the span of 24 feet of shelving.

I fear this year will be worse.

How would that even be possible? Lots of reasons.

1) We're down 3 bodies from last year. Unfortunately, not the three bodies I would have hoped (that is, the people who can't count during the course of the year). Fewer people = longer count times.

2) More product that last year. With a slew of new merchandise (that's been sitting on the shelves since I located it there), at least 84 more feet of shelving have been assembled. Most of it has lots of teensy-tiny boxes with teensy-tiny product inside. Most of the shelves are also so high they need to be reached by ladder. Lots of items + ladder-counting = mistakes.

3) I don't know how to phrase this exactly, but shoddy stocking seems to make the most sense. Finding products mislocated, sometimes in the wrong warehouse, doesn't give me a lot of hope that the counts are going to be tallied accurately. Recounts? Even more of a problem.

4) Here is the kicker: there's a chance all this counting over the next two days will be for naught. Why? Our parent company is going through a computer upgrade this weekend, an upgrade that was pushed back from 3 weeks ago. There exists the possibility that when all is said and done and the inventory is set to post... it just won't. All data lost.

And the management knows about this. We had a meeting about maybe possibly delaying the counts for another 2 weeks, when it's hotter and we have that Monday off and as such won't get overtime for counting. By the fact that we're counting today, you can see how well that went over with the personnel. (Aside: when inventory date was put to a vote during this meeting, I abstained. When called out on it, I stated "It doesn't really matter to me. It's got to get done. Besides, I don't think we'll get it done right anyway." Cynicism or realism? You be the judge.)

I already had a headache yesterday. The counting starts today at 1 PM. Updates will come via Twitter feed. Pray for my sanity. And that I'm not giving math lessons on July 10th.

The Most Logical Conclusion

Well, today was certainly something.

Begin at the beginning, I suppose. Punch in this morning to discover that the server host is not working/connected. Find supervisor, wait for system reboot, endure a fairly typical Wednesday morning.

Then the power outage happens.

It's not a full power outage, mind you. Just a couple of pops, over half the lights going dark, industrial fans stopping. The computers still run (oddly), so we can continue working, fumbling around in various levels of light. The power comes back to full strength within 15 minutes.

That's when the server crashes again.

Find supervisor (again), wait for reboot (AGAIN), have system eventually become stable (AGAIN!). Go to lunch, re-coffee up, return five minutes early. Snap industrial espionage style photos of Alky McDrinkDrink. Start post-lunch work.

While digging through a box of catheters, I find a key.

Yeah, a key. Not a cool, old-styled skeleton key, but what looks like a recently crafted housekey. At this point, I'm fairly certain that this key didn't come from China or Pakistan or Sri Lanka or wherever the things we sell are manufactured. It probably belongs to someone who actually works in our building. Find supervisor (getting tired of seeing me at this point), show/explain key, encourage him to ask around about it. If no one claims it, I'll take it back at the end of the day, because keys are nifty.

Ten minutes later, my Archenemy has his spare key back. Sigh. I endure a litany of uncharacteristic thanks from Archenemy ("I've been missing this for a week! My wallet has this flap and the key keeps falling out... thanks again. Thank you. I reeeeeeeeeeally appreciate it. Thank you again. Thank you.") I assure him it was no trouble at all and move on.

ASIDE: Keeping a spare key in a wallet? Is this a thing that people do? I mean, say you get robbed. Cash, credit cards, ID (with your address on it) and a key. To rob you BLINDER.

The afternoon continues. I continue working. Late afternoon I feel a drip on my forearm. It would be weird if it was sweat. Weirder if I was sweating on the paperwork, as it has two water-drips on it. The truth, of course, is weirder still.

I look up, and see I am being rained on. Inside. What. The. What.

The skies outside are clear. During the actual rainstorm yesterday the warehouse was perfectly dry.

Hello supervisor. Hello office folk. Hello receiving guy on a lift all the way up to the ceiling.

There's a hole in the ceiling. It seems like we should have known.

Time to move product so it doesn't get any more water damaged. Rather than watch as incredibly janky anti-soak measures are set up, I move on. As I leave I hear the higher-ups arguing about the cause of the leak.

All of this workplace madness swirls around my brain for a while, until I come up with an answer. An answer for why all this messed-up stuff is going on today. An answer, that, in hindsight, seems obvious.

We (that is, my company) should no longer be in existence. Between the inept management, apathetic workforce, and sharply declining sales, we should honestly no longer be in this building. Yet, somehow, we're still around. We've slipped through the cracks of reality. The computer issues, the power failure, the freak interior rainstorm?

The universe is attempting to course-correct. Yet, we stand.

It's to the point where I was expecting to look outside and see a rain of toads. Possibly watch a tanker truck pull up to the dock and explode. And it would seem, well, normal. A continued escalation on the part of reality.

Maybe tomorrow the universe will give up and let this aberration of a company stick around. Or, maybe a comet will crush our building. Time will tell.

I just wish I knew exactly how that housekey fits into all of this...