At least 3 more weeks of this...

I wish I could say that the results of sporting events had no impact on me. In a vacuum, this would be the case. Unfortunately, I reside in one of the most pigskin-obsessed areas in the western hemisphere. As such, the results of the NFC championship game yesterday has been a little... taxing on me to say the least.

Example the first: one of our supervisors planned today as a vacation day. Why? For additional celebrations if the Packers won, and to drown his sorrows if they lost.

Example the second: One of my workplace peers (OK, my Archenemy) called in sick this morning to buy Packers NFC championship garb. How do I know this?

Because he showed up to work anyway, clad in his new hat and hoodie. With the official holograms still affixed to the clothes. I guess the lines weren't too long. Priorities, I tell you what. The best part is that he's still as scowly as ever today.

And another thing... "we" did not win the championship. To build off of what Whiskey Rover (unupdated blog here) said, YOU were not on the field. YOU are not a coach. YOU are not even part of the organization. The most that YOU have done is funnel money into the coffers of the NFL. And if that means that "we" won the championship, well then, "I" have a sweet new 3D handheld system coming out in 2 months. "I" produced a new Deadpool miniseries. "I" made a delicious pint of ice cream.

At this point, I'm going to be stuck in at least a 3 week news cycle, win or lose. 3 weeks where the headlines and top stories every night are going to be about a game. Listen. I know games. I spend most of my waking hours playing them. None of them are worth this much press. Even "the biggest game of the year".

States without professional baseball, basketball, and (especially) football ties? Make your case. I'm amenable to moving.

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 Archenemy Error Pool

Here's the thing.

As some of you know, I have a workplace nemesis, and have for some time. For the sake of internet anonymity, I refer to him simply as my Archenemy. The reasons for our clashes are not critical to understand this post, except for this:

This man is as dumb as toast.

In the wake of his divorce, he was loudly discussing in the breakroom about how he didn't know how to make a sandwich. Seriously. Seriously.

Anyway, Archenemy works in the same department that I do: order-picking. In the order-packing department, the supervisor has The Black Book. This is a log of all the errors the pickers make that are discovered by the packing department. Shortage, overages, expired product, wrong product, that sort of thing.

Archenemy has been there for over ten years. Archenemy has the most entries in The Black Book by far. Archenemy has so many entries, the supervisor had to add in an additional page in his section.

Mathematics lesson time:

365 days in a year. (365)

Subtract weekends. (365-102=263)

Subtract paid company holidays. (263-7=256)

Subtract sick time, vacation, and personal time. (256-20=236)

That's 236 workdays for the average individual in a given year.

Black Book entries for the year started August 1. Archenemy's error count as of April 30?

TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHT.

Now, how this guy still has a job is a discussion for another time, but with the errors looking to eclipse days worked (and the free time for me to do the math), a thought came to me:

Why not use this guy's stupidity for my own amusement?

Lo, The Archenemy Error Pool was born! Recruiting 3 other fed-up peers/soulless monsters, we each turned in a reasonable guess for mistakes to be made in the month of May. 20 workdays. Closest to actual errors wins. One dollar apiece is on the line. Small stakes, but it's really about the pride and bragging rights rather than the cash.

I didn't think my guess of 25 errors would be at the bottom of the list, but apparently my peers have even less faith in my Archenemy than I do. The high guess is 47 errors.

If today (day 1) is any indication, Archenemy is on track for 60 errors this month. Who woulda thunk it? He's intensely stupid.

The only question I'm wrestling with now: was starting this error pool more or less tasteless than the Temp Worker Longevity Pools I've started in the past?

Off the Grid

Heads up to all of you out there in internet-land: We're going offline for a few days. I know, with this schedule of postings, how could you tell?

Here's the thing: cable switches from the apartment to the house today. Most of our furniture won't be joining the cable until this weekend. That means:

1) No internet

2) No Twitter

3) No Xbox Live

4) No Netflix Instant Queue

Basically, I don't know what I'm going to do for entertainment. There just might be a breakdown and shuffling of CPU's to the house. Just don't expect to see anything until this weekend.