— पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस —
Holy Jesus Christ, what a clusterfuck of a morning I've had. I think it's pretty much all under control now, even though I may not get everything scheduled to be done today done. But, I will get everything done today that's
crucial to get done.
One of my newer tasks has to do with loading manufactur coupon UPCs to an app in our system, which we get in bimonthly intervals from National Cooperative Grocers (NCG—the organization, incidentally, putting on the converence I am going to in the Twin Cities the first week of August). There was a store question about the next set of coupons, which have valid dates between July 1 and August 31, and it made me realize I never input those coupons, which are supposed to start scanning tomorrow, into the app. So, I had to drop everything and work on that, referring to a Word document SOP Gabriel wrote up for me a few months ago, and which today I was using to go through the task myself for only the second time.
In the midst of this, several other fires came up that necessitated my attention. Our July prmotional period at stores, for discounted prices on shelf tags, started on Wednesday, and a customer complained at one of the stores that what we were showing was on sale online was not on sale at all. This took me a while to figure out, but it turned out the person in IT who loads the information from an excel template we use, had re-loaded the first-half June Market Specials instead of loading from the first-half July tab. At least that was an easy fix once I figured it out. But, I also got multiple emails about screwy things happening in the system with an unusually high volume of items I was asked to switch the distributor for in our system, because someone found another vendor offering the same product at lower cost, and we're trying to minimize expenses whereever possible right now. Unfortunately changing distributors on items is a stupidly convoluted process (which actually may or may not be outdated; I've started a conversationw ith IT about that), and it results in stores being unable to print shelf tags for those items for a day or two. It didn't help that, after already switching the distributor on them, yesterday I was sent a list of about 25 items to switch
back to the original vendor who had said they need more time to sell through inventory—after this had already caused a large amount of confusion among POS at stores. Some of these resulted in more issues this morning. I got a question about a size change on ice cream pints that were supposed to have had UPC changes but were coming in on unchanged skus, only to be told later that this was a mistaken assertion. I got a broker email about an item whose promotion was supposed to have been candeled, even though I never received any previous communication about it. I got another store asking if we could add a new size aluminum cup that they had ordered by mistake. And, I had to pivot to my weekly 1:1 with Gabby over Zoom, so I could record a demonstration of a monthly price optimization task Amy will be doing for me next month while I am in Saint Paul—and which is the other critical task I absolutely have to get done today for the current month being worked on, and which I have only barely gotten started.
I had other things I wanted to work on today that I haven't even been able to think about.
And, the cherry on top? My computer froze with Excel open while I was keying the manufactur coupons into the aforementioned app, a longstanding issue that forces me to restart my computer. I was in a rush and so went straight to restarting, completely forgetting the critical step of clicking the "Save" button on the coupons app, which I had not done even once since starting, and I was about three quarters of the way through the list of about 117 skus. When I restarted my computer and re-opened the app,
none of the skus I had just entered were still there. I actually let out and ouburst of "Oh my god, fuck!" that was pretty loud—thankfully not a lot of people are in the office today—and was so overwhelmed in that brief moment I literally felt like I was going to throw up.
I think it's safe to say that I have not had a day this stressful since the height of the pandemic.
On the upside, I am still very good at what I do, and I can say with confidence that I do all of my tasks way faster than anyone else here does—we've had such high turnover over time that I am now by far the longest-running person in the Merchandising department using the item maintenance system we use, to the point that I've become kind of the "expert" by default who people come to to ask how certain things can or should be done. Furthermore, the one person in IT with greater familiarity than I have is about to retire! We're getting a system upgrade later this year though, which maybe will even the playing field a little. Anyway, the point is, even re-entering the skus went pretty quickly, it's done, and it's fine.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस —
— पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस —
I still just took my standard half-hour lunch break to go read for a bit out on the patio. I needed that break far more than I usually do, actually.
Not that I have much else to tell you. I could have gone to see another movie last night, but I'm seeing
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny—with an 80-year-old Harrison Ford—with Alexia tonight, and last night would thus be my only open evening if I did not see a movie.
I spent the whole evening at home with Shobhit, catching up on TV shows. Most notably we burned through episodes 7-10 of
The Bear on FX on Hulu, and it was pnenomenal. We also watched the season finales of both
The Other Two on Max (which proved unusually moving, actually—that show is also excellent) and
Silo on Apple TV+ (which had a twist I truly did not see coming, which left me genuinely impressed). We're talking probably a solid four hours of TV watching, which I don't think we started until around 6:30, as I also assisted Shobhit in making last night's dinner, a kind of vegetable stir fry with paneer added which proved to be quite tasty.
I've got plenty planned for the weekend, just nothing compared to Pride Weekend last week, which will make it comparatively chill. I'm actually looking forward to it.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ उनतीस —
[posted 12:34 pm]
