May I vent?
Thank you.
Two major specials in the frozen department this week. First up: Polar ice cream pops, 8x40 ml, 97 cents. The pack contains 4 orange pops and 4 grape pops.
Never seen this product before and probably never will again.
Okay, let's think. Head Office wants me to take five skids. There's 144 cases to a skid and 8 in a case for a total of 5760 sales. Seems a bit high to me. But I'd better take them...it's supposed to be wicked hot and humid outside. Small problem: what with the four skids of meat department crap in the nine-skid-capacity freezer we share, there won't be room for anything else. So I'll take four skids on Thursday and one on Monday. Problem solved. Ken solves his problems with a chainsaw, and he never has the same problem twice.
Wait a minute.
We have a three day sale on 2-pack Delissio pizzas for $6.97. Head Office has decided I need seven skids of this stuff, and further that they're shipping it to me all at once.
You can perhaps appreciate my concern. I have space for one skid in my freezer. Another will fit out on display. That leaves five skids of frozen pizza that won't stay frozen for long.
Well, now. I get a delivery on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday...why can't I just get that automatic distribution split four ways? No worries, I was told. Just order what I need, when I need it. Simple like that.
Thursday's order shipped no problem. The sale started yesterday and by the time I got in to work at 2:00 yesterday afternoon that shipment was almost gone. Luckily, yesterday's delivery came in right on time--I never quite ran out.
But I was a little worried. These pizzas were selling even better than I'd expected: I estimated I'd be out of stock by about noon Saturday. The Saturday warehouse delivery window is between 1 and 5 p.m.
We get an email notification the day before a delivery of what time that truck is supposed to arrive. I anxiously awaited that email, and breathed a sigh of relief when it came: 12:09. Things are working out just peachily.
So I wander in to work this morning and peruse my invoice, which comes up on the email system about six hours before the truck gets to the store. Imagine my chagrin when I discover that, instead of the 48 cases of pepperoni pizzas I had ordered, I'm getting 33. Imagine my horror when I notice that instead of 48 cases of deluxe, I'm getting 14.
I knew right away what had happened...and was powerless to do anything about it. When they cancelled my automatic distribution of seven skids, that product shifted in their system from allocated to Ken's store, hands off, everybody else! to humph, Ken doesn't want any pizza, so here's his stock. Anybody who needs more than we gave 'em, feel free to poach the motherlovin' hell out of this. Somewhere in our 95-store chain, somebody has my pizza. And has probably sold it by now.
Meanwhile, right about...now...I'm out. And with the warehouse out of stock too, there's no way to get more. Not quite two days through a three day sale, and not a pizza to be found. All because I have one of the smallest freezers in the chain.
I said all that to say this.
Customers (and you're all customers of some place at some time), please bear in mind two things. One, when there's a "limited time only" sale on something, that time may be more limited than it says. Two: most times, when a store is out of stock on something, it's not their fault. It's never the cashier's fault, NO MATTER WHAT. Yelling at somebody because you didn't get your pizza may make you feel better, but it makes us feel like shit. You're here to buy two pizzas. We're here to sell a thousand of them. Believe me, we don't run out just to spite you.
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We've had an exceptionally rainy couple of days here chez Breadbin. Yesterday it monsooned from three in the morning until nine, dropping 78 millimeters of rain: a shade over three inches. We haven't seen that much rain in one day here since 1991. Today, it poured again. In the middle of this latest deluge, a cashier called in to work and told us that since he had no ride and it was miserable outside, he wasn't coming in.
It's a good thing I didn't pick up that phone. If I had, this is how the conversation would have gone:
Cashier: "Uh, yeah, it's miserable outside and I don't have a ride, so I'm not coming in today."
Ken: "Oh, really? And how were you going to get here if it was sunny outside?"
C: "On my bike."
K: "Do you have a rain jacket?"
C: "No."
K: "And now you'll never afford one, because another thing you don't have is a job. Goodbye."
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