There are things people say by rote, given certain situations. They're often patently obvious, utterly asinine...or both. At funerals, you hear a dozen of 'em. "She's in a better place." Really? And you know this how? "He looks so natural!" Yeah, it's a game he plays, laying there all stiff and unmoving in a coffin. He's played that game since he was a wee child. "This is all part of God's Plan." And even if the bereaved believes in God, she probably doesn't give a spadeful of grave dirt about God's Plan.
And I've noticed whenever I'm sick, somebody always says a variant on "well, there's a bug going around." Of course there is: there are always a myriad of bugs 'going around'. I'm not exactly sure how this piece of information is supposed to make me feel any better. Does it maybe make the speaker feel better, that this particular bug missed him? Well, cough. Cough, cough, cough. There ya go, buddy. Misery loves company, and all that.
Part of it's stress. Work has been much more of an adjustment that I'd suspected it would be. Of course it's busier. But just how much busier is almost impossible to forecast, and it's complicated further because people's buying patterns have changed dramatically.
Take eggs. My old egg counter had five levels eight feet long; all the generic large eggs were in slats on the bottom. The new counter is also eight feet long (albeit just four levels), but all the large eggs are behind glass doors just beyond it. I grasped the intent as soon as I saw the planogram: this would make stupid people think we didn't sell large eggs any more, and they'd then buy the more expensive brown/premium eggs.
But once again I drastically underestimated the number of stupid people. This probably makes me stupid myself, but it's hard not to stand there stupidly gazing at the numbers: brown egg sales have almost tripled, while generic large sales have fallen by half. Now, the stupid people are gradually getting smarter, but the pace at which they do I can only guess, and guess wrongly, at.
My milk is on rollers now, and I still can't seem to order enough of it. I've had to rejig the deliveries to maximize my cooler space, of which I don't have much, because...
It's so busy that all of us have a marked tendency to overorder. We've got a big, big ad coming up, the product for which was booked, as usual, five weeks ago. We were given two delivery dates, both of which were before the two week flyer began. In other words, I have to warehouse two weeks' worth of stock. My freezer, big as it now is, is completely jammed, with lots more product coming. Other stores have the luxury of a reefer trailer. Me, I'd like some reefer: our lot isn't big enough for our customers, let alone a tractor trailer.
I spent yesterday building displays and piling stuff to the ceiling in the freezer. By the time my shift was over I thought I might pass out. I feel quite a bit better today, but nowhere near 100%. Good thing I'm off.
-----
TV alert: HBO's A Game of Thrones. This is how you bring epic fantasy to the small screen: one book = one season of faithful translation. The acting is uniformly superb, the writing is top-notch, and even people who haven't read the books are raving about this series. It's the first TV I've watched religiously since -- ha!-- Joan of Arcadia. Hopefully this one lasts longer than two seasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment