The B's Knees

I'm about as flexible as your average iron bar. Ask me to touch my toes, and I'll tell you to hand me a chainsaw. In all honesty, I can't reach much below my knees without cheating.
This is, as I've said before, one complication from my premature birth. I have been advised--by an actual doctor, with an actual medical degree--that while flexibility exercises would help me, they could only do so much. (Which I couldn't help but hear as why bother. Stretching is bloody well painful.)

My appalling lack of flexibility has had one, arguably, positive consequence: my knees are invincible.

I've been kneeling since at least kindergarten. Other children would sit cross-legged for story time; little Kenny would look as if he was deep in prayer. I think that was my first clue I was not like other children...they sat cross-legged so comfortably, and every time I tried to mimic them I'd want to scream.

A career stocking shelves has only toughened my knees further. Supremely athletic people I know stare at me in total awe as I slam down to my knees and proceed to knee-walk across the concrete. I can still hear Craig...his voice has been echoing in my head for a year now. "G-baby*," he said, "doesn't that hurt?
"Doesn't what hurt?"
"If I tried to do what you just did, my knee would fall off."
"Didn't feel it."
"Wow".

*in case you're wondering, "G-baby" derives from "Kenny G." At first I loathed the nickname...after a time I grew to accept it, then like it.

 Anyway, there are massive calluses on both my knees. Or at least there were.

Last weekend we had an inventory, my first in my new store. To my relief, the procedures are exactly the same here as they were there. In fact, I was able to show them a shortcut I had developed three inventories ago. So that was okay.
On the other hand, it was still an inventory, and inventories suck. An inventory is the only time you'll find someone in the walk-in freezer for more than a minute or two. In fact, I have found over the years that no matter how much or how little stock I've got on hand, it takes between four and five hours to count the freezer, compared to never more than 90 minutes to count a dairy cooler.
The same holds true in this new location.

I actually thought this was going to be a walk in the park, before I started. For reasons I'd rather not get into, I have quite a lot of stock on hand, but relatively few skus. That's a recipe for an easy count. Except I had forgotten about all the part-cases.
I used to have one ironclad rule in dairy and frozen: if a full case won't fit on the shelf, don't stock any of it. Transgressors got the Death Glare for a first offense, There was never a second.

Here, people have no choice but to stock half, third and quarter cases. This store is very small, and yet has almost as many products...so each item's only got one facing on the shelf, for the most part, which in turn means whole cases almost never fit up.

Part cases are a bitch to count.

Worse, the layout of this freezer is such that there is a lot of stock on the bottom shelves, which are quite deep. So I was down on my knees on a concrete floor for several minutes at a time. A COLD concrete floor. In fact, there are shards of ice in places.

Long story short, I got some kind of frostbite on both knees, which morphed into blisters, which popped...taking my calluses with them. My knees are now raw and EXTREMELY sensitive.

Eva tells me eventually those calluses will grow back, but it;s going to "hurt like hell" in the meantime. She's right about that last part, at least.