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3 a.m. Petco, or, never, ever again
Apr. 19th, 2005 01:24 pmLast night (or more accurately, early this morning) we had to do a 3 a.m. Petco inventory. Highly irregular, and the only explanation offered was that we couldn't fit them in during their first schedule choice so the only alternative was freakin' 3 a.m. No other possible time, uh-huh. I agreed to do it out of pure habit of never saying no, then later insisted I be put into a 9 p.m. Old Navy before it so I wouldn't have to try to sleep and then wake up in the middle of the night to go to work. This plan backfired, however, when the Old Navy was so uncustomarily overstaffed that we finished at midnight, with plenty of time to go home in between after all. I made the mistake of grabbing a 45-minute nap, waking up feeling 15 times worse than before I lay down. I loaded my stainless steel Thermos with some high-octane Nescafe Ice Java and away I went.
Never have I seen such a collection of unhappy faces. My friend Tamara walked in with such a menacing glower that I immediately christened her the poster child for 3 a.m. inventories. Our bad attitudes were not improved by being told we had to "team count" all the pet food one-on-one with a store employee. This meant standing there while a Petco person held bags of dog food for us to scan, then they counted the bags and told us the quantity. So they dragged us out of bed in the middle of the night to do their inventory but they wanted their own employees to do the actual counting. I put up with this for about a half hour before finding an excuse to count elsewhere. Throughout the store they had stuck their little pink "team count" signs on things like dog/cat food bowls, cat litter and scratching posts, signs which I rebelliously ignored. I think I can tell the difference between bags of cat litter just as well as their employees. I hate when I'm not left alone to do my job.
A small consolation was that their people were bitching even louder than us over the insane scheduling, proof that this decision was made by white men in expensive suits who at that moment were most likely home in bed, dreaming their corporate fat-cat dreams. These were probably the same white men who devised the stupidly nonsensical program where the item's UPC code drove whether we could put in quantities or have to scan each item "auto-one." Thus things like greeting cards, cat toys and magazines had to be scanned one at a time, while things like cat condos, fish tanks and bird cages (i.e. things that were more likely to have just one) allowed us to put in quantities. Stupid. Nonsensical. Downright asinine. You don't know pain until you see the sunrise from the floor of a pet store while scanning 80 feathered cat balls one at a time.
On the plus side, at about 5:30 a.m. the sight of a bottle of dog shampoo with a badly photoshopped picture of a kitten apparently lathering up a terrier's head is absurdly hilarious.
Then, the drive home at 7 a.m. through rush hour traffic, with everyone driving so snippily, impatient to get to work when dear god all I want to do is get to my bed. Then lying in bed thoroughly jacked up on caffeine, enduring the accusing stare of my cat who poutily spent the night on her window perch rather than in bed with me where she belonged. Awake again after only three hours to get to work at my other job.
Oh, it's gonna be a long day.
Never have I seen such a collection of unhappy faces. My friend Tamara walked in with such a menacing glower that I immediately christened her the poster child for 3 a.m. inventories. Our bad attitudes were not improved by being told we had to "team count" all the pet food one-on-one with a store employee. This meant standing there while a Petco person held bags of dog food for us to scan, then they counted the bags and told us the quantity. So they dragged us out of bed in the middle of the night to do their inventory but they wanted their own employees to do the actual counting. I put up with this for about a half hour before finding an excuse to count elsewhere. Throughout the store they had stuck their little pink "team count" signs on things like dog/cat food bowls, cat litter and scratching posts, signs which I rebelliously ignored. I think I can tell the difference between bags of cat litter just as well as their employees. I hate when I'm not left alone to do my job.
A small consolation was that their people were bitching even louder than us over the insane scheduling, proof that this decision was made by white men in expensive suits who at that moment were most likely home in bed, dreaming their corporate fat-cat dreams. These were probably the same white men who devised the stupidly nonsensical program where the item's UPC code drove whether we could put in quantities or have to scan each item "auto-one." Thus things like greeting cards, cat toys and magazines had to be scanned one at a time, while things like cat condos, fish tanks and bird cages (i.e. things that were more likely to have just one) allowed us to put in quantities. Stupid. Nonsensical. Downright asinine. You don't know pain until you see the sunrise from the floor of a pet store while scanning 80 feathered cat balls one at a time.
On the plus side, at about 5:30 a.m. the sight of a bottle of dog shampoo with a badly photoshopped picture of a kitten apparently lathering up a terrier's head is absurdly hilarious.
Then, the drive home at 7 a.m. through rush hour traffic, with everyone driving so snippily, impatient to get to work when dear god all I want to do is get to my bed. Then lying in bed thoroughly jacked up on caffeine, enduring the accusing stare of my cat who poutily spent the night on her window perch rather than in bed with me where she belonged. Awake again after only three hours to get to work at my other job.
Oh, it's gonna be a long day.
