At work we’re moving to another part of the warehouse. There are several companies sharing the warehouse with Mardel. Hobby Lobby is the largest company; it also is in a couple of other warehouses on the site. Our building also houses Greco, which makes picture frames, and Crafts Etc., which makes crafts. Actually, as near as I can tell, all the crafts are made in China, but they’re stored in our warehouse.

Greco is the oldest of the companies. One of the owners started Hobby Lobby to sell Greco’s frames. Greco is also the smallest of the companies, I think, but they’re still growing, and they needed more space. So they’re moving from one side of Mardel’s part of the warehouse, where they were boxed in, to our other side. Now we get to expand into their old area.

Our move is expected to take six months. We’re only moving a few aisles down, so it’ll be a job for forklifts and pallet jacks. But our boss is creating a whole new shift to do the moving. I volunteered for the new shift because it’s from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. I’m currently leaving for work at 6:20 a.m., and I’m NOT a morning person.

Another advantage to the new shift is that it’ll be more interesting and involve more responsibility. I didn’t realize just how much responsibility until this week when I was informed that I would be taking over as the inventory empress’ chief slave. There are currently two people who do her bidding fulltime. Now I will apparently do ALL of it.

Ever since I started working at Mardel’s warehouse, I envied the inventory slaves; they looked so official walking around with their clipboards, efficiently pulling out bin boxes to count what was inside. When you’re dragging a heavy cart around, pulling books as fast as you can, doing ANYTHING else looks preferable. I wonder if I’ll ever get to do that, I thought, watching Jerry or Brenda make notations and slapping blank, white stickers over location tags, effectively deleting that item from inventory. Oh, the power.

So all this week, Jerry and Brenda have been initiating me in the brotherhood of inventorying. I have learned how to perform the following tasks:

DOD’s (I still don’t know what that stands for…Dead On Delivery, I’ve imagined.)
Zeroes
Sell Downs
New Labels
Moved Items
Duplicate Items
Duplicate Locations

And Monday I’ll learn how to do Final Counts.

All of these tasks are simple enough, yet they are not entrusted to mere mortal in-checkers. One must answer to Laura, the Inventory Dictatress herself.

“Sell Downs” are when we discontinue an item. We had 37 pages to do today. “Zeroes” are checking every SKU (stock-keeping unit) that has gone to zero that week; it’s a quick and easy way of keeping up with inventory.

DOD’s are the most complicated. Whenever a puller needs an item that’s in a location that’s empty, they

1. Curse
2. Check their store order sheet to see how many of that item we’re supposed to have in stock
3. Curse again
4. Helplessly, scan for boxed top-stock in the six surrounding sections
5. Give up and scribble “TO” for “temporarily out” on the order sheet

That “TO” now goes to me. I have to figure out where the missing product went. Sometimes this is easier than others. If I’m lucky, the stupid puller was looking at the wrong location, and the product was there all along. If it’s more complicated, I have to go to the warehouse office, find the file for the particular purchase order from the vendor the last time we got that product in, make sure we actually got it, make sure the product was actually stocked, and then search all the locations of that vendor for my missing product. If I still can’t find it, I have to count all the product in the surrounding locations and turn it into Laura (in case the product was misstocked and already pulled and shipped). Whenever Laura deems I’ve sufficiently proven my loyalty and service to her, my search ends.

DOD’s will be my most common task. After every store has finished being pulled, the order sheets all go to the warehouse office, where they are adjusted and reprinted according to what was actually on the shelves. Next someone in the warehouse office calls over the intercom, “Jerry, DOD’s are ready; Jerry, DOD’s are ready.” And Jerry goes and fetches them. Since I’m working much later than Jerry or Brenda, I’LL be the one to get them, and they’ll say my name over the intercom. Ha ha!

Anyway, Laura is a demanding suzerain, but kind. As long as I serve her carefully and make occasional jokes, I will remain in her good favor. She seems to like me, for some reason.

Which is a good thing, because she’s in charge of the new moving shift.