I May Have to Slit My Wrists: Pt II

It's that time of year again, it's stocktake day.

Those of you that don't work in retail, distribution, warehousing or similar lines of work might not know what that is but trust me, avoid it like the plague.

Unfortunatly, thanks to Tony Blair's "education, education, education" promise, I now have to pay my way through Uni by slaving away at a highstreet electrical retailer.
Most of the time, it's just about bareable. Once you factor out the maniac boss, incompetent trainee's and customers expecting the impossible, it's not that bad. It pays the bills and to boot, it's more interesting than stacking shelves at ASDA.

That is until one Sunday around this time of year. Next Sunday is our annual "100% stocktake". That basically means the store is closed for the day, but the possitves end there. We're in at 8:00am and spend the next however many hours counting every stock item in the store. Considering that the store is about 7,000sq ft and we have about 11,000 different lines, that's no mean feat.
After we've done that, we get someone to head down to Costco, pick-up some of 18in pizzas and charge them to the company bill (OK, I lied earler, this is now where the possitives end).
After we've done that, we have to count the stuff again. Then, we count it again and if we're really lucky, once more for good measure.

And you can guarantee something will go wrong. It's an inevitability in the same vain as the moon changing, Christmas coming once a year and it raining at Odsal. Either someone will count something wrong, someone will mistake a 6 for a 9 or that a handheld scanner will crash / break / get dropped / get thrown across the room in a fit of rage.

Last year I ended up starting at about 7:00am and leaving about 11:45pm although this year I have a plan. Last year one of the lads got away early by pretending to fall asleep - that'll be my trick this time around (assuming that my gaffer doesn't read this, in which case I would never dream of such a tactic).

If all you people didn't want to buy things, then I might get an easy life. So when you're sat in the beer garden next Sunday enjoying the weather, just spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to work in the evil retail machine.