Kenny The RGIS Rat Bastard (aka F.U.R.B.Y.)

After the five of us finished our second RGIS training session, we were one by one called into a small inner office to meet Kenny, the District Manager. Kenny was a short, fair-haired pink-faced man in his early thirties. He seemed extremely upbeat and very cheerful, and had the pinkest skin I had ever seen. It wasn't just fair skin with a rosy flush, but his face, ears, hands-all visible skin was a solid, bright Play-Doh pink. Very weird, and unnatural looking. Much later I found out via the district grapevine that Kenny was a heavy drinker (he would regularly put away a 12-pack of Coors Light every day), and someone said that alcoholics tend to be very pink because the alcohol brings the blood close to the surface of the skin. I don't know if that's true, but it would explain Kenny disturbing pinkness.

Finding out several months later about Kenny's favorite beverage, Coors Light, would also explain the beer cans all over the office. Every single wastepaper basket in the office was loaded with beer cans. In the front office behind the counter, in Kenny's inner office, in the storeroom, in the bathroom...EVERYWHERE. Now, to his credit, I never saw Kenny drink before or during an inventory. But afterwards, at the office...apparently a different story indeed.
One time an RGIS Ops (Operations) Manager dropped by the office when Kenny was out, and supposedly saw all the Coors Light cans in the wastepaper baskets. He asked the office secretary, Betty, "Whose are these?" Betty took pity on Kenny (she liked Kenny for some odd reason, and was always afraid he was going to get fired, which was perceptive of her), so she said the beer cans were hers. Betty knew that she could get away with beer at the office (at least once, anyways) because she was highly valued by RGIS. She was the only one who knew how to do a lot of stuff at the office, like time sheets, payroll, etc. AM Jeff once told me that if Betty wanted to ruin a new Manager she could do so very easily, by not telling the new Manager how to do things on the computer.

Kenny could have been a dead ringer for Archie Andrews, the comic book character, minus the checkered pants and black sweater vest with a big 'R' on the chest. Kenny dressed even worse than a comic book character. He liked to wear horrible mustard-yellow dress shirts that clashed with his neon-pink skin.

DM Kenny was a contradiction of sorts. On one hand, he could appear to be quite friendly and personable to your face (probably due to his beloved Coors Light), but behind your back he might be wielding a knife, ready to plunge it between your shoulder blades. He had a reputation of promising raises and then never giving them, of promising more hours and then scheduling you for less, and making rude comments about your counting ability out of your earshot. One auditor named Hilda became so frustrated with Kenny that she found a drink called 'Rat Bastard' and went into Kenny's office and slammed it down on his desk. "Here, just for you, Kenny," she told him. Kenny apparently just thought that Hilda was only kidding and laughed. But word got around, and from then on Kenny's nickname was 'Rat Bastard'. Odious Moby embellished upon it and started referring to Kenny as "FURBY", for (F)uck Yo(u) (R)at (B)astard, or F.U.R.B.

Kenny gave me a yellow legal pad to write down the dates and locations of upcoming inventories. He sat behind his desk and began leafing through a big plastic binder. "Let's see...January 4th, 6 am, Miller's Stockman, Santa Rosa Plaza... January 5th, meet at the office here at 6:45 am to go to San Rafael to do the Tuesday Morning store... Jan 6th, 6:00 pm at Montgomery Village for Ross Department Store..." and so on. He then rattled off a string of Long's Drugs store locations and dates and chuckled, "After this, you'll be a Long's Drugs expert!" I smiled and agreed, even though I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
I accepted all the jobs that he gave me except for one: Macy's in San Francisco, to start at 8:00 pm. I told Kenny that I wasn't too thrilled on driving all the way to S.F., and Kenny explained that for jobs we did out of our district we would meet at the office and commute to the store in company-owned vans. These vans were sometimes driven by the Area or District Manager, but most often driven by an RGIS auditor picked by the AM or DM at the last minute. I mean they picked just about anyone to drive us. Old men in their seventies with bad eyesight, young guys with glassy eyes, people with suspended driver's licenses, ANYONE. RGIS was supposed to check the DMV record of any auditor who was chosen to drive a company van, but to my knowledge Jeff, Dean, or Kenny never once did this. They didn't seem to care too much about following company policies. They just wanted to get the whole herd of auditors off to the store, in any way possible.

I asked Kenny what time I would get back to the office after Macy's. He said around 6:00 am. The idea that I would work all night and then get home in time to sleep just as dawn was breaking was unthinkable to me and I politely declined. Kenny said okay, then something like, "Welcome to RGIS, see you again soon!", and I left the office clutching my little yellow schedule.
Of course, in the months and years to come I would become quite adept and used to sleeping in broad daylight. All of us long-term auditors had to learn to catch a quick catnap (usually 40 minutes or so) whenever possible in order to survive a hectic work week. These bits of sleep were often the only time I got to close my eyes for days.



The schedules of stores that we were to inventory were frequently mad. That is to say, often we would do stores back to back to back, and I would only have enough time in between inventories to dash home, grab a bite to eat, quickly freshen up and run out again. Sometimes I wouldn't be able to go home at all between stores. I would leave a Whole Foods inventory in San Anselmo at 4:00 am (having began counting there the night before at 7:00 pm), drive 50 miles north to Petaluma, stop at an all-night Jack-In-The-Box for a burger and Coke, gulp those down, drive to a Long's Drugs down the street, park and catch maybe 20 minutes sleep in my car before I had to report inside the store at 5:15 am. Insanity.
Thanks to this crazy way of earning a paycheck, during my stint in RGIS hell I would come to make caffeine my very best friend. My dearest companion, without whom I could not have survived. I would consume loads of coffee, Red Bull (yuck), Sobe Adrenaline (yum), Mountain Dew only because I'd heard it contained more caffeine than Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola when I tired of the putridness of Mountain Dew, and plenty of No-Doz. One auditor named Cory even tried coffee-flavored yogurt. Anything to stay awake.

For me, anything legal that is. I stuck to the safe-and-somewhat-sane methods of staying awake. Many other auditors (and managers) delved into other less wholesome ways of keeping their eyes open long enough to count cans of soup and bottles of wine. There was much whispering around our district and other ones of who was snorting cocaine, with people claiming to have seen this auditor or that manager coming out of a bathroom in an Albertson's Supermarket with a bit of white powder under their nose or continually sniffling suspiciously during a long drive to a Sear's Department store in San Bruno. I never actually saw anyone do drugs during the time I worked for RGIS, but during that time I heard many rumors of drug use. MANY. Veteran auditors would tell me in my first year that "Well, that's why this company never does drug testing. If they did, they would lose most of their auditors and managers."
So between the sleep deprivation and rumored drug use it's a wonder anything got counted in an inventory at all. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes certain auditors, Team Leaders, and even Managers would 'plug in the numbers' instead. That is, they would take the totals from the store's previous inventory, change the numbers around a little bit, print out the area, and...presto! Instant inventory! But more on that later.

(Coming up: My first day as an official RGIS auditor. Whee!)