January, 1999. I was standing outside the locked main entrance to
the Santa Rosa Plaza mall at 5:45 am. Like a good little newbie
auditor I wore a pair of regulation black pants, all-black shoes and
RGIS polo shirt. Nothing over the shirt, and it felt like 30 degrees
F outside.
I was so anxious to make a good impression on my first day that I
followed the dress code rules to the tee. No jacket, even though I
was freezing. And of course the all-black shoes. This was stressed
many times during my sentence with RGIS. You had to wear solid black
shoes, with no other color on them at all. Once this guy wore black
running shoes with white soles showing, and DM Kenny went into a
panic and grabbed a roll of black electrical tape out of the company
van and covered the sides of the white soles with the plastic tape.
All this because some of the Ops (Operations) managers were due to
make an appearance at this inventory, and Kenny didn't want to get
chewed out for an auditor dress code infraction. Not that it
mattered. Even without the shoe problem, Kenny usually got nailed on
about half a dozen screw-ups anyway.
Finally Dean came out of the parking garage with a couple of
auditors all carrying soft-sided brown suitcases. AAM (Associate Area
Manager, basically an Area Manager in training) Dean was running this
inventory. When he reached the main door he said to me, "I
recognized you because you were shivering so hard." I noticed
that everyone else was wearing coats and sweaters. Damn it. I didn't
realize it then, but you could wear a jacket TO the inventory, but
not IN the inventory. Looking back on it now, it would have been
pretty barbaric for RGIS to tell their employees, "We don't care
if it's 20 degrees F below outside, nothing over your polo shirt!"
But again, I was newbie, anxious to please, and did not want to make
any mistakes at all. Oh well.
We entered the mall on the first floor and went directly to a
store called 'Miller's Stockman' (soon to undergo a name change to
'Corral West Ranchwear'). 'Stockman' carried jeans, tee shirts and
some ranch wear, like cowboy boots and long black duster overcoats.
'Miller's Stockman' was my first inventory, and it was a disaster.
At least for me. NOTHING Dean taught me in the training sessions
was even remotely similar to what I was supposed to be doing. All the
other auditors there were veterans and knew exactly what to do. I was
the only newbie and I was completely clueless. There was no counting
of quantities and keying them into the audit machine. It was all
scan, scan, scan. Scan every single shirt, pants and pair of boots.
No one told me what to do if something would not scan, and of course
this was not covered in the training sessions that I'd had
previously. The other auditors were very grumpy and unfriendly. I
would ask them for help and they would say things like, "I don't
know, ask Dean" and "I'm busy, ask Dean." Assholes.
So I would go to Dean and ask him how to do something, and he
would say, "I'll be with you in a minute," and then forget
all about me, or finally come over, try to show me how to correct a
mistake, and be so vague and confusing with his explanations that I
could have screamed with frustration.
Eventually, after I had screwed up several areas, Dean gave me the
easiest section in the store to count: boots. How could anyone fuck
up something as easy as counting boxes of shoes? I could that day,
and did. Nothing was going right for me. Aaaaarggghh.
The only time I even came close to having a light moment that
morning was when I was counting those damn boots. I found a pair of
ratty old running shoes under a bench and I asked a store clerk, "Um,
am I supposed to count these?" The guy laughed and said no, that
a customer must have tried on a pair of boots and shoplifted them by
walking out of the store wearing the boots, leaving his sneakers
behind. The clerk held up the pair of sneakers and yelled to another
store clerk, "Hey Bob, it happened again!"
The inventory didn't last very long, maybe 4 or 5 hours (it
probably would have been over a lot sooner had it not been for my
screw-ups needing to be recounted). I remember at one point thinking,
"What the hell am I doing here? I hate this I hate this I hate
this! This sucks. I shouldn't be counting this crap, I should be
buying it." Completely illogical thought, since A: Without said
crappy job I couldn't afford to buy anything, and B: I wouldn't be
caught dead shopping at a lame redneck store like Miller's Stockman.
It was just me feeling frustrated over all the mistakes I had made,
and my coworkers distinct lack of support, and Dean's confusing
vagueness. Whatever. One thing was clear to me. This was my first and
last day as an RGIS auditor. I was never coming back. Never never
NEVER.
(Coming up: my second day as an RGIS auditor.)
13 comments:
Oh my gosh, this one had me laughing so hard! You were afraid to wear a jacket? LOL! And how do you screw up boxes of boots? ROFL!
BTDT, unfortunatly.
I pretty much screwed up every area I touched my first day also. I was counting CDs, and that's about as easy to mess up as boxes of shoes. It was my boss, the DM of the district running this store, a tiny mall store. So here I am at this store working for the one guy I thought I needed to impress, and messing up all my areas.
Before I really got the hang of it a few shifts later, they sent me to a store outside the district that we were supporting. I had no idea or I'd have said "no way". Talk about feeling completly lost. By this time I was starting to recognize faces, but I walked in to this store, and there was no one I knew. At least it was at this store that some nice red-shirt guy taught me how to search and correct my own areas.
Do you remember how hard it was to distinguish your beeps from the beeps of other audit machines on your first day?
I can just immagine Kevin with the black tape. LOL!! They expect us to color our shoes with a black sharpie here if they aren't solid black. However, dress code tends to be another one of those policies that is sometimes rigid and sometimes ignored.
We have one gal who likes to wear maroon stretch pants, and another one who wears royal blue pants. Then there's a gal who likes to wear her black fuzzy slippers to work. No one has noticed.
8:45 pm:
I know! I was such a feeb! "Can't wear a jacket or they'll get mad at me!" It's funny how anxious I was to please when I first started, and then towards the end there was just so many times when I didn't give a crap about anything during an inventory. "Did I count that? Oh, screw it, I can't remember and who cares."
Oh yuck, I remember scanning CDs in Wherehouse Records and Best Buy. What a pain in the ass. I mean, Wherehouse was okay, except there I was always put to count the DVDs (after I had been with RGIS for a while), because those heavy plastic security boxes that they're in are hard to scan through, so a lot of them we had to enter manually. But in Best Buy, what I hated there was that there was one Best Buy employee assigned to every RGIS auditor, and I guess Best Buy told their employees to watch us and make sure we scanned each individual CD (and not batch, natch). So okay, not too much of a problem, right? Except the Best Buy employees had no concept of personal space, and would stand right behind you. I mean, RIGHT behind you. I might take a step back while I was scanning the CDs, you know, to get a better angle, and step on a Best Buy's guys toes. So many of us auditors complained to our AM that he had to go to the Best Buy manager and ask his people to give us some space. Whew!
Oh yeah, the beeps! And not just on the first day. TM Eric used to play this great trick when we were at an Albertson's Supermarket. They were no-scan, all financial. Someone would be counting furiously, you know, really in a groove, flying down an aisle, and Eric would sneak up behind them and push a few buttons on his machine. That auditor would think it was his machine going off, hit clear, and enter in the price and quantity again. Eric would do this several times, and each time the auditor would have no clue and think it was his machine. He did this to me several times, and I would get so frustrated because I thought the stupid prices wouldn't go in my stupid machine, and I would keep hitting clear and trying again and again, getting madder and madder. Finally Eric couldn't help himself and he would start laughing, and then I would finally figure out what was going on.
Oh, I would be soo mad if they made me color my shoes with a Sharpie!
Glad you're enjoying my blog. I'm going to try to do about 2 entries a week. Please keep reading, everyone! I really enjoy your comments!
When I started in May 2005, My DM told we could wear tan/grey pants non-jeans pants. BUT we could wear jeans to certain stores such as Home Depot. However, that policy was changed completey in March this year to all black non-jeans pants. I wear black EMT pants myself. Shoes were fine as long as they were a dark color.
But that electrical tape thing cracked me up, Our Ops guy would notice that and would probably laugh too, but be forgiving about it.
You know whats funny? here in the Northeast, I stand out side in my polo when its freezing on break because I am like boiling hot :P
Miller's Stockroom, I've seen the stores when I was down in California once, there like a Tractor Supply Company store but with less tractor supply and more of the clothes dept they have as I recall. Now thats werid thats were they sent you. We usually have the first store for new auditors a grocery store and see where you go from there. My first store was grocery store and I surprisngly did well.
They didn't tell you about SKU Checks in training? HAHAHAHAHA, they might as well not told you about the K key if they did that :P
The others ignored you? Oh jeez, everyone was nice to me on my first day the few times I had some issues. Like in that first store, I was asked by the AM running the store if I did some clip strips in the aisle I was working on. I said I wasn't sure and he looked at me and goes "Well, you at least your honest, let me show you how to find that out".
Actually, you know what, 4 or 5 hours is pretty good for a store like that, even with your screwups.
Anonymous at 8:25 pm:
I was always burning up in a store, probably because we usually did the inventories after store hours, when they would turn off the air-conditioning. With all of those sweaty smelly RGIS bodies filling a stockroom, it could get pretty humid and gamy in there. I was always glad to go outside on a break (when we got them), even if it was freezing.
Did you guys do the clip strips as a separate area, or include them with that sections? We did them as an entirely separate area, when we remembered to do them at all. And let me tell you, no manager in my dist. would have been as nice about an auditor forgetting the strips as yours was. We usually would get a groan and rolling of the eyes.
Misfit,
Stockrooms I understand, there's some JCPenney stores that well in the summer, the AC doesn't back there 100% so its boiling. I was in one of those and well, the back room manager told me the reason why AC was ineffective back there, its because the vents were actually clogged. I was boiling back there and sweating like hell that sweat was dripping off me like Niagara Falls. I empied out my water bottle in like one hour and well I remember a female (yes I remember that fact well lol) store person saw me look at my water bottle and seeing its completely empty and said to me "I can put some ice cold water in that for you." Which she did and that made my day :)
In that particular store, Clip Strips were not a seperate area, but we were told to try to put them somewhere obvious along the way, like at the start of the area or shelf or at the end, but anywhere really is fine because it can be figured out if it has very easily.
I think the AM running the show that day had lots of new people who said they did the clip strips when they did not after investigation. I bet he was going in his head he was going "He's going to say Yes and its going to be a lie" and I said "I don't know" explaining his odd look and then helped me find out. He appreciated me telling the truth basically.
BTW, I will post with a name for now so you can put a name with me :P
Thanks Agent Skelly. It's nice that you put a name to your comments. I hope other people do the same. Please, everyone, aliases are fine! You'll notice that I'm using one of course, since my true tales are none too flattering to my old district, or the company in general. However, I think that eventually somebody familiar with my old district is going to figure out who I am sooner or later. I hope later.
Thanks again to everyone for their comments. I hope you're enjoying my RGIS blog. See you with a new entry soon!
Oh I am sure these are all going in my files at HQ with a note "Managment Material" :P
My first day was not so bad. I did Abercrombie and Fitch and, like you, I was eager to please and tried to do everything right for our DM who was running the store. I ended up being sent home early because she scheduled about 20 more auditors to the store than we really needed and I already had my two hours so I could go on home. My second inventory I did not even have an APH because we over scheduled again and we needed to one-on-one with store personnel. I ended up making boxes for them since they were going to be sending out some of their inventory after we were done. Now my third store is where I fucked up. It was a Hollister's and Co at the mall and I was scheduled to do back room. I blended three areas on my first ticket and the total was off (though the store manager didn't care because they do not even respond to SKU checks, they just say scan something else in the area for the item). I screwed up nearly every area I was in and tried frantically to fix them until my AM, Bob, ame and told me to not worry since they were not going to be checking our areas so long as counted more items in it than what they precounted. Btw, how can you miscount an area that has one piece in it? There were several that night...
PseudoShadow: Is Hollister and Co. a clothing store? As a newbie I did mostly clothing stores my first week. And lol! about screwing up an area with only 1 item. That could have been me, my first day.
Yes. Hollister and Co. is a clothing store akin to Ambercrombie and Fitch. In fact, they are a A&F brand.
From the Hollister Wiki:
"According to the company's handbook, John M. Hollister is a fictitious sailor with a love of the South Pacific and the sea who traveled the world and ultimately settled in Santa Barbara, CA and in 1922 established the company in Laguna Beach as a vendor of South Pacific goods. His first son, John Jr., took over in 1953 and incorporated surf apparel and equipment. His younger brother, Todd, took over in 1977 after John Jr. died in a surfing accident, and turned it into today's Hollister Co."
Holy freaking hell! You just described my first day to the letter! Except it was a Smart Set, I did wear a jacket cause Eastern Canada in January is just a little bit fatal without one, and when asked what to do if a tag didn't scan, I was instructed to just scan the next tag twice!
I was told to stay close to a woman that would show me the ropes, only to find out not long after that she'd only been working about three months longer than me, and during the slow time of year, no less. I made a lot of mistakes, but about half of them were from getting bad directions from her.
My schedule at that time had exactly 4 stores on it, but I guess merely showing up was enough of a passing grade that I was given two more, both involved getting up at 4:00 am to catch a van for a 3 hour drive through the mountains to do dollar stores.
Hoser: Do you find it kind of comforting that other people have experienced common RGIS pains too? I know I do ;-). I just wish I had started this blog when I was still employed by RGIS, I know it would have helped me a lot to know that other people had similar experiences to mine.
I started off by counting Home Depot which I learned to like fairly quickly beceause I always new that once we got to paint the store was done . Worst store to count were clothing stores and make up store were on my "I'm not going to this event list" count each piece one by one was so tedious and then if you came to help another team their supervisors would give you the lowest areas and your count would always be low. The only time we were allowed to wear sweaters or jackets was when we were counting the front of the stores near the doors because they would open every few minutes .
Post a Comment