Whenever we did an inventory, along with the bags of audit
machines and lasers that we carried into the store we also brought
along a couple bags of yellow tags. These paper tags, measuring about
2"x10", were used by the RGIS auditors to mark areas in the
store that had been counted. That way, there would be no question as
to what had been counted and what hadn't. If the store's manager
might be a little concerned that this shelf of books or that rack of
shirts had been missed, then the RGIS manager could point to the
yellow tag marking that section and show the store's employee that
indeed that area of stock had been counted.
That was the way it was supposed to work. In my district of
course, nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to. For one
thing, most of us were too lazy or unmotivated to tag properly. We
were supposed to tag the beginning and ending of every shelf, but
most of us just tagged the end of each shelf, or every other shelf.
Some people would just stick in one tag for the entire gondola or
side of merchandise counted, and quite a few people didn't tag at
all. District Manager Kenny might raise a little fuss, but he never
did anything about it so we continued to tag haphazardly.
Also, Kenny was always too cheap to order more tags. He was
supposed to pay for them out of the office petty cash fund, but for
some mysterious reason that petty cash fund always seemed short of
money (Moby claimed it was because Kenny's wife had a habit of
dipping into it for pocket money but no one had any proof of that).
We would start off the year with several bags chock full of tags,
but by around mid-summer we would be down to one bag, about half
full. At that point DM Kenny would panic about the tag shortage, and
start to get very militant about the tags, and where they were
disappearing to. When other districts would show up to help us out in
one of our big stores, like a Kmart or Target, at the end of the
inventory Kenny would stand by the exit and check the out-of-towner's
tag bags (little cloth pouches worn on the auditor's belts). If he
saw tags in them, Kenny would tell those auditors, "Hey, those
are OUR tags", and make them empty their bags. Of course, when
we traveled to another district to help out we always stuffed our tag
bags full. Kenny never had a problem with that, naturally. If his
auditors could save him a few bucks by pilfering another district's
tags, then sweet!
The tags had other ways of disappearing, besides slipping past the
watchful eyes of our District Manager. Lots of times Kenny or Jeff
would forget to tell us to pull tags (remove and collect them after
the inventory was done) in the back room of a store, and the store's
employees would just throw them out.
A good number of yellow (and red and green and blue) tags also
vanished from the district due to my passive/aggressive behavior.
Because Kenny fretted so much over the dwindling supply of tags, and
because he was so despised by me, I took a perverse pleasure in
carrying home from every inventory my own tag bag crammed full of
tags. I had no possible use for them (save for a preposterous fantasy
of using them in some sort of massive pop-art project, like a giant
collage or something). I just took a secret, childish delight in
squirreling away those damn tags. Thanks to Kenny I still have to
this day five large boxes full of neatly sorted yellow (and red and
green and blue) tags. And still no use for them.
Some of the yellow tags also vanished due to their handy use as
scratch paper. For instance, auditors would use them to write down
last minute additions to their schedules, as frequently we would be
finishing up one inventory, and be asked by a Team Leader or Manager
if we could stop by another inventory still going on in a different
store. "Well, as long as you're going by Wherehouse Records on
your way home, couldn't you just stop by there to see if they need
any help?" And a yellow tag would be used to write down the
location of and directions to that store. The tag would get folded up
and placed in someone's pocket and never again see the light of
another inventory.
We also lost a lot of tags in parking lots. The auditors in my
district were fond of tagging each other's cars. There was no rhyme
or reason to it. We would tag the cars of people we liked, people we
didn't like, whatever. The only goal was to get as many tags on the
car as possible. So, in addition to the most obvious spots, like
under the windshield wipers and on the antenna, a bunch of tags would
get stuck in the cracks around the doors, hood and trunk of the car,
and some would go in the tire rims as well.
In order to pull off a really big tag job, you needed quite a bit
of time to operate. So it was usually the guy that had to stay behind
and help the manager close out the inventory whose car got covered
with tags. That poor sucker would be inside the store, doing recounts
and pulling tags (how ironic!), while a couple of auditors would be
out in the parking lot smothering his car with tags. Then, when the
out-of-luck auditor would finally be allowed to escape the night-long
inventory, he would drag his tired ass out to the parking lot and
find his car covered with yellow tags. After whimpering for a while,
he would spend some time pulling all the tags off of his car, throw
them to the ground, and drive home sobbing.
Or he might just do as rotund Moby did, after his car got tagged
one night during a J.C. Penney's inventory. He had to go to another
inventory right after leaving Penney's, and was tired and didn't feel
like pulling all those tags off of his Chevy Suburban. So he drove to
the next store at 3:30 am, yellow tags still dripping off his car,
and leaving a trail of them on the streets of Santa Rosa.
I tagged a few cars during my time with RGIS (see above
paragraph), but there was one particular tagging incident that I was
most proud of, chiefly because I tagged a manager's van, and someone
else got blamed for it.
It started out one afternoon, as DM Kenny had asked me to meet at
the office at 4:00 pm to go to a CSK (auto parts) store in San
Rafael. He wanted me to be a part of the early crew and go in and
count the back room, before the sales floor got started. However, he
got the start time wrong and had me arrive at the office an hour
earlier than necessary. Plus, he couldn't get the program downloaded
to the portable. He kept having trouble with the phone modem or
something. That took another hour. By the time we were ready to leave
I was in a horrible mood, and that only worsened as I learned that I
would have to ride alone to the store with Leo. Team Leader Leo was
foul Moby's brother, and just as revolting as Moby, hygiene-wise. In
the personality department he wasn't much better, as evidenced by his
district nickname, Lil' Hitler.
It was a terrible night all the way around. I did manage to catch
a bit of a break as the inventory ended, though. Instead of having to
ride back to the office with Lil' Hitler, I instead rode back to
Santa Rosa with Robbie, one of the other auditors. And as we arrived
back at the office a golden opportunity awaited me.
There, parked right smack at the front door of our district office
was Kenny's van. And me with a tag bag full of yellow tags. It was
after midnight, the office was closed and not a soul around. Oh,
happy birthday to me!
Robbie parked his car and I hopped out. I told him what I was
going to do and he laughed and said that since he was no fan of
Kenny's either he would join me. We had a fine time tagging the DM's
van. In addition to all the usual hot spots, we were able to slap a
number of tags on all the windows and doors of the van, since it had
rained for most of the night and the van was still wet. The tags
stuck anywhere we placed them. It was silly and childish, but we were
laughing hysterically, letting off some post-inventory steam and
having fun doing so.
When both of our tag bags were finally depleted, Robbie and I said
goodnight to each other and drove away in our cars. The evening had
ended on a high note for me, but the best was yet to come.
The next morning we were all at a Long's Drugs inventory when
gross-out Moby came up to me. He asked me if I knew who had tagged
Kenny's van. I of course played innocent and said "No, of course
not", and "Why? Did Kenny's van get tagged?" Moby said
that yes, it had gotten tagged at the office, but that wasn't all.
Apparently it had misted all night long, and the yellow tags stayed
put on the van. Then, when dawn arrived the sky cleared and the sun
broke out fully. The hot sun dried all of the tags and they were
stuck like glue to the van. When Kenny arrived at the office and saw
his van he was angry. Then when he discovered that the tags had dried
onto his van, and the only way he could remove them was to peel and
scrape them off in pieces with his fingernails, he was absolutely
furious. It took him forever to clean it up. Yes!
And as if that wasn't great enough, Moby got blamed for it! See,
in a district where quite a few people tagged cars, he was the one
that was really known for doing it. So when Kenny saw his van he
immediately called Moby. "Goddamn it Moby, I know it was you!"
Of course Moby hotly denied it, but I don't think Kenny believed him.
Ever. To this day, several years later, Kenny probably still thinks
it was Moby that tagged his van so memorably. But you and I know the
truth!
(Coming up: Meet Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.)
18 comments:
I'm notorious for being the auditor who over tags on occasions.
We have a large volume of tags here in D354 and in the one year that I so far have been with the company I have only seen a AM order one small box of new tags.
We would get grilled if we tagged like you guys :P
The Red and Green tags, well if we run across them, we are told to not use them and when you go back to bag of tags and put them in the side pocket of the bag.
Now, did anyone tell you about the old style tags? they were 4x10" and had lines to write things. I run int o one once in a while and were instructed if you find one "use it as a bookmark, its worthless".
Yes, we tag cars too, but only with the worthless green and red tags. :P
Whats interesting is that D380 who does all the Wal-Mart inventories in the Northeast, they no longer use tags. They instead use blue stickers which I think works pretty good.
I enjoyed the tag tale.
We also tagged vehicles. I only participated in a couple of taggings myself.
Most of the managers I have worked for in my many years were strict on how exactly items were to be tagged. Though I have met a few that didn't care less. One office we use to help out alot hardly used any tags at all. In fact, whenever we would go and help them out their auditors would make a point of coming over to us to let us know that we were using too many tags.
As a TL I ran alot of small mall stores. Now most of the time I would make sure I was there way ahead of starting time to set up and put up area tags. I use to carry in all the machines, portable and printer myself, so the last thing I wanted to do was to have to carry in an additional bag full of tags. I didn't believe that the better counters needed to tag every shelf on a bay.
So what I would do is just bring what I thought was needed in tags and carry them in the same bag as the machines.
The blue tags that you mention are old Wal-Mart tags. I use to help out the Wal-Mart teams alot when they were doing the stores in our district. They were an odd bunch (not to say the least), but it was good hours and you even had a lunch break.(lol)
Sometimes there were left over yellow tags in our pouches and if anyone happened to put one of those up in a Walmart all hell broke loose. (not that any of us would do that on purpose now)
I was told the reason why they used blue tags in Wal-Mart was because the big shots from Wal-Mart thought that the yellow tags looked tacky. (ummmm, might have a point on this one).
Years ago when there were many more financial inventories the yellow tags had a much more important purpose. For any one who is not a RGISer a financial inventory is where you are capturing dollar amounts rather than quanty or specific skus or upcs in a store. What we use to do was count an area and they on the last tag we would write the dollar amount down. This was so when the person recounting the area came around they could look at the last tag and make the recount come out exact or close enough. I don't think there was any store that I knew of that ever caught on to this practice.
Now, I don't want anyone to think that my district was crooked and deceitful because for the most part we weren't. If a counter put down on one of those yellow tags that they counted $8000 worth of merchandise in an area and the recounter only came up with $7000 we wouldn't let that go. Our practice was more for smaller discrepancies.
Of course this was another practice in which RGIS managers looked the OTHER way, but as I stated in one of my previous blogs, most Am's and Dm's started out as auditors and knew full well what went on.
I remember at one time there was one auditor that worked for us who was just a tad bit unnormal. But he could count well and was reliable so he was kept around. Every so often, (probrably when he was out of meds) he would fold his tags in half before he placed them on a shelf. This would drive the managers crazy. Any the tag pullers as well.
As far as other uses for tags, there a few. The old ones with the lines use to be good for grocercy lists. They are also good for writing notes to each other if you are in a store with a manager who won't let you talk.
But the best use I have seen was at a company outing that we had. It was an hawaiian theme party and one of the TLs made a hula skirt out of them.
agentskelly: I think my district was so grateful that they had any tags at all that they never minded what color they were. In fact, in some stores like Albertson's, we would use different color tags in different areas. Like yellow would be for grocery, red for liquor, and blue and green for lobby (checkouts).
I remember the 4x10 tags, but I don't think I ever saw the ones with lines on them. I thought it was hysterical when the new, slimmer tags came out because RGIS printed their motto on it. "Accuracy is our Primary Concern." Lol! You would have to be an auditor in my district to appreciate that joke.
Here in Northern CA the Wal-Marts are not done by RGIS. They're done by WIS, and they use stickers too instead of tags. I saw WIS counting once in a Safeway. Their machines look exactly like RGIS', plus they all have an alpha keyboard on the audit machine as well. I believe I remember them wearing blue polos. They used to wear just cheapo vests over their regular clothing.
jkat: See, right away you were a much better TL than anyone in my district! I can't ever remember in my 7 years with RGIS any TL being professional enough to arrive early and carry in their own equipment. Usually a couple of auditors would already be at the store, in the parking lot, waiting for the TL or Manager, and we would have to help them carry in the equipment. The area tags would get put up at the last minute, and sometimes we would be short of machines or maybe the AM might have forgotten the lasers, and we would have to key in SKU's while the AM raced back to the office to get a bag of lasers.
Lol! about writing down the dollar amount on the tags, for the recounts. We used to do that in Sally Beauty Supply (quantity count only, no dollars), but they caught on and we had to stop.
Oh, the Hawaiian skirt thing is a great idea! Lol!
Yeah, the blue tags were used for Wal-Mart Inventories. Wal-Mart IS RGIS's largest customer worldwide, FYI.
WIS actaully uses machines that are knock-offs of our A12 series audit machines. They for one thing are not made by AST Technology, and the only thing the same about the machines is the fact they have the same case design.
jkat: You familiar with D380 as well? I think they also did Wal-Marts in MA, but not sure exactly.
I'm always one of the first people, if not THE first there for any store. I show up at least 30 minutes before scheduled inventory time regardless of location. I remember doing my first out-of-district store in Pittsfield, MA and being the first one there and about 15 minutes later the AM running the store shows up with the van load of people and was amazed I was there long before him.
I believe that with Wal-Mart, it's up to the individual stores who they will hire to do their inventories. That explains why the Wal-Marts in my area are done by WIS. I know this because I've seen their area tags still hanging up in the stores from time to time. And their orange stickers.
red tags = topstocks
green tags = GM areas (in grocery store financials)
blue tags = walmart
at least that is how it used to be in our district. walmart inventories now use blue stickies (which are left up for the store people to pull). and we don't bother with differentiating topstock by tag color much anymore (though it is useful). and we only have one or two stores where we use diff. color tags for GM
Individual Walmart stores do not get to pick their own inventory service! There are RGIS and WIS Walmart "Teams" of completely separate auditors that cover an entire geographic area. There are three WIS Walmart teams in California. There is one RGIS Walmart team that covers Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Alaska, and part of Arizona.
Home Depot also uses separate "teams", but RGIS is sole vendor - there is a NorCal team, a San Diego team, and an LA team that cover California. As with Walmart, if a store is too big to be covered solely by the team, local districts send support help.
arzon: loved your comments re tagging! Go for it, be a pioneer and the first to tag cars in your district!
Blogger.com is having some technical problems right now (actually, they've been having problems for the past week), so I'm unable to publish anyone else's comments right now. But I do have them saved, and I'll keep trying to publish them. Hopefully Blogger.com will get it together soon. Thanks for reading!
Maybe I'll be the first to tag a car.... LOL! I was wondering where my comment went. I didn't think you got it.
About WIS... they have these awful machines now. At least here, they do. I don't know about other states/ districts. They don't use the audit machines that look like ours. They're these clunky things that they wear on the wrist that have a key pad and lazer all combined in to one rectangular kind of unit. It has an elastic strap that holds it in place on the wrist. It coudln't be easy (or quick) to key anythign on those. They either have to hold it and key like someone might key a text message, or they press buttons with one finger while the thing attached to their other wrist.
I can't see how carrying that thing strapped to my wrist would be easy or comfortable, and trying to reach some bar codes must be impossible without everything comming off a peg hook or T-bar at a clothes store. The machines are light but but after using it for a few hours, it must start to feel like lead! I would rather use our clunky lazers and have an audit machine strapped to my waist!
I'm behind on the blogs, so I'm reading them one at a time in order, anticipating the next entry. :) I just wanted to comment on the WIS... if I didn't already. Since my last post isn't up yet, I don't remember what I wrote. :p
arzon: Those WIS machines sound crazy! I haven't seen them around here yet. I can't wait to; I have to see these things in action.
Comments on the tagging and WalMart.
Red for Topstock and yellow for regular shelving except for certain accounts - then it's yellow for Grocery, Dairy, and Frozen, and red for GM & HBC; for those accounts that have three colors: Yellow - Grocery, Dairy, & Frozen, Green - GM, and Red for HBC. God help us if we don't take a bag of green to those particular accounts.
I've come to the conclusion that I have worked for RGIS WAY too long because I not only remember the old, fat, lined tags I've used them.
Now they've recently stopped adding the "Accuracy is our Primary Concern" motto to them and very recently they only have a hole punched at one end so you have to have the darned things organized in your pouch so you don't stand there in the aisle twirling them all around trying desperately to hang them on J - hooks on a hole that isn't there. Too cheap for ink and now too cheap to pay for that additional hole.
We have five WalMarts in our immediate geographic ares (mediumish size) and we only do one of them now; Washington has the rest of them and yes, at least here the individual stores decide who they are going to use.
I know the old auditors of D380 along with the previous AM's and DM and I am firmly convinced we have that crew to thank for the loss of those stores.
Do you think flowers and candy would be enough?
anon at 5:40 pm: "Too cheap for ink", or maybe they've given up on the whole "Accuracy Is Our Primary Concern" thing, hmmm? I rather think it's the latter.
And never mind the flowers and candy. Give 'em a pie in the face!
We actually have a new policy in place regarding the placement of tags.
On shelves, you are only required to tag where you stopped on the first and last shelves.
On Peg hooks, the top corners are to be tagged.
On endcaps, only a single tag is necessary.
On freezer doors, only the last freezer door in an area needs to have a tag on/in it.
In my district, we use the blue stickers for Wal-mart unless its top stock then they use green stickers. In most store we use just yellow tags but if green or blue are mixed in (which they usually are) the stores don't mind unless it is a grocery store. Grocery stores have use yellow for Grocery, Dairy, and Freezer doors. Blue is for GM merchandise. Green is for top stock, may be replaced by blue if no green tags are available. In regards to red tags, we have very few and those that we do have go in a special bag that we only send to one inventory which is Omnicare, a pharmacy. We use the red tags there to distinguish when a bottle of medication is over $200/pill.
As far as I know, there have not been any tagging incidents on cars.
pseudo shadow: That's a good tagging policy, you'll waste fewer tags if you only have to do the beginning and ending shelves. But not tagging cars? Come on, that's fun! :)
It was funny that a couple months back when we were doing a Target in another district and they have a different tagging policy than us. One of their TLs came over and told us that we were tagging wrong and that we needed to start following "proper procedure." Well, one of our TLs told her "Lady, maybe you didn't get the memo but we only have to put one tag in the upper corners of peghook sections (we were counting socks) and if you would like to get done in a suitable amount of time you can just shut your mouth, get off our asses, and get back to doing your own job instead of looming over us." She shut up about us the rest of the night. :)
LOL! I don't think that we've ever tagged cars in tiny little D59. I think that it's mainly because we're a little spread out, but lol, it happens.
In regards to the comment about the blue stickies, I HATE THEM!! XD We use them at Westlakes and they are the things that hatred are made of.
I've always used the different colours to departmentise in a Homeland or something, red for VMC, blue for GM, just so that I don't forget and pile it into grocery while I'm flying down the aisles. ^^
Really enjoying your blogs, man!! XD I know I'm a few years late XD but it's still hilarious
Shawn: Thanks for reading my blog! I'm glad you've enjoyed it and I hope you continue to read and to leave your comments too.
I'm so glad we are using only yellow ones! :D
Greetings from an Italian district auditor :)
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