The following items are just little incidents that I remember from my glory days as a RGIS auditor. They don't really fit into a specific storyline, but I didn't want to leave them out of this blog. So I've just included them here in no particular order.
1. One afternoon after we finished a Long's Drugs inventory District Manager Kevin, on the way back to the RGIS office, drove a vanload of auditors to the Sear's store in San Rafael. We were doing the Sear's inventory in a few weeks, and Kevin told us that the store's manager had asked him to stop by the store for a quick discussion of the store's layout in preparation for the upcoming inventory. As Kevin parked the van outside the store's entrance he told us that he should only be gone a few minutes.
We sat in that van for over two hours. Two hot, uncomfortable, smelly (Mondo was in the van) hours. I don't know about you, but sitting in a crowded van parked in a Sear's parking lot on a hot summer day for over 2 hours was not my idea of fun. Nor anyone else's. Bedroom slippers Erin had dozed off at one point. When she woke up a short time later she was furious to find out we were still at Sear's. "Gimme the time sheet!" she yelled. "I'm signing myself in again!" Finally DM Kevin came out of the store. He climbed into the van and sheepishly apologized for the delay. He claimed that the Sear's manager had insisted Kevin do a full tour of the store's two floors, plus the basement storage rooms. He then did a rare, halfway decent thing and added two hours for each of us to the Long's Drugs time sheet.
2. The districts in the Northwest Division did a lot of inventories together, and each district usually brought a bag or two of their own equipment to each inventory. In order not to get our district's lasers and audit machines mixed up with another district's, orange dot stickers were placed on all of our equipment, including the few stepstools that we had. The idea was that if a District 414 laser or audit machine were accidentally placed in another district's bag it would be easy to spot by the orange dot.
The dots usually helped keep the audit machines and lasers in our district, but not the stepstools. Lots of times I would go into the back room of a grocery store or department store and find a little two-step metal stool with an orange dot on it, left behind from an inventory that we had done months before, and in one case a year before. The first couple of times I found one of my district's stepstools I notified the person running the inventory. The Area Manager or Team Leader each time expressed a little surprise but no other reaction. No "Oh wow, so that's where it was." No "Hey, thanks. Can you grab that one for me?" Just a shrug and a "Hmmm." Well, they didn't seem to care too much about it, so why should I? I would use the stepstool in the store's back room and then leave it there. Accidentally, of course.
3. TL Heather had become disillusioned at working for RGIS and decided to quit. This was around Christmas time, and I had stopped by her house to say hello. I told her I was on my way to the district office party to pick up my January schedule. Heather got a gleam in her eye and told me, "Wait just a minute." She left her living room and came back a short time later with a couple of RGIS polos, a leather belt and a large piece of Christmas wrapping paper. She neatly folded the polo shirts and placed the leather belt on top of them. She wrapped the bundle in the Christmas paper and handed it to me laughing, "Give this to AM Dave and make sure to tell him it's from me."
I got to the district office around 6:00 pm. The Christmas party was in full swing, meaning the lights were on and one cookie platter was visible on the front counter. I picked up my January schedule and spotted AM Dave. I handed him the brightly wrapped package saying, "Heather told me to give you this." Unsuspecting Dave seemed surprised and said, "Oh, well, how nice. Please tell her thank you." I said I would and then I got the hell out before he could open it.
4. AM Joe told a bunch of us this story about when he was an auditor and going through a particularly grueling schedule. He said that it was during one of those interminable Long's Drugs inventory runs (approximately 2 week's worth of Long's stores, one (and sometimes two) per day. In addition to these early morning inventories he was also doing a number of late night stores as well. Joe was so tired that at one point during a Long's inventory he went to the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and promptly fell asleep. He told us that he was asleep on the toilet for about half an hour, and the only reason it wasn't any longer was because someone woke him up by banging on the door outside the bathroom and yelling, "I need to get in there!"
5. Once I was standing on a little plastic stepstool (provided by the store) in a Long's Drugs, counting some OTC on a top shelf. Just as Ops Manager Sai walked by behind me I dropped a box of aspirin. Before I could step down and retrieve it Sai stopped, picked up the box and handed it to me, saying in his sing-song Eastern Indian accent, "Oh, you white people are always expecting me to pick things up for you." He then walked away before I could say a word.
6. A small crew of us were doing a port-fn inventory at a grocery store called North Shore Sentry in the little town of Nice, about 2 hours north of our district office. We were short-handed to begin with, and the situation got worse as we arrived at the store because blob Mondo immediately developed a mysterious nosebleed upon exiting the van. He bailed out of counting with us because of this nosebleed and spent the 7+ hours that we were there asleep in the van. Jerk.
TL Eric was running this one, and Eric under pressure was not a pretty sight. He always had difficulty handling "frying" in a store. We were woefully behind schedule, when Eric suddenly said, "I'll get us out of this store." He took a copy of the store's previous inventory, checked the areas that hadn't been counted yet, changed some of the numbers in those area's totals, plugged those new totals into the portable and...ta-dah! We were finished. Eric printed out the whole thing and handed it to the store manager. He was satisfied with the results and we packed up and left, bloody Mondo included. Another quality inventory done by RGIS.
27 comments:
I usually post my blogger name but I will stay anonymous for this one.
This is a great game for auditors to play with their beloved mgrs and dm.
Heres how its played.
1: Borrow an audit machine for about 3 months. Its actually easy to do, just don't take the last one you used because they are all tracked. You need to take one out of bag in a large store when no one is paying attention. The store people don't pay attention to what goes on with us and the machines, and just make it look like you are going outside to smoke or something and then put the machine in your car.
2: Take pictures of the machine, make sure you take pictures of the barcode and serial number on the back of the machine.
3: The pictures can be of the machine holding a sign saying "Help, I am being held hostage!" Be creative! Take pictures of the machine at the beach, at a restaurant, in front of a landmark, dangling from a cliff.
4: Make sure you get the serial number in the pictures.
5: Send pictures to office every so often. Don't address envelope in your own handwriting.
6: Finally, after about 3 months of driving AM's and DM crazy, return machine, don't get caught returning machine.
Its a rather fun thing to do, but please return machine in the end, you only want to pull a prank not commit a crime.
As far as #6, where Eric plugged in the numbers. In portfin, every entry with a price above a certain amount or an extension above a certain amount gets printed out at the bottom. I'm guessing Kevin and Joe didn't care about this sort of thing, but if there were proper management, someone would have asked, "Why do you have all these entries that are equal to the entire area totals?"
True, he could have lied and said he was rekeying a machine that had crashed, but how many times will that happen in one inventory?
Now, I was at an Albertson's where the PORTABLE crashed, and this was before it was standard practice to use a PC Collector. Thank god it was before we started scanning in Albertson's or we'd still be recounting it. So while we waited for the DM to bring us a newly uploaded portable, three of us rekeyed all the totals off the printouts.
Regarding Kevin and the Sears visit: I don't care what the customer said, I would NEVER leave auditors sitting in the van for two hours. He could have told the store manager you guys were there. Or at the very least he could have let you know he was stuck and had you come inside.
Polo shirts: A while back an AM told me she had heard that some RGIS shirts had been seen at a Goodwill Store. It turned out there were quite a few. So she took money from petty cash and bought back the good ones because HQ charges the district more than what the store was selling them for.
In the old days, there was a lot more cameraderie. Even if you were working with people you didn't like, there was a sense of working together and getting a job done. So the rough spots were a lot more bearable and easier to laugh about. I remember one January when we were going from one store to the next, with barely any sleep. We were at a department store, and the DM sent about 10 of us out at 4 am because we had 6 am inventory at the other end of the district. So we went to Denny's for breakfast. One guy, who I'll call Norman, kept insisting on driving to the store, but he was falling asleep at the table.
Finally we threatened to call Norman's wife if he tried to drive. When we got to the other store, Norman spent almost 1.5 hours on a rounder of clothes. Why? Because he kept nodding off, and then he'd wake up and continue. He was going around for the third time when he realized what he was doing.
Two hours?! What an inconsiderate jerk... You guys are nice, if that had been my district someone would have gone in the store and got him and then told him off.
Did you guys get out of the van and stretch or go and get a snack? Please tell me you let down the windows.
the refugee: There was no "proper" management in my district.
I remember seeing one of those light blue RGIS "dusters", the button-down jackets, in a Goodwill store. I didn't buy it though. It was going for around $3.99.
anon. at 10:48 am: Hah! Yes, we did get out and stretch a little. And curse a lot too. And yes, with smelly Mondo in the van open windows were a necessity!
I guess it was Kevin's first Sears because back in 354 for the annual Sears inventory at Colonie Center, our managers would do the two hour tour a day before as I recall.
REfugee....AM's run all the supermarkets in my District. And, I have seen all of them plug in whole section figures when a store is short. One night, we were doing a supermarket and we were really short of staff. The AM running the store would go into an aisle with a financial machine, no download and key for a few minutes and then lay yellow tags in the whole aisle. He would then go into the Backroom and take figures from the last inventory and change them a little and key them into a live audit. If store people were walking around, they saw someone look like they were counting the aisle. Uh...a whole aisle in less than 10 minutes?? I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was just plugging in figures because he didn't want to be in the store all night. He almost got caught by store management that night though. I heard the store manager tell the grocery manager that he had just walked by the bread aisle 10 minutes earlier and no one was counting there yet and now the whole aisle had yellow tags. Since then, I have seen every single AM in my District do the same thing.
"Accuracy is our primary concern"???
Getting out of the store and making a big percentage seems to be a whole lot more important than integrity in my District.
And yes, Refugee, the exceptions do print out at the bottom in a portfin but if the AM is doing the plugging in of figures, just who is supposed to be noticing??
Let's be honest here. If you sat in the van for two hours without going inside to look for Kevin, you need to share responsibility for being stuck there.
Anonymous, you might think that "borrowing" an audit for three months is just a harmless prank, but if it shows up missing in the equipment inventory for that long, it's written off and charged against the district. And that comes out of the managers' bonus, assuming they did well enough during those six months to get a bonus.
People don't realize how expensive the audit machines really are. When the Audit 11 came out, I heard $3500 apiece, probably more for an Audit 12, and I'd guess way more for an Audit 14. I'd bet a written-off Audit might take $100-$250 from EACH manager's bonus.
Maybe your managers are jerks, but I still consider taking money out of someone else's pocket to be stealing. And by the way, it's not even original -- someone did that with a garden gnome years ago, which eventually led to those stupid Travelocity ads.
Anyone working for RGIS in Texas heard anything about the overtime lawsuit? Deatails please
www.RGISOvertime.com
Refugee: Excuse me? "Share the blame" because I didn't go into the store and hunt down Kevin? Exactly what would that have accomplished? Sure, I do that and he tells me that he has to take the full store tour with the manager. Does that mean the two hours that it takes will go any faster, now that I know what's going on? Does that mean that now I know he's taking the full store tour, I can get the keys from him and drive the van back myself, leaving him there to walk the 45 miles or so back to the office? Or now that I know he's taking the full store tour, I can walk the 45 miles or so back to the office myself?
No, the only one to blame was Kevin. He as the District Manager should have found out ahead of time how long the full store tour would take, and act accordingly, i.e. not done the tour on the way home from another inventory, driving a van full of auditors. That was his fault, pure and simple.
REfugee...spoken like a true AM or former AM, whichever. We can't do anything to take money out of those precious bonuses. But, what about the Team Leaders who run far more stores that earn those managers those bonuses?? They get nothing in return and do you think the AM's even care? Not!!!! They only care if a TL doesn't do well because it hurts their precious percentages.
Anonymous at 6:02 -- I know of at least a couple of operations managers who might have caught the plugging in of numbers. If you go by policy (yeah, right!), all large entries are supposed to have an explanation.
In fact, one ops caught an AM counting in a store (when it was still banned) by looking at the printouts. The next week she was in a red shirt, and after that we were told that if we did alterations, we had to keep the updated printout AND the original in the paperwork, and when that ops did the office audit, he would randomly pick out financial stores hunting for violations.
I don't want this to get hostile, but listen, TAKING EQUIPMENT THAT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU is wrong, bonus or no bonus. I lost plenty of bonus money to stores not being prepared, unrealistic procedures, low rates, or auditors/team leaders not properly trained. That falls in the category of "stuff happens, or its the fault of the AMs, and accepted that. But don't give me that "typical AM" crap to justify theft.
The AMs and DMs also have bosses, and if you haven't dealt with an ops directly, you have NO idea what "only caring about precious percentages" is all about. And these guys, at least the ones I worked for, wouldn't let us get away with illegal shortcuts to do it. In fact, the AMs in my office were once nearly fired for not telling anyone about our DM's dishonesty that we didn't even know about.
When I was an auditor/team leader, both before and after my time as AM, I never took anything (equipment, time, money, etc.) that I wasn't entitled to. And even when I was an AM, I said repeatedly that the company should bring back the auditor bonus -- which, as an auditor, I had taken away TWICE.
If you were to talk to the people that worked for me, they would tell you that while we sometimes had disagreements, I always tried to be fair with them. IOW, I was NOT a typical AM -- which has a lot to do with why I am no longer an AM.
Misfit, I'm not relieving Kevin of blame for you sitting in the van, but if you're eating lunch and someone keeps taking food off your plate, you need to least tell the person to stop. And going inside would have at least gotten you away from smelly Mondo!
*I* would have gone in. Failing that, I would have thought about calling someone and getting a ride back to the meet spot, but not telling Kevin, leaving him to wander the mall in search of his missing auditors.
Refugee, then obviously our Ops managers are not on top when it comes to plugging in of figures.
My AM has told us that if we need to plug in figures, get rid of the printout that shows it. DO NOT put it in your package. One of our AM's got caught counting in a store when they were not supposed to be counting. He, FB in fact, was caught by a VP. They didn't fire him. They demoted him to AAM for 6 months then promoted him back up. Because he lost his van during this time and didn't have a vehicle to get to work, they actually rented him a car for that amount of time. They were supposedly going to fire him but our DM and Ops manager fought to keep him. He didn't even become a maroon shirt but an AAM. You are right, I don't condone the taking of equipment either, but the AM's in our District always get huge bonuses because of the high gross in our District. So, as in the case of fake lunch breaks and plugging in figures, our District does not follow any Company policy.
And they obviously do not have to because of the gross of our office.
Our AM's brag about plugging in figures.
The first time I did a grocery store, no one told me how to count (you know don't touch, count with your eyes, use you're 6k, etc) so I'm in an aisle for an hour, and I notice all of these people blowing threw the store. So I'm like freaking out because I'm thinking I'm the slowest person in the store. Well it turns out everyone is estimating... they would pick a price and 6k the crap out of it(this is before they started making you scan... but there are ways to get around that too) for a while, then they would change the price and 6k a little more making sure they counted, and then they would ray and compare their totals with the previous totals (that print out for a comparison) and make adjustments in the portable. The DM was a pro at this. He would step back to the other side of an isle and pick a price and then 24 6k a couple times to sound like he was counting , move down to another 4 foot section and pick another price, and continue this until he finished the whole isle(he never used a stool or milk crate and would question you if you were using one). And the crazy thing was, he would always be no more than a couple hundred dollars off from the last time the isle had been audited.
The only reason they didn't plug in figures was because two TL's got busted doing that at a Albertsons and were both fired... and rehired. One is now a DM and the other is an AM. So as you can see, being dishonest at RGIS does not pay (sarcasm off).
JOIN THE RGIS LAWSUIT!!! DEADLINE IS 10/20!!
http://www.rgisovertime.com/
There is a space for you to write any additional things that they should know about what they do illeagally-- i.e.- no breaks
Why didn't Kevin do the PIV on his own time? It may have been convenient for him to stop at Sears on the way back to the office, but the two hours that had to be paid to those waiting in the parking lot must have really pissed somebody off. What you all should have done was gone inside the mall, gotten something to eat, then when Kevin came out and found an empty van, he would have shit his pants. That was just plain stupid of him. If the Sears manager wanted to do the full tour, Kevin should have explained to the manager that he had to return to the office, drop you all off and that he would come back. It's not like he's paying for the gas.
anon. at 11:59 pm: The reason Kevin didn't do the PIV on his own time was because as was commonly known in my district, he was a total fuckup who didn't know his ass from his elbow. And BTW, that was a great idea you had! We SHOULD have all left the van and went to the food court in the mall. Damn, I wish I had thought of that then. It would have been fun to see him freak out and comb the mall for us.
Actually, the cost of equipment missing from the equipment inventory is deducted from the management bonus in toto, I think quarterly. My district misplaced an Elite portable and we heard about it for a month, at 6,000$ each.
Also, Kevin ripped off Long's and killed his average by paying you on their timesheet. He should have put it on 908 time.
Of course, my favorite action is how you're told that managers will communicate with you and tell you things that you need to know. Then not, then get mad that things didn't go right. Yeah, makes my day. I should have quit 6 months ago at hour 10 of another 16 hour KMart.
RGIS, There a bunch of GOOFIES
Here's one about being left in a van for hours on end. The Tucson, AZ district has to go to all these little towns around us. One is Nogales. One side of the street is Arizona and the other is Mexico.
Now we were in Nogales, AZ (not Mexico), BUT THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE. We had finished doing a Sally's Beauty and everyone had left. The AM running the store kept two of us to help him with corrections. Eventually we went to the van to wait for the AM.
WE WAITED THREE HOURS FOR THIS MAN. Finally he came out to get a drink of soda and was talking to our DM on his cell telling her that were NOT SLEEPING in the van. In the meantime the toilet in Sally's was broken and I had walked to a disgusting grocery store (remember its Nogales) where the toilet marginally flushed, stank like hell and had no paper or soap.
We got back to our meet site at 3:00 pm and had to be at the meet site for Davis Motham Air base at 5:00 p.m. for an all-nighter of the Exchange. Like a total idiot, I drove from one meet site to the other and worked all night. I don't even remember the Exchange or doing it cause I think I was sleeping and counting at the time same. I do remember there were several different Cali. districts helping out and every time one of them went on a break I went too. I think I had about 5 breaks that audit. The other auditor who had been with me in the van (the smart one) was a no-show.
exauditor: Lol! That was a good one. You guys must have been dying in that van. How many of you cursed the AM and swore vengeance on him? :)
Oh, and did you guys get paid for that time you had to wait? Or was it off the clock? I would have been furious (even more so) if I hadn't received compensation for that hellish wait in the Sear's parking lot.
And oh, the feeling of doing a couple of back-to-back stores and being somewhat sure that you counted some merchandise in the latter store, but not definite about it because you were so tired you can't remember counting anything...so familiar to me too. Ah, life with RGIS. Fun, eh?
to the misfit: Yeah we got paid our actual hourly wage for all three hours. This district always shorts auditors when they travel which is every week. But of course they don't pay the first and last hour of driving (is that legal???) so we never got nothing for driving to and from shit hole Nogales. RGIS was trying to get back Sally's after losing it (why)and the Manager had complained that some of our auditors had dirty shirts!
Re the double: I actually cherry picked the entire base exchange. I just bounced from one district to the next until I didn't like the next area and would walk away to somewhere else. It was so screwed up(way too many people in charge)that the various DMs, AMs, etc. didn't even know where anyone was supposed to be. I knew people from all the various districts so they always thought I was supposed to be with them. Someone in my own District saw me on break and said "didn't you just get back from break?" I think I gave her a hand sign back. HAHA
exauditor: Hah! Dirty shirts! If someone had complained about dirty shirts in our district then Blimp Mondo would have been fired years ago. Dirty pants, dirty face, etc.
That base exchange inventory sounds a lot like many inventories that we did with other districts too. Like Target, Sears, Kmart etc. Mass confusion, with lots of DMs and AMs telling auditors different things. You just have to take it all in stride and not stress out at thoses ones, right? I mean, after all, it's not our skin if someone screws up!
To all: I also have many similar stories, i have also worked for BAD management. But i replaced the bad management with myself. I run a very large district, with many employees most enjoy working here. I pay my people very well. In fact some of my best people have made as much as AM's. I also do not require back to back stores or double shifts. Anybody that does that does it by choice.
So all I am saying is don't confuse a few struggling districts with All districts. And yes the past 2 years on the west coast have been unorganized and poorly managed. And those of us that are successful laugh at those other guys. We are successful becuase we respect our people, pay them properly, create a fun working env ironment.
BTW about the christmas party - ours didn't end until 4 am.
rgis manager:
You truly are a rarity for RGIS managers, especially out West where I am. Things have always been just the opposite here--the good employees are treated with indifference, if not outright contempt.There seems to be resentment in having to pay us a few dollars an hour more, even though our productivity is two or three times that of most other auditors.We are constantly being manipulated. The bottom line is always profit margin.Auditors are basically considered a piece of equipment here, not people. We never do anything fun together, because it might cost management a few bucks.It`s really depressing out here; we keep hoping for a change for the better, but the managers just get worse with each turnover.It is heartwarming to know that there are at least a few districts that are well run, it`s just too bad it`s not mine (and many others).
Kiwi will say that ...
I just wrote a great story....
too bad I wont write it again....
not now anyhow...... I suppose I should have had .....
USB stick....a memory stick.....
what is it with these darn computers......
Why does no one remember where they left their memory stick? Or why did they forget the memory stick... which begs to question why we remembered we needed one....
...................................
Please STOP.
ps....
why is the navi'guessor' usually the first to fall to sleep in the van??
HI
im from Uk not all districts are crap jusy most of them
Worked in Newcastle which was unbelievably bad underpaid ever week no travel paid etc then transferred to Manchester, he has some organisation there thats for sure schedule snt out every week for the next 3 weeks paid correctltyand all the good stuff
Its a crying shame that the bad spoil it for the good guys
I started in 1974 in Albany,NY, Starting pay was $3.00 with raises of up to $.25 per hour. Raises were given quarterly, depending on availibilty,
speed counting,and willingness to take more respondsibility. One night our AM and her teamleader lover got drunk and did our evaluations
which were used to get back at those who they didn't like. But at least we got raises.How are the raises now, any better ?
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