Xpression.v2

Work has been picking up lately. My hours have, thankfully, doubled from what they were and, while I could do with a little more, this is fine for now. However, some of it is seriously being wasted. As a member of the merchandising team, my job is to maintain current displays and pricing while continually setting up the new displays that pop up weekly. This time of year becomes rather busy for us and, so, a recent decision has me confused. Generally speaking, any Merch team members working on a given day come in at 7am so we can start working and get a lot done while the store is still empty.

However, a recent decision has been made which decrees that each one of us has to work a closing shift one night a week. During this time, our job is to maintain the warehouse and upstock areas of the store. Last week, there were about 17 man hours dedicated to this useless task. Next week, there’s over 20. I worked my first shift Tuesday and there was nothing to do, at all. I couldn’t find anything to do that wouldn’t wind up getting me in the way of the inventory team (they were busy unloading a truck). Now, my buddy worked Wednesday and he spent the whole time realigning the top stock (boxes on top of aisles) in computers and home theater. The problem is, the box stock was fine. This waste of our time has already started to affect how quickly we get displays done. For the entire time I’ve been in Merch, by the time Friday came around, we were already starting next week’s displays. Today, we were still working on the current week’s displays. To make it worse, when we left, there was still more left to do.

Needless to say, none of us are happy. It’s waste of time and we wind up doing work that isn’t part of our job description, anyway. I’m going to give it one more week, but, if it doesn’t show any value this week, I’m going to try to talk sense into my supervisor. Next week, we have some very big displays coming up and, as far as I can see now, we simply won’t be able to finish them on time with such a large portion of our man hours dedicated to useless closing shifts.

Filed under: Journal