My new manager started at the company yesterday. I didn't even get an introduction before 2pm so I started off rather irritated with the whole situation. I mean, apparently having meetings with every other department in the company is a priority over introducing yourself to your own department. Not my new manager's fault - he's not the one who scheduled his time this week. Just saying.
Anyway, sometime after lunch yesterday Cori went into a meeting with the new guy, and after a while they came back out and she introduced us. Then I had to go back to the conference room and meet with him for a while. We chatted for a bit in general, then discussed what was going on in our department now that he's started.
Between that meeting and the brief amount of time I saw him today (again, he had meetings - he won't be settling into our department properly until Friday), I'm cautiously optimistic about the whole situation. He seems to have a good bit of experience with other companies and developing inventory management and purchasing practices. He also doesn't seem as though he wants to switch anything around much. He said that he plans to keep us all in the positions we're in now, and that he just wants to organize everything so that our department is more efficient.
I'm all for that, actually. If we're not going to be able to hire another person for the department then anything that can be done to make our jobs easier and quicker will help. Also will be nice to have someone trying to get the inventory situation in hand as it's ridiculous, between issues with the ordering reports I'm forced to use and warehouse problems. So far all of the questions and suggestions he's had are ones that we've been asking for ages, but apparently since he's got a degree it means more coming from him.
Oh well, as long as it gets done I suppose that's all that matters. We'll see how it goes!
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Oh my....
And so ends my first week in my new job. Today I spent the majority of the day changing prices, because merchandising decided they wanted to use a different kind of spreadsheet? We have a price spreadsheet for each of the 300 or so vendors we have, and each of them needs to be redone every time any prices change. And suddenly merchandising decided the format used for the past 4 years isn't good enough anymore.
Yeah I don't get it, all I know is that means all of the old spreadsheets Jen spent countless overtime hours doing are worthless. Nice of them, huh? I'm going to redo about half of them for her before she goes absolutely batshit insane. I'm surprised she hasn't already, actually. I did one brand of shoes today and between all of the styles, colors, and sizes, had to change over 3200 prices. Must remember to start taking a pair of glasses to work so when I have to stare at Excel for 5 hours I won't get such a headache from my contacts.
Luckily, that one I did today was one of the worst. I have one more shoe spreadsheet and then the rest will be quick ones for some of the other stores. No more than 20-30 items on any of those so they will go quickly. This is good, as I'm starting to actually place orders next week and won't have the time to fuck with Excel so much. Cori also decided how she's going to split everything between me and Jen. She's giving me the flag, tea, and safety stores, and then Jen will have the other four. Mine are by far the biggest three stores, and the ordering for them involves some crazy Excel formulas. But Cori says I'm better with Excel so she wants me to handle them.
Jen and I will both be trained in all of the stores, so that if someone is out sick or on vacation we can cover for them, but for the most part we'll just be handling everything associated with our respective stores. Jen will do the returns for all stores on her own. There are a couple of other little things that Jen will do as well, so the work load will be pretty even overall even though I'm responsible for the bigger stores. Or that's what Cori says; I haven't done enough of this to know. She said that once I'm trained to let her know if it's too much and we'll see about redistributing the work a bit.
To say I'm nervous about all of this would be a huge understatement. Whether the workload is supposedly going to be the same or not, the fact remains that a week ago I was doing customer service and suddenly I'm going to be responsible for purchasing for stores that make up over 3/4 of our revenue. Luckily I will be clearing everything Cori for months before being left to my own devices, but it's still a lot to take in.
At any rate, I'm done thinking about it for now. I'm exhausted and need to get some sleep. Goals update will be coming on Sunday if all goes according to plan, and then I'll probably update on work yet again sometime next week. Or I might just post to panic about how I'm never going to learn everything and will get myself fired. We'll see. ^_^
Yeah I don't get it, all I know is that means all of the old spreadsheets Jen spent countless overtime hours doing are worthless. Nice of them, huh? I'm going to redo about half of them for her before she goes absolutely batshit insane. I'm surprised she hasn't already, actually. I did one brand of shoes today and between all of the styles, colors, and sizes, had to change over 3200 prices. Must remember to start taking a pair of glasses to work so when I have to stare at Excel for 5 hours I won't get such a headache from my contacts.
Luckily, that one I did today was one of the worst. I have one more shoe spreadsheet and then the rest will be quick ones for some of the other stores. No more than 20-30 items on any of those so they will go quickly. This is good, as I'm starting to actually place orders next week and won't have the time to fuck with Excel so much. Cori also decided how she's going to split everything between me and Jen. She's giving me the flag, tea, and safety stores, and then Jen will have the other four. Mine are by far the biggest three stores, and the ordering for them involves some crazy Excel formulas. But Cori says I'm better with Excel so she wants me to handle them.
Jen and I will both be trained in all of the stores, so that if someone is out sick or on vacation we can cover for them, but for the most part we'll just be handling everything associated with our respective stores. Jen will do the returns for all stores on her own. There are a couple of other little things that Jen will do as well, so the work load will be pretty even overall even though I'm responsible for the bigger stores. Or that's what Cori says; I haven't done enough of this to know. She said that once I'm trained to let her know if it's too much and we'll see about redistributing the work a bit.
To say I'm nervous about all of this would be a huge understatement. Whether the workload is supposedly going to be the same or not, the fact remains that a week ago I was doing customer service and suddenly I'm going to be responsible for purchasing for stores that make up over 3/4 of our revenue. Luckily I will be clearing everything Cori for months before being left to my own devices, but it's still a lot to take in.
At any rate, I'm done thinking about it for now. I'm exhausted and need to get some sleep. Goals update will be coming on Sunday if all goes according to plan, and then I'll probably update on work yet again sometime next week. Or I might just post to panic about how I'm never going to learn everything and will get myself fired. We'll see. ^_^
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
So far so good
Today was my third day on the new job and it's going well so far. I haven't really trained at all. I spent maybe an hour Monday morning learning how to receive inventory and a few other things, and then they just kind of started handing me stacks of papers. And GOD the emails. I added over 300 folders to my email on Monday morning because I need separate folders for each vendor for 8 stores. I thought that seemed a bit much until I actually started getting the emails. I'm not sure how often Outlook receives emails but I get at least 5 every single time it does. And it's not even the busy season yet.
I'm perfectly comfortable with everything I've learned so far, and Cori said she's impressed because she figured it would take at least a week before I was working entirely on my own (like I have been since Tuesday lol). She's going to start me on one or two other things tomorrow, and then on Monday I'm going to learn about drawing up and placing the orders for some of the stores. She's not sure how she's going to split the stores in the end. But I'll definitely have the safety store, and she seems to be leaning toward giving me the flag store as well. Maybe strollers. The flag store is our biggest and would be more than enough in itself, but I suppose I'll deal. >_>
Another thing I really like now that I've moved is I'm allowed to listen to music. All of the computers in the company come with iTunes installed, but in customer service I never got to take advantage of that since I was always on the phone. I've already ripped about 9 CDs over to my computer and I'm sure I'll have about 600 songs by the end of the week. It's also really nice because I can put on headphones and drown out the wholesale people who are right near me. I like Todd and Sherri but they're really loud sometimes. XD
And speaking of music....
April brought me over a bunch of mix CDs she had so that I could copy them to my computer and have something to listen to besides the one CD I brought in from my car. It's a pretty good and random collection of stuff. I'm sitting there fiddling with inventory and half listening to one of them, and this weird techno like song comes on. I'm still only half paying attention and then all of a sudden the words got my attention. I restarted the song and sat there actually paying attention to it, and absolutely died laughing. I was in hysterics at my desk, in the middle of work. April came over, looked at the track I was on, and just giggled and walked away. The bitch. >_>
Turns out it's some Adam Sandler song, but I've never really listened to anything of his so I'd never heard it before. Here it is so everyone understands what I'm talking about, and why is was so damn funny...
That's about it for tonight. I really will be getting another goal update up this weekend, I hope. I've just been too busy to redo my damn list!
I'm perfectly comfortable with everything I've learned so far, and Cori said she's impressed because she figured it would take at least a week before I was working entirely on my own (like I have been since Tuesday lol). She's going to start me on one or two other things tomorrow, and then on Monday I'm going to learn about drawing up and placing the orders for some of the stores. She's not sure how she's going to split the stores in the end. But I'll definitely have the safety store, and she seems to be leaning toward giving me the flag store as well. Maybe strollers. The flag store is our biggest and would be more than enough in itself, but I suppose I'll deal. >_>
Another thing I really like now that I've moved is I'm allowed to listen to music. All of the computers in the company come with iTunes installed, but in customer service I never got to take advantage of that since I was always on the phone. I've already ripped about 9 CDs over to my computer and I'm sure I'll have about 600 songs by the end of the week. It's also really nice because I can put on headphones and drown out the wholesale people who are right near me. I like Todd and Sherri but they're really loud sometimes. XD
And speaking of music....
April brought me over a bunch of mix CDs she had so that I could copy them to my computer and have something to listen to besides the one CD I brought in from my car. It's a pretty good and random collection of stuff. I'm sitting there fiddling with inventory and half listening to one of them, and this weird techno like song comes on. I'm still only half paying attention and then all of a sudden the words got my attention. I restarted the song and sat there actually paying attention to it, and absolutely died laughing. I was in hysterics at my desk, in the middle of work. April came over, looked at the track I was on, and just giggled and walked away. The bitch. >_>
Turns out it's some Adam Sandler song, but I've never really listened to anything of his so I'd never heard it before. Here it is so everyone understands what I'm talking about, and why is was so damn funny...
That's about it for tonight. I really will be getting another goal update up this weekend, I hope. I've just been too busy to redo my damn list!
Sunday, October 19, 2008
My job is awesome
I said in my last entry that there were some things going on with work that I couldn't explain quite yet, but it's all straightened out now so might as well blog about it. I've only been at my current job for three months. I started in mid-July as a temp in customer service. I did well in there, obviously. I've already said in other entries how that went, and how I've gotten two raises and was offered a permanent position at the company. That kicked in this past Monday.
Monday afternoon my department had a meeting in the break room with Brian and Kim. They explained that we would be extending hours to 9pm Monday through Friday. Instead of the 8-4:45, 9-5:45, and 10:15-7 shifts we have now, the new shifts would be 8-4:45, 10:15-7, and 12:15-9. Kind of annoying but everyone would only have to work one of those late shifts per week. However, there would always have to be a supervisor there as one of the people working the late shift. At the moment we only have two supervisors, so Brian mentioned possibly naming 1-2 more supervisors so it would be a bit more even for everyone. If he would have done that there was a very good possibility I would be one of the new supervisors, just going by people who know what they're doing and have been there a while.
However, on Tuesday Kim said they'd worked something out that they didn't need any more supervisors at this time. No big deal, just went on with my day. When I got back from lunch I had an email from Brian titled "Opportunity". It started off saying it was strictly confidential and then went on to tell me about an opening in purchasing that he thought I should interview for. It also said that I could work there until I finished my bachelor's degree in May, and then move directly to accounting.
Problem was I'm not finishing my bachelor's in May, I'm finishing my associate's. Then I still have a handful of classes left for the bachelor's. So I'm slightly disappointed in this, thinking it means I can't get the purchasing job after all. But I email Brian and explain it anyway as I'm not about to leave that rather important fact out.
He responds asking me to come to his office around 4. When I get there he tells me that I can still go for the purchasing job if I'd like. I would just be there for a couple of extra semesters until I finished my bachelor's degree, and then move to accounting. Plus, they'll reimburse me for about $2000 a year in tuition, which means I can actually continue now instead of taking time off to save for a more expensive school.
So I say, of course I'm interested in the promotion, what is it? And he tells me it's for Mike's job, as Mike is up for a promotion to warehouse manager. Mike would be the purchasing manager for half the company, pretty much. I've never done a thing with purchasing in my life. Brian was all, "Well that's okay, you'll learn. I'll set up the interview with Cori (overall head of purchasing)."
I end up having to go for the interview Thursday morning. Because the entire thing was very hush hush, I had to go off-site for the interview. They didn't know if Mike was getting the promotion and didn't want him to know anything about them interviewing his potential replacements. So I went into work Thursday for about 45 minutes and then drove down the street to Bob Evans to meet Cori for breakfast (on the company, while on the clock ^_^). It went alright, but I honestly didn't think I would have gotten the job. The look on Cori's face when I said I'd only officially been an employee for three days...lol. At any rate, she said she had some other people to interview and didn't know what was going on with Mike, so it would be sometime next week probably before I heard anything. I left feeling decent about the interview but didn't really have my hopes up.
Friday rolls around and I'm on one of my few calls as it's dead as hell. Cori pops around the corner and says to hurry up and then meet her in the conference room. I follow her in there...in all honesty I figured she was going to tell me Mike wasn't getting the promotion. She'd said she had other people to interview and I didn't think she'd have picked me at all, much less after a day. But she did want to offer me the job. ^_^
The catch was that Mike was promoted effective immediately, so it starts this Monday. But what the hell, I'm not going to pass up the opportunity. So I accepted, and my supervisor congratulated me and nearly cried that I was leaving, which made me nearly cry. Then I sat in absolute shock for the rest of the day at what had happened. I find it almost ridiculous that I got 2 raises and a promotion by the time I officially worked for the company for four days. Hell, I don't even get benefits until January!
So...Monday then. I'm not sure how it's going to go but I learn quickly so I'm hoping to pick it up. I'm nervous, but really excited to be getting off the phones and into a department much closer to my actual degree. We'll see how it goes!
Monday afternoon my department had a meeting in the break room with Brian and Kim. They explained that we would be extending hours to 9pm Monday through Friday. Instead of the 8-4:45, 9-5:45, and 10:15-7 shifts we have now, the new shifts would be 8-4:45, 10:15-7, and 12:15-9. Kind of annoying but everyone would only have to work one of those late shifts per week. However, there would always have to be a supervisor there as one of the people working the late shift. At the moment we only have two supervisors, so Brian mentioned possibly naming 1-2 more supervisors so it would be a bit more even for everyone. If he would have done that there was a very good possibility I would be one of the new supervisors, just going by people who know what they're doing and have been there a while.
However, on Tuesday Kim said they'd worked something out that they didn't need any more supervisors at this time. No big deal, just went on with my day. When I got back from lunch I had an email from Brian titled "Opportunity". It started off saying it was strictly confidential and then went on to tell me about an opening in purchasing that he thought I should interview for. It also said that I could work there until I finished my bachelor's degree in May, and then move directly to accounting.
Problem was I'm not finishing my bachelor's in May, I'm finishing my associate's. Then I still have a handful of classes left for the bachelor's. So I'm slightly disappointed in this, thinking it means I can't get the purchasing job after all. But I email Brian and explain it anyway as I'm not about to leave that rather important fact out.
He responds asking me to come to his office around 4. When I get there he tells me that I can still go for the purchasing job if I'd like. I would just be there for a couple of extra semesters until I finished my bachelor's degree, and then move to accounting. Plus, they'll reimburse me for about $2000 a year in tuition, which means I can actually continue now instead of taking time off to save for a more expensive school.
So I say, of course I'm interested in the promotion, what is it? And he tells me it's for Mike's job, as Mike is up for a promotion to warehouse manager. Mike would be the purchasing manager for half the company, pretty much. I've never done a thing with purchasing in my life. Brian was all, "Well that's okay, you'll learn. I'll set up the interview with Cori (overall head of purchasing)."
I end up having to go for the interview Thursday morning. Because the entire thing was very hush hush, I had to go off-site for the interview. They didn't know if Mike was getting the promotion and didn't want him to know anything about them interviewing his potential replacements. So I went into work Thursday for about 45 minutes and then drove down the street to Bob Evans to meet Cori for breakfast (on the company, while on the clock ^_^). It went alright, but I honestly didn't think I would have gotten the job. The look on Cori's face when I said I'd only officially been an employee for three days...lol. At any rate, she said she had some other people to interview and didn't know what was going on with Mike, so it would be sometime next week probably before I heard anything. I left feeling decent about the interview but didn't really have my hopes up.
Friday rolls around and I'm on one of my few calls as it's dead as hell. Cori pops around the corner and says to hurry up and then meet her in the conference room. I follow her in there...in all honesty I figured she was going to tell me Mike wasn't getting the promotion. She'd said she had other people to interview and I didn't think she'd have picked me at all, much less after a day. But she did want to offer me the job. ^_^
The catch was that Mike was promoted effective immediately, so it starts this Monday. But what the hell, I'm not going to pass up the opportunity. So I accepted, and my supervisor congratulated me and nearly cried that I was leaving, which made me nearly cry. Then I sat in absolute shock for the rest of the day at what had happened. I find it almost ridiculous that I got 2 raises and a promotion by the time I officially worked for the company for four days. Hell, I don't even get benefits until January!
So...Monday then. I'm not sure how it's going to go but I learn quickly so I'm hoping to pick it up. I'm nervous, but really excited to be getting off the phones and into a department much closer to my actual degree. We'll see how it goes!
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