13:45
Butter Me Up
After talking with My Buddy Up Front for an extended time today, it was found out that Boss#2 has no idea who was "stealing money." That's in quotes because I don't believe anyone would be able to successfully steal money from here. I hear the cash register drawer every time it opens and can clearly tell when there are customers around. So Basically Boss#2 admitted that Boss is just being a complete asshole. He said that they just needed to stop the people from stealing, so they accused someone they thought could have done it. Unfortunately this was all done in a private setting so there's no real opportunity to sue.

They suspect My Buddy Up Front because occasionally he comes in late to work, which indicates he must have some form of a problem. Everyone comes in late to work here, like I said earlier, it's because they don't care. There's no motivation to show up on time.

Today the bosses have been extremely nice to him. Like they always are when they know they have done something extremely wrong.

Just another day in the life here at my place of work.

14:14

Can You Make This Bigger For Me?

Boss#2 just came up from upstairs and asked me to blow up an image for him because he can't see it. He shows me a printed out e-mail he had that had an image attached to it. I crack the biggest smile. He said he zoomed in to 300% and still can't see a damn thing. So I'm trying my hardest not to laugh as I make my way to his station.

He has the thumbnail preview of the image in the center, and he was zoomed in. LOL I downloaded it and opened it, and I will forever remain a god in his eyes when it comes to computers.

10:31
Drama Drama and More Drama
So My Buddy Up Front, has recently been subjected to interesting exclusion by Boss. Since Boss came back, he has reduced the people that are allowed to use the cash register. Nobody knew why until he was confronted about it last night. My Buddy Up Front was one of the people not allowed to touch it. Very peculiar as he has been a great employee and co worker.

Last night at about 16:30, My Buddy Up Front decides to have a "talk" with Boss. When you have a "talk" with Boss it's always going to be in a random spot in the warehouse, or outside depending on the severity of it. So they disappear upstairs. Boss returns shortly after, then My Buddy Up Front comes down about an hour later. He looks hurt.

I text My Buddy Up Front shortly after he leaves to see how the talk went. What I got in return was this text "I am still numb from it. I don't have the words. Apparently, I've stolen "thousands of dollars," and Mike knows in his gut it's me because I have a "drug addiction or alcohol problem." I'm fucked up about this."

This is shocking, My Buddy Up Front doesn't do drugs, he won't even smoke pot. He does go out to the bars on occasion, but it's not as frequently as anyone else that works here. I have only two explanations for these wild accusations.

My first is that someone planted a seed in Boss's head. I think Girl Up Front, who has recently started disliking My Buddy Up Front, may have said something that would have lead to that state of mind from Boss.

My second is that someone is messing up transactions up front. Someone has probably been running credit cards after marking them as cash on the register.

Nobody has been stealing though. I don't work with anyone that would risk that. Even if you were to try and steal from the drawer, someone would be around to notice that.

Now my boss is trying to get cameras, in particular ones that record audio. Not looking forward to having zero privacy here.

17:50

I'm Getting Real Sick of Jazz

I'm still confused on why I'm forced to listen to jazz for 8 hours a day. It's killed my working motivation. But I think he thinks it's helping. I just don't get it and it's giving me a headache.

Don't get me wrong though, I do enjoy Jazz. Just not at work. I prefer upbeat music to keep me going and semi energized. 

09:31
I Finally Won the Amazon War
Whenever there is an issue with Amazon, it turns into a giant hassle correcting it. It's always something simple too. Like oh this says it's green, but it's actually orange. It'll take about 15 messages until they finally do something about it.

Today I won a war. It was a 5 day battle. I came out victorious. I announced that I had one the Amazon War. Boss asked what are you talking about?

I explained the situation, and then said that they had finally listened to me and gave me what I needed.

Then Boss throws in when he heard that "MAKE SURE WE HAVE INVENTORY, we zeroed it out last week!"

Thanks, I know, I was the one that took it down, reuploaded it 5 times, and then re published it the second I won.

It's not like this is my job or anything.

10:00
Other Guy Behind me, Can You Show Her How to do the Music?
It was only a matter of time before we lost control of the music. We apparently had gotten to loose, trying to make the store seem fun. So he asked the newsletter lady if she could pick some more appropriate music. Sure enough, she picks probably the most boring playlist I've ever heard. It's taking all my might to not fall asleep in my chair. I'm staying awake but barely.

"We want something that'll relax the customers while they're shopping, we don't want them to start freaking discoing"

13:20

Why Don't you Get up an Stretch Your Legs

When you hear boss say that, you know that you're going to get asked to do something that you're probably going to hate. Today Boss asked me to cut paper, and become the paper cutter master.

Why does the web guy get asked to do these tasks?

Well today, the Girl Up Front decided that she really hates jazz. I think she already had plans of leaving early, but I'm thinking because of the drastic music change from indie to Jazz she decided to leave even earlier.

Next there was a cash register issue. Apparently there have been to many mistakes. so Boss says only one person can do the cash register.

That ties up everyone once The Girl Up Front left. And since Boss neglected this order for weeks, it had to go out today. Naturally I guess I'm good at everything so I was asked to use the paper cutter, and turn 50 sheets, into 500. Now my back hurts, I'm tired and I really just want to go home.

14:09
When You're Feeling Ambitious...
So Boss left for a trip yesterday, he'll be back sometime next week. Which means that the entire store runs smoothly, very little issues happen and productivity seems to sky rocket. Well until Boss #2 starts making rounds. Boss #2 doesn't handle pressure very well, and when things happen he tends to get very confrontational.

I find this humorous. When his temper rises I usually sit back and crack a smile and stop listening. I just listen to his tone and decide that I'd rather not hear what he has to say. I know this isn't productive, but neither is screaming over essentially nothing. He usually makes people feel extremely unappreciated.

Just now he told me that my workspace is disgusting and it's embarrassing. He realizes a lot of it is from Boss, but if I'm feeling Ambitious I should take a minute and clean up around me. This was his polite way of asking me to clean. You could tell he was holding back though he was blushing holding back his anger.

I've been searching for a box to make a garbage can with for months. I must always just be missing the timing because I still don't have one. And what really sucks is that after looking around, the mess is minorly mine. I do have a few pieces of paper and two medical boxes, but the rest is for a sub company, and filming. Oh well.

When he said that, it left me wondering, what if I'm not feeling ambitious today?

09:45
What's This on my Desk
Very frequently here I'll come into work and there will be stuff on my desk. Usually they're products that need some sort of attention. 50% of the time, it's hey can you check and see if this is online? That really grinds my gears because it's so incredibly easy to check if something is online. You simply type the UPC into the search box and wait, it'll either give you a product, or say no results found.

This morning I came in, and there were two little boxes on my desk, all they said were red. The first person I ask is Boss, "Hey do you know why these are on my desk?" He of course has no idea, I have no idea, he asks some of my coworkers who also have no idea. So here's a little genius idea, leave a damn note with the product you're dropping on my desk, Better yet, just send me a freaking e-mail.

12:21

Want to Enjoy Some Fresh Air?

Whenever Boss asks this, he's actually asking you to go and run some errands for him. Now I don't have my license unfortunately. I ride my bike. Today it's a beautiful day, the first summer like day of the year. He asks me if I want to enjoy the beautiful sunshine and warm air and make a run out to OfficeMax to grab a proof for him.

I usually love love love going on these trips. You take his car, drive around kill time, I can milk it for slightly over an hour every time. It's fun. except I don't have my license. I was just put into the position where I had to tell him. It was a sad moment and he was shocked. He probably thinks I have a DWI now, which isn't the case. Oh well.

11:20
Oh Shoot I Just Noticed Something
This is typically not something you want to hear when you're about to send out fliers to multiple distributors and retail stores. This is something you hear very frequently here.

Everyone that is submitting some form of advertising has to get it approved by Boss. The way this works, is that every newsletter he gets a proof. He'll read it. BUT, as he's reading it he'll find something in the first paragraph and call your desk "Oh hey I just noticed a typo on this sentence, can you fix it?" Then he gets off the phone the edit gets made. Then as he continues reading, he'll find something else, make the same exact phone call. In fact, I heard him do this about 5 or 6 times just now.

Now if I were in his shoes, this is how I would handle this. I would read the entire document first, on the screen. Then if I found an error I would type out an e-mail. Adding to it as I find other errors if they exist. After finishing the read, I'll read it again, making sure my notes match up to errors I find on my second read. Then I'll send you an e-mail, and since the matter is semi urgent I would then call you and inform you that you have an e-mail of requested edits.

The way he does it just makes life so stressful, and this is how he handles everything. What really sucks is when you're managing about ~30k products. Because guess how he gives me my work? The same way. 90% of the time it's work that I won't even be able to start that day. I have no record of receiving the request, or what the request is so I can start it when I get the chance. I used to have an e-mail setup with spiceworks. So I was doing well for a while until randomly everyone, literally everyone in the store gave up on it.

If you're organized here, you're going to have a bad time.

11:45

You're Awesome! Thank You so Much!

The past couple of days I was working on a coworkers laptop. Someone informed me that she was complaining about it running slowly, and that there were tons of pop ups. Easy fix. She left early that day so I took her laptop and got to work on it. I alway start off with MalwareBytes right when I get a computer I have to fix up because 9/10 it's packed with viruses/malware. Since I had half the day and a semi-powerful laptop I was running a full scan. Guess how many things were detected...

~500... I have no idea how you can get that infected and wait that long before you tell someone. So bam, 1/4 of the job is done. I have a fairly decent list of tools that I have to use to clear a computer out of almost everything.

Step 2, hide IE. I hate IE.

Step 3, make Chrome more visible

Step 4, install ABP on chrome

I'm not filling in with the list of my tools, but every tool turned up something different, I also found about 17 RootKits.

So I returned the computer back while she was out yesterday. I just received a phone call saying how much better it was and how grateful she is that I did that for her.

At least someone appreciates the work I do.

17:26

That's a Wrap.

Day's over with nothing new and exciting to report except that I'm going on a nice bike ride in 33mph wind.... Should be fun.

Good night! Good Weekend!

09:29
Take the Seats Out of the Van

So Boss asked Shipper#1 to pull the van out front, and he'd help him take the seats out to deliver a local order. This is fairly standard practice, we usually have a room where we can put the seats temporarily so it's not in anyones way.

Today was a little different. When Shipper #1 pulls the van around, Boss is nowhere to be found of course. So naturally since everyone's always late here because you don't get in trouble no matter how late you are, seriously, I've walked in at noon and got a good afternoon from Boss.

We can't put the seats where they would normally go because Boss#2 wanted a fridge upstairs but didn't bother measuring and of course it doesn't fit in the elevator, so we're waiting for it to be picked up next week. Which means we have to put the two bench seats in the storefront. Everyone can see them and they are an eyesore. I don't know how he doesn't care what his store looks like to his customers. Only in select spots, like the paper room is all that matters now.

10:21
Do Not Let Shipper#1 up Here

So I was minding my own business changing image sizes prepping to load them onto the website, all of a sudden I hear a waterfall of junk, I turn around and Shipper#1 is going down! He's a big dude! like 6'7" and 300lbs, going right for the Other Guy Behind Me's Mac! I watch him slowly fall step by step as he tries to correct and save himself. Other Guy Behind Me came back pretty quickly after the incident and was left with the sight of garbage that had fallen onto his desk and cluttered around where he sits.

I don't think he actually hit the ground, but he sure did make a mess. You couldn't even get into Boss's office afterwards. Boss is a major hoarder. He doesn't like throwing things out and he'll even dig through the garbage from time to time to make sure that you haven't thrown anything out.

Boss didn't bother to ask if Shipper#1 was ok, instead he just told us not to allow him up there, nor did he clean up his mess, but just pushed it to the side, so it's back to normal I guess but it's still a disgusting pile of clutter.

Pic Related, it's his second desk a couple years back. Imagine that, plus a few defective products, cramped onto 4 steps falling down.

11:38

Use What we Had on our Old Website

Every day here I'm constantly going through a time machine to roll back to the way it was back in 2007. It's like he didn't spend thousands of dollars on a new website, and I didn't spend years preparing for the launch. Everytime he says check the old website I cringe.

This time it's about shipping charges. I applied a charge per variant based on an estimation of box size, It makes sense until you order a quantity greater than 1. Boss noticed this right away and commented on how they'll be turned off and just drop the order. He suggests I go to the old website and copy what was already there (it wasn't there it was on a different product naturally.). So that's what I did, and I created a giant headache for my order manager who is now going to have to get a quote every time somebody orders said product. Not to mention I have to talk to someone that's going to charge us $100 to have me ask, how can I turn off shipping options for this line.

It'll be fun when he gets the bill for it.

15:48
Dangerzone

We have music in our store, it was setup fairly recently by The Other Guy Behind Me, and as a result we have control of what we play. The first track I added was Rick Astley - Never Going to Give You Up, and there has been one story about a customer walking in, he basically told us that it was his 4th time being "Rick Rolled" this week. It made us chuckle a bit.

A few days ago I added Kenny Loggins - Danger Zone, It just played and reminded me to tell you about Rick Astley. This is inspired by Archer. Love that show.

17:29
It's quit time. Take care.

The Other Guy Behind me, have a good vacation, see you next thursday.

You Look Like an Outstanding Young Man

4/7/2015
09:02

You Look Like an Outstanding Young Man

Well I arrived today at 9:00AM. Since I got a haircut last night, I get to listen to my bosses give me fake compliments on it all day. Boss #2 noticed first, said it looks great and that I look like an outstanding young man, then proceeded to call me Captain Stubing (The captain of The Love Boat). This is the first of many times today he'll crack the same joke. He certainly already killed it yesterday.

Why?

Well I went on a cruise, and returned about a week ago, I went to Mexico, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Haiti. So now I have this new great nickname.

Boss saw my hair and said the same thing, "You look like an outstanding young man" and then proceeded to walk away.

Business As Usual.

10:10

Have You Seen This Set?

About four months ago, my boss dropped off a set for me to add onto the website. I added it, and put it back on the shelf for restocking. The Girl Up Front, just received an order for one. Since Boss put it back, naturally nobody knows where it is. 

The Girl Up Front asks Boss, Where is this set? and of course, he responds with ask Him it's on His desk. The Girl Up Front comes back and asks where is this set? of course I respond with I have no idea Boss put that back months ago. The Girl Up Front goes back to boss and repeats what I had said.

Boss expects me to have dimensions of the set, the packaging, the color of the cardboard. I have no idea about the answer to any of these so I just respond with it's in a cardboard package to get him to back off a little bit.

He begins his search. After five minutes he goes back to the Girl Up Front and says my name about ten times, probably saying how I lost it, because after all, my boss has never done anything wrong in his life.

This is the way it is here, if he messes up, he didn't mess up, you did. Always.

I Talked to One of You a few Weeks Ago About This.

4/6/2015 - 14:00
I Talked to One of You a few Weeks Ago About This.

I was approached by my boss about ten-fifteen minutes ago. He's holding a product in his hand with an Amazon order in the other. He says I talked to one of you two (The other guy behind me assists largely in the management of our website) about this a few weeks ago. Can you fix it again?

I naturally ask what he wants to be changed, and he replies that it no longer comes in a gift box. First thing I do is I investigate. I told him I would force it through in order to get him to leave because I hate when he stands over my shoulder. I discover that I had indeed uploaded it with the title gift box in it. Interesting I thought.

I decide to plug the UPC into our distributor's search boxes, sure enough, a matching image/product comes up with a gift box. I assume my boss had ordered the wrong product until I had discovered that it's no longer in stock and that you can get the ones without the gift box. These are things that I should be told about. So for every gift box order, we've received we have been subbing it with a brush without the box. I check the UPC's, they're different, which means I have to add a new product to our website, as well as Amazon.com.

Both things I should have been informed of, but naturally I wasn't. That's very common here. I'm plugging away, and have an updated product on our website, and I'm currently unpublishing the gift box on our website, and I'm waiting for Amazon to refresh so I can determine what shipping charge to give it. He'll forever think that I simply changed the product name easily without ever knowing what happened behind the scenes.

It makes him underappreciate me, which sometimes I'm okay with because then he expects less. The only thing that sucks is my wage.

15:00

Other Guy Behind Me, I Can't Find this Color Where is it?

Boss #2, the brother of the Boss mentioned earlier was pulling an upstairs order for a can of spray paint, the Other Guy Behind Me is fairly knowledgeable when it comes to spray paints, and because our bosses know this, he gets asked all the questions about spray paints, no matter how dumb they are.

My Boss #2 said "Guy Behind Me I can't find this white"

Other Guy Behind Me - "Which white"

Boss #2 - "White"

Other Guy Behind Me - "There's about 6 differ-"

Boss #2 - "White <Item Number>"

Other Guy Behind Me - "Which white is it? There's about six"

Boss #2 - "Oh Shock White"

Other Guy Behind Me - "Shock white what?"

Boss #2 - "oh Shock White Cream, come upstairs help me find it"

They briefly disappear.

About two minutes later he sits down and my boss asks, hey Other Guy Behind Me, did you find that white? He lets out a chuckle then explains that he didn't find them, but Boss #2 found 6 cans 3 seconds after approaching the rack. Boss and Other Guy Behind Me laughed.

And now it's 17:24 time to get ready to go. Until Tomorrow.