If one more customer asks…

….if we sell "X" anymore I’m gonna scream. We’re out. We’ve been out. It’s been ordered. It should have been ordered while I was on my off cycle but no one had sense enough to do it, so now it’s my fault. Whatever.

Have my departmental inventory tomorrow, then the big store-wide inventory in two weeks. Yay me. I do have to work an extra day that week, but it’s only the actual day of inventory, I don’t have to work the day before (panic central) or the day after (they said I have how many?).

Facility manager is already planning on touring the ship, so to speak, the day before. It’s a tradition, dating back to at least the 1700’s, that the Captain of a vessel walks it, bridge to bilge, inspecting it closely, on the eve of a hopeless battle. Inventory isn’t necessarily a hopeless battle, the number is what it is, but it really stresses people out. We should be ok though. The computer thought we had $5 million in inventory last year and we actually put hands on $4.6. We’re sitting at $4.5 right now, and I think we’ve kept a better handle on the paperwork this year. We’ve also had more sales (dramatically so) which will also help with the final numbers.

Here’s how we come up with THE NUMBER:

Take what you counted last year, add in everything you’ve paid for, subtract everything that was damaged, defective, recalled, or known to be stolen (empty packages recovered and the like), subtract what you’ve sold or transferred to another store. That is the current count. Take that number and subtract the current number the computer has for your inventory, and that’s your shrink dollars. Divide the shrink dollars by the total sales since the last inventory and that’s your percent, the important number. The lower the better, obviously. That’s where the extra sales helps out, it dilutes anything that was stolen or lost in paperwork.

I’m out, gotta hit the sack so I can be all fresh and bouncy tomorrow. Carla is helping with the inventory, and she has plans, so we will be done by 1500 at the latest so we can go back and check anything that looks silly on the trial reports so she can run out the door at 1800 as planned.