Rapid Exhaustification
March 27, 2006 | 5:30 P.M.

So the new job is interesting. I am thinking that if I explain one portion of my duties per post, I will have about a years worth of posts down without anything else every happening. There is so much to do and some of it is very confusing! However...I do feel that once I get a hang of everything I have to do (in say oh a month or two) I should have no problems at all. It will be easier after I have moved because this 1.5 hour of transportation EACH way in addition to my 9 hour shift is quite wearing but the 10 minute ride each way after moving will be a nice change as I am sure that you can imagine.

Now...I work in a Home Depot back in my hometown but I do not work for Home Depot. They pay my company to send us in there to make sure that everything is as the manufacturers pay for them to be so that the Home Depot corporation makes their money off of them. Need an explanation? No problem:

Just like paying to have commercials on at
specific times during specific shows is important to selling products by TV, there are strategic places to put merchandise that your company manufactures to help ensure that they sell more. Companies will pay the Home Depot Corporation money to have their products in a certain place and to keep other companies stuff where it belongs. So Home Depot pays my company to ensure that everything is where it's supposed to be and use a PDA to take pictures for the companies to show them that everything is where they are paying for it to be put in the store. Follow so far?

They also pay to have certain signs put up with their goods along with tear sheets and brochures that the customers can take to help them decide what to buy and to try to persuade them to buy merchandise from their company.

So the MAIN goals for us is to make sure that everything is where it is supposed to be. A problem with that is the store managers usually want to make better use of space which will 90% of the time go against what the planograms tell us that the layout should be. So we have to work with them to get everything looking as it should. And while that sounds simple...oh god it isn't! An then we have to put up signage where it should be and replace any that gets destroyed by normal wear and tear from customer perusing.

We also dust, whipe down and clean everything possible as well as tape up opened boxes to make everything look better. Our job is to make the products look their best to make sure that they sell.

We also have to go through the returns for our department and see what the store should get credit for. Like if the product had a defect, we'll usually give them credit. If a customer simply broke it and returned it saying that it was defective...they will take it back so as not to call the customer a liar but we won't give them credit under most circumstances because it wasn't the manufacturers fault.

And while what we do each day will differ...that is barely a portion of what we do on an everyday basis. But hey..the money is great and there will be more and more benefits such as there is a 6 month corporate meeting and the last one was held in Atlantic City where everything is paid for AND you get paid your regular salary to be there! Plus I will be earning paid days off and all. But the money from this job and what the band makes from shows will be very helpful in working on getting out of debt. It will take quite some time but I hope to get myself out of the danger zone atleast in a year or two.

In the meantime I will get through the interesting transportation
methods of getting to and from work and band practices, record and shows. Exhaustive! But the feeling that I am getting things done is priceless!