Mood - stressed

Sunday is it. We take inventory piloting the new system without a safety net and going in with almost no margin of error. People in the store are pushing back or finding every excuse for things not to go to plan, reasons why so-and-so can't work work despite the fact that we need almost the entire roster to work that day or night for things to go well.

Oh, and we'll have "visitors" looking over our shoulders. Not peers that want to see the system in action (we'll have those but they don't stress me), but superiors who will be sure to point out anything we miss.


There are two people in the store who's annual review is affected by shrink. Mine and my boss'. Granted, it's a warm and fuzzy, but come time for annual reviews it will neither be warm nor fuzzy if we blow our inventory. And blame will come down squarely on us and only us.

Plus, I have my reputation at stake. I've never missed the mark on an inventory, even after we found out that a warehouse supervisor had been ripping us off blind for huge sums. I brought it in under budget, had my boss' boss go through my work looking for mistakes or cheating, and came through it fine. When it comes to inventory, I am the guru and I'm rather proud of that. Having someone refer to me as the "Godfather of Inventory" made me smile. And usually I can call it within a fairly narrow span.

This time feels different. I've seen too many things over the past two years at a dozen or so inventories to be comfortable with our narrow margin. The things we've counted I know we're solid on. But there are just too many variables and all it will take is one big surprise to throw us off track, one person deciding to bend the rules because they are inconvenient or one shipment we get billed for in a category we don't count.

Most of the time I can maintain my calm demeanor, probably because I go into autopilot. But I keep worrying that I've missed stuff, and go from being into my groove to fretting. It doesn't help that my boss has been denied most of his prep time for this. "That's what Oz is for." Except normally Oz would have a manager working alongside him so that we could do scrub counts and prep work and the new system condenses two and a half weeks worth of work into one. Add to that the fact that my team is short staffed (especially with me off the grid) and there are times I feel like this whole mess is balancing on my shoulders.

While I usually try to avoid it, I know cracks have appeared in my calm facade. I've been quicker to irritate, and today I almost blew a gasket when people kept pestering me. I think when I bared my fangs they got the message, and fortunately the most pestery one doesn't work with me anymore until after inventory is over.

I think having a heart attack would be less stressful than the next few days.