Two more days...just TWO more days and this weekend will be over. What am I talking about? Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and my very own Tragic Tuesday.
The parents came here on Wednesday night. I told them before that I was working on Thanksgiving. In fact, I volunteered to work on Thanksgiving because no one was going to be home but myself. I thought I'd just go to work. Two of the cashiers (luckily, it's people I get along with) also volunteered.
I didn't know that my manager (actually, ALL managers in all the departments and the store managers) was going to be there.
I had made my Thanksgiving dinner early (on Wednesday). I baked a chicken and some potatoes and made some rice. Yep, that was it. Lol! I slept early so I could go to work at 8:45am on Thanksgiving day.
When I got to work, I noticed all the usual Black Friday barriers we put up every year, but I noticed the employee's side of the parking lot had a lot of cars; but no people in line. O_O; so I kind of panicked and thought I was late. It turned out that the other departments were there earlier to set up for our day.
This is our first year doing this. They said if this is a success, they're going to do it again next year. And it's a good thing they did this instead of making us all come in to work on Thanksgiving like last year for that horrifically long shift. (24 hours PLUS!!!!)
Basically, we were all working because our store had a special online sale. The actual store was closed (so we got to wear normal clothes instead of our dreaded dress code) but we were there to work on that online sale. It was going to be an "In store pickup" sale.
On Tuesday, our home office decided to do a test run to see how our system would handle 100 orders within a short amount of time. They were still on the screen and needed to be "deleted".
Anyway, this is where the trouble happens. Our system works perfectly fine in a normal environment. Daily, we get about 80-100 orders (?) I believe. Basically, we bet about 8 orders an hour. This was different. Unfortunately, the set up of our in store pickup system was the same.
We only had ONE station that could: print off the orders and email the confirmations. ONLY ONE STATION!!!!
I was the designated person to do all the emailing/manning of the station. So this is how our ISPU (in store pickup) process goes:
1. Order comes through, we print out the order (it prints out two sheets: 1 product copy; 1 file copy). In order to do that, we have to password.
2. Take the product copy and get the item(s)
3. If the item is available/not available; manually type in the quantity that's available
4. Email back the confirmation email (which requires another password)
THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED ON THANKSGIVING:
1. 30 orders come in (on average) within 15 minutes; print out orders
2. Next person separates the sheets and hands the product copy over to the inventory checker (my manager/store manager); file copy goes in a separate pile on the side
3. Inventory checker checks the inventory list (we had a spreadsheet of all the items on sale). If it was on the list, they would mark it off the spreadsheet and hand it back to me to email. If it's not an ad item, they'd use the walkie-talkie and get one of the departments to check up on the item.
4. Depending on the pending items (aka items that were not on ad and people have to manually check the item), I would be given the papers if they've all been confirmed to be there or not
5. Manually type available quantities for each order [btw, did i mention that we could only work on one order at a time!?]
6. Email off confirmation emails
7. Person matches the product copy and the file copy. Product copy goes into appropriate department bin.
8. Runner from the different departments come up to get the product copies to find the items and put in the warehouse by alphabetical order
At first, it started off very slow. Then, when we found things out (like if you hit "enter" twice, it exits out of the system O_O!!! and you have to wait 15 minutes for it to load back up!!!) and we became backed up like CRAZY!!!!! At the worst, we were backed up for 3 hours! :( It was terrible! It kept refreshing and every time it refreshed there were a million new orders!
90% of the time I did the passwording. My manager took over a few times because it was painful (hands, wrists, back, and feet <--we have to stand), the store manager took over for 15 minutes but they thought he was too slow and made me take over again LOL, and the cashier who was separating all the papers helped out with the passwording. But, I did most of it -_-;;;
I was in pain! Luckily, we got caught up!!! (near the end, though X_x;) We actually got out on time. [My schedule on Thanksgiving: 845am - 615pm; I clocked out at 622pm].
Once I got home, I didn't even get to sit down when my parents whisked me away to my aunt's house to have Thanksgiving dinner. My dad wanted to go to Wal-Mart right after and I refused to go. I was super cranky and tired. They dropped me off at home while they went to Wal-Mart. I just passed out. It was 9pm. [I planned on sleeping at 8pm]
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Black Friday
My Black Friday work schedule: 5am - 830pm
I arrived at around 430 am. I, always notice the line whenever I arrive on Black Friday. I was surprised to see how small the line was. I was wondering if it had to do with the ISPU's from the day before.
My duties were DSC all day. YAY! But that meant I had to make sure everyone went to lunch/breaks on time. That's quite hard to do when we have 100+ associates. I did my best.l Me and Phillip took turns being DSC. All the other sups had their own duties.
Basically, in the morning it wasn't busy. It was slow, actually. But after 9am, it picked up. It really really REALLY picked up! Why? Because all the ISPU orders came to be picked up! It's stated on their confirmation emails that they have to pick up their orders after 9am.
Oh, but that's not all for the ISPU though... The ISPU was a MESS (not the ones from Thanksgiving). There was a HUGE influx of NEW orders for Black Friday. Jennifer (sup) manned that station. The store managers were in the warehouse with their walkie-talkies. As usual, people didn't read their emails or bring their email confirmations. So they would ask Jennifer if things were processed and if they could pick up their items, etc.
The orders for Black Friday were so backed up that when they showed up to pick up the item, we sent out the email confirmation right there and then. X_x; I had to help out for a bit. Jennifer had her own system going and I got so confused :/
Anyway, the day actually went by REALLY REALLY fast! I'm wondering if it's because it was slow in the morning but got busy later on? It could be!
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Small Business Saturday
Okay, this has nothing to do with Small Business Saturday except that it was Saturday. Saturday at work was VERY busy! O_O; It's like all the Black Friday people came in on Saturday instead!
Anyway... That's all I have for the Black Friday weekend. My feet still hurt, so does my back :(
I wonder how work's going to be tomorrow for Cyber Monday... and I hope I get a lot of sales for my Tragic Tuesday sale.
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NEXT TOPIC!
I'm just going to show you my most recent hauls. I haven't really bought anything from Black Friday or etc. But here are my most recent hauls (from a month ago till... today?)
I didn't use my flash here -_-;
MAC came out with their holiday collection and this is what I got. I, also, got StrawberryMilkMade something from this collection but this is what I got for myself. I won't show what I got for her cuz she reads this blog :D
Lipglosses! YAY! This was the last one too. This set is the Guilty Passions set (the Coral one)
EDIT: I decided to return this. I didn't even use it ^_^;
EDIT: I decided to return this. I didn't even use it ^_^;
This is the item that I purchased TODAY. I ran out of my go-to perfumes. I got these at KOHL's, they come in a set. The FLIRT! Rock-N-Rebel had been my go-to scent for years... but when I got this set last year (?), I found out that I liked the Flirt! Luva-licious one more. Their scents are very similar but they're different too. Lol!
They had the mini purse-sized ones too but for $14.99 each, I'm like...uh... I can get the full-sized ones for the same amount as two mini's.
Sephora had their Friends & Family sale awhile back. I know someone who works at their corporate office and she gave me a coupon... Taa daa! The next few items were purchased from that time...
You'll see that I've been in a lippie mood lately :P
This is the IZAK Mini Lipstick Set
Here's the Cinderella Moonlight Kiss Lipstick Set
Gorgeous packaging! It's silver...sorry my camera made it weird... :P
I saw that Laura Mercier came out with a new palette and I was attracted to the colors. This is the Artist Palette
What the actual palette looks like...
Here are the colors...
No swatches because I'll be posting them in my beauty blog, hopefully soon...
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RANDOM NEWS!
I still really like this perfume! This was a huge splurge. I had another Friends & Family coupon from a friend (for Sephora) and this is what I had purchased.
Speaking of perfumes... A long time ago (2 years ago?), ESCADA came out with this scent Taj Sunset. I like this scent...in fact, I liked it so much I got the SET (lotion, perfume, and ....a roller ball) EXTRA (for a backup) because this is a limited edition as most ESCADA scents are. I try not to use it that much.. ;__;
Imagine my surprise when I ran out of my go-to perfume (look above), I spritzed this on and I was like hmm...this smells like ESCADA's Taj Sunset. They're both VERY VERY VERY similar! So, TAA DAA! I found a dupe and didn't know it. LOL
What?! Another perfume post!? A few weeks ago, I went to Nordstrom (where I got the MAC holiday sets) and passed by the small counter that had this perfume there. I had a $20 gift certificate for the store and didn't know what to spend it on cuz it expired soon -_-;
So I smelled this RANDOMLY! And I liked it. I tried to get the attention of the salespeople but no one paid attention to me. They were in some sort of meeting. I don't really like getting the attention of people ;P so I wandered off for a bit... Before I wandered, I sprayed it on my wrists so I could see if it'd give me a headache.
20 minutes later, no headache and still loving the scent... I went back to the counter and decided to get it. The sales lady told me (yes someone came and helped me! O_O; ) that this is a limited edition perfume. *cries* OF COURSE IT IS! ;__; and it's #7 in a series of limited edition perfumes or something like that and that you can MIX the other ones with it to create a unique blend.
She gave me a sample of the original... and told me to mix them together. While she got me the sample, I asked for a sample of PINK SUGAR also... not for me though, but for StrawberryMilkMade. I had smelled that scent before and thought she'd like it. Since I don't have it... I couldn't exactly give her a sample of it. Lol! But i got a sample for her. YAY!
Anyway, here's what the bottle of the packaging looks like. I think it's quite plain...
Anyway, that's all! I really need to sleep. The Black Friday schedule has seriously messed up my sleep!
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