Friday, August 25, 2006
Corporate Shortsightedness
It probably comes as no surprise to most people who have worked for large companies but there is little connection between what Corporate thinks is good and what works on the individual store level.
Across this fair country, retail stores are slowly preparing for the onslaught of holiday merchandise, which we will no doubt start displaying in June in a just a few short years. To make room for these piles of boxes and cartons of be-elved items, most stores have an end of the summer sale, but even so, stockrooms will be filled with everything non-holiday related.
This is the case at the Store; the stockroom is so chock full of boxes and stacks of books, that one can barely traverse it for fear of getting hit by a tsunami of encyclopedias and unsold copies of the Da Vinci Code.
Despite this fecundity of merchandise, Corporate believes that they should be sending us innumerable boxes of crap every single day. And almost none of it is for the holiday season. We are supposed to shelves these books for a total of two weeks, then bring them to the stockroom to sit for three months while the holiday books are put in their place.
The idiocy of the situation can barely be described - and my immense anger at having to deal with it might have something to do with that as well.
Our location is not as large as some others and yet I imagine even the largest locations are having the same problem.
I understand that Corporate mindlessly sends us these boxes because someone in the organization mindlessly purchases the stock. However, dumping it on their stores without a thought of consequence is just an act of abject cruelty to those have to lug the boxes and books on rickety old carts.
Across this fair country, retail stores are slowly preparing for the onslaught of holiday merchandise, which we will no doubt start displaying in June in a just a few short years. To make room for these piles of boxes and cartons of be-elved items, most stores have an end of the summer sale, but even so, stockrooms will be filled with everything non-holiday related.
This is the case at the Store; the stockroom is so chock full of boxes and stacks of books, that one can barely traverse it for fear of getting hit by a tsunami of encyclopedias and unsold copies of the Da Vinci Code.
Despite this fecundity of merchandise, Corporate believes that they should be sending us innumerable boxes of crap every single day. And almost none of it is for the holiday season. We are supposed to shelves these books for a total of two weeks, then bring them to the stockroom to sit for three months while the holiday books are put in their place.
The idiocy of the situation can barely be described - and my immense anger at having to deal with it might have something to do with that as well.
Our location is not as large as some others and yet I imagine even the largest locations are having the same problem.
I understand that Corporate mindlessly sends us these boxes because someone in the organization mindlessly purchases the stock. However, dumping it on their stores without a thought of consequence is just an act of abject cruelty to those have to lug the boxes and books on rickety old carts.
