It’s been a soul crushing week at work.  As many of you may know, I’m currently employed as an RTM (Return to Manufacturer) Clerk at one of those big-box home improvement stores (the blue one).  My days are spent working with various vendors, trying to get credit for returned and/or damaged items from customers.

Yes, that’s right – whenever you return those broken light bulbs, extra screws, or that can of paint you didn’t want (but conveniently used half of), those items will eventually make their way back to my office (affectionately known as “the cage”), where I will then try to eek out some store credit and reduce the loss to the company’s bottom line.  Most of this stuff eventually gets thrown away – no matter what shape it’s in.  If a vendor gives the store credit for a returned item, they then usually want that product destroyed so it cannot be used again (without someone paying for it).  Is it wasteful?  Of course, but it’s the game every retailer plays with their various vendors.  Believe me, in the six months I’ve been on the job, I’ve thrown away enough raw material in the dumpster to probably build an entire house, from the floor boards to the sinks.

Oh, and on a side note – shame on most of you.  The reasons you give for returning a product that really isn’t broken are both laughable and embarrassing.  How you can stand there at the Customer Service Desk and easily tell a bald-faced lie to the cashier says a lot about the state of our society.  They write down all of your return reasons for me to look over, and believe me, you come up with some doozies.  I wouldn’t last five minutes up there, because I’d be constantly calling people out on their horsedump – probably telling them to take their tall tale and poorly thought-out purchase and skedaddle.  It’s why retail invented restocking fees (although my store unfortunately does not use them).  I swear we’d take back a Civil War-era kerosene lamp and a three piece, lime-green, leisure suit if you falsely stated that you bought it there just last week.  The next time you wish to complain about the high price of something, I’d suggest you go take a long look in the mirror.  Staring back at you is one of the reasons.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes.

In addition to that consumer mess, I’m also in charge of putting out broken power equipment for repair, tracking and safely collecting all HAZMAT waste, (yes – that returned bug killer, caulk, lawn fertilizer, and paint is considered HAZMAT, genius), pulling and processing any vendor buybacks or product recalls, and new for 2018 – trying to track and justify all of that special order merchandise that rolls back into the store (uh huh, I’m talking about that $3,000 Samsung fridge you special ordered [in navy blue] and didn’t bother to measure to see if it would fit.  Guess who has to deal with that now?)

It’s a big (read “underpaid”) job, and very technology dependent.  I use the computer to interact with the store’s inventory system, communicate with vendors for credit, contact repair techs, and ship product out of the store (via UPS, FedEx, or other commercial shippers).  It’s a balancing act, trying to keep up with the incoming returns, and any hitch in the program can easily put me way behind.  If the IT systems were to go down, then my world would come to a screeching halt.  That would be the “worst-case” scenario.  I’d be forced to sit and watch as the returned inventory piles up inside and outside of my office until the systems are back online.

 

Guess what?

As I write this (on a Friday), we’re on day three of a crippling IT communications outage that has rendered me all but useless.  At this time of the year, we are getting a lot of foot traffic and transactions, so naturally I get quite a few returns every day – thousands of dollars worth, to be exact.  The “cage” currently looks like a bomb went off inside of it, as I haven’t been able to process anything for the past 48-72 hours.  The mess has spilled out into the Receiving area, and I’m constantly stacking and re-stacking returned product, trying to make room for more (until I can sign-on and get it all worked through).  The path to my office door is getting narrower by the hour.  It’s like walking the aisles of your neighborhood “Ollies”.  The tally and returned inventory continues to build, stacking higher and higher, and I fall further and further into the weeds.

By the way, just because I work for a Fortune 500 company, don’t think that we’re dealing with a “state of the art” inventory system here.  Far from it.  For goodness sake, it’s DOS based.  D-O-S.  You may not have heard of DOS.  Trust me, no one under the age of fifty has, either.  This system is older than 75% of the employees at the store.  It knew Ronald Reagan when he was President of the United States.  It will probably qualify for Social Security payments next year.  It just goes to show how companies operate.  They take the calculated risk of running an antiquated system (and its associated cheaper operating costs), and will put up with the occasional outage (although each one can become potentially catastrophic due to the age of the IT system).

So what can I do?

Nothing, really.  I’ll be forced to try and dig out of the mess once the system is back online.  Who knows when that will happen?

It’s gonna be a long summer.