Okay, I take it back.

Monday, I felt bad for my manager getting in trouble because I didn't get all my work done. I'm over that now. When I clocked in yesterday, I had plenty waiting for me. First, I was to construct a stackbase (essentially a plastic pallet that all "action alley" displays are supposed to stand on since Upper Management doesn't let us have real pallets on the floor during the day anymore) of cedar chip bedding, which we not only had an excess of, but would make a good run of considering last night was the clodest it's been so far since the end of summer. And actually it wasn't even one stackbase, it was two, side by side. Now, this in itself I don't consider a big deal, and it went well since one assistant manager help me get the stackbases from the pen out back, and set up the signing, and another assistant manager helped me by pulling the cedar bedding off the high shelf in the aisle. So, that was the first thing I was instructed to do before my department manager took off. The second thing was the put away the contents of a shopping cart full of stuff that I'd come to understand later had come out from underneath... somewhere. I suspect shelving, mainly. But some of this stuff was so old it wasn't in the computer system anymore, and some was still in packaging we haven't used in at least two years - not to mention how downright filthy a few items were. I also came to know that this cart had been presented much earlier in the day to my manager, and he'd effectively had all day to dispose of this stuff before I showed up. Next, there's the returns. The returns which obviously hadn't been worked all day, since there was a shopping cart packed full near to the point of overflow. I know they hadn't been worked at all because that simply doesn't happen. Pets, Chemicals and Paper doesn't get that kind of return volume during the day, and certainly not during the day on a Tuesday. It took me almost two hours to get all the returns and the cart left for me finished, that after spending forty five minutes setting up those stackbases.

It should be clear that given this, I barely had time to just do a bare-minimum zoning. I couldn't pull anything from the risers, I couldn't stock anything from the back, all I could do was pull stuff forward and dispose of empty boxes. And doing that, I did get done, and finished the fish before the call to go home. But I could have done a much better job if my department manager hadn't dumped a good bit of what should have been his work onto me.