It's getting hard to concentrate.
September's end marks the close of the fiscal year at the shop where Mrs. KintlaLake and I work, so this weekend we're slogging through physical inventory -- 100% manual, no bar codes or high-tech help.
The annual ritual began when we arrived here yesterday morning around 7:30am for a regular workday. As soon as the clock struck 5pm we began counting -- 15,000 SKUs, give or take -- and we didn't leave until 1:15am, by which time our eyes were crossed and our brains were mush. We were back at it at 9am today, preparing to enter our data and transmit it to the corporate office, which has to wrangle nearly two dozen other branches' numbers as well.My wife, who manages this shop, and our two co-workers have been doing data-entry now for over an hour. I've busied myself with sweeping the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, taking out the trash and tidying up my warehouse, my kingdom.
An independent auditor will pay us a call early this afternoon. A typically humorless creature will scowl at, pore over and, well, audit what we've done.
We won't get our lives back until he/she/it signs off on our counts.
