The Cosmetic Reset From Hell

Last Sunday we drove down to Yuma for a cosmetic reset at an Albertson's store on Monday. Now we were told that we only needed one day to do this and there would be a crew of four of us to set 20 feet of product. I only budgeted us for one day down there as I was not told we would even remotely need more time than that. I definitely thought it could be done within those parameters. I was the team lead which really didn't mean much except that I had more responsibility and stress for the same amount of pay. So we get to the Albertson's and check out the situation on Sunday evening. Come to find out the Cover Girl product had been added to our list of duties which gave us an extra 9 feet to worry about. Now 9 feet doesn't sound like very much but when you think about cosmetics and the small products on the pegs, YES it is quite a bit. Still I figure that we can probably get it done with in a 9 or 10 hour day.

So we get there at 8am as we just had to walk across the parking lot as we boondocked there for the night. Only one other person from our team showes up so now we are running with only 3 people. The movement on the cosmetic wall was pretty straightforward but the beginning depended on the Revlon/Almay rep being there on time as she had to move her stuff as she was losing 3 ft of space. Of course, here it was 8:15am and she still wasn't there. So I call my DM and the L'Oreal rep and I start moving her stuff off the wall into carts. She gets there about 8:20am and is pissed off that we touched her stuff....argghh...we COULD NOT do anything until she started the ball rolling.

So we start our part of the set which was Physician's Formula. Now I know I do things fast and Bill hadn't done many cosmetic sets, but the other guy is as slow a molasses. We run into an issue with PF and the wall standard, which is where it connects together...we can't get the final row of PF before the standard so we have to move it over. Well, the gap looks funny and that means we will lose space farther down the line. So on the phone I go again. DM says she'll get right back to me. We can't do anything further until this issue is cleared up and she doesn't call me for almost an hour! THEN the decision is we have to flip the brands and PF will no longer go in that spot! So Mr. Slow-As-Molasses starts moving the PF slowwwwly to the next 2 ft section. In the meantime I am pulling my hair out as we are getting so behind.

At 5pm we only had part of the Cover Girl done, probably half of the work. The Albertson's department manager comes over and asks what time we will be in tomorrow. I say we can't come in as we had not planned on it. She goes and gets the store manager who is is a total ass. He is pissy at me and I sure as hell wasn't getting paid enough. So I call my DM and explain what is going on. She calls around and gets the team from a Phoenix store to drive down and she'll put them up in a hotel and they will take over and finish on Wednesday. Whoa! We DRIVE 3 hours in the motor home and use $60 in gas and you don't offer us anything? But she said we need to come in the morning to work on the project -- of course nothing about the fact that we were 1 person short and 9 ft more of product! I tell her that we have work in Phoenix on Wednesday and the most we POSSIBLY could do would be the morning. So we stay until about 7pm and then call it quits.

Tuesday morning we decided NOT to go in as we talked about it and decided we had been set up, running short handed and more product to set in only one day. My DM gets on the phone around noon and is totally pissed off --- wait a minute! We weren't even SUPPOSED to be here anymore to work on Tuesday. So she locks me out of the website and I can't report our hours. I call corporate headquarters on Thursday and let them know in no uncertain terms that we expect to get fully paid for Monday. They have me leave a message with the HR/payroll person who has not bothered to call me back. I will be on the phone with them bright and early Monday morning. If they think they are going to get away with this and not pay us they don't know who they are messing with. That is a huge problem with the economy today -- people have to take anything and everything the "boss" dishes out if they want to keep their jobs. I was upset about this all week and then we decided that we are going to look at it as bonus money. I really should not be doing that kind of work as I hurt horribly Tuesday and Wednesday. Plus I was only good enough to get work from that company that no one else wanted. There were sets all over Phoenix and she did not bother to use us but it was ok to send us all the way to Yuma.