Starvation diet hasn't kicked in yet

For reasons passing understanding I woke up not particularly hungry. Perhaps I've gone past that, which is a bit of a worry. Any way I'm still not hallucinating, so the problems associated with lack of food are not yet of catastrophic proportions.

I have another two whole sessions this week at the funny farm; both of them with the Big Swinging Dick in charge. His mood has improved as the week's progressed - no Pea Brain, and gradually he's been able to turn around all the 'issues' he faced on Monday morning.

We can be held responsible for a poor merchandising, but only up to a point. Beyond that merchandising is just a matter of taste. When I was running my own shop I had a vision for the over all offering and the sections within it. I got in early so that I could get a clear picture of the state of play, straighten things and get ready for staff and then opening. I stayed late to bring things to an orderly conclusion. I knew what I wanted on which shelves and rails and how. I had a clear idea of standards of presentation, tidiness, cleanliness and so forth. I had a clear image in my mind I strove to deliver. Not everyone saw things as I did and so there was conflict, not always about 'right' and 'wrong' but simply over equally valid but competing visions.

There's an element of that going on. There's also an element of incompetence. Ordering insufficient quantities of the products going 'on offer' is simply inept. The store looks relatively barren because the Big Swinging Dick's big on littering the shop floor with 'bins' and 'stacks' and 'stands'. Personally I'm into clean lines and space, so if I were running the place I'd clear the floor to enhance the feeling in customers that they can actually shop and stop worrying about what they're going to walk into or knock over.

Keeping the shop floor clear during most of the year would also improve the impact of the cramming that's about to happen: Christmas stock is arriving and soon the store will be overflowing with things you wouldn't otherwise think you needed to buy.

Proper pricing is about making the customer comfortable. Proper pricing means he or she knows what will be charged before the item's even picked up. We're not good at this which is very naughty and punishable in law if the powers that be decide to get heavy with us.

There are a couple of challenges though to doing this pricing thing which are not of our own making. At the heart of the problem is a massive data table. Broadly speaking each item has a bar code which is a computer readable form of its unique identifier that links the product description (name, size) price, price per weight and, from time to time any special offer the item is subject to. The data table also contains a order code and a source warehouse code for each item). Extracts from this data table contribute to shelf tickets, promotional material and what happens at the tills.

At the end of the day though, what's in the data table is only what's put in there by a human being. A fallible human being. A newly promoted fallible human being.

The result has been chaos. This new offer period has been a disaster as our new chump has unveiled a raft of innovative ways to get prices, descriptions and offer details wrong. If products are being linked to an offer then the chances are the offer isn't working properly: too much or too little deducted etc etc. One of our ciders is being described as vinegar. It probably tastes like it, but it isn't actually vinegar.

The chump is in an office in a town a very long way from the wrath of our customers. Lucky bastard. Bet he's paid more than me too. Why? I could fuck things up at least as well as Dick can.

I'm off now, to continue this conversation with the little green man with pointed ears who lives at the bottom of my garden.