[double plurk] [work] so today was crazy, but also interesting, though I'm not looking forward to how this fire is going to impact virtually everything.

I'll try to explain some work stuff as I go, bc I know I haven't talked much on here detail-wise (or even vague detail I guess), but that's mostly bc it's sorta specialized and difficult to explain tbh.

oh gosh, fire?

the easiest way to probably explain my job is that I work with sales reps in the company to set up temporary online stores with custom art for their clients, generally high school teams and the like. I work on the front end, and then other people in my dept work on the back end (not raw coding but the building, essentially).

this is super simplified, but I don't want to go into too much detail bc if you know where I live you could narrow down pretty easily exactly where I work.

ANYWAY

like I said, most of the sites are for kids' sports teams and the like. some colleges. occasionally other businesses/groups (which we've slowly been getting more of, mostly local but it's definitely been growing in the 1.5+ years I've been there)

one of the longer running stores is for a client that's associated with a certain sports star that's pretty popular globally, which has caused some interesting issues from what I've overheard over time. partly bc of people outside the US wanting to order and that's not usually a thing.

back in December there was actually an interesting thing because the sports star had called the rep and wanted to get some merch to wear on some late night shows, so there was a BIG thing over making sure the art looked good on the garments, the garments were in good condition, etc etc

- I'll pause here bc I work in the corporate office, but our distribution center is here in town also, and production, which makes the custom stuff that is on the stores/sites. -

- and this is why I said earlier today how yes, my job is connected to retail, but not in a traditional way, being also connected to inventory and dealing with production/customization, etc. (I definitely look at garments in stores a little differently now, lol) -

continuing on...

if you've watched/heard/read the news at all in the last 24 hours, you know a fairly well-known sports star died yesterday. that individual is the athlete connected with this client.

so when I came in to work this morning people were already freaking out and setting up emergency meetings, bc just overnight the store/site saw an absolutely ridiculous amount of sales. more than the store had sold total previously (and it's I think one of the biggest sellers we've done).

my supervisor's cubical happens to be on the other side of mine, so I tend to overhear a lot of stuff (which gets interesting sometimes).

all day it was just updating on sales, and impacts to production, and inventory, and how the hell they're going to handle this bc there's not been anything remotely like it (which, I mean, it's not really something you can prepare for).

basically any other fires that were happening - which being nearly end of fiscal year I'd overheard a few - are major backseat to this, which is going to have things crazy for a while. especially if this client ends up wanting to do some kind of memorial merch, which my supervisor is already expecting.

(also apparently ALL the Kobe shoes in the company's entire inventory sold out, something like 6k pairs, so that was a bit jaw-dropping to hear on its own.)

I mean you always hear how music/record sales spike when big musicians die and the like, but unless you have a peek behind the scenes you don't really think of it past that. so today was very interesting from that perspective.

wow. not a surprising thing to happen, but yeah. yikes. no way to prepare.

but. things were kind of already semi-on fire in the dept bc activity has ramped up unexpectedly, all areas of our thing are swamped, AND they're going to try and "soft launch" the new platform (that got promised at the national sales conference back in July) within the next month. which is going to be an absolute nightmare but I won't go in to that.

today as the day went on my coworker and I - there's only 2 of us that work on front end btw, hence why I was working OT for however many stupid months in a row that was in 2019 - just kept having "oh fuck, this is going to impact this or that" moments, and we're both just dreading how this week (and probably the next couple) will go

because the sales reps have been getting pretty unruly about some things for a while now, and if this delays other people's stuff (there's no way it won't, really) people are going to start getting their panties in a twist and it's going to get ugly.

and unfortunately my coworker and I are basically the messengers stuck in the middle. we have "support" roles but personally I feel it's worse than a pure customer support role because with customers there's always a line at some point. with the sales reps, it's kinda been shown that line doesn't always exist.

so yeaaaah. I'm hoping work doesn't become unbearable this week because oh boy, I'm not down for that.

as it is I'm miffed and unhappy at the fact I'll be working OT tomorrow (voluntary but still) as there's that much work piling up and I feel like if I don't take the initiative to put in extra hours during the week I'll end up forced to give up part of my Saturday, and I fucking HATED working Saturdays for however long that was in the fall.

totally do not get paid enough to deal with some of this shit. really don't think I personally do, now that I've found out the temps have been getting paid more than I do right now. which is another issue that I'm totally bringing up when it's yearly eval time in another month-ish.

/stops this crazy ramble.

( also if I get to minimal RP tags this week, all this is probably why. tonight I got home and my brain kinda wanted to shut off critical thinking for a while... and of course now that I really should be forcing myself to bed, my brain is like "hey the house is finally quiet, let's try to write some scene tags!" >.< )