Doing Closing

3rd week at Safeway now, and I'm doing closing :-) Most people hate closing, because it means a lot of extra work and stress, and you're responsible for the completion of a lot more tasks. If someone else screws up, it just means more work for the people who do closing-- if the people closing screw up-- they get in trouble with management, who will see all your mistakes and things you neglected to do, when they do morning inspections. So basically, if you don't do closing perfectly, your boss(es) will definitely know, and you'll get called into the office if you slack off too much.

But for me, who is a perfectionist to begin with, I see this as an opportunity to demonstrate my strong work-ethic, and to get more much-needed experience doing go-backs. Perhaps after a couple of weeks doing closing, I will have nearly the entire store down-- that would be good.

The biggest problem I had with doing closing today (other than the go-backs-- which sadly I am still having way too much trouble with, although I'm fast improving!) was with sweeps, which I had to do twice as fast (the whole store in 15 minutes) in order to have time for all the other closing duties stacked onto the regular stuff. I had to work really fast, and tried my best (but somewhat failing) not to cut corners to get everything done. All the other courtesy clerks cut corners, but not me. I need to stay ahead of the pack if I want to be successful here.

Closing duties consist of turning off the power to the secondary entrance (to optimize traffic) at 9pm, taking out all the trash and recycle, both in and out of the store, replace all the garbage bags, refill all the plastic bags for the checkstands, pick up all the trash around the checkstands, wipe down the barcode scanners and food belts with windex, put away all the carts, and....of course go-backs. There are also other closing duties that need to be done from time to time, but these are the ones you do every day (if you're closing).

First day of closing, I did everything right, except I didn't know I was supposed to refill the checker's bags, and I still had a lot of go-backs leftover when I had to check out. I'll do better with closing tomorrow, hopefully.

Getting Into the Rhythm of Things.

Things are really starting to settle in now-- I've got the basic job functions down now, and I can start applying all the things I learned yesterday-- especially all the mistakes I made-- to make today even  more productive and smooth-sailing. I've already received several compliments from coworkers of all levels, on the quality of my work, which I feel is a good sign-- after all, the more people @ Safeway like me, the more I'll be able to get the support I need to get promoted, and I want to get promoted as soon as possible.

The main thing I needed to work on (other than those damn go-backs!!!) today is BOB (Bottom of Basket), which is still quite easy to forget-- I'll need to instill a habit for it; especially when transitioning between break/lunch and work, I tend to forget about the finer details like that.

That's why I hate taking breaks: they kill my rhythm, make me forget stuff, and throw off my professional equilibrium. I sometimes wish I could skip breaks altogether.

But all in all, it's been a really good day :-)