September 5th, 2009

A good friend

Me: It’s just down one floor, if you want to take a look.

(we descend on escalator, look around)

Me: Oh, no, sorry. I was wrong, it’s actually *up* one floor. Sorry.

P: No worries. At least we got an escalator ride out of it.

Crying crying all of the time
RR

August 28th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews T&T Supermarket

I was tired and overstimulated from an afternoon gathering featuring no fewer than 7 children under 3, but when my friend Z asked if I would mind stopping at a Chinese supermarket in Markham, I felt my energy returning.

Markham contains Chinatown North for Toronto, and Chinatown North contains wonders of new (to me) restaurants, groceries, and other things that I know nothing about that are not contained in the older, bigger, wonderful but different Toronto Chinatown south. And carless me does not get to go to Markham very often–this would only be my third trip, which is why I don’t know much about what’s on offer there.

I had never, for example, heard of our destination, T&T Supermarket, even though it apparently has some TTC-able branches, and is wonderful. WONDERFUL.

It’s a grocery store–big parking lot, buggies, checkout lanes, etc. But it’s also a market–various stands of prepared foods, pushing crowds and entire families shopping together, and the free samples are distributed far and wide by cheerful hawkers who yell at you (well, me) to come over to try some soy milk/dumplings/fried scallops. I was excited about the prepared food section because it reminded of Japan, with all the cute complete cheap dinners in plastic boxes. I think it was a pan-Asian market even though it was in a Chinese area, too, because I recognized some salmon teryaki and those triangular nori-wrapped rice cakes I forget the name of. Yum, everything.

Too bad I didn’t really need any of that stuff and was full of cake, but even the stuff I wasn’t buying was fun to look at: Chinese baked goods, aka, manna; giant rice-cakes that *popped* out of a rice-cake making machine (tragically, the picture didn’t turn out); kimchee in tetra paks, and all kinds of vegetables I don’t know how to cook with:

This would be intrepid M, with duriands. The sign, if you can’t read it, says, “Handle duriands carefully to avoid injury.”

Since I didn’t need so many things and was feeling somewhat restrained for once (could be all the cake), I didn’t buy much. But the Chinese eggplants I bought were excellent in stirfry, the lettuce was…well, standard lettuce, that apples were huge and tasty (though I dropped one on the floor and it got all bruised…we can’t really blame the apple, can we?); the dried mushrooms I haven’t tried yet and the sweet potato candy that I ripped into in the parking lot was…odd. But I eventually found someone who did like them to give the rest of the package to (I have another, unopened package–coming soon to a household near you!)

Also, all the little samples I tried were awesome, except the soy milk (I don’t like soy milk, but it’s so healthy that I keep trying). And the prices were super cheap and if you were more ambitious and organized like my shopping companion Z, you could get the makings of some truly fantastic food. And no one gave me a hard time for bouncing off people in the aisles, or clogging the produce section taking pictures, or not knowing which line to stand in. It was a friendly happy place full of delicious.

I later heard this place has been bought by Metro a chain that had a little cred in Quebec, but quickly spent it all in Ontario and now just annoys me (crunchy bitter raspberries the other day!!) So that can’t be good. I’m going to try to find the local one before all the awesome falls apart.

And if we’re lost together
RR

August 7th, 2009

The Professional Interviews (4): Scott, Assistant Manager of Retail Distribution (at a mass-market publishing house)

[Man, I love doing these things! I’ve known Scott for 6 years and borrowed his workspace to make airline reservations, and I still had no idea he did half this stuff at work. It’s me in the bold-face (’cause I’m that self-important), Scott in Roman. Also, you should know that while he was telling me all this, S was also making a wicked tofu marinade.]

So, what is it exactly that you do?

I work in the retail operations department. There’s 3 components to operations: what’s shipped out; what’s returned; and what’s sold. I deal with what goes out.

And by “dealing” with, you mean?

What I deal with is gross units, order files that are transmitted from our customers, entered by our sales force. I insure that [books] arrive on time, since we have a timeline from when the order files are received to when they are processed at our warehouse. I’m basically chasing down the customer or chasing down the salesperson to chase down the customer, to get the orders. Then I have to also verify the orders that we receive for reasonability. I’m also doing preliminary analysis on how we’re doing overall against these order files.

Reasonability?

Every month, stores order the same product lines. The theory is because the series’ are bought as a product line rather than as individual authors, it should be the same order numbers every months. That’s one of the major audits I do of the files, to make sure it’s the same. That’s only series. For single-title, I’m comparing it against projections, which are made by the sales force of what they think we’re gonna get.

So you’re checking that orders are reasonable, not that they’re lucrative?

Yep, just that they’re ordering what they said they were gonna order, or the same as last month. It gets more complicated, because there’s also distribution reviews done by sales force and sales analysis (the “what was sold” group) to see what’s selling, because if 30-40 percent of your book sells, that’s fantastic. Single-titles have a longer shelf-life, you’d probably want that over 50 percent.

Because of those distribution reviews, customers’ll come back and say “we’re gonna change our orders to reflect sales” (a chain will revise distribution for all their stores at once).

That’s a mere fraction of what I do. Do you want to do the rest as bullets?

Sure!

–I load the [order] files and make sure that they have all the information required for the warehouse to process the orders
–I do gross unit analysis for early trends and missing orders (that’s the bulk of my job)
–I do some summary delivery analysis reports (what does that mean? We need to know, ‘Did 30% of the stores get delivery early? 20%?’ I provide the numbers. Most shipments have a 3-day delivery window, [so we wonder] ‘what stores received stock on the first day of the window?’)
–I also take part in the weekly teleconference call with the warehouse to discuss any issues like stickering issues, inventory issues, basic return information.
–Also, I do a monthly video-conference (cool!) call with the warehouse that deals with bigger issues than the weekly call, like changing barcodes, or marketing has come up with a new product line that they want to ship.
–I am involved with monitoring inventory levels of backlist titles to see if reprints are required.
–I am helping to develop MS Sharepoint site, a document file-sharing website.
–I test and implement reporting in our data warehouse.
–print and binds—which is the process of determining how many books to print to cover initial orders and re-orders for the first 90 days.

What makes you qualified to do all that?

I’ve learned a lot of it on the job. When I started in 2001, I had basic Excel skills and MS Access skills. I would argue that logistics is just institutional knowledge—understanding how the system flows, what file format goes where, what needs to be massaged data-wise, and just…how things work. … There is technical stuff: I had to learn specialty software, but again, I learned them on the job. And then there’s just basic logic—things happen in steps.

So what is it about you, personally, that makes you good at this?

I like to understand things, that’s helpful. People have commented that I’m friendly (True!) which helps, but that is true of any job in an office—the friendly guy is well-liked. There is a certain level of intelligence required and they feel like I possess that level of intelligence, so… Asking questions is important too, so that when someone asks for correct information you can make sure you have it.

How did you get the job?

I actually was approached. I put my resume on Workopolis and a headhunter called me. Then, they made me do 2 interviews and a computer test (they sent me down to this independent third party testing thing) to see if I could actually use MS Excel. Apparently, a lot of people say they can use it, but… Since then I’ve actually done courses on Excel and there’s still a lot more I need to learn about it.

What sort of person would you recommend go after a job in operations?

(laughs) Someone who likes numbers! Um…someone who can think logically, doesn’t mind a stressful environment. Course I say that, but it depends on where you are—other companies might be difference. I think if you make toothpaste, it doesn’t change from month to month. But bread people, they have to get it there every day.

And who should stay away from this sort of job?

People who aren’t good with numbers, people who have trouble with logic, people who want to be able to sit and meander through their stuff. We’re one of those in-between departments that don’t get to control the timelines.

What is a typical day like for you?

There are no typical days.

There are greater cycles: if you come to me on a Friday, there are certain things I do on Fridays. Every cycle is different, every problem is different, unfortunately. If I had to split my day, parts of it are short-term problems and parts are long-term problems, and the short-term always eats up the long-term problems’ time. Lemme give it a crack:

First thing in the morning you are going through your email to find out what happened while you weren’t there. The warehouse starts at 4-5 in the morning; they were already packing books then. And then people stayed after you left, too. After that, I usually have either ad-hoc reports or reports that are due for the cycle that I’m in. Or I’m chasing orders. Long-term stuff, I usually have some reports that I have audit to make sure they work correctly, I have instructions to type out on using reports, my boss will come with some specialty analysis that he wants done… Usually there’s calls to be made for clarification. Also we have a partnership for distribution with another publisher, and they send me morning reports on orders and inventory and I have to deal with problems there.

In the afternoon, if you’re lucky you get to do your stuff; if you’re unlucky, you’re doing other people’s stuff. At a moment’s notice, my superior or their superior, could come and ask for something. Because I’m assistant manager, I’m lucky, because they go to the manager first.

The afternoon is a blur, really. You might have meetings: tomorrow I have meeting from 8:30 to 1. It’s our big monthly meeting, which no one ever wants to go to.

Is it catered?

It used to be, but due to budget cuts, it is no longer. Which has sped it up now that we don’t have lunch in the meeting.

So, you get to 4:30, and leave?

Usually, sometimes I have to stay an extra half hour to get some key things out, but more or less I leave on time. My boss is there until 6 or 7 often, but I joke that’s because he is a bachelor. I have a lot to get home to. I have a new baby, so I have to get home and get supper and spend time with the kid…who probably isn’t old enough to appreciate it.

Is there a people management part ot your job?

I don’t have anyone report directly to me, but in operations, if you’re brought into a meeting, you’re contributing to helping solve a problem. If book signatures have been mismatched, we have a meeting and I’m part of defining the solution, I don’t say, ‘you do this,’ but I say, ‘I’ll do this,’ other people say ‘I’ll do that.’ Sometimes I’ll take charge of a meeting, but that’s a dynamic, sometimes people just don’t want to make a decision and I want to get it done. You can get meeting-itis, and you’re just beating something to death. Some people just like the sound of their own voice, and those people don’t work in Operations. We can’t do that because we have to get out of the meetings and deal with the emails ticking away in our in-boxes. That’s why agendas are so important.

That being said, back to my point about institutional memory, I do tell people what to do sometimes just because I know do the answer, and I say, “If you go do this, it’ll solve your problem.” They don’t report directly to me, it’s just because I have the answer they listen to me.

What do you do at lunchtime?

I usually go to the kitchen, get my lunch, and come back and eat in my office. Unless I didn’t bring a lunch, in which case I go buy it. Then I read a book, websurf (Salon, Slate, Macleans, NYT, bookninja, bookslut, and whatever meets my fancy.)

No working thru lunch?

That happens, depends on the day. Some days I have to work through.

Degree of resentment?

No one likes working through their lunch. But sometimes you get in a groove, stuff is getting done, the emails make sense when you type them up, and you don’t mind. Other days, you’re like, “Why won’t this end?” But there’s always a sense of urgency, I don’t think I’ve ever had slow days. An example: Today, I’m dealing with books that just went on sale for August so we’re having ad-hoc meetings to see if we can deal with the orders. I’ve already got all the billing files for September, now the warehouse is actually starting to process them. I’m already looking at October on-sale because I’m trying to figure out where the orders are. We’re setting up some special projects for November. And I was just dealing with my boss on Christmas books, backlist Christmas books, I had to do a report on that, to see if we need to order them, which we do.

What’s the hardest part of your job?

Memorizing some stuff. There’s certain things that my boss is just gifted with–like numbers. I’m good at math, but I don’t remember specific numbers .Some ppl can work faster because they memorize certain things, but my mind just doesn’t want to do that.

When you tell people what you do at parties, what is the typical response?

No, I don’t do that. Frankly people can’t wrap their heads around it. I tell them the name of the publisher, and then I say, “I help get the books out.” I would say operations has an influence on your life, when product shows up and where it is. But it’s just too hard to explain.

Anything general about the job?

It’s been one of my pet peeves that there’s always this discussion about art vs. business. There’s this dullard Dilbert suck-your-soul element that everyone talks about in business, but I would argue every job has a soul-sucking element, even artistic pursuits. I have seen math artists– there’s a guy in our department–people who can read that patterns. And there’s an art to writing an email, there’s art in everything. There’s a human element to everything. Math is not as simple as A + B = C; it’s hard and there are some people who are gifted. Some people just have a knack for it.

RR

July 14th, 2009

Social Networking, So Much

Before the Rose-coloured blog, before the Facebook obsession and the fear of MySpace, before socializing went virtual, there was the Bureau of People We Know. Well, there was insofar as a thing that had no form or substance but simply got talked about a lot (mainly by me) can be said to have existed. In fact, even before that, there was the chorus of the children’s song The More We Get Together, which encouraged you to think of my friends as your friends.

That was really the basis of the BPWK, as I have always wanted to meet my friends’ friends, especially around the time I graduated undergrad, and my little circle exploded into different cities and careers and circles, doing all kinds of fascinating things far away where I couldn’t see them. So whatever city someone ended up in, I’d name them head of that city’s office of the BPWK, their only duty really being to hang out with me when I came to town, maybe introduce me to their other friends, and perhaps hang out with some other friends of mine if they found themselves in the same city.

This was not social networking in the Penelope Trunk sense, where you look for useful people, befriend them and then hope they’ll do things for you. My central goal was for no one to ever be bored or lonely in a strange city and to meet as many cool people as possible (and in those senses, I am personally living the dream, at least).

And for the same reason (well, more the meeting cool people part), I am very fond of blogs and Facebook. I often meet someone once at a party, have a charming conversation, and wonder how I’ll be able to have another charming conversation with that person without seeming a) like I’m hitting on him/her, b) a potential stalker, and c) socially lame. Facebook offered the answer, a way to get to know a *little* about people who seem cool, and to interact a *bit*, to the point where you might be able to “take it live” and have coffee in a real actual place.

And that makes me very happy. It also makes me happy that I can invite these new friends to parties and readings and be invited to theirs, that they can see my other friends and what we’re all up to, and maybe the Bureau of People We Know will enlarge even further.

Social networking websites are not a substitution for personal interaction; they are a method of interacting, albeit in a minor, low-committment way. Which can be a conduit to lots of other things, or just a long-term happy acquaintanceship. Both are good things.

So yay Facebook, yay blog! I never joined MySpace because I thought you needed to have a band, and I never joined Twitter because I thought you needed to have a cellphone… Obviously, I know they’ll let you *on* either platform without guitars or a flipphone, but I figured there’s be no point; I’m not who it’s for. Then a shadowy man told me I could synch my Facebook updates with Twitter, if only I were on Twitter. \

So now I’m on Twitter. Such is my love of FB that the hours in the day when, erm, technical difficulties make updating impossible are sad for me. So now, FB tweeting all the time.

And the bonus, of course, is that I’ll get to see who is on Twitter. Besides Wren and Fred and Mel, of course, who are my friends across all platforms, aside from being original members of the BPWK.

Not sick of me yet? Let’s be Twitter friends! Or you can just scroll way down on the right side of this blog and see my none-too-fascinating tweets.

Sweet Alexis / is eating fingernails for breakfast
RR

July 9th, 2009

Life

This morning, as I planned this post, it was going to be titled “Life is Good”, because:

1) the Joyland Joyathon last night was so amazing and fun and funny and well-attended by awesome people (most of the pictures turned out terrible, due to failures of both technology and technician [though they are still available on Facebook, if you feel the need], but here’s a decent one of Brian Joseph Davis and Emily Schultz kicking off the festivities:

2) I’m heading to pretty Kingston for the weekend.

July 6th, 2009

What we talk about when we talk about nothing

D: Aspertame isn’t really bad for you, you know. That’s a myth.

Me: Whew!

A: So how come I get a headache every time I have it?

D: It might be bad for you personally. Some people are allergic to aspertame, but some people are allergic to trees and grass, and I’m unwilling to accept that those are objectively bad things.

J: I’m not so crazy about grass, actually.

Me: I love hearing about what you hate! How can you hate grass?

J: It’s all poky! And full of bugs.

Me: I sat on some nice grass this weekend. It was sort of dying, so it was all limp and soft.

A: Dead grass is the most poky. It’s like straw.

Me: Dying, not dead. It had just gone limp, but it hadn’t dried out yet.

D: It was losing turgor pressure.

Me: Exactly.

J: So that’s the secret–almost dead grass. Huh.

I can’t believe what they’re saying / I can change my mind
RR

Professional Interviews: Mary, assistant manager in a tack shop

Interview #3 in this series, if you are keeping track, still taking advantage of my friends’ patience as I am as yet too timid to interview strangers. For urban readers, a tack shop is a saddlery, a place that sells equipment for horseriders, competitive and recreational, and for the horses themselves.

What is your job? I’m in sales, shipping, and I’m assistant manager, 2nd within the chain of command.

How did you get that job? By chance. I was laid off for the winter from the nursery [plants, not babies] that I was working at and my friend who owns a horse farm needed some help because her dad, who usually helped her out in the barn, was having bypass surgery. So while he recuperated she needed a hand and I needed something to do. I worked for her through the winter and summer while looking for another job (I had decided not to go back to the nursery when they asked since they weren’t going to give me back my management position).

June 19th, 2009

Incommunicado

Until my late teens, almost everyone I knew had not only the same area code but the same first three digits in their phone numbers. It was a very small town, but as far as I was concerned it contained everyone it needed to. Sure my extended family and parents’ old friends lived in the faraway U.S., but so they always had, and it was hard to miss people whom one rarely saw in two consecutive years.

Nevertheless, I delighted in post from such farflung correspondants, and a few made an effort to write to my young self on a regular basis. I was a far more ardent correspondant than any one recipient could handle, however, so whenever the elementary school penpal program circulated, I signed up again, winding up with a worldwide network of fascinating penpals, all of whom I would exhaust into silence within a year or two. I also wrote a family newspaper for distribution within my household, with articles on such topics as whose birthday it was that week, and what we needed from the hardware store (oh, this blog was so clearly presaged). I was also likely the only kid in the world who didn’t have to be nagged to write thank you notes for gifts.

I went away for the summer I was 17, made no friends, and used up half a dozen books of stamps. I went away the summer I was 18, wrote only slightly fewer letters but did finally actually make genuine friends who didn’t live in my township. They were older than I, already in university and conversant in the ways of university email addresses. I had no idea about any of this, but when I returned home, I tried to figure it out.

We’d had a computer in the house since the end of the eighties, which my brother and I used to play endless video games of steadily evolving complexity, and occasionally to do schoolwork. I had no idea what my folks were doing with it, or with the shrieky dialup “internet”; work of some sort, it seemed.

So the fall of my last year of high school, my dad taught me about email. I don’t know if freemail accounts hadn’t appeared on the scene yet or I just didn’t know about them, but my father generously shared his work email account with me, leading to a whole new form of household nagging (“Did you email Amanda back yet? That note’s been in my inbox all week? You really should…”) Everyone was sad when I moved away for university, but at least I got my own damn email account. By then I was hooked.

Far away from my area code and all the relevant people it contained, I started emailing my friends and family constantly–minutia about school and new friends and food and weather and clothes and health…and people *emailed back*. Letters had become old-school and boring: you had to buy stamps and envelopes and remember to walk past a mailbox, so I very rarely got post, but email still had the gloss of novelty to it, and I was thrilled to get email every day.

More than a decade and several technological revolutions later, I’m still pretty excited to see that Inbox (1) bar pop up! Letters have largely gone dormant for most people, though I can’t resist that heart-leap hope when I unlock my mailbox that today will be a day that one of the six people on earth who still use post will have sent me something.

In truth, I think the bloom is off the rose a bit with email, too. Most people’s jobs require them to send and receive dozens per day, and most of those are of the “Please reconfigure the pages completely and within the hour” variety that rarely causes heart-leaping, even in me. I’m sure I know a lot of people who, off the clock, would like their computers firmly silent and email-less.

Not me. I’ve never gotten over my childhood desire to hear from those distant, and much as I love to talk, I still feel my best self-expression–most coherent, most thoughtful, most amusing–is in writing. I like to think over a letter/email/story, rewrite a line or two, delete (some of the) extraneous stuff. I think I have a career as a writer that I could never have had as an “extemporizer,” and I think you’ll agree if you’ve ever gotten voicemail from me.

So I’m an email junkie. I send and receive dozens a day in a professional context, and although fewer in personal context, I’m still ever-emailing. I do get that not everyone wants to write long discussions of life, the universe and everything in their off-hours. Actually, I’m sort of amazed that some people (other than myself) do, and that I can be the recipient if only I continue to respond in kind.

All this email-relection has been brought on by the fact that I’m headed out of town this weekend to a cottage, on an island…with no internet. This has never happened to me before, really–not since that critical turning point back in the late nineties. I think it’ll be good for me, although challenging. I think the lake water, sunshine, friends, tofudogs, boardgames, actual dog, boat, bonfire, and coleslaw will help.

But I’ll still miss you, interent, and all my lovely far-flung friends that live inside you!

You just can’t do that again
RR

June 12th, 2009

Saving you from boredom, one link at a time

Did you know that AMT has a blog? And that’s it’s fabulous, and contains regular updates about dogs, the Weather Network, and all the other various ways life is amusing? I have been dreaming of (and campaigning for) this for *years*, and now I am happy. You go read and be happy, too.

Another thing I’ve been wanting for a while is the re-emergence of rob mclennan’s fascinating series of author interviews, 12 or 20 Questions. And now it’s back, and being posted regularly on rob’s clever blog. Hooray! (Am I now going to get everything I’ve wished for? That would be odd. Maybe only blog-related things I’ve wished for.)

Finally, Penelope Trunk has a good post on prioritizing. Actually, it’s a slightly snarky post about how people who don’t read blogs are dumb and slow (I don’t agree with that; much as I like blogs, they are a personal choice, like a New Yorker subscription. Or heroin.) But she makes some really good points about how we have time for what we care about, and less time for what we, consciously or not, regard as unimportant. This is a good truth to acknowledge for me, and it’s stuff like this that keeps me reading PT although she a) is mean and b) talks a lot about her sex life for no reason. But actually, neither of those things are boring either!

Happy reading!

Thank you stranger for your therapeutic smile
RR

June 8th, 2009

Blogging the NMAs

Right off the bat, I’ll tell you that my short story “Linh Lai,” originally publishing in The New Quarterly did not win the National Magazine Award for which it was short-listed. But Friday night’s shindig was still an amazing good time, not least because I got to sit with the TNQ crew, and chat with assorted other cool folks. 

Rosalynn Tyo (left) and Katia Grubisic were nominated for their work on TNQ’s Montreal Issue (they didn’t win, either, I’m afraid–boo! it’s a fantastic issue!)

The TNQ table, from left: Chair of the Board Kathy Berrill, editor-in-chief Kim Jernigan, Managing Ed Rosalynn, me giggling with Katia.

My and my glamourous friend Corinna vanGerwen, nominated for editorial work in Style at Home.

Other highlights include the food: chocolate fountain, smoked salmon wraps, spicy popcorn (not in that order, but in that order in my heart!) The crazy cool opening video collage of magazines–I wonder if that will eventually be available somewhere… Also, The Carlu where it was held was really glam (watch that link, though; borderline porny music plays when you open it!)

Although I can’t say I was 100% thrilled not to win, the fiction winner Andrew Tibbetts brought the percentage up into the 90s with his acceptance speech, which ended with “and thank you to transsexual sex workers, just because.” He rightly received an additional award, for best acceptance speech. Way to represent, Mr. Tibbetts!

Find the river
RR