June 16th, 2011

What Happens When a Literary Submission Gets Published in a Journal/Magazine

I don’t know how many Rose-coloured readers, if any, are aspiring writers, but it seems like there are a lot of articles out there designed to helps us cope with rejection of our  literary work. A useful skill, no doubt, but I don’t see a lot of guides to help us deal with acceptance of said work, which, while a much more cheerful circumstance, can also be quite confusing. In an effort to stay on the Rose-coloured path, I have assembled my humble experiences with acceptance (never as many as one would like, though still not inconsiderable) into a Rose-coloured Guide to Coping with Acceptance in journals and magazines:

How long should you wait for an acceptance? There is no standard answer except: longer than you think. If the submissions guidelines list wait times, go with that plus a few weeks. If they don’t…hopefully less than a year. It is true of many (not all) lit journals that a yes takes longer than a no. For a no, many journals just need several negative reviews from first readers, and into the rejection envelope it goes, while positively reviewed pieces get passed up the food chain, read again, discussed in a meeting, possibly held over for a future meeting, and eventually accepted. And then someone has to get round to writing you a personalized note (these are lovely) accepting the piece. These things take time. It’s not always the case that no news is good news–some mags are just backlogged and slow–but good things definitely take time.

Will I get an acceptance in my self-addressed stamped envelope? Nope. I have received 100% of my story acceptances via email, even when I’ve sent a SASE. I think editors just want to get the process started at that point–they need to make sure the story hasn’t been submitted/accepted elsewhere, discuss edits, sign a contract, etc.–and email is faster.

What if I *did* submit it elsewhere? If you submitted somewhere that accepts simultaneous submissions, just drop them a note and say, “I have to withdraw my piece as it has been accepted elsewhere”–no harm, no foul. If you did submit simultaneously when the journal asked submitters not to, your email will have to be a bit more cryptic. And no, the editors of the scorned journal *probably* won’t see your piece elsewhere, realize you broke the rules, and blackball you forevermore from their journal…probably. I don’t have experience in this, though, as simultaneous submissions remain a chance I’m not willing to take.

Will I have to sign a contract? What if I don’t understand it? Maybe. Most of the bigger journals have them; smaller/newer ones mainly don’t. I find them very simple–generally it just promises a period of time in which the piece will be published and an amount of money they’ll give you. Journals and magazines should generally be asking for “First serial rights”–they’ll put it in a periodical before anyone else. If a print journal wants to put some materials on the web, they need to stipulate that and you can generally say no to that part without refusing the print part. Sometimes a journal will ask that you wait a bit of time (1 year, maybe?) before republishing, but the odds of ever being able to republish something are slim anyways. If you find yourself het up about a contract, sleep on it, then reread. If still worried, get a writer who has published a lot to look it over, or just query whoever sent it to you about what things mean. I have almost never had an issue with these contracts; they are usually nothing to worry about. Just send’em in on time.

When do the edits come? Will they be scary? Short answer–no, usually not scary. But the long answer is very long, as no two pieces of writing need the exact same things editingwise. Let’s go through some broad categories:
Revise and resubmit–This is technically not an acceptance, but I’m putting it here because it often looks like one and writers get confused. An experienced editor will word an R&RS really carefully to be clear–“Sorry that we cannot accept but…” or the like, but others don’t, and then a letter full of feedback starts to look like editing advice. What an R&RS is is an editor’s very positive reaction to a piece of writing with (what s/he perceives as) some serious flaws. S/he doesn’t know if the writer is capable of doing the work to fix these problems or would want to, so has just sent his/her thoughts. If you act on the suggestions, the ed would be interested in rereading the work and *possibly* accepting it.

If the feedback doesn’t seem useful to you, or nothing you’d be interested in acting on, sleep on it, and if you still feel that way, tell the editor thank you and that if you make use of their suggestions you’ll be sure to resend the work. Doesn’t matter if you never do–it’s their time and energy you appreciate. I would not argue or debate what is essentially just someone’s opinion; however, if you don’t understand something, by all means ask–might as well get all you can from the advice.

If you want to act on the feedback, send an immediate thank you and, unless the editor asks for the work for a given deadline, *take your time*. It is too exciting when you get helpful thoughtful engagement with your work for the first time, and very tempting to rewrite it overnight and send it off at dawn. Don’t do that–take your work through another draft, have others read it, sit on it for a while, then read it again and send it off. Why not give it your best shot?

Conditional acceptance–this is pretty rare with creative work–it’s a term carried over from academia, where you can ask a writer to add more data or examples or whatever in specific ways and know that you will like the result. It’s very hard for an poetry/fiction/creative nonfic editor to suggest edits so specifically that s/he knows that the piece will be acceptable after those edits have been done. Basically, I’ve seen this only applied to cuts–“We’d love to take this piece, but we’d like to remove the 7 pages in the middle that are exclusively about cats. Ok?”

If you don’t feel comfortable with the edit requested, it is totally fine to offer an alternative change–“How about just 6 pages?” “How about the dog section goes instead?”–keeping in mind they might say no. Some in the industry would call this “push back,” or simply “engaging with the editorial process.” Whatever, it’s normal. You might offer a brief explanation for why you prefer your alternative change. Also, if you feel you can’t make the change suggested nor any other, say so politely and with a brief set of reasons. Unless of course your reasons are that your work is inviolate and no one is allowed to edit it; in that case, you shouldn’t be submitting to publications run by non-relatives.
Acceptance, with some edits. You might get an enthusiastic acceptance with a small suggestion to re-examine your ending to make sure it’s totally clear (this is something I’ve heard several times) or to strengthen some bit of character development, etc. etc. As with all of the above, my advice is the same: think about it, sleep on it, try doing what’s been suggested and, if it really doesn’t work for you, propose an alternative and say why. Remember: editors have been doing this a long time, and more often than not wouldn’t waste their time offering you bad advice.

Will the editors make any changes I don’t know about? One would hope not. The major edits mentioned above should come in an email (or notes on a hard-copy, if you have a time machine). Then there will be a copyedit later on–in track changes in a Word file (or equivalent), a list of changes and locations in an email, or perhaps markup on a PDF of the typeset file (or again, hard-copy markup in the mail, but that’s so rare as to almost be not worth mentioning). Most copyediting should have to do with spelling, grammar, punctuation, continuity errors (this person used to have green eyes and now they’re blue; didn’t the main character already get his marriage license on page 8?) Some copyeds will try to help with awkward or confusing phrasings. You should get a chance to review the copyedit, and likely accept most of it; anything you don’t agree with you can stet (editorial speak for reject).

*Sometimes* if the copyedit is very light–just spelling and punctuation–you won’t be given it for review. I’ve generally found this fine, though everyone has heard the story of the copyeditor incorrectly changing a comma in a pivotal spot and thus changing a meaning. Don’t make yourself crazy over this one–it’s almost unheard of. Also, some small-staff journals just don’t do a copyedit, and they’ll publish your piece warts and all. You can simply ask, when your work gets accepted, “Should I expect to see the copyedit? If so, when? I’ll be sure to make time to review it.” And then you’ll know where you stand.

I have never run across a case–for my own work or anyone else’s–where an editor made content changes and then just ran the piece without the author’s approval. That would be pretty unheard of, as well as ghastly. More common, although still pretty rare, is to be sent a document containing your edited work with no indication of where the edits have been made (ie., no track changes or markup). I hate that! If it’s in Word, you can just run a “compare documents” with your original work (I’m sure there are equivalents in other word-processors, but I don’t know what they are). Compare documents is a hot mess to view, especially if the changes are extensive, but you can get through it, see what’s been changed, and send a list to the editor of what you want further altered or stetted. You might mention what a hassle it is for these changes to be made invisibly–maybe it never occurred to them.
Now what? You might get to review a PDF of the typeset pages–good time to check for typos one last time, as well as weird word breaks or loss of formatting (italics disappears in typesetting pretty regularly). Follow the deadlines the eds give you for these, or your changes probably won’t be included. This step might not happen at some journals, and I wouldn’t worry too much about it–you can’t, anyway, because when you realize that you didn’t get to proof pages is usually when you get your printed copy in the mail. Assume that they’ve proofread really carefully themselves.
Do I get to read at the launch? Maybe! Consider it a compliment if you get invited to do so! And even if you don’t get asked to read, do attend the launch if you can, and bring your friends–it is so fun to celebrate your work with others who like it too. If you live far away from the home of the publication, send your best for the launch–and certainly volunteer if you’ll be on vacation nearby and would like to stop in. Not every journal has launches, or not for every issue–especially if it’s online and the contributers/editors very dispersed. But if you get a chance to go, I’m pretty sure you’ll have fun.
When will it be in stores? If you have received your contributor’s copies, probably soon–you could ask the editor or the distro person at the journal and find out not only when but where: not every literary journal is stocked in every bookstore (sigh). Folks are usually very helpful in finding you places to buy their wares. And you could always ask for your journal by name, and encourage others to do the same. Some shops will order something in if there is a groundswell of support for it.

Something’s gone wrong: my piece isn’t in the issue it was slated for; I didn’t get my contributor’s copies; I didn’t get paid; etc. Sigh. Give everybody the benefit of the doubt: life is confusing and many journals are swamped and understaffed. Just ask, very politely, when you should expect A to happen, and/or why B is happening instead. If you don’t get a response, or the response tells you something will happen that then doesn’t, just keep sending polite emails on a regular basis. If your publication keeps getting put off, you can decide when it’s appropriate to withdraw the piece and do so–only the writer can really know when a given publication has become more trouble than it is worth. Once it’s published, that’s not an option–but really, I’ve never *not* been sent my $$ or contributor’s copies, though it’s sometimes taken much longer than I’ve expected. Gentle friendly nagging is, I’ve found, the best (and only) option.

Wow, this piece is more than 2000 words long, and covers some stressful situations. If you’ve not published work before, I don’t mean to scare you–it really is usually as fun and lovely as you’ve been hoping. But the procedures are so varied, and as a novice it’s easy to feel you don’t get to say anything or ask any questions. A few times recently, folks have asked me some of the questions listed above, but I’m hardly an expert on anything–if other people have different experiences or opinions, please do share. Really, everyone who has read this far is to be congratulated!

June 14th, 2011

Which blue?

Please help me settle a debate (which I am having inside my head; no one else is involved):

Which song is better, Lou Gramm’s Midnight Blue or Icehouse’s Electric Blue (please minimize the video while you listen to the song, at least until after you’ve voted; it’ll taint your opinion of the song)??

Note: I’d like to keep this simple and not admit covers into the competition, but for bonus listening, I highly recommend the REM cover of “Midnight Blue” …but definitely not the Cranberries’s song called “Electric Blue,” which is a completely different song from Icehouse’s and which I am not linking to because it is so creepy it frightens me.

So–your opinions please??? I need to get this sorted!

June 11th, 2011

What I’m Doing Tomorrow

Just a reminder that I’ll be reading in St. Catherine’s tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon at 3pm, in the fine fine company of short-story-ist Carolyn Black and poet Jacob McArthur Mooney. This reading is part of 31 days of reading in June in the Niagara reading, as part of the Niagara Literary Arts Festival, a very very cool endeavour.

If you can join us tomorrow, please follow the link and scroll down to June 12 for more details. If you can’t make it tomorrow, click the link and scroll through the many options of awesomeness to see what else you might enjoy. There’s tonnes of good stuff!

June 8th, 2011

What Else I’ve Been Doing

I guess the reason I’m not writing longer posts is that I’m busy with all this other stuff!

Filling out the Toronto Service Review (link/idea via Scott). I gotta admit, this is a boring survey, constructed with autofill templates (how else would you explain a question asking if homeless shelters should be funded with user fees?) Still, I feel it’s the least I can do to fill it out–our city government is basically asking what it can get away with cutting, and we have to tell them (well, I have to tell them) that I care about things that I don’t even personally benefit from, and a small tax savings isn’t going to comfort me when I see our services rotting because those who need them most are so poor and pointless. Ahem. I think it’s a good thing to fill it out. Even is you don’t agree with me.

Watching online episodes of My Drunk Kitchen (link/recommendation via Shannon). This is a very funny silly show that is a good five minute way to recuperate from doing something not fun, like filling out the above-mentioned survey.

Taking that V.S. Naipaul quiz (link/idea via Mark) to see if I can identify a male or female author by reading a few sentences of his/her prose. I got 6/10, which is slightly better than I would get if I just guessed at random (I think; I’m not a statistician). So no, no I can’t tell.

Reading Carolyn Black’s book The Odious Child, which is really brilliant and deeply weird, an excellent combination. My favourite story is “Games”–what’s yours?

June 6th, 2011

What I’ve Been Doing Lately

Re-reading Big Two-Hearted River (parts I and II) A lot of things I loved when I was 14 don’t stand up so well these days, but the two stories that make up Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” piece are solid gold and always will be. I love the gentleness of the force behind them–unhurried, unprentensious but so involving, so *intense*. And I have to say, I don’t think a lot of 14-year-old girls read much Hemingway, because if they did there’d be way more of us with giant crushes on Nick Adams. *swoon*

Watching the movie Bridesmaids. I am pretty sure I am the ideal target market for this film. I love comedy of all kinds–situational, standup, sketch, improv, whatever you’ve got. I used to be a huge SNL fan (back when I had a tv that worked) and I’ve been on board the Judd Apatow for a few years now. I am also a feminist who gets depressed when there’s a great comic film with all the ladies sitting quietly on the sidelines. And I’m slated to be a maid of honour this summer, and just last week got engaged myself. I saw the movie with the friend I’m mutual maids-of-honour with and a fistful of candy. No one could have been more primed to see this movie. So you have to take it with a grain of salt when I say I laughed. A lot! I didn’t actually know anything about Kristen Wiig, writer and star, before I saw this, but now I think she’s brilliant. The best part is when she wrestled with the giant cookie. The worst part is the protracted diarrhea joke–but even there, I sorta chuckled when I peeked out from behind my hands.

Playing Wii Sports Resort. Did I mention I got a Wii for my birthday? I am officially the luckiest person in the world! I love it all, but especially the sporty games for some reason. I am unexpectedly good at wakeboarding–if I tried to do that in real life I would be killed immediately–and swordplay. Total goofball fun–ie., exactly my thing.

Making spinach dip. There is no way to subdivide a package of frozen spinach, so you can only make this dip for a large party or gathering, so I spend most of life pining for it. Had a party this weekend and got the chance–hooray! For those who asked for the recipe, here you go:
1 package of frozen spinach
2 cups plain yoghurt or sour cream (I prefer yoghurt)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (I skimp a little because I hate mayonnaise, but it actually blends in just fine)
1 can of water chestnuts, chopped
2 scallions or green onions, chopped
Thaw the spinach completely, then take it in your (clean) fists and wring all the water out of it. This is important and I’ve never been able to think of a better way–let me know if you do. Once it’s wrung out, mix all the ingredients together, seal it in a Tupperware and leave in the fridge overnight…or as long as you can stand without going and eating it with a spoon. You can serve it with vegetables or crackers or sturdy chips–whatever it is will just be a dip-delivery system.

Going to the Clark Blaise/Bharati Mukherjee launch Ok, I technically haven’t done that yet because it’s tonight, but then I *will* be doing it, and who knows when I’ll get around to writing another blog post? It should be a great night, two great writers at a lovely pub. You coming?

Not freaking out over reviewing my proofs for The Big Dream Nosireebob, absolutely not. I’m completely calm about it, as usual.

June 3rd, 2011

Professional Interview #8: Aaron, Space Management Specialist

I haven’t done a Professional Interview in a while. Originally, I was doing the series as background for The Big Dream–not research, but to have a sense of the wildly varying specificities of working life. That’s all done now, and TBD is in page proofs (which, owing to a strong gust of wind while I wasn’t paying attention, are currently all over my dining room floor. I’m gathering strength to go pick them up and sort them), hence the gap.

This new interview is a bit different in that it’s specifically focussed on a job that a character I’m writing about (spoiler!) actually has. I really like to get the details right, and space management is not a field I have detailed knowledge of, so Aaron kindly agreed to fill me in. I find this stuff so interesting, so I thought I’d share it here in case you do too! Thanks, Aaron–you do cool work!

***


Q: What is your official job title? What is your official job description?

A: My official job title is “Senior Space Management Specialist”. The term “Merchandising Analyst” no longer forms a part of my job title but it is implied – at least it is where I work.

I don’t really know what my “official” job description is. I’m sure I have the offer letter for it somewhere; I just can’t seem to find it. I’ll sum it up as best I can:

I report to the Manager of Merchandising Services. Technically, no one actually reports to me. The other Space Management Clerks might report to me on a task-by-task basis, but generally only if it is a task or project that I am directly in charge of. I am not their supervisor.

I’m responsible for creating and updating planograms that will help grow sales in our stores. To do that, I’m responsible for running sales, gathering information and presenting it so that it will help me and the Category Manager of that planogram determine how we can get the best results out of the planogram.

I’m responsible for helping maintain our database of section sizes by store, which help us determine which versions of each planogram need to be built.

I’m responsible for various reporting duties that include (but are not limited to) many types of sales reports, both on a regularly-scheduled basis and on a by-request basis.

As Senior Space Management Specialist, I act as the principle point of contact between the Space Management department and the Front Store Manager of any new stores and renovating stores while they are setting the store up prior to opening/re-opening.

I also act as the principle point of contact between other departments in the office and the Space Management team. I help to ensure that they are not tied up with frivolous requests that take away from more important ones.

Working knowledge of our space-planning software (or other space-planning software), Microsoft Office (Access, Excel, Outlook, Word), our stores’ POS software and our warehouse inventory software would all be considered assets (particularly the store POS) but not required.

Experience as a Merchandiser would also be considered an asset, but not a pre-requisite.


Q: What do you actually do in a typical day? (If your cycles are longer than one day, a typical week?)

A: The work cycles involved in creating planograms are not only longer than a day; they’re longer than a week too. As a result, I usually have several planograms in progress at any one time, at various stages of their cycle.

The cycle of planogram creation generally follows a pattern, if not an exact timeline. Too many variables exist to map it out precisely but in general, it happens in the following order:

1) Sales reports are run for the existing planogram. This will not only include the items that are present in the largest version of the existing planogram, but any other items in our listings database that could theoretically be added to the section. For example: Many items are listed for in-and-out promotions that don’t form a part of the planogram but, depending on their performance in the market, might warrant being added to the planogram.

This will include not only our own POS sales, but information from the market in general. We will also examine which items from the existing planogram have since been discontinued by their manufacturer/distributor, which represent known holes that need to be filled. That’s not to say that other items which are still available won’t also be removed to make room for newer and/or better-performing items, but those decisions come later.

This information is all put together in a package that is sent to the Category Manager for him/her to examine. The Category Manager will use this data, and take into account any presentations from sales representatives (aka. “Reps”) of companies trying to sell our C.M.s on carrying their products, to come up with a strategy that they wish to employ when we design the new planograms. I will have made some recommendations based on the data that I have, but ultimately the decisions are in the hands of the C.M.s.

2) When the Category Manager has had a chance to review the data, we will typically meet and discuss where we go from there. This might or might not involve working up a test planogram right there. If the C.M. already has all of the new product samples that we need and they were given to me in advance (to have their dimensions measured for input into the software’s product library) we could work up a test. If not, we’ll use the meeting to determine which products the C.M. wants to add and which ones to drop. We’ll also get a basic plan down for how we want to approach the build.

The C.M. will then acquire the necessary samples so that a test planogram can be worked up when the samples have arrived.

3) Samples are acquired and their dimensions measured. A test planogram is created. This is usually most common version among all of our stores (also typically the largest). This is done to figure out which products we can actually fit in the planogram, and therefore which ones the Category Manager has to get listed.

4) The test planogram is sent to a store in the city. They will order in any new products and a time will be set for me to go and set up the test planogram.

This is done because, as useful as computers are, we believe it is important to make sure that the physical results match what we see on the screen and that there aren’t any unforeseen difficulties. (A good example would be a product that has changed its packaging and though the amount of product in the package is the same, the physical dimensions of the product are not what they were when we measured them before. Perhaps the package decreased in height but increased in width. This will affect how many products we can fit on the shelf.) If we don’t test the planogram, we might not catch such problems beforehand and will send out a planogram to our stores that doesn’t work and then the Category Manager will get angry emails and phone calls from stores trying to figure out how it is supposed to work.

Usually we test the only one version of the planogram; the largest and most common one in our stores. Our stores are not cookie-cutter designs and can vary in size quite a bit. This will affect how many different sections they can carry and what sizes those sections will be. If the most common planogram size is not the largest, we will probably test the most common one instead. In some situations, we might test both the largest and the most common planogram (in different stores), particularly if we expect the largest to become a more commonly seen version as we move forward with renovations and new stores.

The test planogram is set up and adjustments are made. If the store is able to order all of the products in the planogram now (I’ll have brought samples for testing purposes if not) then the planogram will be left up for the store. Otherwise, it will be returned to its original state.

5) The remaining versions of the planogram are built. The Category Manager views them and asks for any changes. Changes are made until all versions are approved.

6) Planograms are launched to the stores.

The Merchandising Analyst side of my job operates with more regularity. Various reports are run on intervals that range from weekly, to monthly, to bi-monthly, to quarterly, to semi-annually, to annually. Some reports involve extracting information from our POS (Point-of-Sales) software (which also houses our product listings database) to be converted into a more useful format (Access or Excel) for day-to-day use. Other reports involve extracting sales information to be organized and reported for billing/commission purposes. I usually take care of these as early as possible in the week, to get them done and out of the way so as to leave as much of the rest of my week free as possible for working on planograms. Category Managers may request additional reports for various reasons during the week. These requests are prioritized and balanced with the rest of my workload.

I should note that these reports are not from the Rx (prescriptions drugs) side of the business, but from the rest of the store (including OTCs (Over-The-Counter medications), Confectionary, Cosmetics, etc.).


Q: I think a lot of merchandising work would be applicable across the retail industry–if you got sick of working for a drug-store company, you could probably take your skills to a grocery-store or the Gap. Am I right about that? What would be the hardest parts of the job to relearn if you did that?

A: For the most part, I would say that is quite accurate. If I wanted to keep doing the kind of work I’m doing now but in a different retail environment, I shouldn’t have much difficulty transferring my skills. Grocery chains definitely use planograms. I don’t know if retail clothing outlets make use of them or not, but something like a Staples probably would.

It’s unlikely that a small business would take the time to design proper planograms. They would be more likely to adjust their shelves to hold the inventory that they have on hand, fill holes left by discontinued items and move new products in as they get them. It would be medium and large businesses with multiple retail locations that would employ Space Management personnel. The purpose of creating planograms is not just to have the best items available, but to have a consistency to your product offering and layout across your retail environment.

I explain it to the lay-person like this: If you have a particular brand, scent and size of deodorant that you prefer to buy, it is my job to see that if you go into two of our locations that have the same size of deodorant & anti-perspirant planogram (section length and section height – either can vary from store-to-store), you will be able to find that deodorant in the exact same spot of the section in both stores. That’s assuming, of course, that your preferred product is not a bottom-feeder in the market. In that case, your product might disappear from the shelf. If it does, it will disappear from the other store too.

As for the hardest parts of the job to relearn, in the short-term it would be learning how to operate their space planning software (the one we use is not what I perceive to be the industry standard – ours is, to my knowledge, more powerful) and the software involved with obtaining sales data. I have no doubt that I would catch on quickly enough, but until I did I would feel fairly useless. After that, I would need to learn to understand the products that I would be planogramming and how customers shop for these products. Finally, I would need to learn how this company’s space-planning practices differ from how I approach planograms now.


Q: [Since you work in the head office of your company, h]ow often do you have to go to an actual store? What do you do when/if you go there?

A: Someone who does my job would have to work in at least a regional office of some sort, if not the head office. I do work in my company’s head office. It is from there that I am able to distribute any new planograms to all of our stores.

As noted above, once for every planogram that I work on, I will have to visit a store.

I should point out that this physical testing is not necessarily an industry-standard practice. I know of at least one, very large vendor who produces planograms that rarely, if ever, tests their planograms physically. Having seen the results, they should.

Another reason to visit a store would be if they are renovating (or if they are a new store prior to opening) and within the city or not too far beyond it. In such cases, my department will usually make one or more trips to the store to assist with any new developments in Space Management, such as brand new sections never seen before in our stores. These might also simultaneously be regarded as test planograms.



Q: What is the pace of work? Do most days resemble each other in terms of pace, or do you have busy times and easy times? If the latter, what causes a busy time? Is it a big problem if you have to call in sick?

A: Some days are definitely busier than others. Mondays, in particular, are always busy for me due to the number of reports and other responsibilities from the Merchandising Analyst side of the job. Most of them need to be done early in the week, so I cram as much of it into Monday as I can. I get very little Space Management work done on a Monday. This is not necessarily true of the other two guys. As Senior Space Management Specialist, I have some responsibilities that they do not.

Sudden reporting requests can also increase the pace of work. Days when I get to work on nothing but building planograms are the ones that feel the easiest. That’s not to say that I’m getting less work done, but it weighs less on the mind, and so feels easier. If I’m getting close to a deadline and still have planograms left to build, that can also increase the pace.

I suppose I’m equating pace with stress level. The more stressed I am, the more frantic the work feels. The less stressed I am, the more I have time to think about what I’m doing and ponder alternatives. I’m also equating pace with the days I’m mostly likely to stay late to keep working. More likely to stay late equals higher pace, at least it does in my mind.

It is not usually a problem if I have to call in sick. Mind you, I’m a stubborn bastard and pretty much have to be vomiting every 15 minutes and barely be able to walk before I call in sick, so this never really gets tested. Most of the reports that I have to do can either be put off for a couple of days or handled by the other two guys if they can’t wait. As for planograms, there’s almost never anything so pressing that my being absent for a day or two would be a problem. In a pinch, the other two guys can access any planograms that I’m working on as they’re stored on a network drive that we all have access to. If they had to launch one of my planograms for me, they would have to retrieve other files that I don’t store on a network drive, but on a personal drive instead. All but one of those files they could retrieve from the Category Manager of the category the planogram is from, and the other file they could easily recreate themselves.



Q: How many stores are you responsible for? How many other people do the sort of work you do within the company?

A: I’m not sure of the exact figure, but I believe our chain has close to 70 stores. In addition to that, we provide planograms for the OTC sections of the pharmacies within the grocery stores of our parent company across the country (I can’t even guess how many of these stores there are).

There are two other people besides myself who work as Space Management Clerks (again, Merchandising Analyst is also a part of their jobs, though not necessarily stated in their titles) not including our boss. She mostly oversees our work and helps ensure that we’re working at a good pace, but from time-to-time she may take a project on herself. As she is responsible for more than just the Space Management team, she spends most of her time dealing with duties and projects outside of our department. We are fairly self-sufficient, which helps to make this possible for her.



Can you talk a little more about what the plannogram software produces? Does it give you an image or a graph, or simply a list of data?

While you’re working with it on the computer screen, one window shows a diagram of the section you’re working on (at whatever dimensions you’ve specified), complete with how many shelves you’ve put in there (at whatever dimensions you’ve specified) and with the however many products you’ve put on the various shelves this far (at whatever dimensions the product library has stored for them, if it is in the product library at all — if not, it will give you a window for you to enter information that it will then save in the library).

Another window shows a list of the items in the planogram.

A third window, that starts out minimized, shows a “shopping cart”. Items that are deleted from the planogram automatically go here. You could, in theory, import a list of items that you intend to add to the planogram here and from here drag and drop the items into the planogram (either the diagram or the item list would work). We don’t do that, but other organizations might. Some programs treat the shopping cart differently — some treat it as a disembodied shelf on the planogram diagram, outside of the section’s actual dimensions. I think our program can treat it this way too, but we prefer the 3rd window option.

There are other kinds of shelves than just shelves. There’s pegboard (board with holes in it at set intervals that allow you to insert peg-hooks that allow you to hang products that use hangers or have peg-holes themselves), slatwall (similar to pegboard but instead of holes it has horizontal grooves at set vertical intervals that allow you to hang products but is less restrictive than pegboard horizontally – often more restrictive vertically though) and lots of other things that we don’t use – hanging bars, case displays (think the freezer cases in the middle of aisle near the meat section of a grocery store – the ones you look down into to get whatever meat might be on sale that week or what brand of pizza is on special) and so on.

Everything needs to have dimensions entered at some point – everything! Even though the picture looks two-dimensional, everything has (at least) three-dimensions. Even pegboard and slatwall, which are the most 2D things you get, have “interval” dimensions — how far apart the center of the pegholes / slatgrooves are. How far apart the notches are in the uprights that shelves can be inserted into is a kind of dimension. If there’s a buffer-zone at the top or bottom of the section where there are no notches/pegholes/slatwall, that’s another kind of dimension that can be entered. The amount of vertical space occupied by a shelf (it’s “thickness”) is another dimension that can have an impact.

I can’t understate how important dimensions are. Depending on how information is entered into the product library, it might be something that could be imported with the other information, or it might be something that the user enters themself – item-by-item. For me it’s typically the latter, to a point. If you have ten different items that are all the same dimensions (height, width and depth), you could measure one of the products and enter and save those dimensions for all ten. You do what you can to save time whenever possible, but not to the point where you risk comprimising accuracy.

But, to get back on topic, what is printed out for stores is a shot of the diagram and a shelf-by-shelf item list. We could, in theory, print out more than just that. If a graph of some sort would be helpful, our program has some capabilities of doing that. I don’t know if all space management software packages do and I suspect that several of them don’t.

If the section is very big in relation to the average size of the product, we may include several shots of the diagram, some of them zoomed in closer to see just part of the section so it is easier for the store to visually check that they’re on the right track. That won’t usually happen with just the click of a button, so we’ll have to print out several files (in PDF) and combine them all later.

What makes you good at your job? I imagine it as a very visual/spatial kind of intelligence–is that something you need in this role?What sort of person would you recommend pursue this line of work? What sort of person should stay away from it?

I don’t think it is any one quality that makes me good at what I do, but having a right combination of qualities. Note that I said “a” right combination, rather than “the” right combination. There are many different qualities that, as long as you’re good at some of them, you can learn the rest.

I think the most important one is attention to detail; to accuracy. Being off by even fractions of an inch (those fractions can add up quickly) can be the difference between a section working the way it is supposed to, to the store having to make adjustments to get it close to what you told them would work. Likewise with the sales data that is run to analyse the section. If you fail to take into account that a product underwent a package change that necessitated a UPC change (there are rules that govern these things), you may fail to notice that, individually, those two different UPCs don’t look like a very good product but, when added together, they end up being one of your top-ranked products. If you miss these things, you could be missing out on sales.

Visual/spatial intelligence can definitely be very helpful. Someone without a good awareness of this could get away with it to a point. Because we work in computers first and foremost, the program will alert you when things are off. The shelf turns red on the screen when the products you’ve put on it are too wide (added together) for the length of the shelf. The entries in the items list turn yellow when the product doesn’t fit in the space you’ve put it in. Fixing these problems is where an innate awareness for such things comes in handy. Otherwise, you’re just blindly plugging and playing until you get something that works. And, when things don’t work out physically the way they did in the screen, having a good awareness will help you solve it quicker and probably give you a hint as to what dimensions are the ones that are off. Paying attention to what is seen at eye-level is very important. There are a lot of other intangibles that can go into what makes a planogram look good or bad. One example: having large products up high and small products down low will make the planogram look top-heavy and be unappealing to look at.

Having an eye for color (i.e. this color doesn’t look good next to that color) can also be a benefit , but sadly, this is an area I don’t excel in. I can get by without it but arguably my planograms would be even better if I had an eye for this.

It is a job where I do believe that one of the most important things you should have is prior merchandising experience. It very much helps to be able to think as a someone at store level thinks and be able to balance their concerns/needs with that of growing sales. For example, if you only devote one facing to a product that a store can only fit three-deep on a shelf and it comes in a case of 12, you’re really going to piss the stores off to have to store 9 of those products out back (a 3-to-1 ratio of out-back to on-shelf). That product should probably get a couple of more facings to get the majority of the case on the shelf.

When you go into the stores to implement the plannogram, do the staff or management ever disagree? Do in-store staff get surveyed on
merchandising? Are there aspects of it that are up to the individual store’s team, or is everything decided centrally?

Do you mean disagree with me going there to set up the planogram, or disagree with the decisions we’ve made with the planogram itself? If the former: if the store was adamant that we not test in their location we would respect their wishes. It’s never come up though, as most stores are more than happy to have someone from the office come in and do the work for them. They might negotiate with me a little on the exact timing if the date I was aiming for was a bad time for them (they might have an inventory scheduled that day, for example), in which case I will work with them to get a time that works for both of us.

If the latter, everyone has an opinion. If there’s something they don’t like, they’ll usually ask questions about it. I’ll do my best to explain the rationale behind the decision and try to make them more comfortable with it. Once in a while, they do bring up something I hadn’t considered that not only makes sense, it also seems viable. It’s rare that I would completely redesign a planogram for something like that, but I certainly would adjust a couple of shelves if their suggestion seems like it would improve sales.

Store management know how to get a hold of category management if they wish to make comments on the merchandising. Some store managers are very vocal, others not so much. We do our best to keep stores happy, but sometimes keeping them happy would hurt sales so we sometimes have to ask them to just go along with it.

Most everything is decided centrally. We mostly avoid having “flex space” in the planograms. That said, we know that some stores will go behind our back and make their own modifications. For example, they might sell a lot of a particular product that we didn’t provide what the store considers an adequate number of facings for. They might reduce facings on other products to increase that one instead. We basically just turn a blind-eye to this. We know we can’t really expect to give the perfect planogram to everyone. Oddball situations are just the nature of the business.

Do you have a cube or an office? If a cube, how tall are the walls? If an office, do you have a window?

A cube. I’m not sure of the exact height (I’ve never had to planogram one, so I’ve never measured it 🙂 ). It’s not quite as tall as I am. It’s a bit over 5 feet high, but no more than 5-1/2 feet high at the most.

Does your office have a dress-code? If so, what are the basic parameters?

It does: Business Casual. It’s pretty broad category – basically, I’m not required to wear a suit and tie but still need to look professional.

What do most people in your office do at lunch-hour? Are lunches even taken, or are people pushed to “work through”?

Most people seem to take a lunch, and most of them take the full allotted break, but obviously that depends on the person. Some bring their lunches every day, some go out for fast-food every day and there’s many who are somewhere in between. Some use the lunchroom (even some of the fast-food people will bring it back to the lunchroom) others eat at their desk. Like pretty much any other office, some will occassionally use their lunch break to run errands but I don’t think there are many who consistently do this. Some even use their lunch break to go to the gym 2-3 times a week (there’s one very close by).

So far as I’m aware, it would be against company policy to push employees to work through their lunch. Some will work through it, but that’s usually because it is in their nature to do so. Some others come in early to get things done, some others stay late. I think, though, that the total number of people who contribute extra time regularily are in the minority.

***
Me again, just to say that I’m not sure if I’ll be continuing with this series, as I don’t have any vocationally specific/intense stories coming up. However, I don’t think I’ll ever stop being interested in work and jobs, so if you would be interested in participating in this series yourself, I’m sure I’d love to interview you. The only rules are that you earn income from the job and you’ve been doing it at least a year (approximately). Even if you don’t think your work is that fascinating, it’s probably because you do it all the time and to an outsider it actually is!! If you might be interested, let me know on the “contact” tab above, and I’ll get right back to you!

And thanks again to Aaron!!

May 30th, 2011

More from Me

A few other blog postings about town from yours truly:

On Kerry Clare‘s estimable Wild Libraries I Have Known series, I contribute a bit of bookish (well, semi-bookish) nostalgia, about my very first library, Binbrook Library.

On Biblioasis‘s Devil’s Engine series, Cathy Stonehouse and I talk about that pesky stories to novels career arc rumour.

It’s a good thing I’ve got these otherwhere blog posts to send you to, as I have nothing much of my own to say right now. Oh, except that if you have overripe bananas, put them in the freezer (peel them first), then chop up the frozen bananas and each them with a spoon–like banana ice-cream!

May 29th, 2011

Rose-coloured reviews *A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius* by Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers is my seventh book in the To Be Read reading challenge. As many of my other picks are, this is a book I feel like everyone in the universe had read except me–until now.

What kept me away was all the things that Eggers predicted would keep pretentious types away–the dense and contrarian introductory materials, the cutesy flip-it-upside-down-and-backwards appendix at the back, the “daring” title. And an extra one that’s just me–I don’t like memoir.

Fine, I know this is my failing–I read all book-length prose narratives as if they were novels, and if one is being faithful to the facts, life rarely has the shape and satisfactions of a novel. It has it’s own satisfactions, I know–though rarely an obvious shape–but I don’t care. I want the novelistic ones when I’m reading a book that looks–to me–like a novel.

AHWoSG (as it is referred to in the running heads) is a strangely shaped book, and thus–to me–low on tension. If you’re the one other guy who hasn’t read it, in brief, Dave Eggers parents both died of cancer, within 5 weeks of each other, when he was 22. Eggers had a sister and a brother both a couple years older than him, who helped him and their parents cope. But there was also a much younger brother, Toph, who was only 7 or 8 at the time (I think; I somehow can’t find the earliest reference to Toph’s age). For reasons that (to me) never seem clear, the next-youngest sibling, Dave, is the one to take custody of the boy.

The first chapter, on the end of Heidi Eggers’ life, is incredibly vivid, moving, terrible, and wryly funny. The dialogue is sharp and weird:

“Ah!” she says.
“Sorry,” I say.
“It’s cold.”
“It’s ice.”
“I know it’s ice.”
“Well, ice is cold.”

It’s kind of quietly devastating, the way the characters are such a comfortable, fully functioning family (under the circumstances), walking around with the knowledge that they aren’t getting to function at all for much longer. Throughout the book (gah–I almost typed “novel”), it’ll be Eggers’ relationship with and mourning for his mom that is rendered most clearly, emotionally, brilliantly.

Oh, and did I mention? The prose is very brilliant–but not in a way you think a lot about. Actually, I glanced at some other reviews of AHWoSG, and some people thought about the prose a great deal, but I found it natural, fluid, hilarious and transparent–the prose seemed to be a clear glass window into the narrator’s mind. I know, it takes work to achieve that illusion, but unlike other first-time authors I could mention, Eggers is happy not to draw too much attention to himself. After the title, he’s either assured we think he’s a genius, or he doesn’t care–he’s a lot of fun to read.

So when he goes off to San Francisco with Toph and gets into the humdrum impossibilities of real life–finding a place to live, cooking food, playing Frisbee (oh, god, he does go on about the Frisbee) it’s fun reading, and fast–light as air, in fact. And interspersed in present-day details are flashes of the past, where we learn about how things were when his parents were alive, when he and Beth and Bill were around Toph’s age and living in the house. Things were complicated. Things were hard and sometimes they were scary and some people behaved really badly, but there were no demons–no saints or angels either. There were just people who lived with each other who were a little fucked up. Eggers mourns the fucked-upped-ness almost as much as he mourns the love.

So, what’s my problem? you might ask. Regular readers know that the above sounds like (one of) my ideal reading experiences. The problem is that aside from quotidian scenes about Frisbee or food, so very much of the book is interior monologues. The dead inhabit those monologues, so we get a decent sense of Mr. and Mrs. Eggers, but the living escape the narrator’s telling, and thus all the non-dead characters are pretty much cardboard cutouts with one or two interesting scenes each, all in service of the narrator illuminating a point about himself.

The other thing I hate about memoirs is what I call “special pleading”–this comes up a lot in “heavily autobiographical fiction,” which is something I like sometimes, but almost exclusively when you can’t tell that’s what it is. My personal feeling is that a writer should not write anything where he or she is too invested in how much a reader likes or dislikes a character. There should be no shielding of characters from a reader’s harsh judgement, no censorship of details relevant to the plot, no slanting the narrative so that some come off better than they should. Even in fiction, you can’t lie.

But it seemed to me that Eggers did protect his characters, and thus unless you’re dead or the narrator, there’s no character development in this book. Dave eventually starts a magazine with his alleged best friends Moodie and Marny, who are in many scenes that take place at the magazine, yet have almost no dialogue. They have no preferences, moods, opinions, or thoughts–they are merely around, because it would be weird if the narrator claimed to have run a magazine by himself.

Eggers has a girlfriend at the beginning of the book, Kirsten, whom he dates on and off for about 2/3s of it–then they break up, she is briefly roommates with his sister, and eventually she marries someone else and he is very happy for her. Again, she has no dialogue and we learn nothing about her–though she attends his mother’s funeral (and has sex with Eggers in the parents’ closet afterwards) we don’t know a thing about what she thinks about it.

That’s true for *everyone* in the book–Beth, his sister, lives nearby and helps raise Toph…sort of. She actually seems to never be around and Eggers is always having to find a sitter if he wants to go out. But how much of that is reportage and how much of that is ellision–Beth’s part isn’t portrayed, out of respect or deference to her wishes or…I don’t know. I just know it pissed me off when the characters are at a wedding and Eggers thinks that that wedding reminds him of Beth’s, six months ago, to “a nice young man.” This is the first and last we hear of that relationship.

What I’m telling you is why I found the book annoying. What I’m *not* telling you is why I think the book is bad…I don’t know that I do think that. The narrator rants late in the book about how using characters’ real names, even phone numbers, is meaningless. He says, “You have only what I can afford to give you,” and that is such a true and shocking way of looking at memoir. This book is a very closed-off, shut-down, limited way of exposing personal tragedy. Eggers pontificates at length about how he needed to write the book to heal himself, and in that sense he had to protect whatever he felt needed protecting–but I’m not interested in therapy (well, not in this context). I’m interested in the reading experience and I feel like this one was a highly manipulated, tightly controlled, edging-on-dishonest one–and I’m fascinated by the ways I’ve been manipulated. There are too many to count, especially since this review is already 1200 words.

So what I’m saying is, I didn’t enjoy reading this book. It was frustratingly narrow and (with appendices, etc) close to 500 pages. If you write a narrow book at that length, you end up with endless pages about nothing (no more Frisbee!) and an often-bored Rebecca, but you also end up really immersing the reader in a single point of view, an intense experience.

Eggers achieved something here. I’m not sure what and I’m also not sure that I cared for it all that much, but the book was worth reading. I had hoped that writing this review would show me what I really think of the book, but I still don’t know. So I’m going to continue to think about my ideas about truth in narrative, and the ways it gets manipulated. And no book that makes you think is all bad.

May 24th, 2011

New York Was Great…

is a song by the The Raveonettes that you should really listen to–it’s great!

My own experiences in the big city weren’t quite great, but were certainly very good, although by the time we were taxiing down the runway I had worked myself to such a state of anxiety that any scenario in which I did not actually die would have qualified as passable.

Despite the title of this blog, I can be a little pessimistic sometimes.

But really, when I am in such a state of terror over presenting my book to a giant group of strangers, it is helpful to be reminded that I am so lucky to have support and encouragement from my publisher to do it, and indeed, a book at all to present.

And of course, the strangers were perfectly lovely, warm and open and very excited about books–an excellent group of people to spend an evening with. Also, whoever had catered the event made these little chocolate-chip cookie/brownie hybrids that I hope someday to marry.

I did have some other obstacles that were harder to look in the brightside of, but I did try. Like when I got prescribed the wrong medication and had a reaction in the form of a hideous empurpling rash over my entire body right before the event, I was…somewhat dismayed. Also itchy. But I can be grateful that the rash mysteriously disappeared from my face within 24 hours, though it lingered itchily on the rest of me.

And when I had to abandon my lovely, expensive dress that I’d specially purchased for the occasion, in favour of something that covered every inch of my now-hideous body (including a man’s shirt with cuffs that covered my hands) it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because New York was way colder than Toronto, and I wouldn’t have wanted to be out in that sleeveless dress, anyway.

And when my hotel failed to give me my 3:45 am wakeup call, it turned out I really enjoyed that extra 15 minutes of sleep until my backup alarm went off, and would’ve just been bored at the airport during that extra time anyway.

Of course, the best part of the event was all the other wonderful writers who presented their work, and gave me so much to think about (and read!) What’s really lucky about my life is how much time I get to spend with fascinating people, talking about books.

Or maybe the best thing was being greeted at the airport at home with flowers and party hats to celebrate my birthday.

In all events, I’m a lucky person.

AND as you can see in this last shot, the rash is nearly gone from my arms now (but don’t look at my ankles–blech).

I hope you had a really great holiday weekend too!

May 21st, 2011

NYC, City of Kittens

Yes, right, I know, New York City’s international reputation is actually not “City of Kittens.” I do know that, despite not being very familiar with that town. People always think I’m some sort of New York expert because all of the senior Rosenblums lived there for many years. I have personally actually been to the city four times, for a grand total of probably less than two weeks. Three of those four visits were before my 14th birthday.

So while I do have much anecdotal information about the Big Smoke, most of it pre-dates 1972 or comes from watching Friends/Seinfeld/Mad about You/Woody Allen movies, and I’m thus about as intimidated/excited as any other country bumpkin when I have to go there. Like tomorrow. It’s a very short trip, to meet some cool people at the Jewish Book Network and present a little book talk to them, and then turn right around and come home to celebrate my birthday.

I’m pretty nervous, though slightly comforted that, at least from the look of the map, the building where I will be speaking is next door to where one of the aforementioned senior Rosenblums lived in the 1960s. No idea why this is comforting, though it is a nice building. Maybe we can upgrade “pretty nervous” to “very nervous.”

Bottom line: when next you hear from me, I will (a) have made speech in New York City, and (b) have turned 33. I may be an entirely different person once those two things have happened. We can’t be sure.

In any case, wish me luck. More with (a) than (b), but all luck-wishes appreciated. And happy Victoria Day to you!