A yearly day from ....

Today is inventory day where I work. It comes every year the last day, or the last working day, in May. Always it falls right around Memorial Day. We have very few rules at my office, it is pretty laid back. We have rules about internet content and a set number of vacation days... and that is pretty much it except for the inventory day rule. This rule states that no one is allowed to take vacation on inventory day. It is a mandatory work day. Every year, someone gets permission to leave on vacation during this week. This year it was 2 people. So why this background history on inventory day? Well let me tell you about how my inventory day differs from others here at work:

1. There are 15 employees in my company; 11 of them count inventory
2. Of the 4 that do not count 2 of us enter inventory, the other 2 do not do anything more than answer the phones and take messages for everyone else.
3. When everyone is done with inventory at about 12 they are pretty much free to do whatever they want to do as long as they are not in the inventory program on the computer.
4. After 12 (noon) it is my turn to start working along with my wonderful mother who works here part-time as well. We enter the inventory numbers and it takes us until about 4 or 5.
5. After this we print the value report.
6. My boss analyzes the value report and informs us of any costs that are entered wrong; this takes anywhere from 1-2 hours.
7. Then Mom and I fix the values in the computer, and run another value report with the updated numbers; we are at about 7 or 8 at night at this point.
8. Hopefully at this time the values are all correct and we are done... sometimes not.
9. I have worked 16 hours on inventory day before and had to come back the next day for another 4 hours; the average is about 12 hours.
10. This is not so bad for Mom who is part time and gets to claim all of these hours for full pay... I am salary so overtime does not really apply to me.
11. So when people take vacation on this day it makes it so that there are 9 people counting instead of 11, which does not seem like a big difference. But it can mean an extra hour or two to my day. Selfish I know!

So my cures for today? Glee soundtracks, ordered Joe Morley's for lunch, Wheat Thins, and a nice cold fountain Diet Coke. I ask, does it get better than that? Well maybe chocolate would make it better!