Chapter 30
30
C ally was back in Peaceton for the day. She stood with her hands on her hips in the doorway of the stockroom at the shop, and surveyed the very chaotic scene before her. Boxes were stacked haphazardly from floor to ceiling, shelves overflowed with a jumble of products, and layers of dust coated every surface that didn’t have a teetering pile of boxes on it. She let out a long exhale. She wasn’t in the least daunted by the task but it was going to be quite the undertaking.
‘Right then, best get cracking,’ she said to herself as she shook her head.
Rolling up her sleeves she put her experience with Nina to good use and did a quick first sweep of the room. The first thing would be to create some semblance of order out of the initial layer of mess. She'd need to group similar items together, take a proper inventory, and compare it all against what was listed in the system. Then she’d be able to make sense of stock levels and take it from there. She began methodically working her way through a towering stack of containers in one corner and tutted over and over again. As far as she was concerned, the mess and disorder were completely unnecessary. She frowned; it was so haphazard and jumbled, it was almost as if it had been done on purpose. None of it made any sense. She knew from how things were ordered and how products came in from the delivery vans that the stacks and piles were so out of sync that it defied logic. That had been her first red flag.
Starting at the top of a tall disorganised stack of boxes, she sorted items into categories – medicines, toiletries, first aid supplies, and so on. As she worked, she compared the state of the room to the tidy, well-organised area she was in charge of back in Lovely Bay. It was a very startling contrast. No wonder Birdie had wanted her on board. She would certainly be earning her pay that day.
Wondering how on earth the place had got in such a state in the first place considering it had only been open for a while, she tutted as she worked. In amongst orders and stock, it looked as though years of clutter had accumulated resulting in what felt like a muddle of chaos. After a good few hours of sorting, she’d made a small dent in the clutter and perched on a rickety stool, she booted up her laptop and pulled up the inventory spreadsheets and delivery system to have a look and see if she could tell what was what. She shook her head in quick little movements and frowned as she went down the spreadsheet. Right away she didn’t need a calculator to tell her that it didn’t add up. The second red flag had appeared.
Delving further into the stock and boxes she cross-referenced the physical count against what was listed in the system to try and start to organise things. The simple cross-referencing was how she’d first started to work and organise things in the Lovely shop. As she tallied up an open carton of Cold her new job wasn't going to be quite the walk in the park she’d assumed. She wasn’t wrong.