Thursday, July 22

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July 22, Thursday - Worked pretty hard. Forgot to send in KMP order. Upset the whole Kroger organization.

July 23, Friday - My first paycheck since March. Hot

July 24, Saturday - Worked late with Johnson.

"KMP" is the order system for items carrying Kroger house brands. There were no computers, of course, just big - and I mean big - clipboards with pages and pages of items listed by category. I can only imagine how mom felt having dropped the ball on this major piece of the store's stock order.

When I finally got my shot at carrying the mega-clipboard in the early '70s, I found that the items you were trying to order were not listed in planogram order.

If you've never worked retail, a planogram is a visual shelf-space planning system for placing merchandise in a company-approved manner. At Kroger, planograms showed the item name, shelf placement on the gondolas, and the correct number for product facings. Most of the product resets were done by a traveling band of store merchandisers who swoop in, make lots of noise, reset the shelves, then swoop back out again.

By the time I went to work at Lowe's in 2010, planograms were largely executed by in-store Product Services staff, though most departments still had to deal with the process on a regular basis. At a warehouse store, though, the shelfs are fourteen feet high and able to carry tons of product, both at customer level and in high top stock, accessible by ladder and personnel lifts and by fork-lifts and reach trucks.

One of the highlights of my time at Lowe's was being to add "Fork Lift Certified" to my resumé.

Mom finally gets a real paycheck again. Soul-crushing, mind-bubbling heat in Kansas City, complete with wet-towel humidity.

Saturday night at Kroger. Man, that's living.