Grocery Store Appreciation Day

I am declaring today grocery store appreciation day. Most of you probably don't know, but to help Caleb and I earn a little bit of money, I am doing retail work for Crossmark. What exactly is retail work? Well, I'm glad you asked. There are 2 types, resets and projects work. Project work is where you go into individual stores and do a task by yourself- example: this week I have to go to 9 CVS's in the area and

a) measure their gastro intestinal section and report back its size and
b) set up sunscreen displays and make sure that everything is stocked.

Not bad, especially because it is flexible. You get assigned tasks and have 2 weeks to go do it. Perfect for a student. Alright, then there are resets. Let me preface this by saying, STEPHANIE HATES RESETS. These are where you go into a store as part of a team and do a HUGE (usually 4-8 hour) project. Last week, I was assigned to my first reset. I met with 10 of my new "friends" in Mclean, VA at a grocery store. We proceeded to take EVERY box of cereal off of the rack, change the aisle from being 4 shelves to 5 shelves and then completely reorder, restock, tag, and stock all of the cereal. You can imagine how fun it was.

Now, on to why today is grocery appreciation day. Today I started day one of a three day, 8 1/2 hour a day project. Fun, huh. I was told it was a reset in Centreville (45 minutes away). When I showed up, I found an ethnic grocery store under construction. But to my surprise, this was not so much a reset as much as it was a set up....

Have you every wondered how all of the food in a grocery store got put in its place, how it all fit correctly, how it was organized, continually stocked, etc? Drum roll please..... yes, that was me today. I walked into an empty grocery store with 25 pallets of food that were taller than me. We had to lug the boxes down the aisles to their general "food group." Then we had to build all of the shelves. Next, we had to organize and figure out how to fit everything nicely on the shelves, then place all the price tags. Next we had to unpack all the boxes and stock the shelves. There were 20 of us there and we worked 8 1/2 hours. We finished 1 and a half aisles..... ya.

So, in honor of all my hard work today I am declaring it grocery store appreciation day. The next time you are in the grocery store, take a moment to appreciate the food you are taking off of the shelves. Say a silent thank you to the people like me who get up at the crack of dawn and kill themselves so that the food is so nicely organized for you. If you take something off of the shelf, put it back in its spot and make sure its facing forward. Because you know why.... when you don't.... people like me get up at the crack of dawn and come back behind you and spin it back to face forward. : )

Anyways, enough of that. Tomorrow is Caleb's first day of law school orientation, so if you get a moment say a quick prayer for him tomorrow. I know he's going to great! Well, I better start heading to bed... I have to be in my car on the road at 6am tomorrow. Ah, a day in the life of a grocery store resetter.