This is retail's Big Week. Our store is no different. I have been going in an average of two hours early in order to do a procedure known as the "manual CAF". "CAF" stands for "Capture Auto-Fill", a procedure which happens automatically at 10 PM every night. A manual CAF occurs when someone uses a PDA to trigger the CAF early--thus, a "manual CAF".
The manual CAF is useful at times of heavy traffic because it reduces the amount of UPCs in each autofill batch. For example, if I do a manual CAF in the "chemical" batch, when the batch drops at 10 PM there will be fewer items in it because some have already been taken care of.
This time of year it is not unusual for the autofill batches to total over 2,000 UPCs or more per night. That would take an inordinate amount of time and manpower, so the store offers overtime to those who would like to come early and do manual CAFs. So I volunteered--I need the money anyway, right?
This week being the kind of week it is, we are having double trucks just about every night. Normally we have one double per week, on Tuesday; this week we're having them every night except Thursday. Thursday is Thanksgiving, and we're not open on that day.
Monday night we had two trucks, of around 1,700 and 1,800 cases each for a total of about 3,500 cases. That is a lot of freight. (Sunday we apparently had two 2,000 case trucks.) Of that, something like fifteen pallets of it went to the back room. Fifteen tall pallets, stacked between five and six feet high.
There were four people in the back room. Five if you include the woman who was doing all the clothing and such. We got the freight done at six AM, and I went home.
Last year at this time we had a mob in the back room. There was no shortage of people to get the work done; so why on earth this year we're having to make do with four people is beyond me.
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Megumi's Diary
Since entry #186 I've added more pages to the manga, and they are wonderful pages. I'm really pleased with them.
I especially like this drawing:
...because it's one of the best side views I've ever drawn.
It shows Megumi's bustiness. (Fan service note: her measurements are B: 93E W: 65 H: 90, in centimeters. Here in the US her measurements would be: B: 36D W: 25 H: 35).
I'm really happy with how the story flows up to page 17 of the second chapter. There is just one panel on page 18, which is why I can't say it's good throughout.
There are a few abrupt transitions but I didn't really know how to show the intervening action without taking too much page space--anyway the action ought to be relatively obvious.
The funny thing is that I did all this great artwork in between bouts of work. I had a long lunch break so I drew and drew and drew; and then we had a long mid-shift break so I drew more. I ended up drawing seven new pages and they're actually good pages.
It's nice to see that I'm actually trying new things and not just drawing the same kind of scenes over and over again. The most recent pages feature scenes I've never attempted before, and I'm pleased with how they turned out.
Perhaps once I get my butt in gear I can start thinking about web publication or something....