509: Pour myself a cup of ambition

A snapshot into my life in especially excruciating detail; I hope you enjoy. I compile a list of products; a particular type of stock which one might browse and purchase when out and about in the high street. These products have, to me, no names, merely numbers for example 72153. Being au fait with the workings of these product codes I am able to disregard the initial seven, knowing like I do that it merely represents my department. The following 21 is the sub-department, and the 53 indicates the style. Therefore I am able to communicate basic ideas about stock using mostly numbers. Working from a list of paper, which looks like 73423, 73283, 73342, 77923, 79893, 79223, 73123, 71293, 74291, 71912, 73989, 79128, 78992, 72912, 79932, 77272, 74322, 71232, 74321, 74121, 73122, 78829, 71923, 73192, 73192 x2, 71922, 71291, 79322, 71492, 71923, I am able to pull from the dusty stock room a large towering pile of boxes. Each box contains between nine and 40 of a product, usually individually wrapped with plastic and paper.

Standing beside the piles of boxes, I create a smaller pile three or four boxes high so that the top-most is at a comfortable working height, requiring me to neither bend nor reach beyond a limit unacceptable to me. Using a safety box opener/knife which I usually keep in my right trouser pocket I slit open the lid. Sometimes I find the safety knife has made its way into my left pocket, and there is usually a moment when I think just a minute, where has that silly little knife gone and put itself? Once the box is open, and the four leaves/tabs are folded back out of the way I proceed to unpack the stock. One at a time I lift each item from the box, remove it from its plastic bag, pull out any cardboard or paper, or any further plastic, and deposit the packaging into an orange bin bag. The bin bag is often tied to the side of a trolley (more about the trolley soon; much more), or sometimes just hung off the side of the box. Sometimes I even put the bag inside the box. More and more recently this has become my preference, as it results in the minimum need for unnecessary twisting and turning.

As each item of stock is removed from its packaging (a process we refer to as prepping; a whimsical shortening of the word preparing) it is placed in a large trolley. When the trolley is full it can then be wheeled onto the shop floor where the stock can be deposited onto the shelves in the appropriate locations. The convenience of the trolley as a medium for transporting stock lies within its possession of four small wheels (almost verging into the realm of castors), one located in each corner of the trolley's base, coming into contact with the floor, and enabling a significant increase in manoeuvrability than one would expect from a similar object lacking wheels. Once the contents of the trolley has been evacuated it can, and should, be wheeled back into the stock room and the process repeated. This is done until its time to go and have a cup of coffee.