Spring Cleaning

If you can lean, you can clean. I'm not much of a taskmaster as a boss, but that's the popular retail saying I've heard from hard nosed store owners. There's always work to do. I recall countless hours futzing around on my computer when I had an IT job. I wrote massive quantities of D&D stuff, researched what new wheels to buy for my new car, and generally wasting time. I think most office jobs are that way, with maybe five hours a day of actual work possible before your brain stops functioning. In retail, when you're brain stops working and you start leaning, you can always clean.

Cleaning this week hasn't been actual cleaning as much as it is clearing out dead inventory and re-organizing. Card games that haven't sold in a year got the heave ho, a move over to the discount section. Top ranked board games that had been given a free pass last month finally got on my nerves and they got the boot as well. I don't care how good you are, if you haven't been performing for me lately, you're not much use to me. I put a bunch of Privateer Press overstock on clearance, as well as another basket of clearance Flames of War models. Thomas stuff continues to get listed on eBay, although I think we've developed at least two in-store customers for it. Whoo hoo! We, meaning Michael with me giving directions, re-organized the miniatures section, adding a larger magazine rack for the various rulebooks and codices and spreading out and re-organizing the Reaper miniatures, labeling them in every increasing granularity.

This morning I spent a couple hours re-organizing the used RPG section. Some will argue that the hodge podge of the section is half the fun, but every once in a while it's good to organize it. It turns out 40% of it is D20 product. My guess is that about two-thirds of that could be dumped in the recycling. After several years, there is a kind of RPG sludge in the book shelves. If you've had a book for years, taken it to a dozen conventions, lowered the price twice and nobody wants it, is it dead? Perhaps the discount shelf is a place for that stuff, at least until I need the space.

If this all sounds tranquil and relaxing, I had plenty of traditional store owner junk to do today as well, including going over a new workers comp policy for next month, finding out why I had an overdrawn checking account earlier in the week (gambling on the float), and figuring out if my primary distributors new computer system is likely to cause me more work (it will at first, then it will be much easier). Oh yeah, and then there's the various employee issues, like the three forms that need to be filled out for the new guy and scheduling hours when nobody wants to work. Somehow, each morning I still can't wait to get to work. Go figure.