I was going to write about a clever sort of a mixed alphanumeric string that I did, and congratulate myself (not for the first time) on how quickly I did it, but I got all confused trying to remember what I did. So that story will have to wait.

Almost every day these days I get at least one call from someone in shipping. With all the people who have left I have some of the broadest knowledge of technicalities in shipping. I was called today because an order that was supposed to be out for pick couldn’t be found, and C. M. wanted to make sure it was okay to delete it. C. M. was working with the very newly trained semi-clerks (the clerk positions are gone so he’s not a clerk) and they said they had checked both the main Orders system and the shipping software and they had no record of the shipment, nor could they find the paperwork.

I couldn’t remember the screen on the orders system that I wanted and I felt like a dunce because it was one of my favorite screens for troubleshooting. It was this cold I have, I think. I had to look it up on the cheat sheet I wrote for C. M. last week. I was going to use the screen to look up the shipment number. As I did so C. M. told me they already had the shipment number. But they didn’t; they had the shipment number for an earlier shipment on that order. “This is why we call you,” C. M. said.

Lately I have been touching a lot of old databases I have built over the years, as far back as the first year I was here. I love it. It makes me feel so special, so appreciated and needed.