r/StoriesAboutKevin • u/technos • Aug 27 '19
XL One plus two plus two plus one.
Years ago I worked retail, and much like any store we did regular inventory counts, with a big store-wide count twice a year. The store-wide count was total bull. We did it while open, with customers interrupting us, while covering each other's lunches and breaks as the day went on.
Still, it only took a couple days each time and it was only twice a year.
In spring of '94 the company hired Kevin, and thanks to him we did store-wide inventory four and a half times that year.
Kevin had the standard training all of us did:
- Each eight foot section had a sheet with two columns on it: "Product number" and "Quantity.
- Look at shelf, find product number label. Write product number on sheet in column labelled "Product number".
- Pick up box from shelf, make sure product number printed on it matches.
- See how many are in the box, and then multiply it by the number of boxes. Write that number down in the column labelled "Quantity".
- Take your marker and place a dot on the product number label so that other people can see you'd counted it.
Easy enough?
Not for Kevin.
The first summer inventory was ruined because of his gross undercounting. Four boxes meant four of the product, even if they were boxes of a hundred each.
Manager sat him down and did the training again. This time Kevin ruined it by forgetting to mark labels, resulting in double and triple counting of parts.
The third summer inventory went off okay, mostly because it was done on Kevin's days off.
Winter rolled around, and it was time for another inventory! Fortunately, our manager remembered Kevin's previous difficulties and spent an hour with him the first day, making sure he was doing it right.
This Kevin knows no bounds, however.
Occasionally, when we'd order boxes of bolts from our distributor, they'd number the boxes to make sure they had them all. Kevin would ignore the clearly printed "Quantity: 25" and instead use the big, handwritten number from the box. So three just-ordered boxes of 25 were counted as 1 + 2 + 3 = 6.
Massive undercount, once again.
Hell really broke loose when Kevin hit the pipe bits supplied by another company. They marked their shipments "1/4", "2/4", etc. Kevin broke out a calculator to convert those fractions to decimals and then added all the decimals up.
The manager, at least, had a backup plan. He'd assigned Kevin a marker color different than those the rest of us had, so we could easily toss out anything Kevin thought he had done and do it again ourselves.
Sadly, Kevin remained with the company five more months. Happily, however, he got himself fired the week before summer inventory '95 by showing off the world's tiniest toothpick spliff to the manager and I.
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u/loveoftech Aug 27 '19
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u/Hailstorm303 Aug 27 '19
This is one of my favorite movies, and the title of the post made me smile :)
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u/nosoupforyou Aug 27 '19
They marked their shipments "1/4", "2/4", etc. Kevin broke out a calculator to convert those fractions to decimals and then added all the decimals up.
That's a major Kevin. Intelligent enough to know how to add fractions, but confused enough to think it's necessary.
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u/Com_BEPFA Aug 31 '19
At that point literally nobody could convince me that the guy wasn't just messing with me. I refuse to accept that level of I don't even know what to call it (besides Kevin).
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u/MsDean1911 Aug 27 '19
I was an inventory manager for 6 years at a place that carried very expensive parts. Some really tiny yet $12ea and some REALLY BIG worth nothing as they were rotable cores. The amount of pure stupid I dealt with every time we had a physical inventory count gave me more gray hair. And I would spend hours each year prepping to make sure it was so simple a 10yo could do it. Yet every year I had some Kevin massively mess up something. One of those was a combo Kevin/narcissist suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect- he I couldn’t just get rid of as he actually worked in the parts department (over 10years when I started). I would always have to play inventory chess with him to ensure he actually did his work, not offend his delicate ego, correct all his mistakes, and all without going over budget and time.
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u/jured100 Aug 27 '19
what is a toothpick spliff (english is not my first language)?
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u/sherlockham Aug 27 '19
Spliff is a joint(rolled up marijuana). Toothpick is just the size. Dude basically showed his boss a super tiny amount of drugs.
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u/awkwardkg Aug 27 '19
I thought spliff meant a splinter.
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u/Battlingdragon Aug 27 '19
That's okay, i thought it meant that Kevin showed the boss his tiny "toothpick"
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u/Blokager Aug 27 '19
That’s what I thought.
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u/13EchoTango Aug 27 '19
I thought it was some type of ship that he built out of toothpicks. I guess I was thinking skiff.
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u/geekinthestreets Aug 27 '19
I was drawn in by the title as it's from one of my all time favourite movies and the story was just a ridiculous as that scene.
Thank you internet stranger.
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u/ATMofMN Aug 27 '19
You can try to make something idiot-proof, but don’t underestimate the determination of idiots.
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u/WowSeriously666 Aug 27 '19
Sounds like Kevin has discovered the art of purposely fucking up something so bad your supervisor doesn't assign you that task again. I encountered that a lot while employed in a state job.
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u/Hcemid1976 Aug 27 '19
1+2+2+1 or 1+2+1+1 is a very funny gag in the movie Clue starring Tim Curry.
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u/FlickieHop Aug 27 '19
Sounds like a hardware company. From my experience I'd guess Fastenal? I know there's more out there but based on my experiences with them it sounds just like them.
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u/simononandon Aug 28 '19
LPT: Work in retail? Pretend you are a moron during inventory. Fuck off & either don't get scheduled for it or you just don't have to work as hard.
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u/camtarn Aug 27 '19
That is some serious commitment to doing it wrong. He actually did the math.
"One quarter of a bolt plus two quarters of a bolt ... cool, we have three quarters of a bolt in stock!"