Going Nuts Over Nuts!

When I worked in corporate retail, I was brought into stores that were having visits and asked to fold their jean wall and t-shirt tables. I folded each area to perfection, and once 2am hit, I went home. I was promoted in corporate retail, because I was well-rounded, and had an amazing attention to detail. Nine years later, I am in NorCal, applying all the same qualities to the bulk nut and dried fruit business.

After the briefest four hours of sleep in my life, I met J at 5:00am at our first store. Because we wanted to get eight stores done in two days, and most stores end their receiving hours around noon, we decided to drive to five stores the first day, drop product, and then go back and clean each store. Cleaning one store, depending on the number of bulk bins that it has, takes two or more hours. Since we wanted to service five stores, we were looking at a minimum of a ten hour day right off the bat.

The nerve racking part about going to each store, was that most of them had never been maintained when it comes to cleanliness. When we went to clean the bulk bins at the store level, we were only allowed to use corporate approved cleaning products, and our secret nut oil removing weapon... rubbing alcohol. One of the stores we went to that day actually had moths growing inside the bulk bins. Yummy. We had to put a lot of elbow grease into the stores that day, and sixteen hours later, plus Aaron stopping back at one of our stores for us, we still had to complete three more stores the following day.

At least we got to go rest our pretty heads at the always consistent, Hilton Garden Inn.