I am up at 7am because my kids have to be dropped off at school by 8am. I'll also be picking them up at 3pm, which means leaving the store by 2:30 and getting back about an hour later thanks to a long, slow pickup line that never improves because slowpokes are too stupid and a ridiculous number of soccer moms clog the pickup line with their land yachts and drive their children home even though they live one or two streets over within the neighborhood. They could literally walk to the school, find their kids, and walk home in less time than they take driving and waiting in line and slowing things down for the rest of us. Their yoga pants appear strictly ornamental; no fitness is achieved in them.
I will then watch the kids at the store, with them distracting me and preventing me from doing any real work, until Steph comes to grab them at around 4:30. I do this every weekday except Wednesday. The total impact to my work month from this is around 70 hours of lost productivity. If I wanted the kids to have after-school care, it would cost a staggering $870 per month through the district. So against costs, and not accounting for taxes, I am "earning" about $13 per hour doing this. That's not great, but not awful either. And most people who have punch-clock jobs don't have the permission or flexibility to do this, and the contact time and involvement with the kids is a definite positive.
I try to double- and triple-up my value by sequencing in errands and meals and phone calls to that driving and waiting time, and doing non-brain work while the kids are at the store distracting me. In all honesty I bet I defray almost that entire child care cost with no greater effect on my work output than the ordinary daily inefficiency of your average call center employee. And sometimes the kids have homework and they shut up and do it so I can be productive.
Monday
I wake up. I go downtown to look for a job. Then I hang out in front of the drugstore. Actually, after waking groggy kids from weekend stay-up-late-playing-video-games excesses and dropping them at the elementary center, I drink enough caffeine to kill a buffalo and roll on up to Ray Road. I log into QBO and the banks and so forth and find out where my money is, and then I put money where it needs to be for the week. During the dark times, this was basically a daily dance with danger, but these days I'm planning expenses pretty far ahead and the weekly work amounts to a series of "press the button" outputs on funds whose movements have long been anticipated.
My online store manager and fulfillment staff are usually already at the store when I arrive, processing that day's TCGPlayer reimbursement invoice and shipping out a weekend worth of eBay sales and web orders and such. Right now I let Amazon fulfill all our orders in their channel, so that's a nice labor savings. All week long the fulfillment staff work early shifts, with at least one of them on deck until the evening shift arrives because a manager covers the front solo and cannot leave the front to pick kiosk orders. So the fulfillment staff does that.
Ordering used to be a big Monday thing but these days I want my managers to be more involved in deciding what comes in. Jake works Monday and Brian works Tuesday, both of them on four-day open-to-close workweeks that run concurrently on Fridays. Thus, I give them both until early Tuesday afternoon to make any requests they have. Square's low stock system tells me the rest of what I need, and I'll let any staff member load up a potential item on the Alliance website since it has that functionality. So throughout Monday I'm gathering that info.
The exceptions there are Games Workshop, who are inexplicably a three-day ship from Memphis to Phoenix, and Video Game Advantage, who ship from New Jersey. I place their orders right away and I usually have a good idea what's needed from the system reports.
Griffin is back to coding for more money than he makes here hosting Magic tournaments (shocking, I know) so I take care of marketing the day's events and promotions on social media every day around midday. All of the above puts us into lunch range and then it's time for me to go get the kids, so I'll tuck in odds and ends and then head out to do so. On return, the balance of the day is taken up in general productivity, such as triaging video game buys or working on administrative deliverables.
Title IV-D child support payments tap at 5pm on Mondays for those who are under a court order to pay them, so a lot of people usually come in on Sunday and Monday to sell cards or video games for cash. Thus, I sandbag cash going into the weekend for buys, and then I rarely deposit weekend cash sales, as we'll end up dipping right back into them to make even more buys.
Tuesday
If I'm ever going to sleep in on a weekday, it'll be Tuesday. I can drop the kids off at school and just head back home and rack out for a couple of hours. Inevitably I have work to do and the sun shines brightly in the window so I'm Up And Atom again. I take care of morning admin from my desk at home, eat, and then head in. If I pushed breakfast late enough, it's good, because I can pick up the kids after school and just take them home and have a late lunch "for free" while I wait for Steph to get home, and the kids will play video games and leave me free to take care of more real admin work at my desk until I head back.
I am post-bariatric so unfortunately meal planning takes on outsized importance in my daily work. If I don't eat the right stuff at more or less the right time, I deteriorate pretty quickly. Can't focus mentally, can't do serious work physically. Vitamins also play a part. It's frustrating to have age and health effects hurting my productivity this way, especially when I think of all the time I squandered in my youth when my body was at 100% and I could have abused it for hours on end to earn money. That last sentence reads far more suggestively than I imagined it would.
Anyway, Tuesday early on, once Brian has added his input to Jake's and I have pretty decent order request lists, I reconcile all stock needed and check my pending items from this week's distribution arrivals, and fire off orders in the early afternoon. GTS has a warehouse in Phoenix, so if anything I need is fulfillable there, I will grab it either Tuesday or Wednesday.
Tuesday used to be a busy night at the store due to comics, which aren't a factor now. However the area Legacy crowd and Modern crowd both turn up in strong numbers, and Commander is always a thing. Dungeons & Dragons runs six nights a week. So while I am not strictly needed on coverage almost ever, it's not the worst night for me to be lurking and doing project work at my desk.
Wednesday
It's the day I don't have to pick up the kids! Their particular schedule has them shuttled around by Steph and by Grandma (Steph's mom) and I am not needed in that equation. I load every deep-digging project onto Wednesdays, especially where I expect to be neck-deep in the back room doing archaeology, or performing substantial furniture movement or anything IT-related. If there's a drill or a soldering iron involved, this is the day that task is going to happen. I tend to cover the most ground on deliverables on Wednesdays and even if I have to pay a little more than usual for lunch, it's a throwaway cost against the amount of money I usually generate for the store, both directly and indirectly (or "for later" through setting up revenue structures or updating them, etc). Since GTS's warehouse is right around the corner from the legendary Little Miss BBQ, I sometimes get my brisket on with a consolidated errand trip.
I let myself burn hot fuel all day and then quit no later than 7pm, because 10 to 11 hours uninterrupted makes for some pretty great throughput and I am usually wiped out and also needing a substantial dinner by then for bariatric purposes.
Thursday
Most orders arrive Thursday, and the staff does well nowadays at ingesting them to store stock and merchandising them. Part of getting them involved in the ordering process has been a result I like, which is that they take ownership of the product once it comes in, and they want to see that stuff specifically sell well so that I will give them even further latitude to have us bring in more stuff. Which is, in fact, the case. I absolutely will do that.
Events tend to be busy on Thursday nights and sales tend to be strong. I could make an argument that I ought to be there every time, but by dint of circumstance, Steph's evening work obligations tend to occur on Thursdays, so I usually roll out before it gets too late and let the crew finish out the day.
Friday
Usually I'll be picking up a clicklist order from Sam's Club of a van-load of beverages and snacks for the weekend, and I'll hit the bank and pull out a bunch of extra cash for weekend buys, and any errands still pending need to get done, so I spend a lot of Friday on the road. I'll bring the kids back to the store after school and take them to Circle-K for "Froster Friday" if they behaved well that week. Frosters (a rebranded version of an Icee or Slurpee) are the lock high with kids. For less than a buck each today, they get a better treat than anything I used to get on a regular basis when I was their age.
Both managers are on deck Friday, the entire fulfillment staff, and usually one or two part-timers on top of that, and Griffin is usually around to hobnob and play Vintage or Legacy, so Friday is when DSG is bumpin' and is absolutely the place to be. The staff do a "fancy Fridays" thing where they all wear suits and ties and Jake puts on his weird jazz channel on Pandora Business and the store gets this amazing tabletop-nightclub aesthetic going. It's more impressive than the written description makes it sound, and I get to defer credit for all of it to my team, which I am delighted to do.
I tend to spend Friday evenings helping out with general maintenance or tasks and staying out of the way. It's the best day of the week for me realizing the value of what I've built as a functioning, delegated business that doesn't require me on coverage at all. And yet it's also a good evening for me to stay late and be there. Regulars get some visibility from me, which I avoid the entire rest of the week so I can work and not be tempted to chat with friends. And Fridays sometimes incubate some monster sales, and when a serious player is making a big purchase and the dollar amounts get toward four digits and there are usually DSG Stars redemptions or case pricing involved, even Jake and Brian like to get my green light before going ahead. (As long as it was reasonable, they could have done it without asking, but I am glad they are being careful.)
Saturday
I don't have the most congested social calendar out there, but if it has anything on it, there's a fair chance it's on Saturday, and that includes store events of consequence. I am almost always on-site "tending to my wager" and during quiet times I am coordinating with Brian on what projects can get knocked out. As the afternoon deepens and heads toward evening, sales pick up and usually we get our weekend's top revenue load flowing in and product out the door. Projects get set aside and it's all customers until the final bell. There's no banking, so I often take the opportunity to grind some eBay listings, finish that month's sales tax prep, or other administration. Lately it has been taxes. Saturday is typically secondary to Wednesday as a day I can dig into some deeper projects if there isn't a front-end event demanding any attention from me. (And the staff can handle most things.)
Sunday
Sunday is our short day, and it's always Jake along with one experienced staff member or another for the duration. Sales tend to underwhelm, it's all about those buys (as described above). There is usually a pretty full room with players, and snacks and drinks won't keep the bills paid but I'll still take that money as it's better than nothing.
I almost always come in Sunday even though it's an ideal day for me to take the day off, because the attraction of "getting ahead" of the week in projects and such is tough to ignore. If I have to do any serious inventory or fixture work in the storefront, doing it after the 6pm closure also makes sense, as I don't always have time before opening during the week. And I also want to be ready for the guy who walks in the door to sell us some staggeringly large collection of whatever for cash. Jake knows what he is doing and can "make the deal" from open to close just fine, and has many times. But only Griffin and I have the ATM cards and the checkbook signer access. A sufficiently big buy can often require my presence in order to disburse money.
And that is essentially my week! As you can see, there are a few issues of scale that actually lock me in to physical presence at the store, but in terms of the daily mechanics of business, the team has that well in hand and has become adept at teaching the processes and getting new hires up to speed also. Which is a good thing because thanks to the food and child-care necessities in my schedule, I have all the hour-to-hour attention continuity most days of a mongoose on ecstasy.
Monday
I finally got a job. Keeping people from hanging out in front of the drugstore.
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