The week that ended 9/23/06 I was in Stafford, VA. I'm sure it's got neat stuff to discover, but we were working long hours at night and I did not discover it. My glasses broke - the lens fell out - so I spent time at the optometrist getting them fixed. I found a park which was not at all picturesque but had a perfectly adequate grill for my burgers. I found a Curves - there are in fact two, but I went to the one near the optometrist. I found a bead store right by the supermarket. Most of my time was spent on important stuff - like sleep. Night sets are like that.
Meanwhile, back on the internet, one of my readers posted a comment - "I am curious about your work." OK, since that's mostly what I did this week, I'll write about it.
The work I do is different each week, which I love. I do supermarket resets.
Some weeks I work with a retail project team. These teams have a regular route of maybe 16 stores relatively close to one another, and visit each one monthly, doing various projects. We'll rearrange a few sections of the store and be gone. For instance, a few weeks ago I spent the week rearranging frozen entrees in four Food Lions.
Other weeks I work with a traveling set team. These teams travel for the purpose of remodeling stores and setting up new stores. We're at one store for 4 days - or 4 nights - and when we're done everything is different. For instance, this week we converted a regular Food Lion into a Bloom store.
Most of the people who do these jobs work for one or another food broker or merchandising company as employees - Acosta, Proctor and Gamble, Advantage, Crossmark, Keebler, Nabisco... These companies also get help from other merchandising companies like the ones I work through. I'm an independent contractor. I get jobs through a kind of temp agency for merchandisers. This gives me more freedom and flexibility, and enables me to travel by motorhome rather than stay in corporate-approved motels. Plus I get to work in many different towns, with many different teams, on many different projects, and even in different chains.
I love my work.
So when you go to the supermarket and the cat food, which has always been on aisle 4, is now on aisle 8 - we did that ;)
Love your "Yards" Your job sounds awesome! I am retiring in April, and hitting the road... is your's a difficult field to get into? I would love to do that!! That sounds like the perfect traveling job! Would you mind terribly telling me what step one would be in finding this type of work? So happy I found you blog! Jeannie
ReplyDelete@Onmyway - I tried to contact you direct - how?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, more about the merchandising field can be learned at http://www.narms.com. My first ever merchandising job was from an ad in a newspaper, but the next several involved divine intervention. Then I listed with NARMS and connected with more that way.