What I Do

I was just thinking - there are probably a few people who don't really know about or understand my job. So I thought I would try and explain it a little bit - even though I myself don't know what I'm doing half the time!

I work for a Wine & Spirits Distribution company. I am in the Chains , which means I drive around and visit grocery stores all day. When I first started with the company, I was a Sales Rep/Merchandiser. So I would take all the information I had on the brands that we represent (like Bacardi or Jack Daniels) and try to sell displays into the grocery stores. We have quotas we are supposed to attain each month - which means we need to sell in a certain amount of cases and have a certain amount of displays in our stores. We also merchandise the displays to get them looking fancy and hopefully grab peoples' attention so they buy the stuff.

After about 1 year as a Sales Rep, I got promoted to a District Manager. Now I run a team of 7 Sales Reps and make sure they are taking care of business. Sometimes I think Manager is just another word for Glorified Babysitter, but it has its good points too. The #1 thing that keeps me working is the fact that during the slower times, my schedule is really flexible. But when we are not going through a slow time, my schedule is nothing if not HECTIC. And besides being hectic out in the field, I get to come home and do paperwork for hours on end. Not every day, but enough days that it gets old.

The company also does what they call Surveys. Oh, the dreaded surveys. Basically, one particular brand will give you a date (usually a week or 2 in advance) and then send its people out to your stores to make sure their displays are the biggest and the best in every store. Now, in the real world, there's no way everyone can have the biggest and best display in every store. Its completely impossible. So we fake it. Literally. We use empty boxes to make our displays look bigger. We move things around to different areas of the store to make sure we have the best location. It is very, very time consuming and draining. I won't go too much more into detail, but it is just a lot of work. A lot of 12-hour days leading up the survey to make sure everything gets done. And now that I'm a manager, I don't just worry about myself. I have a whole team whose stores have to look great. If the stores look bad, it is ultimately my fault.

I have had 1-2 of these stinkin' surveys every month for the past 6 months, so my schedule has not slowed down. Honestly, I am exhausted. I am thinking about moving on to something new, but I just haven't decided what.

So that's it in a nutshell. It's really weird. (And pretty funny considering that I don't drink.) It is something that I never knew existed. A friend introduced me to the company and I just hit my 3-year mark there. I have been trying to hang in there for my 5-year (so I can be fully vested in the company) but don't hold your breath!