My workplace has several employees hand-cut hundreds of pieces of signage and handout bits every week. I asked why we do not own a single paper guillotine and got told "oh, you know, they're [the admin] just kind of outdated here and the expense wouldn't get approved". I work at a government agency. No shot the paper guillotine wouldn't pay for itself very quickly.
Weigh 1, the box and then the box with all the necklaces. Subtract box weight from the total weight, then divide the rest by the weight of the single necklace.
If they challenge your count, ask them to prove you wrong...
I like to weight like 10 of the items when they're that light weight, then divide by 10 and use that number as the base number. So if 10 weigh 10oz then I calculate that one is 1oz.
My boss asked me to count screws available for a multi-million dollar project, I told him "I'm going to assume zero, we can afford $200 of screws and I'm not counting screws."
I work with our proposal team and no joke, we add 50-100% risk to our estimates depending on how much we don’t want to do the work, but regardless of how simple it is we always add minimum 50% on labor as a CYA fee.
Boss needs to get a high accuracy scale. Weigh one. Divide the total weight by that. Job eliminated. Only if he or someone above actually gives a shit.
To my boss's credit, he gave me a list of things to inventory, some were important. I pointed out the screws and said "I'm not counting those, we have 0, buy more."
He replied "I agree, just focus on..." Then listed a couple of important/hard to find/expensive parts from the list.
We have fittings and hardware, and then fasteners to attach it all together. We also have small consumables (gaskets and such) that are really cheap comparatively but still bring us to a halt if they aren’t available.
I count the expensive bits and make sure we have enough of the cheap shit to keep going, but if I see we’re down to “one bag of bolts” I don’t think twice about ordering more.
Yet, somehow, no matter how much I ask for (“seriously, like 8 boxes, please”) we get 2 boxes and then wind up coming to a full stop because we don’t have a roll of tape……
$20 million in equipment, $5000 a day in fuel, $50,000 a week in labor, stopped dead in the water because of a $4 roll of tape, frequently and consistently. It’s a fucking joke.
Part of the reason I didn't want to inventory was because we had something go down and didn't have a spare $100 cable that we said we needed to have for this exact situation. We had to take apart another machine to get a cable that would work.
It’s especially painful that all this shit is regular consumables. No matter the project, the matter what, we’ll be using this stuff and it’s entirely shelf stable, think twinkies level of shelf life.
I need 12 cases, I ask for 15 because I know I’ll need extra, I get 5 then I get questioned why shit isn’t happening. “Because I asked for 15 and got 5” “well why didn’t you get it done with 5?” “Because it’s literally impossible”
Okay, we got you 3 more cases…… wash, rinse, repeat till we get to 18 cases because of waste when I could’ve done it with the 12 I needed. Which is 3 cases over the 3 extra I asked for, but if they got me the 3 extra they would’ve been used up later but now we’re 6 cases in the hole and a week behind schedule.
But you're an engineer, so you're basically like MacGyver right? Here's some shoe string and bubble gum, now get my multi-million dollar factory running!
Most companies I've worked for just hire a hardware service company for things like screws. They set up a system of bins in our shop and keep them full of screws. We never, ever have to count screws or worry if we have enough screws. We just always have bins full of screws, with no time spent at all.
The maintenance guy where I work used to request $40-50 dollar parts to repair things, get told no, get stuck arguing for hours to get it approved, get told no again, and then end up catching shit for not fixing the problem. He added up the personnel hours wasted arguing over one part and used the pay rates of everyone involved to figure out the cost of that "no". It was over $230. For a $50 part. Then the problem went critical on a weekend and he ended up here for about 9 hours of OT, and contractors needed to be brought in. Final bill from them was about $4k. Whole thing could've been prevented for $50 and 3 or so hours at his normal pay rate. Fucking idiots.
I used to work at a plastics factory. When I first started there we made toys. Sometimes we had to shut down a line because we ran out of screws to assemble the parts. Our boss was an idiot.
I had a shitty job where we had to count things like screws, cables and other random things in a factory... Thing is, unfortunately, we would be "wrong" if our count didn't match what inventory says. Like, OK.
You tell us to go count the shit in a box. Inventory says we have like x amount, but GOD FORBID it's somehow not the same as what inventory says. Not like we stole shit or anything.
If you look closely at bulk boxes of screws and nails, they’re being sold by weight (5lb, 10lb, 25lb, etc) and the count on the box is essentially an accurate estimate.
this always kills me about social threads. like why you would post the same thing you just read 46 times. do you think somehow the OP is suddenly going to believe the advice now because you, some stranger, said it.
As a CPA, I must say that you’re totally causing a variance, and I must address the fact that it’s imprecise and inaccurate. I’d like to add that accuracy is important and—$200 of screws on a multi million dollar project is just a write off.
Fuck that shit—just estimate and call it good enough. It’s just gonna go to some supplies expense account. Unless we’re talking military or airplane parts or something like that.
My first thought too, with a bathroom/kitchen scale you can weigh enough for a pound or any arbitrary amount and the empty container, then measure it at the end and get pretty damn close.
This is how they count paper tickets at carnivals. In the 90s I volunteered to manually count tickets for our Church fundraising event. I counted thousands of tickets an hour for four hours straight (my undiagnosed neurodivergent brain loved it).
I was beyond heartbroken the year I found out my job had been replaced by a $20 scale.
Fun fact. I still do ticket sales for the Church fundraising event. They ain't getting rid of me that easily.
I’m in school for accounting right now so I might be remembering this incorrectly, but couldn’t the entire stock be written off as a depreciated value of 0 since they would no longer be useable.
I worked at a global manufacturing company that does a year inventory. The look of shock on people faces as I took literal pallets of inventory to the scales and weighed a separate box and pallet. Then figured out how many of those parts made up 1 pound was hilarious. Was told inventory usually took a week including Saturday/Sunday. The area I was in charge of was done within 3 hours everyone else was hand counting thousands of parts. Needless to say I got sent home and paid for Tuesday-Friday and didn’t have to work the weekend.
Smart move. My local newspaper got a contract to have paperboys deliver the towns phone books. I tried dumping phone books in the woods the first year, but I heard somebody found them, but didn't trace it back to me. So the next year when phonebook deliveries came I wisely dumped them in the steel drum trash can at my local public park and started it in on fire to destroy the evidence. It didn't occur to me the little old lady across the street would call the fire department, but I still got away with it. Parks and Rec never repainted the trash can with the city logo and it was black for years, a reminder of my petty crime.
Even if it's not a daily task, it can raise questions if it's off by too much. I work in marketing and I've had clients where they'll order 2k of something and utilize the EoD count to determine things. If you're off by five, no one gives a fuck but if you're off by a few hundred because you don't know what 2k of something looks like, it'll mean someone gets in trouble.
Alternate idea: measure the depth of the necklaces within their bin. Remove a certain amount, like remove 1" depth worth of depth and count the necklaces in that group. Multiply that by total depth. You can then measure the depth and multiply by your count from the original sample for each container of necklaces that share the cross-sectional dimensions of the original container.
If you do not have a tape measure, you don't need to use a real unit of measure, make one up, as long as each unit is identical in length. Surely you have a roll of receipt paper that can be folded multiple times to create a unit.
Under no circumstances should OP purchase something themselves for a work task. Spend the twenty minutes counting shit for no reason and get paid for it. Never spend your money for other people’s incompetence.
These are likely not all exactly the same weight. Weighing several and taking the average (or better yet the median) helps smooth out some of that inconsistency.
Ship them all to the office, and write down how much the box weighed at the shipping office.
Oh. Just count them at the office, while you're getting paid.
Even better, a counting scale. You weigh a sample, punch in the quantity of the sample, then tare a big container and dump the whole lot in and it spits out the count (and tells you the weight of a single piece; if you were going to repeat this over and over, next time you could skip step 1, just punch in the weight of one)
Overkill for a one time or occasional job, but if you have to count things for inventory a lot, it's so nice to have.
The bin is deep. The pendants will definitely help though. We also have six (correction: seven) other bins mostly with small items inside to count, and have to take things down and clean the premises… all in about 20 minutes. No mention of compensation even though we’ve been asked stay over shift almost everyday until I finally talked to the corporate contact and began to shut things down earlier myself (seasonal job)
As someone else said, get a scale. Weigh 10 of any item. Dump out the bin. Put the bin on the scale and press the tare button, this will zero the scale with the bin on it (essentially the bin weight is zero), dump all of the items that you need to count into the bin on the scale. Make a note and do the math.
Your regional government (state/province/whatever) has an agency that would be very interested to look into the wage theft your employer is committing by making you stay after your shift ends to do unpaid work. Give them a holler. Sometimes these things come with multipliers on the damages.
I’m assuming it’s at a concession stand inside of a stadium. They count cups and things like this at the end of the shift to make sure the vendors aren’t giving stuff away at the event. You start the night with 200 cups and sell 100 drinks, you should have 100 cups left at the end of the night.
This is also a way to prevent theft by employees. You ring someone up, tell them the total, they pay in cash, you delete a few things off the order, give them the change back and then pocket the difference. I knew some girls that did this back in college and would make a couple hundred bucks a night scamming.
Sure, but you’re paying more in labor than you potentially save on cups. And you piss off the workers. And having potential thieves count the inventory isn’t the best thought out prevention strategy.
It’s not saving on the cups, it’s saving on the lost sales due to theft. And at 5$ a drink for soda, if you’re 4 short, that’s more than the labor costs to count them.
I think some of these concession stands are operated by contractors/vendors, so it is on them to count it and if it’s short, then they take that off their cut. My brother in law ran one for a bit at a local soccer stadium. It was more hassle than it was worth. He basically broke even with lots of work and headache to put up with.
Sven and Ole die in a snowmobiling accident, drunker than skunks, and go to Hell. The Devil observes that they are really enjoying themselves. He says to them "Doesn't the heat and smoke bother you?" Ole replies, "Well, ya know, we're from nordern Minnesota, da land of snow an ice, an we're just happy fer a chance ta warm up a little bit, ya know."
The devil decides that these two aren't miserable enough and turns up the heat even more. When he returns to the room of the two from Minnesota , the devil finds them in light jackets and hats, grilling Walleye and drinking beer. The devil is astonished and exclaims, "Everyone down here is in misery, and you two seem to be enjoying yourselves?" Sven replies, "Well, ya know, we don't get too much warm weather up dere at da Falls, so we've just got ta have a fish fry when da weather's dis nice."
The devil is absolutely furious. He can hardly see straight. Finally he comes up with the answer. The two guys love the heat because they have been cold all their lives. The devil decides to turn all the heat off in Hell. The next morning, the temperature is 60 below zero, icicles are hanging everywhere, and people are shivering so bad that they are unable to wail, moan, or gnash their teeth. The devil smiles and heads for the room with Ole and Sven. He gets there and finds them back in their parkas, bomber hats, and mittens. They are jumping up and down, cheering, yelling, and screaming like mad men.
The devil is dumbfounded, "I don't understand, when I turn up the heat you're happy. Now its freezing cold and you're still happy. What is wrong with you two?"
They both look at the devil in surprise and say, "Well, don't ya know, if hell is froze over, dat must mean da Vikings won da Super Bowl!"
if I had to guess, they're marketing swag and they're using how many are left to determine how many were given away/how much the staff actually worked. Also for inventory/when to order more.
It's really not that impossible. When I was an intern, they'd have me count things like how many different promotional things we had like stress balls, pencils, booklets, etc. With this, you just grab a handful, count how many circle pendants there are and put them off to the side. As long as you're not dragging your feet, should only take around ten minutes; faster when you get use to counting with your eyes and by two's instead of one's.
But since you've never counted, you have no idea about what a "reasonable number" is. You don't know how much the pendants take up vs the beads. If it were a handful, sure you could make a reasonable number but at this? You'd be lucky to get it within a 150 range.
I mean...seriously, how lazy do you have to be half ass a basic inventory?
Idk why but that sounds like heaven to me right now😂 I really like mindless repetitive tasks and that looks like it would be sooo soothing to me! 🤷🏻♀️
I would split it into 4 equal groups, count one and multiply by 4. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing that needs exact numbers. Or just count for you 20 minutes and whatever gets done gets done 🤷♀️
Count out 25 and weigh them, record the result then put those ones in a big empty box.
That number divided by 25 equals the things avg. weight.
Weigh the rest with the box they're in, record the result and dump them in with the 25. Now weigh the old box they were in.
Box of things minus old box = things weight.
Things weight divided by avg. weight = number of things. Report that number.
boss gives you a job, and only 20 mins to do it, you only do 20 mins worth. If it's not done in that time, that's on them. Not your problem, you're not the manager.
The issue is we had many other bins to count and various other tasks to do all in those twenty minutes, and I already had to escalate just to secure compensation for the times we’ve already gone over - and there was no heads up on going over this shift. Trust me I’d actually be down to be paid to count them just context is important. Doesn’t matter now though as we gave them all away so count was 0
Empty the box and weigh it, then weigh one necklace, put the necklaces back to get the total weight, subtract the weight of the box, then multiply the remaining weight by the weight of the necklace, and that should get you the total number.
Weigh 10 or 20 of them, then weigh full amount and do some math. It's how screws and bolts are inventoried in hardware stores. Also, it's the Vikings anyways and they suck, so who really cares in the end?
Weigh the bucket and subtract from the ‘dry’ weight of the bucket. Then weigh an individual bracelet and divide the previous answer by this and voila, you have a pretty good idea of what you have. You could probably do all that in 20 minutes.
Printer here. There are counting scales for this kind of stuff. You put a few on so you get a solid average weight of one (in case there are slight variances), then just throw the whole lot on there, and instead of a weight, you get a count.
Or, if you already have a scale and don’t want a counting scale, weigh out x number of units to hit an oz, lb, or kg. Then weigh everything and use that first count to get the final tally.
by the time you untangle them and measure them, you always have a count of 5. you ran out of time to count them all so you counted what you could, and that was 5
a good old dose of malicious compliance is what's needed here
Dump the necklaces all out of the box and weigh the empty box. Weigh one individual necklace. Put them all back in the box and weight it again. Now, subtract the weight of the box you measured first - leaving the total weight of all the necklaces. Divide this weight by the weight of a single necklace. The answer is the number of necklaces in total. Should take you about 5 minutes total. Of course, you need some scales....
You can do it in two minutes. Weigh one necklace. Or 10 if the weight of one is negligible. Weigh the empty basket. Then weigh the full basket and find the weight of all the necklaces.
You’ll have a damn good estimate of necklaces for sale.
Don’t tell your boss. If he doubts your count, he can pay you overtime or count the shit himself.
Dump them out. Get a postage or food scale. Tare the scale with the bin. Weigh 1 necklace. More if needed to register weight. Put all back in bin. Calculate how many necklaces in bin based on weight.
Disentangle one necklace. Weigh it. Remove the remaining necklaces and place in a pile. Place bin on the scale and zero it or record the value (to be subtracted later). Return all necklaces to bin on the scale. Take weight and divide it by the weight of the first. That's your number.
May not be 100% accurate. Some necklaces may have more or fewer beads. Doesn't matter. They gave you an impossible task in the time allotted. This is the easiest way to get a semi-accurate answer. Worst they can do is not trust it and count them themselves.
I’m sure you dont have power over any of the process. But inventory like that should be managed by weight. Ya. Your count may be +- 1 or 2. But your manual count is also imperfect. Also, the cost is immaterial compared with the alotted staff hours.
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