The Only Reward for this High-Stress Job was the Exercise
Pros
The pros of working as a receiver were the 15% employee discount (if you use your Redcard), at least five miles of walking a day, plus heavy lifting, a set schedule (if you don't mind being at work at 0600), and most of the vendors were fun.
Cons
If you think you are just going to "receive in" product, you are mistaken. Very mistaken. Almost impossible to keep up with destroyed/damaged product (some of which are classified as hazardous waste, so they have to be disposed of in a special manner, even though you have all of them in your house somewhere). Then there are the weekly and daily "MIRs," (merchandise to return to the vendor or the distribution center) -- I had as many as 51 in one week. And those weren't just 51 items -- 51 MIRs most with as many as 60 individual UPCs with just as many units that needed pulled, processed, and shipped. Oh, and you are responsible for the outprocessing of weekly donations to Goodwill and the Food Bank. There are the infamous Steritech audits (where someone comes to your location to identify everything you are doing wrong), and then there are weekly audits. You are also responsible for receiving in (getting the product entered in to the POS system and activating the accounts receivable process) for all merchandise received from Fedex and UPS. Did I mention cleaning up after your fellow team members who refuse to bag and tag whatever product they broke, so you are left cleaning up the case of broken molasses or spaghetti sauce and everything it got on, while trying not to cut yourself on the broken glass. And as you are working all day, you get to hear the sales floor team being heartily congratulated for each customer they got to sign up for a Redcard, while no matter how many extra hours you put in or how hard you work or how many breaks you forgo (in my case, I never took one even though you are entitled to two 15s a day) to try and get the job done, all you end up with is a dirty, thankless, high-stress job that no matter how hard you try, you can't possibly succeed in it. I still dream about doing this job and wake up in a panic.