Stickers, Pickers, service crew and one hairy mental dog

Today is a wet and windy day that is perfect for taking a chocolate coloured Labrador to the beach and throwing balls into the sea for him to recover. So that's what we did early this morning,.

A quick drive along the motorway was spoiled by the rozzers as they had a rolling roadblock to protect some bloke who was moving traffic cones. Then another rolling roadblock to protect an abnormal load that was taking up the same space as a double decker bus. However, we still made it to the beach in Crosby by 11am and spent a lovely morning with Taz chasing tennis balls into the cold brown water as we wandered up and down looking at the statues of Anthony Gormleys 'Another place'. A lovely way to spend a wet autumnal Sunday.

It also meant that when we got back Taz was given a warm shower to clean him and he ended up losing most of his loose hair down the plug hole before Buffy brushed the rest of his loose hair off later. He is now like a shiny new dog, with a lovely shiny coat - although he has spent the rest of the day sleeping!!

Taz on the beach with Rainbow and tennis ball!

In the sea

Crazy dog

Buff checking out one of the statues

The dirty stinking mess left after Taz had a shower!

He enjoyed being groomed though - check out the bloody hair on the table!!!!

For me it has been a good week at my new job. The asda delivery job is going really well. Its not the most technical way to earn a living but it is fun to be out on the road all day dropping off bread, milk, pizza and nappies to lazy bugars who cant be arsed to go shopping themselves, but it does get me out and about and sticks some more dosh in the bank. I actually passed two goals this week:-
1. My first pay into a bank for over three years.
2. After just a few days training I went out on a job on my own delivering the shopping in my £40000 Mercedes van.

But I hear you asking..... how does it all work? Whats the score with home shopping? I will explain.....

Step 1  - Lazy customer rolls over in bed and orders crisps, pizza and booze using cheap second hand laptop.

Step 2. Orders arrive at the store and are passed along to a 'picker'.

Step 3. The picker wanders aimlessly around the Asda supermarket putting mostly incorrect items into incorrect boxes called 'totes'. (The pickers do start at around 5am)

Step 4. The service team move the totes from the shop floor to the pod, where the totes are all placed into the correct pile for each delivery van. Each van and customer is numbered and the totes have stickers on indicating which van and customer they belong to. The stickers are made to fall off so as to aid confusion!!

Step 5. The loaders take the piles of totes and load them into the vans - frozen produce into the freezer which doesn't work properly,. the cold stuff into a fridge which doesn't work properly and the ambient stuff into the ambient area which doesn't shut properly. This is all done in reverse order so that the drivers can unload the correct order and to make fun of the loaders as they cant count backwards.

Step 6 - The doorstop heroes  - us drivers take out the vans and drive at breakneck speed, ignoring all rules of the road and running over as many schoolchildren, grandmas and stinking cats as we can whilst we aim to deliver the wrong shopping to the wrong address as fast as possible.

Step 7 - We return the vans to the store and let someone else deal with all the mistakes made!!

Here's a typical Asda delivery driver working hard. You can see the totes in the vehicle with stickers on. 

He was probably supposed to be delivering all this to an old peoples home or school, but decided to feed the horses instead!!

It actually all runs a lot smoother than you would imagine due to everything being scanned at every stage with a handheld computer. This traces where everything is at any time and means that mistakes don't happen too often. It is easy however for a loader or a picker to drop something from a tote and put it back into the wrong one. Its also possible for a driver to not tie down the totes correctly and then they fall over leaving a pile of shopping on the floor of the van and no idea who it belongs to - (This didn't happen to me and Shaun, honest it didn't guvnor)

 Haahaa not my van - Bloody Clampers!

If mistakes do happen then for the most part it is sorted out with the customer calling asda and a re-delivery being made for missing items.

I have now been doing it for just under two weeks and due to a lack or real drivers at the weekend I was the first new driver who didn't previously work for Asda to take a van out on his own and complete a route by himself, so I am chuffed for that!

In other news Chris is still in hospital but in good spirits. His legs are both looking much better and he is penned in for an operation tomorrow sometime (Monday 21 Oct). The surgeon doesn't know exactly what he will find when he opens up chris' legs but seems keen to take a look and positive of a good outcome. Chris himself is now looking positively to the future and getting back on his feet as soon as possible!

Thanks for reading and don't forget  - if you want your home shopping delivered - shop with Asda!!
(Other supermarkets are also available to deliver your frozen goods late and at room temperature!)