So this is our current biggest problem at the brothel: fuzzy wood.
…No, it’s okay, it’s been a shit-week…by all means, read it again and giggle like a teenage boy all you want.
…Anyway…fuzzy wood is a kinder way of saying “mold and mildew.” It happens because our kits are cut and pre-packaged, still green, on the east coast. For those not in the industry, that means unseasoned…basically butchered before the last signs of breath were even completed, and wrapped up in a giant plastic condom with other still gasping, mostly dead pieces of wood, and put on a truck, then a train, then another truck…west-bound (to the lumber capitol of the entire fucking world.)
Why do we do it this way?
In the words of our multi-millionaire Corporate President: “Because.”
…Now, due to the temperature changes, these babies basically humidify themselves with a good claustrophobic self-steam, and arrive in our yard to sit anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 months, depending on the current kit demand. For the shorter-lived stock, the seal is broken and built before any compromises can take place. For the more seasonal goods, this can be a problem.
…Say, for instance: a playset.
There are two times per year where the market for these $2K -$4K systems are sold: Christmas and Summer. Our company will only build these kits on demand based on territory sales specs, the previous year, along with our open order manifest. However, upon occasion we will get a cancellation, and thus turn into a holding-house for said already ordered and shipped kits. Sometimes we will get several cancellations: thus, several kits. Kits which have lived in our warehouse now for just over 7 months to date.
…Problem is: because we technically have these kits, Corporate will not allow us to order new ones until the old ones have been sent out. Only we over produced these sets last Holiday season, so were shipped more than we needed to begin with…then with added snow storms, got more cancellations than average.
…In short: we currently have dozens and dozens of sealed sets of wood, happily growing their own little eco-systems in the back of our warehouse, snugly tucked in the top corner of the Pacific NW.
…Which is what we found out directly after this last sales ad just hit.
Over $33,000 in playsets have been sold this month, and every cocking one of them we open, looks like it was bundled in a rainforest. And BECAUSE Corporate is so very on point with things like communication, we have no time to prep the kits before the ads hit, as we had no idea which ads for which systems would be done at which time.
…Prepping these kits basically requires breaking the condom, laying out each individual piece in the yard, spraying it down with a wood treatment wash, giving it a good scrub, and letting it bake like a flat of grapes in the direct sun. Only we are currently simultaneously receiving two to three containers of build product every seven days, loading up to 11 builders per day, and erecting around 34 structures per week. One single playset kit, being prepped for build, takes up about 1/4th of our yard space…and we had 3 to build, just this week, alone.
Mathematically, it just can’t be done.
…Any idiot can see that.
But we work with a special brand of idiots, who don’t seem to understand that.
Which is why the WHS Pimp and I have been consistently yelled at all week long, due to corporate promises, trying to accommodate parents wanting their kids’ new toy NOW, but being asked to wait for a two to three week build date. No matter of explanation we give them seems to satisfy their outrage. It is somewhat understandable due to the fact that said kids in the Pac NW only GET about three weeks of good summer weather to begin with, but short of erecting a wooden chia pet in their backyard, I don’t know what the fuck they expect us to do about it.
In the end: people can only achieve what time, room, shipping schedules and weather can permit. We are not wizards. And we are dealing with a still-breathing commodity that was basically still growing in a forest less than nine months ago.
…And this is all to say (after a truly grueling and especially bitchy week of phones and contract work) what I never ever thought I voluntarily would, after 13 years of living here: I wish it would put us all out of our misery, and just…freakin’…RAIN.
~D
