Procurement?
Ordering for pick-up, delivery to transport facility, getting on a flight out

I may or may not have lost any hair, but I was about to lose my mind!

I expected my first order would total about $10,000! It took no less than 15 hours to push my shopping lists to a print to file status – three different lists, week one items for production, week two items for production and two weeks of breakfast and lunches. Then to add to all that (off the top of my head) fully equip a kitchen for production-everything from a spoon to a 20qt stock pot. Two computers, one with pretty good WiFi access, one with sketchy access which would dump my order when connection was lost, most frustrating day my brain has had in 8 years! I was informed that the kitchen I’d be using for production didn’t have anything left from last year, save three 5-gallon containers of soy sauce. Apparently, it has been the joke of the crew that that previous cook, who was Filipino, only cooked Asian dishes and they were quite tired of that mess! I reassured them yesterday that for the two weeks coming up, I’d only require 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, the three men present gave whoops and hollers like I’d scored a touchdown or something!

I’m used to ordering from Labatt or Sysco, logging onto their websites and plugging in the item name and *poof* items with that description pop up, choosing the desired product and quantity and seeing it drop into my cart. I used to order for 3 schools that held 1000 children total, never had to worry how large my cart got, or if my budget limit had been reached, shipping and delivery was predictable, same day of the week, same time of the day-but not out here!

First we have to make sure there is a transport company that can handle 1000+ pounds of freight, that they are flying to our village, if they have frozen, chilled and dry storage to hold our items before transport. So, a call was placed to Lake and Penn Air in Anchorage to arrange receiving and transport, confirmed dates available to fly to our village, and let them know what would be delivered by Costco and what was being delivered by an expeditor. This particular shipment is a bit tricky since it’s the first order of the season, and it’s a holiday weekend.

Then the ordering began, my first option was to get as much as I could from Costco, then order what wasn’t available from Walmart. Costco offers a business platform which they will deliver for FREE! Alternating between Costco and Walmart and things were going ok, until the first time Walmart dumped my whole cart, I had no idea what I had put in it! I had just entered the items that weren’t available at Costco, going back and forth between the two computers so I could see the screens simultaneously. I have patience, so sometimes I would wait for the reconnect to restore my information, and after 8 hours of that, I was beyond anxious, as both carts were growing in items and value. Then Costco hit a brick wall, I couldn’t add anymore items, I had reached my limit, just under $7000 and 225 items, I was practically half-way through my ordering. I used the company card to pay for the Costco order and decided to close the current Walmart order to kind of keep myself on track. That worked out pretty well, so I started a new cart on both platforms, was able to complete and second Costco cart just under $2000 and shipment to transportation facility would be Thursday, 5/22/2024, great it could move Friday and Monday to our village! The Walmart order was not complete, but I had been at this for 12 hours and my mind was mush, I just could not longer keep at it, so I close d the order and told myself, I’ll do this in the morning. Lights out, this girl is tired!

The next morning, I awoke to complete my Walmart order and it was successful, until Walmart shot a message; “We have cancelled your order, the processor has determined suspicious activity and deemed the frequent use of the company card fraud. DASHED! What do I do with this? I quickly messaged the site supervisor and let him know what had happened, so he got on the phone and did some checking on it. Much later in the afternoon I was able to reorder the items, and the expeditor was able to make the pickup and drop it off at the transport facility. Now, we wait. A plane will come tomorrow, will our stuff be on it? or not. We shall see, if it does, you know I’m going to be on the flight line with bells on!