Management can't decide what they want to do...

Tale as old as tiiiiime.... Kinda rant-y. I work overnights, so this story happened last night/this morning. Working in dairy, our normal truck is 1,400-1,500 with dairy getting 6-7 pallets (dairy & frozen truck arrive together, so it gets split about even most of the time). If the truck is on time and there are three of us working, we can get done by about 4-5 AM.

Last night was, to put it mildly, a shitshow. Our truck was two hours late. Said truck was 2,500 pieces (22 pallets), but split with frozen so we ended up with 11 pallets. We only had three people (they sent us a 4th at 3:30).

Before lunch, manager told us to stop at 4 AM, just get as much done as we could. 4 AM rolls around, check with manager that she wants us to stop at that time. She says to go find the coach and ask her. Coach says not to listen to the other manager and work until 4:30-5 AM, getting as much done as we could. Coworker asks coach if it's ok that we leave our TAGGED overstock on carts since it was so close to break and we all still had to zone. Coach said it was ok for us to do that.

I verify with coach closer to 5: "Just want to make sure that it is ok for us to leave our tagged overstock on carts and a pallet in the cooler?"

- Coach: "Yes, that's fine! Do you need a printer?"

- Me: "No, we're good, we have printers. Just to double-check, you do not want us to bin anything? They're fine on the carts?"

- Coach: "No, you don't have to bin, just leave it on the carts or whatever. Be sure to keep them separated from what has not been worked. We don't want to confuse dayshift!" (oh, the irony)

I relay to coworkers that it is now double verified that we do not have to bin and we can leave overstock on the carts and pallet.

5 AM, break time, we are leaving the cooler as manager and coach come to check on us.

- Coach: "So what is overstock and what needs worked still?"

- Us: "The stuff in the back is what needs worked, and these carts in the front are overstock."

- Coach: *points at a cart with overstock* "But that's tagged."

- Us: *sharing confused looks* "Yeah, we tagged all of the overstock."

- Coach: "If it's tagged it needs to go in the bins."

Cue the dead-eyed stares of three tired, caffeine-wearing-off, overworked overnighters who just want to go to break.

We all went out to the parking lot and screamed. My coworkers had to bin everything (5 carts and a pallet) after break and I did the fastest zone on my shit so I could help them with their zones.

Retail is fun!