Makes You Appreciate Your Job

A group of about 20 people in dark blue uniforms stood outside Big 5 Sporting Goods at 7:30a.m this morning. Some smoked, some watched passing pedestrians, all looked a little bored.

A man sat on a chair just inside the entryway, as if guarding the place from a mob of employees politely waiting for the signal to attack.

One older man in thick-rimmed glasses and a dark blue polo embroidered with a small "WIS" logo explained that they were counters.

Counters? I asked. Inventory counters, he answered. They are part of an international corporation of merchandisers — WIS International, to be exact — and they would count each and every piece merchandise in the store today, including the fish hooks.

By 11a.m. the counters were gone and regular customers were the only ones examining sporting goods.

Apparently Big 5 — and other big retail stores like Wal-Mart, Walgreen and Home Depot — have companies like these perform physical counts at least once a year to check their actual inventory against their computer systems.

According to Hoovers.com, WIS International employed 7,000 and made an estimated $349 million in sales with more than 200 offices on four different continents. The company is a subsidiary of American Capitol, an investment firm with an annual sales of $700 million, headquartered in Bethesda, Md.

Counting positions for WIS are on practically every internet job-search Web site. It's almost surprising that such a labor-intensive job is still around with all of the technology these days, but that's just what the company profits on — the inconsistencies between real life and its digital counterpart.