By day two, Risa realized something important.

Day one had not been overwhelming because it was new.

Day two was overwhelming because it was real.

Evelyn and Sophia walked her through the same processes again, this time with the expectation that Risa’s brain had retained something overnight.

“So first thing,” Evelyn said, sipping her coffee, “BOL Tracker.”

Risa nodded. “BOL Tracker.”

“Has to go out by 9:30 a.m.,” Sophia added.

“To the warehouse,” Evelyn said.

“Every morning,” Sophia emphasized.

Risa checked the time.

9:12 a.m.

Her spine straightened.

The BOL Tracker—Bill of Lading, she had learned—was not optional. It was the difference between products shipping and products… not shipping. Which was apparently a Very Big Deal.

Emails poured in from distributors throughout the day. Some polite. Some confusing. Some written like riddles.

“Why do they email like this?” Risa whispered, staring at one message that appeared to be missing half its words.

Sophia glanced over. “They always do.”

Orders had to be processed before 6 p.m., when the warehouse closed.

“Anything after that waits until tomorrow,” Evelyn said. “Which everyone hates.”

Risa nodded solemnly. She, too, would hate that.

And finally—the sacred ritual.

“The Sales File,” Evelyn said, voice dropping reverently.

“End of day,” Sophia said. “Always.”

“And it goes to—”

“The CEO,” Risa said quickly.

“And others,” Sophia confirmed.

They smiled at her.

Progress.

Analytics, mercifully, felt quieter.

Fred took the lead this time, rolling his chair over with an easy grin.

“Okay,” he said. “This part’s a bit more… technical.”

Risa braced herself.

He opened a shared drive.

Folders bloomed across the screen.

“So this is where uploads go after formatting,” Fred said. “Each distributor has their own folder.”

He clicked into one. Then another.

“And inside each folder,” he continued, “are the guides for how that distributor wants their data formatted.”

Risa nodded slowly. “Of course they do.”

“Uploads come in during the first three days of the month,” Fred said. “We have to complete uploads and transcoding by the tenth.”

“Transcoding?” Risa echoed.

“Mapping internal account codes to external ones,” Fred explained. “Both for accounts and products.”

Risa blinked. “Every month?”

“Yes.”

“For all blanks?”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

Okay, she thought. We are simply doing the same thing forever.

Fred smiled. “It’s not that bad once you get used to it.”

Risa trusted him. He had grown up with this. It was in his blood.

Rachel popped into meetings like a very efficient fairy godmother.

“I’m setting up intros,” she said. “You’ll be working closely with other teams.”

Risa joined call after call, introducing herself.

“Hi, I’m Risa—new Junior Analyst in Operations.”

Marketing smiled politely.

Supply Chain nodded knowingly.

“We’ll be working closely together,” someone from Supply Chain said.

“Especially on Customer Service,” someone from Marketing added.

Risa smiled, nodding, adding it to the mental list titled People I Am Now Responsible To.

By the end of the day, she had learned one undeniable truth: everything had a deadline.

Everything was urgent. And somehow, it all worked.

She shut down her laptop, exhausted but functional.

Two days in. Still standing. Which felt like a win.

By day three, the routine had settled in.

Which meant Risa was no longer being gently guided through tasks like a nervous museum visitor, but instead being handed the controls with a calm, ominous, “Go ahead.”

Sophia took the lead that morning.

“Okay,” she said, rolling her chair closer. “You’re going to process this one.”

Risa swallowed. “Great.”

They opened PO Space.

A sea of orders filled the screen, some highlighted in comforting greens, others glowing ominously red.

“Red means unprocessed,” Sophia said. “So pick one of those.”

Risa clicked a red order. Immediately, she felt like she’d triggered something irreversible.

“Okay,” Sophia continued, “check shipping location.”

Risa scanned the fields. “Warehouse A.”

“Good. Shipping carrier?”

“FedEx.”

“Marketing order or regular flow?”

Risa paused. “Regular.”

“Great. Confirm and send to ERP.”

Risa clicked.

Nothing happened.

She blinked. “Did I—”

“No, you did it right,” Sophia said. “Now comes the fun part.”

They clicked Order Processing in SAP.

The screen froze.

And froze.

And froze some more.

Sophia leaned back in her chair. “Honestly,” she said, “Customer Service wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t for how slow and outdated our systems are.”

Risa watched the loading wheel spin like it was mocking her personally.

They chatted. About nothing. About everything. About how long it had been spinning.

Ten minutes passed.

“Sometimes,” Sophia added, “it’s faster if you don’t watch it.”

Risa looked away obediently.

Finally—finally—the order processed.

Risa exhaled like she’d been holding her breath underwater.

“And that,” Sophia said, “is one order.”

Risa laughed weakly.

She quickly learned that everything required waiting.

The BOL Tracker? Ten to thirty minutes.

Sales File numbers? Ten to thirty minutes.

Reports? Don’t even ask.

The process, once laid out, sounded deceptively simple:

Order received in PO Space →
Send pro forma email to distributor →
Receive approval →
Process order →
Wait for SAP →
Export report (wait again) →
Record sales number based on Bill of Lading because backorders are a thing →
Post numbers into a Teams chat →
Manually enter them into the Sales File →
Send the Sales File to the CEO and the chosen few.

Easy, right?

Of course.

That was before marketing allowances, brand protection rules, promo trackers, and everything else that lived in the vague category of miscellaneous but urgent.

By mid-afternoon, Risa’s brain felt like it had too many tabs open.

Which is when Brad leaned slightly toward her from the desk next to hers.

“Hey Risa,” he said. “Got a minute?”

Oh no, Risa thought.

She followed him over to his screen.

“There’s this Promo Tracker Marketing uses,” Brad explained. “It tracks how many promotion sets distributors commit to versus how many actually ship.”

Risa nodded.

“I want to automate it,” Brad continued. “There’s a report in SAP that has the data—we should be able to pull directly from that.”

Risa paused. “Has… anyone done that before?”

Brad smiled. “Nope.”

Of course.

“I’ll need you to take this on,” he said. “Evelyn can show you how to pull and read the report.”

Risa nodded. “Sure.”

Sure, she thought. Why not.

Evelyn pulled the SAP report with her—after a ten-minute load time—and patiently walked through each column.

“This one’s distributor ID,” Evelyn said. “This is SKU. This is promo code. This is quantity committed. This is quantity shipped.”

Risa listened intently.

Evelyn wasn’t an analyst, not technically, but she explained things carefully, thoughtfully, without making Risa feel dumb.

“I really appreciate this,” Risa said.

Evelyn smiled. “We’re all just figuring it out.”

Risa began experimenting on her own.

She stared at the files. Copied data. Tested formulas. Undid mistakes. Googled things discreetly.

This was her first real project.

A week flew by.

She asked Evelyn questions. Asked Brad questions. Sometimes asked both and got two slightly different answers.

She slowly pieced together a SUMIF formula.

But the report was massive.

Over a hundred thousand rows. More than ten columns. Heavy. Slow.

When she loaded it into Marketing’s Promo Tracker, Excel groaned.

The file lagged. The cursor stuttered. The screen froze.

Risa stared at it, hands hovering over the keyboard.

Okay, she thought. This is hard.

But she smiled slightly.

Because this was her first project.