MEGATHREAD 2018-2019 Store Modernization Megathread

[ntauctions]

It's going to be interesting to see how doubles are handled w our inbound team only getting 4 hour shifts. A few Saturdays ago we all punched out halfway through the second truck, locked the bay door and left as our four hours were up.

 

[Black Sheep 214]

I always assumed that it was just a way for them to cut hours because instead of having pushers and regular sales floor, you combine it into one with the same payroll if not less.

That too.

 

[flow4areasonuno]

We have been through a Q4 and BTS absolute hell. You cannot handle multiple trucks with this system by scheduling dayside hours.

It was hell enough when we were doing it at 4am last year--we are at about 42m I think, not too big, but when every parent in town converges on the same 5 or 6 aisles you're lucky to get ANYTHING done.

 

[Black Sheep 214]

Last time I saw a process like this implemented was by a parent company desperate to make a subsidiary company either look more profitable, or if if that failed, prepare it for sale. The process was very similar to Modernization (practically a prequel without the new technology), cut expenses to the point where nothing could get done, turned the company into a three ring shitshow, drove out most of the veteran employees and failed spectacularly. The subsidiary was sold and liquidated soon after. Not saying that is what’s happening here, but the similarities of the processes are just eerie...

 

[Tainted Kool aid]

But you're a business owner now! Got to justify that $15. No matter if hours get cut to achieve it. Brian believes you can do it! Think of all you can accomplish in 4 hours a week.

Who's getting $15 an hour lol no one yet unless you been with target a long time. Earn that potential of making $15 an hour!

 

[qmosqueen]

At my store, on paper it reflects 4 hours scheduled but truck team members stay longer than their scheduled shift. So that's where the hours are going. That's the workcenter that is overspent each week, each month. At the end of each month other workcenters have to cut shifts just to make the store payroll for the month. Currently at my store (no offense to other stores) it's the truck team against everyone else. There is a big segregation going on and it's going to get even uglier!

I see one girl stay from 6am to 3 pm or longer.
Well past the 12:30 pm time on the grid

 

[Kalaen]

As far as lighting goes, there are absolutely stores where the lighting would save money. There was an occasion where I was walking out with the LOD, who had armed and turned off the lights. When we got outside, we double checked the doors were locked, and one of them ended up being broken. So I went in to get a bike lock to use overnight until a repair vendor could service it. I can tell you, 15 minutes after the LOD armed, the entire store went pitch black, to the point where I had to use the flashlight on my phone to see in front of me. The only lights left on in the building were at the checklanes. So ASANTS, but there are stores where it's absolutely going to save money.

Also, in terms of Modernization, the comparison to Canada is rather stupid. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's going to turn out well. It could, it could not. But even looking at the results so far... from what I can remember, every single Canadian store failed. Because it was absolutely a process issue. But with Modernization, the fact that corporate can speak to any stores at all succeeding means that it isn't necessarily an issue with the process itself--it could be in how stores are reacting to it, and their poor implementation and attitude towards it. It could also be a terrible idea, but I'm just saying that we don't have enough information to know which it is. Since we have to deal with it regardless, it wouldn't hurt to just actually try it out with an open mind. It might just work out. If it doesn't, it just means your suspicions were right, but honestly, that's not really the result that would be the best for anyone here, so I'm not sure why anyone would want that.

 

[Go2TL]

The truck team has hard goals it has to meet. The front-end does not. It's not like you need to cash 500 guests in a day. You just cash. But the truck team needs to pull their auto, push their auto, backstock their auto, push their freight, backstock their freight, zone their area, shoot outs, help guests, etc.. and they need to back-up cashier. Cashiers aren't expected to go back and push freight, pull autos, or backstock.

The truck team is also expected to help out in flex when orders pile up.

So I can see why the truck team would take hours. They have actual hard metrics that need to be met, or else. If the truck doesn't get pushed, how do you take the next truck? If autos don't get pulled, they roll and become even larger. It's a workload that simply has to be done, and the truck team is the only team that's expected to do it.

Not at my store. Truck team members do not pull autos, do not zone, barely backstocks their freight, barely helps guests, not all are cashier trained, etc. I agree that cashiers are not expected to help once backup is over but sometimes they are sent out to push abandons and once in a while help zone areas close to the check lanes.

Only a handful of TM's know how to jump into flex and none of them are truck team members.

At my store the salesfloor team members are expected to push autos and truck freight that didn't get done so I guess ASANTS but corporate expects all stores to be the same, go figure!

 

[Tainted Kool aid]

As far as lighting goes, there are absolutely stores where the lighting would save money. There was an occasion where I was walking out with the LOD, who had armed and turned off the lights. When we got outside, we double checked the doors were locked, and one of them ended up being broken. So I went in to get a bike lock to use overnight until a repair vendor could service it. I can tell you, 15 minutes after the LOD armed, the entire store went pitch black, to the point where I had to use the flashlight on my phone to see in front of me. The only lights left on in the building were at the checklanes. So ASANTS, but there are stores where it's absolutely going to save money.

Also, in terms of Modernization, the comparison to Canada is rather stupid. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's going to turn out well. It could, it could not. But even looking at the results so far... from what I can remember, every single Canadian store failed. Because it was absolutely a process issue. But with Modernization, the fact that corporate can speak to any stores at all succeeding means that it isn't necessarily an issue with the process itself--it could be in how stores are reacting to it, and their poor implementation and attitude towards it. It could also be a terrible idea, but I'm just saying that we don't have enough information to know which it is. Since we have to deal with it regardless, it wouldn't hurt to just actually try it out with an open mind. It might just work out. If it doesn't, it just means your suspicions were right, but honestly, that's not really the result that would be the best for anyone here, so I'm not sure why anyone would want that.

I'm losing many good team members and I'm not saying that because we are friends or anything. Just the fact they are the hardest workers we have and most reliable. Also the most trained and the ones that are making the modernization somewhat work with their effort but none of them can or will survive on the 20 or under hours they are given. Most are leaving or looking now. What will that leave us with? Brand new untrained people being trained by whoever you can get to train them. Those new barely trained team members will be lied to about hours using $15 an hour and the fact the company "offers" benefits as a smoke screen. Than they start working for $12-13 an hour at 12-20 hours a week, find out they will never be given benefits...than they quit. The worst part about modernization is that it needs to fail in order for it to change and by than it will be to late.

 

[Tainted Kool aid]

Not at my store. Truck team members do not pull autos, do not zone, barely backstocks their freight, barely helps guests, not all are cashier trained, etc. I agree that cashiers are not expected to help once backup is over but sometimes they are sent out to push abandons and once in a while help zone areas close to the check lanes.

Only a handful of TM's know how to jump into flex and none of them are truck team members.

At my store the salesfloor team members are expected to push autos and truck freight that didn't get done so I guess ASANTS but corporate expects all stores to be the same, go figure!

Under modernization cashier's are no longer able to work frieght or zone or any tasks it's all guests all the time. So they will get $15 an hour to cash while the sales floor gets $15 to cash and be dedicated business owners, flow, Plano, instocks, pricing and whatever else they can keep throwing on the dumpster fire at the same time. All with no hours.

 

[flow4areasonuno]

So they will get $15 an hour to cash while the sales floor gets $15 to cash and be dedicated business owners, flow, Plano, instocks, pricing and whatever else they can keep throwing on the dumpster fire at the same time.

I don't get how they think this will work. Like, you can only do so much in 4 hours....

 

[Rolling CAFS]

So all 1,850 stores milked it and that's why we went to this? Everyone at my store has said how terrible Q4 was and we aren't fully modernized yet. We're also currently buried in softlines freight (which isn't their fault). There are NO HOURS. I feel like the claim of the hours for backroom/pricing/plano getting put into general merchandise is false. (Also - anyone else being buried in softlines freight? The amount that sits in the backroom would mean that softlines would be near empty, but it's not.)

Softlines buries half our backroom from freight not touched to repacks of backstock to Z racks of push and repush. It's a shit show!

 

[Rolling CAFS]

That’s very disappointing to someone like me who never milked shit. I utalized every sec of working with no guest in the store and EVRERYTHING got done. And while pushing freight is not rocket science it’s more than just opening boxes and stocking the selfs. Knowing all of the department #’s, future Planograms , researching what sells, second locations and BRLA and detailed zoning was all a nightly goal for me and with all that time traning was more thorough.

I have team leads who have no clue of their department #'s or fill groups and see no problem with it...April 1st is gonna be interesting

 

[Frontlanegirl]

You just discovered everyone's dirty secret! ALL the hours have been allocated to The Truck unloaders/pushers! That is why there's a skeleton crew at the front end, 1 HLTM and 1 SLTM. Even the consumables team is a skeleton crew. Truck gets all the hours but they somehow still roll over truck freight.

And these team members are not the ones on the floor helping guests or responding to guest first. There are days when we are at guest first and we have no back up on the sales floor.

 

[flow4areasonuno]

And these team members are not the ones on the floor helping guests or responding to guest first. There are days when we are at guest first and we have no back up on the sales floor.

We're not getting any hours, at least not on our truck. 5 hours, hard limit, and we are expected to help guests. While working 3 days a week at most (and the bulk of us are getting 1 or 2 days per week). 5 trucks per week doesn't sound bad until you realize how little we're actually scheduled. If more than one person calls out we're f*cked

 

[Dapper]

Different for every store, truck pushers aren’t high on the food scale here, although it has been slowly going up.

My store has hours to give starting from softlines (guaranteed 40 a week), hardlines (if you own your own department, they started with 4 hour shifts q1 for 5 days a week, but they’ve been doing up to 6-7 recently), front end (only if you are gsa trained/service desk tm, other wise cashiers get like nothing), truck people (big disparity here, some only get one day a week, suck ups get like 5, but barely enough a day to finish unloading truck and maybe doing a little bit of push), grocery (only like a few tms in dry, but they get okay hours), then food service.

I think a lot has to depend on how payroll is being allocated and whatnot from your DTL or GVP or whoever does that.

 

[graffiti]

You just discovered everyone's dirty secret! ALL the hours have been allocated to The Truck unloaders/pushers! That is why there's a skeleton crew at the front end, 1 HLTM and 1 SLTM. Even the consumables team is a skeleton crew. Truck gets all the hours but they somehow still roll over truck freight.

I feel like that's self explanatory though... Flow/GM is being used to fill the gaps in payroll elsewhere, on top of the mountain of tasks already expected of them. That's literally where Spot is heading, and why they're eliminating so many teams and integrating them into the one team. Only it's a halfassed, unclear version of it going on in most stores right now and stores are bleeding payroll trying to figure out the best way to twist TMs' arms to get them to do it all with less payroll.

 

[flow4areasonuno]

the best way to twist TMs' arms to get them to do it all with less payroll.

Given that most of our employees here are people 40+ who've been here for ages and don't appreciate this nonsense, I imagine this arm-twisting will prompt an exodus will do exactly what some people mentioned earlier. Which is, allow for new young folks to come in without any memory of the old way, or anyone to say that the old way was better.

Personally I have no idea what's expected of me anymore. No one is telling me other than "push that uboat". I hear tell that we are supposed to be backstocking but no one has taught me how to. It's pointless tbh though, since I only work one day a week.

 

[can't touch this]

I'm gonna just say it...e2e can work. The shills are right on this one point. HOWEVER. Absolutely everybody needs to have and stay 8 hours in order for it to work, and I mean 8 hours every single day like "I don't even need to look at my schedule" regular. Otherwise it's just a recipe for an instant, explosive dumpster fire that kills anybody who tries to put it out.

 

[BoxCutter]

Good or bad process, anything will succeed if you throw enough money at it. It just won't be profitable.

 

[busyzoningtoys]

I'm gonna just say it...e2e can work. The shills are right on this one point. HOWEVER. Absolutely everybody needs to have and stay 8 hours in order for it to work, and I mean 8 hours every single day like "I don't even need to look at my schedule" regular. Otherwise it's just a recipe for an instant, explosive dumpster fire that kills anybody who tries to put it out.

This. People think I’m full of shit or there’s some secret to my success, there isn’t. My dedicated business owners get 4-5 days a week, 7-8 hours a shift.

 

[Frontlanegirl]

This. People think I’m full of shit or there’s some secret to my success, there isn’t. My dedicated business owners get 4-5 days a week, 7-8 hours a shift.

I think a lot of people have acknowledge this could work as long as there are adequate hours. However, as usual, we are being forced to do more with less hours and things are not getting done.

 

[lifeblows10]

Back in January when we were 15% over forecast and the company took away Flex hours (we should have had 1K additional hours that month) and we were writing the store schedule to 1,700 hours - my SD made a comment that really seems to ring true

“I can make a 1600-1700 hour schedule all day long without modernization, but being modernized it’s damn near impossible.”

Payroll (the lack of) seems to be the biggest issue. That and tiny backrooms actually. If we had a larger backroom set up I actually could see modernization working quite well. But because as soon as we get a truck larger that 1300 pieces, we start to flood the floor with vehicles because we simply lack the space to handle any more freight. And yet we get at least one 2,200 piece truck a week.

 

[oath2order]

Does anyone else's store have the problem where the Zebras absolutely will not work? I've tried nearly 20 different devices and they all keep getting stuck in the fucking endless loading loop before switching to the red exclamation point in a circle.

I can't *do* anything.

 

[oath2order]

There is a global right now. Undetermined scope of impact.

It's been going on near two weeks, what the hell are these idiots doing?