Archived Can Backroom Leads Interfere?

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Wave Ballerino

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I've been the signing gent for about 6 months and am developing some regular patterns, establishing what of 10-20 projects I'm doing at the same time get priority, and I've survived my first Xmas set at least. Recently my store's backroom TL (who is also LOD on occasion) has gotten permission from an ExecTL and the StoreTL to "clean out" my signing area -- but instead of cleaning, he's dispensed perhaps 80% of my active, on-going project items just at his whim, to the floor wherever he decided it should go, to the garbage, or possibly up his own netherbits for all I know. Does anyone have any similar experiences? He seems to be under the impression that if the PDA says it doesn't go out, then it can be tossed, and refuses to listen to reason, and spouts the it's-my-backroom line. My Pres-TL is on my side, but that's about as far as my side goes, because the ExecTLs know so little about how my processes work that they seem to find his cleanup just fine since the area I had my things in is now nearly spotless. I am pretty close to going Integrity Hotline on this character..
 
I think dropping a pallet of water on him would be a good way to go at this point.
I had a PTL do something like that to me and it took some serious serious effort to first calm down enough to deal with the situation then to come up with a way that it wouldn't happen again.

I'm guessing the main issue is lost signage so I'd start writing up a list of everything you have to order to replace what he threw out.
When you order it present the list to the, I think the ETL LOG supervises plano now.
Let them know that these are going to cost the store and shouldn't have.

Explain that you are happy to keep the signing are clean and neat without being attacked.
The area might be backroom but it is your signing area and as such you need to be consulted when things are being thrown out.
Challenge upward.

Taping off the area and putting up a sign that says signing area might be a nice passive aggressive way to get your point across.
 
As the PTL in my store we do not keep anything if it scans discontinued not on pog. We run a very tight ship and try to minimize the clutter as much as possible. SP signing goes in one area, SL signing one area and plano signing one area. Maybe if you showed them a list of what your working on and why they would understand. Im not trying to sound unsympathetic but what kind of projects could you have to be working on? My signing ninja has the same routine every week.. She breaks out her pallets when they come in.. she puts up whatever is due as soon as possible and delivers the other stuff. she walks her street singing, makes lists of stuff to order, orders it then communicates it out. Whenever shes done with singing (which is usually Tuesday or Wednesday) she works on plano with me. on Thursdays she does the comp shop.
 
Signing area in my backroom has a small section with dedicated pallet spaces. A few years ago they requested I give them a few more spaces, I did. Now they want more, so we walked it the other day and they have pallets of stuff that they keep saying will be set this week, then its next week and so on. So I will not give more spaces to them they went to STL and she sides with me. DTL walked the other day signing area a disaster she asked what was what, the POGTL started rambling about this and that. She gave them 24 hours to clean it, then told myself if by then its not clean to "help" them out and she didn't care what was needed and not.

On a side note our signing specialist has not been doing signing for a while the POGTL keeps them doing other stuff instead so its not their fault.
 
The answer to your original question can a BRTL interfere, YES, overall they are responsible for everything and anything in the backroom. The signing area is technically POG but its still backroom area. Get with the BRTL if you need more space for now or something or communication between the two of you before they clean it out.
 
backroomdude... i understand your frustration.. about two years ago we were in the same situation... finally we just had to buckle down and say hey.. she has signing she needs to do give her the time.. now every week she takes care of her signing first thing no matter what shape the pog team is in.. I SOOOOO want her on pog team instead of signing but I have to resist. now we have a small room up by the ambien(sp) room that we use for new stuff and if its a whole transition pallet like all electronics we leave it palletized and either put it in the steel or take it outside till we need it. i would not go through the stuff and throw it away yourself because ultimately you will throw out something important and it will just have to be reordered but i WOULD force my signing tm to buckle down and get it done.. say you have 2 days to go through this and get it up or throw it out
 
By the the by, on the issue of signs that don't scan, any signing ninja can tell you that there will be any number of reasons that perfectly valid signs will come up NOP.
A lot of signs for soft lines do that as do ones for SP that haven't been set yet.
So don't be making decisions without checking.

Finding space in the steel for wrapped pallets is a cool thing.
I worked out of the back of the fixture room so I didn't run into so much of this territorial BS.
Just had to move the crap out of the way every time I needed to get to my stuff.
 
Zombiegurl said:
its a whole transition pallet like all electronics we leave it palletized and either put it in the steel or take it outside till we need it.

That'd be cool and all, but my "big" transition pallets come in with a mix of stuff for the transition and non-transition stuff. So I have to break down the whole thing. I cannot tell you how many times softlines signing and salesplanner signing was mixed up with the transition pallets.

I'm very curious why you have twenty or so projects going on. Is there any way you can complete them before moving onto the next one?

Sometimes you just have to throw everything out to start clean. Otherwise, you're just running in circles. That happened one time when the salesplanners got out of control, it was "throw it all out and we won't set the old ones, we are going to start with new ones going forward".

The general rule of thumb is, especially if you're coming into a role where the previous signing person or presentation team was especially bad, it will take a year or so before you get everything back to brand.
 
zombiegurl said:
My signing ninja has the same routine every week.. She breaks out her pallets when they come in.. she puts up whatever is due as soon as possible and delivers the other stuff. she walks her street singing, makes lists of stuff to order, orders it then communicates it out. Whenever shes done with singing (which is usually Tuesday or Wednesday)

Does she not do the POG signing and displays?

I'm expected to do it all: softlines signing, POG signing (except for backer paper), build everything that comes in, weekly store audits, PPAs, maintenance, SAP orders, and SP signing/backer paper. I want to know how she gets it all done in 2-3 days.
 
my signing ninja does not do all the pog signing. we do it as we set. if we are setting the trend runs, go get the trend run signing boxes.. put it up as you go.. thats how we roll. i find it frees up a lot of her time to get her important stuff done and then she can help on pogs. she does not do the sp's stuff either its set as the sp is set. i dont understand how that makes any sense to set the sp ... then go back and put up the signing? such a waste of your time when it takes a few minutes to put the new stuff up before you put up shelves etc. supposedly we are getting the sp's added to my workload.. and i will follow that same practice, set the signing as you set the planner, thats why we sort it all to make it easier
 
Does she not do the POG signing and displays?

I'm expected to do it all: softlines signing, POG signing (except for backer paper), build everything that comes in, weekly store audits, PPAs, maintenance, SAP orders, and SP signing/backer paper. I want to know how she gets it all done in 2-3 days.

Seriously, either she's Superwoman or the scope of her position is a lot different from what mine was.
Even on my slow weeks done by Wednesday was a stretch.
And if it was a cosmetics or Television transition things would fall into the next week.
 
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i couldnt tell you how she does it. she even works ahead and trust me she is putting it up. our etl Sl and the sl tl's are always calling her. she always puts up the stuff we had to order. what would she have to do with the tv wall? the backer very rarely changes, we put up the signs for the tv's.. must be that you guys have more on your plate. its very rare that she isnt don by tuesday or wed and helping us. she doesnt have a lot to do with weekly ad... she prints the prep batch but thats it.
 
Yea, I know if there's a TV revision I did the TVs.
If there was an appliance revision, I did all the displays.
So she is doing much less than I was.
 
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yeah totally.. we incorporate it all into setting the pog... if thats the case then we would be getting further ahead but i dont really see how making someone go behind someone else and put up signing is worth their time when it could be done at the same time. and we always benefited because then sh comes to help us set and shes very good
 
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I've tried to explain it to my TL but she doesn't get it. Because the adjacency calendar says "X hours of signing", she thinks it means that it's for printing and hanging up the ad/tpc signs. So anything that isn't POG backer paper, I'm expected to do.
 
honestly i know there's some stores where they leave all the signing for the signing tm.. i think that if you have the right leader they can work together. My etl wanted to know why i do things this way and once i explained everything he was cool with it. i think that if she wasnt getting things done then he might make me change. my stl gives the signing tm the hours that are on the adj + some.. plus we have one tm who does the ad prep (who is not my signing tm)
 
I've tried to explain it to my TL but she doesn't get it. Because the adjacency calendar says "X hours of signing", she thinks it means that it's for printing and hanging up the ad/tpc signs. So anything that isn't POG backer paper, I'm expected to do.
@NOP

Does that include the time needed to fix the endcap header header broken every week because the flow team always puts too many carpet rolls in it?
Or the time you spend finding fixtures for the plano team because they can't be bothered?
Or how the F69 aisle number that keeps getting stolen?
How about the crap adhesive they put on the back of the hooks for all the signs that had to be attached to metal frames? How many times did we have to fix those before we just came up with another way to do it?
Because as far as I know the adhesive still sucks.
Or the way we would get signs that were either too big (thus having to cut them down, I'm looking at you Shawn White) or too small (find something to tape them too, I-Tunes).

Sign Ninja it's not a job, it's a calling.
 
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After I read this last night, my ETL (LOG) had me go through every shipper casepack in the signing steel today to see if it could be pushed. As soon as she walked away, I called our resident signing master, took her to 3, and told her what was going on and asked if there was anything she wanted me to be careful of in her space. I've never heard somebody say thank you so many times in one breath before! lol
 
After I read this last night, my ETL (LOG) had me go through every shipper casepack in the signing steel today to see if it could be pushed. As soon as she walked away, I called our resident signing master, took her to 3, and told her what was going on and asked if there was anything she wanted me to be careful of in her space. I've never heard somebody say thank you so many times in one breath before! lol

On behalf of signing ninjas everywhere, I have to say ....

you-rock-comment-012.gif
 
After I read this last night, my ETL (LOG) had me go through every shipper casepack in the signing steel today to see if it could be pushed. As soon as she walked away, I called our resident signing master, took her to 3, and told her what was going on and asked if there was anything she wanted me to be careful of in her space. I've never heard somebody say thank you so many times in one breath before! lol

you guys just put shippers in the signing steel? like shippers for endcaps and such? with product in em?
 
i dunno i think i misunderstood. we just backstock our shippers so they get pulled when the pog is set
 
My store can't figure out what to do with the shippers since nobody can ever find them when we need it.
 
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