Archived Do you guys do the "wave"?

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From browsing this forum a bit I haven't seen it being mentioned. Before I make a fool of myself by describing it, I'll pretend everyone knows what it is.

What I want to know is what you guys think about it and if you think it lowers team morale?
 
For my store it depends on the team and LOD. (And this is true at both of the Target's I've worked at). If you have one team member that does more talking than working, the team usually feels like it is better to zone alone in individual sections because otherwise three team members are working hard and one is just chatting and occasionally zoning one item. Other nights, the team works well together and enjoys spending time together... so it makes it more fun to zone in the wave.

I've also seen it depend on the LOD. If you have a fun, effective LOD who can manage the team well, it works. But I totally have seen the wave not work and be a complete morale sucker.
 
At my store the wave was done when there was enough team members to justify it. Otherwise every team member had a block to work on. The wave technique is very good if you have synergy and the ability to...you know...work and talk at the same time.
 
We used to always wave zone and so we'd always know exactly where we were on the zone. Then our store decided to phase it out, dividing the team up for better guest service... but it also means we lose the nice brief explanation of how the zone is going. I honestly prefer the wave, but maybe it's because I don't slow down much even when there's a dragging person on the team.
 
Do you guys do the wave throughout the whole store. For example, all of hardlines minus market and electronics? In my store if we do the wave it is throughout two departments and then everyone goes back to their assigned departments. This is what I think causes the loss of morale. Time is wasted zoning other TM's department and then they have it easy and the TL's don't think about maybe putting them to help out the others. Meanwhile, during the time that the wave is going on, every other department is getting trashed and there isn't enough time to put away the strays and do a good zone.

I can understand a quick wave if a department is completely trashed, but when it goes on for hours every other department that didn't get waved suffers.
 
Wave zone was created a few years by spot has an effective, fast way of zoning the store night. The concept was good on paper. You would to have a mid day every day to work & a lot of tm's.
It was stopped at my store, because of lack of staff on all shifts & poor guest survey scores. For ex: no tm's available in the area etc..
 
The wave at my store seems to work well for softlines.

Hardlines is hit or miss. If I'm working with someone good, we each grab an aisle and just leapfrog over each other and keep going and talk at the same time and usually go pretty quick. With most of the hardlines team when I work with them to wave zone, it's a complete cluster ****. They will want to zone the same aisle, one starting on one side, one on the other, maybe one in the middle when we had that many on, and they would manage to zone over each other and miss half the aisle...but never a word of their conversation.

One night, due to overlap, we had 5 people in hardlines for a bit, and I nearly killed someone. There were four people pretending to zone one aisle while talking. Meanwhile, I zoned 2 aisles by myself while they continued to zone that aisle (that was not zoned well at all when they finished). I went to the LOD after huddle and begged him to do something before I throttled someone. He sent two people off to one block, me and another person off to another block and the 5th off to help someplace else. We got a lot more done that way.
 
Right now my store is doing a One Wave kind of thing. Start on one floor, end on another. Problem is we had our budget cut so drastically that only 10 or so people are scheduled. Combine that with getting only one or two days, there really isn't any point of them trying to work.
 
We stopped doing the wave about 2 years ago. Even if we wanted to right now we couldnt. The other day I think we either had 2 or 3 people working between hardlines and softlines and the operator lol, how are you going to wave zone the whole store with that. Now we just assign people blocks, so Jane you do Mens and Infants and John you do A block. Usually the LOD does C and D block which is all the domestics items, electornics does entertainment, toys, luggage, sporting goods, automotive and mini seasonal if they have time, and Pfresh does dry, coolers, freezers and the pfresh area. The only areas the hardlines closers ever really have to do is Pets, Cleaning Supplies, Pharmacy (Pharmacy does touch it up throughout the day too), HBA, Small Appliances, and then the office and art supplies. Those areas comprise A and B block and that is pretty much literally all they do for zone.
 
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We occasionally wave zone softlines in my store if we are shorthanded or if a department is especially trashed. We will zone our assigned areas until around 10 or 10:30 and then team up and work each additional area for our last hour.
 
As a former softlines TM, I hated the wave.

For some reason I loved the satisfaction of working alone and completing my zone, and then going to help others. It allowed me to work at my own pace and not worry about people who were more worried about chatting and not working.

It probably didn't help that the wave was only used by the least effective TL I have ever seen.
 
As a former softlines TM, I hated the wave.

For some reason I loved the satisfaction of working alone and completing my zone, and then going to help others. It allowed me to work at my own pace and not worry about people who were more worried about chatting and not working.

It probably didn't help that the wave was only used by the least effective TL I have ever seen.

Yes. And when people skip over large sections and declare an area done, it's a hard line between saying, "no" and going with the flow.
 
Judging from the stores I go to things like a zone are not done at all outside of the food area. Things were bad when I left but, man they are terrible now. My wife is always complaining to me and I am like I quit, nothing I can do about it. Fill out a survey but, it will not matter.
 
It depends on who I'm with. I hate wave zoning softlines during holidays because no one knows what they are doing or where things go. & then right after holidays there's usually just me zoning all of softlines so no waving. When I do get someone to help out they usually disappear frequently for 20 minutes to an hour at a time .. especially in shoes and infants.

So basically.. being short staffed we really don't have the people to do a wave. Hardlines usually does it though.
 
My store only uses the wave for mid-day and if softlines is too short-staffed.

You guys do a mid-day zone? We only do those for about a week every four or five months. I wish we'd be more consistent about it, but when the only people in Softlines during the day are Brand and Team leads doing POG... "Ain't nobody got time for that!"
 
My store only uses the wave for mid-day and if softlines is too short-staffed.

Same at mine. We only do mid days during the weekend but I would be interested in trying it in the evenings as I feel like wave zones seem to go faster and everyone seems to enjoy being able to talk as you zone. Obviously our ability to be social isn't a plus for TL's and it comes at the cost of everyone being spread for guest service so I can understand why they wouldn't want to do it.
 
We did the wave a long time ago, but looking at the store these days it would appear we're going the not zoning at all route.

lol, you mean, we expect you to zone everything perfectly and will ***** at you when its not even though we reduced the hours on the salesfloor by 50% the last year route. I looked tonight again and we had one person doing a 2:30 to 10ish, then 2 others coming in to do a 6-10ish shift. We then have one operator til 8, electronics til 10, Pfresh til 8, and who knows how many cashiers but ya lol at that. Have 3 people to divide up between softlines and hardlines. What is sad is that when I close pfresh I do more of a zone than they do, still have to do ALL of my pushes, do the saleswalk, sometimes push out all of the reshop, do outdates, meat coupons, and daily cleaning sometime while they struggle to just get one block zoned. When i went from Salesfloor to Pfresh a year ago I didnt expect id be zoning MORE than I was doing SF
 
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Oh I miss the wave. . . kind of. I don't work hardlines much but it was so nice to do the wave to take ad down. I felt it went much faster, and it was nice to have people to talk to. But only 1 LOD liked it and he left a while back. :/ But whenever I zone in softlines we always work together, so I guess thats the wave. I hate working alone when zoning. It's just so quite and boring.
 
lol, you mean, we expect you to zone everything perfectly and will ***** at you when its not even though we reduced the hours on the salesfloor by 50% the last year route.


There's no complaining about the zone at my store. Even the LODs get it. Everyone is feeling the crunch. Dayside, closers, nothing is getting done. The store looks terrible, but hours are so tight that there's almost no time to touch it. By the time the dayside people get the mountains of reshop pushed, smart huddle (what a joke), then the constant backup begins, then the pulls start to drop, then we abandon the midday zone in favor of pushing pulls, then someone has a breakdown because no salesplanners are getting done, the instocks TL freaks out because nothing is getting scanned, we get through lunches and then it's time to go. Repeat again tomorrow.

Oh and I forgot the daily 45 minute battle for PDAs every day.
 
Our reshop is piling up...well...not as much as it would if there were people zoning, but it can take 3 or 4 days for a cart of reshop to even think about getting out back to the floor...and that's if the cart doesn't need to be resorted after sitting out for guests and TMs to throw stuff into blindly.

It doesn't help that nearly all TMs now leave at closing, with the cashier leaving at 5 minutes after and the GSA/GSTL is out at 15 after....so there's no longer that half hour of random catch up without guests.
 
I have a love/hate relationship with it. It was a good concept on paper, and worked well for softlines (especially in shoes, baby hardlines, and RTW) but hardlines was another story. I always got stuck with the slacker team who'd magically disappear before towels and reappear after toys. Of course, I'd try to work faster to make up for their absence, but the zone was never good.

You have to have the right synergy as HLM said. I can talk and fold at the same time. Most people at my store would stop and stand at the end of the aisle to carry on a conversation. Seriously! Get moving!

We had a TL who finally just started assigning two people to a block in hardlines. That worked for a month until the disappearing acts started up again.
 
I kind of feel bad about the lack of employees you guys have working the floor, but you guys have less traffic. So I guess it even outs with mine that has more of both. Things will be hectic either way.
 
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