Archived FACT CHECK: Is payroll "tight"?

[can't touch this]

Anyone else caught their leaders lying about available payroll? It's lower than it should be, obviously, but it's not as low as they're trying to say it is. If they say there are 225 hours this week, there are really 280 - 300, I suspect. Alternative facts: Target edition.

I was sitting here at home on my day off, waiting by the phone for a call from Target that never came so I decided to call them. I called the Market TL and asked her if I could come in and pick up some market hours, and she got all evasive on me like she was trying to say there were no hours without actually lying.

FACT CHECK: FALSE. Market has lost 3 TMs in less than 2 weeks, one was termed and the other two NCNS. They haven't hired or even interviewed anyone to replace them yet. Last week's push and backstock are piling up in the backroom. Yesterday when I left there were 5 ambient and 2 frozen pallets that hadn't been pushed yet that are definitely still there because the Market TL is the only one scheduled today. I am crosstrained in Market and have open availability.

THE CLAIM: According to the ETL-LOG, due to modernization, each ETL is allocated their own "wallet" of payroll hours that they are responsible for spending carefully. I'm keyed as flow which means I can't use any Market hours.
FACT CHECK: FALSE. Keying me in another workcenter is trivially easy, takes 10 seconds and can be done at any leader's discretion. There appears to be some kind of lowkey agreement between the leads to avoid shuffling people between workcenters as part of their ploy to level up their payroll budget highscore.

THE CLAIM: Payroll is also tight due to overspending at the end of the month.
FACT CHECK: FALSE. We've been shedding TMs much faster than we can hire them, in all workcenters. The "wallet" divvying is entirely arbitrary. The only overspending here is on the executive leads' salaries.

THE CLAIM: "Thanks for showing interest though, I really appreciate your willingness to be a team player."
FACT CHECK: TRUE.

 

[2Spooky4U]

HR team members and leadership looking at payrolll while writing out the schedule for the last week in a non-holiday month with low sales.

 

[busyzoningtoys]

We aren’t replacing call-offs/no calls this week due to payroll. I’ve seen my stores numbers and we are overspent BUT I can’t figure out where the hours went. My guess is logistics, as softlines has finally stopped being immune to the cuts.

 

[BoxCutter]

We were over for the month by more than 30 hours at the start of the week. Call outs are not being filled by calling TMs to come in.

 

[tellmeaboutatime]

Payroll is tight and it bites however a few facts
because you are given 300 hours in a week when the schedule is written does not necessarily mean that is what you will have when the date actually rolls around. Flex payroll is real. If your sales are trending down so will your payroll hours. If you are killing sales you will get additional "flex" hours. Its a matter of the leaders being aware of where sales are and cutting or adding accordingly.If they are managing payroll appropriately they will cut when the store is dead instead of doing a ton of projects.
If you take an additional truck, there is no extra payroll for that. Your store needs to "find" the payroll from wherever it can. If flow stays late due to huge trucks that payroll needs to be found too.
The reality is that too many stores wait until the last week of the month to try to get payroll back in line. That means no adding, no replacing shifts and no staying later.
My guess is that overall your store may have been overspent for the month. Your STL has to answer to the DTL is he/she doesn't make payroll. He will make the cuts wherever he can to make sure he comes in on budget. Some stores will run very lean the first few weeks of May knowing that at the end of the month we will be very busy due to Memorial Day and graduations.

 

[can't touch this]

Sales have been brutally killed Game of Thrones style (comping consistently every month). The lines are long not just because we don't have enough cashiers, but because there are just that many guests with large baskets. Backroom TMs spend as much time pulling flex orders as they do pulling autos/cafs. Last year around this time the front end would be a graveyard, but now I've started packing lunches from home because I don't want to burn up half of my break waiting in line to buy food. That combined with the fact that we've lost many more TMs than we've hired means something isn't adding up. I've got plans to try and double dip from flow and plano since one of them is quitting. I'm crosstrained in plano so if they balk at this too then I'll know there's dirty tricks afoot.

 

[unknown]

Payroll is tight and it bites however a few facts
because you are given 300 hours in a week when the schedule is written does not necessarily mean that is what you will have when the date actually rolls around. Flex payroll is real. If your sales are trending down so will your payroll hours. If you are killing sales you will get additional "flex" hours. Its a matter of the leaders being aware of where sales are and cutting or adding accordingly.If they are managing payroll appropriately they will cut when the store is dead instead of doing a ton of projects.
If you take an additional truck, there is no extra payroll for that. Your store needs to "find" the payroll from wherever it can. If flow stays late due to huge trucks that payroll needs to be found too.
The reality is that too many stores wait until the last week of the month to try to get payroll back in line. That means no adding, no replacing shifts and no staying later.
My guess is that overall your store may have been overspent for the month. Your STL has to answer to the DTL is he/she doesn't make payroll. He will make the cuts wherever he can to make sure he comes in on budget. Some stores will run very lean the first few weeks of May knowing that at the end of the month we will be very busy due to Memorial Day and graduations.

One of the dumbest, truly most moronic things I've seen in my work life. Taking a truck with no hours.

And I have to add, some store processes take hours no matter the sales. For example, setting a pog. I don't care if we comp down, the POG still takes time to set. And if leadership wants to skip setting it, like they have been with setting salesplanners, that means more work for price change when all the stuff sitting location goes clearance. Nevermind the fact we missed the sales from the items themselves.

 

[redeye58]

FA & SB are skimmed of hours before the schedule is even made.
Then, about the 3rd week we'll all be told to give up an hour here or there; sometimes we're told to give up a whole shift.
And we're killing it in sales.

 

[LearningTree]

You can easily track payroll for your store under the MPM2.0 app. It'll show you how many hours you've spent each week, how many hours you've earned based on sales (flex hours), and how many have been spent. In my store I've found it's mostly the O/N crew that overspends. STL presence is very low while they're working so they give hours like there's no tomorrow. 1 O/N ETL is getting pushed out soon. She schedules according to payroll on the official schedule and then after the schedule is posted will ask all of her part-timers to pick up extra shifts.

 

[PackAndCry]

You can easily track payroll for your store under the MPM2.0 app. It'll show you how many hours you've spent each week, how many hours you've earned based on sales (flex hours), and how many have been spent. In my store I've found it's mostly the O/N crew that overspends. STL presence is very low while they're working so they give hours like there's no tomorrow. 1 O/N ETL is getting pushed out soon. She schedules according to payroll on the official schedule and then after the schedule is posted will ask all of her part-timers to pick up extra shifts.

I don't think that shows for TMs.

 

[can't touch this]

I highly doubt it does but I'm totally checking it out tomorrow out of curiosity

if the app does spill the beans then that will make for a very funny troll

 

[redeye58]

We already know we're red for hours used but that's one metric leadership doesn't care if it's red.

 

[can't touch this]

I bet a lot of the hours finagling is an ASANTS thing. Someone here on TBR recently posted that they helped out at another store where the STL allows up to five hours of OT a week. Assuming that wasn't fake news, this means that either STLs are secretly empowered to make that decision and usually don't let on that they can, or that that particular one has giant titanium alloy balls (literal or figurative).

 

[busyzoningtoys]

Negative flex hours either went or are going away as part of the modernization plans. We can still get additional flex hours for positive comps but they aren’t supposed to take hours away for negative anymore.

 

[REDcardJJ]

Are we still technically in April for hours until Sunday? My store cut a bunch of hours for today and tomorrow (not me, sadly) and I doubt they'll be replacing call-outs which is gonna be fun.

 

[busyzoningtoys]

Are we still technically in April for hours until Sunday? My store cut a bunch of hours for today and tomorrow (not me, sadly) and I doubt they'll be replacing call-outs which is gonna be fun.

Yes it’s still technically April for fiscal purposes, I believe.

 

[JohnSith373]

You can easily track payroll for your store under the MPM2.0 app. It'll show you how many hours you've spent each week, how many hours you've earned based on sales (flex hours), and how many have been spent. In my store I've found it's mostly the O/N crew that overspends. STL presence is very low while they're working so they give hours like there's no tomorrow. 1 O/N ETL is getting pushed out soon. She schedules according to payroll on the official schedule and then after the schedule is posted will ask all of her part-timers to pick up extra shifts.

It doesn't show for regular TMs on MPM 2.0 app however randomly it lets me see the payroll section. It does show for TLs and above on the app. I wonder if SFS/OPU has hours based on sales (flex hours) of what we pick in the batches.

 

[Frontlanegirl]

FA & SB are skimmed of hours before the schedule is even made.
Then, about the 3rd week we'll all be told to give up an hour here or there; sometimes we're told to give up a whole shift.
And we're killing it in sales.

I've noticed this in our store. We are supposedly really tight on hours but we are making sales. C/O's are not being fulfilled and there are not a lot of TM's on the sales floor.

 

[qmosqueen]

5 ambient pallets I don’t think they are all ambient I am high volume store and get 15 boxes of bananas and about 1/2 pallet just for ambient. They must be berries and salads apples and if not in cooler must qmos those salads and berries.

Hours are tight but 1 person in 6 hours should be able to do all of fresh meat 1 pallet and produce 3 pallets and 1 banana pallet from the FDC truck

 

[BoxCutter]

Yes it’s still technically April for fiscal purposes, I believe.

It is also the last week of the first quarter of the fiscal year. My feeling is Brian is trying to make the numbers look as good aa possible by saving money on payroll.

 

[tellmeaboutatime]

OT is a DTL decision in the long run. Some will ream the STL if there is OT. Others will let them have it as long as its from "value added" team members. Usually that means people who get shit done however in most stores that will include some major brown nosers. Shit rolls down hill at spot just like everywhere else. An STL has to answer to his /her DTL if your STL all of a sudden starts slashing payroll its because he has been warned that his numbers better add up. If a store within a district is tanking with payroll, it is not unheard of for the request to go out to come in a little under for the month. That way the DTL looks good. I get that there is a budget and we need to work within that budget. However there are so many variables.
BTW good luck nabbing hours from Plano, those are almost non existent since E2E is rolling out.
I dont agree with this slash mentality. This wage increase is going to kill us. The execs have actually said, that with this huge bump in payroll we are going to expect teams to really push themselves, they should be sweating after a shift. What they fail to realize is that is already happening. More money won't give you more hours in a day or equipment that works (if you are lucky enough to get equipment) Processes that keep crashing (thinkMOVE) I don't know WTH is going on anymore with this company. I do know I think its time to move on and save my sanity and self respect

 

[can't touch this]

I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere about it being fiscal April 1st but I'm too tired to fuck with it

5 ambient pallets I don’t think they are all ambient I am high volume store and get 15 boxes of bananas and about 1/2 pallet just for ambient. They must be berries and salads apples and if not in cooler must qmos those salads and berries.

Hours are tight but 1 person in 6 hours should be able to do all of fresh meat 1 pallet and produce 3 pallets and 1 banana pallet from the FDC truck

It's the leftovers from 3 trucks combined lol

 

[can't touch this]

also my store only did e2e for a few months last year and ditched it at the beginning of Q4. Haven't heard anything about it coming back yet although I'm sure it eventually will

 

[busyzoningtoys]

I wonder if SFS/OPU has hours based on sales (flex hours) of what we pick in the batches.

Yes, hours are adjusted based on projected orders. Sometimes (often) the projection is late though, that’s why you’ll see last minute cuts or additions for flex fulfillment

 

[can't touch this]

I checked MPM2.0 and it for sure doesn't show payroll, but it does show that we raked in $678K this week. Welp.