Archived First shift in Market?

[KraVance117]

I think i'm starting to be used as a utility person in my store (flow, backroom, instocks, pricing, salesfloor, signing, and now market). I have my first shift on a sunday opening next week and I had a few questions. First off because im alone that day for some reason, what am I actually supposed to be doing? I know I check for expired food, but I don't know how to qmos something or whatever. Then I do the pulls from pfresh and zone the stuff. But do I have to make an order or does somebody else make that (Trucks mwf)? Also is there any other stuff I have to do before the afternoon person comes in. Any help would be great. Thanks

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Unfortunatly, PA (and Market TM!) duties and responsibilities can vary from store to store. So what we tell you might not be the process that your store uses.

If you go onto Workbench, there is a page called "Food Best Practice" or something like that. It has a loooooooot of info on how pretty much everything is done, and why. When I was training, our other PA printed off a ton of crap and sent it home with me to read up on, lol. Definitely helped. If you have time, poke around on Workbench and get a feel for what's there. If you see something that you don't understand, print it off and ask your trainer/TL.

Also, don't be afraid to ask questions. If you have a good management team they should come to you and ask you how you're doing and if you feel like you're getting the right training, but if not, talk to your trainer, or failing that, your TL or ETL. I always say there's no such thing as a stupid question, and when you're working in such a detail orented area, "winging it" and guessing on a lot of stuff is going to give everyone a headache.

Hang in there. It's always overwhelming at first but you'll get the hang of it. 🙂

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Does your store expect one person to close pfresh AND take care of all of dry market?
Here is a typical closing shift for market:
- Walk in to most of the day's CAFs not pushed. They were just piled onto the autofills that FLOW couldn't handle. Instocks batches waiting around too.
- Replenish bananas
- Replenish milk (usually empty by now)
- Cull the bakery table
- Do your QMOS (and everyone else's)
- Mop coolers
- Zone pfresh
- Zone 100+ doors of coolers/freezers
- Zone 30 aisles of dry market
- Maybe zone chemicals too
- "And finish early so you can help apparel!"

Not to mention the standard backup cashiering, guest service, breaks and huddle.

Over the past 6 months the leadership at my store has slowly come to the realization that it is impossible for one person to zone all of dry market to "green (perfect) by themself. One of our softlines TLs asked me what was taking me so long to zone market. I told her that we can dedicate as much time as we want to zoning market, and it will never be enough. She said "just pull everything forward" like it could be done in half an hour.

Anyone else expected to do all of pfresh and dry market? How has that been going?

 

[looseseal]

To access QMOS in the PDA, you can either find it under the Reverse Logistics menu, or just type in QMOS under RF Apps and hit enter. It'll then ask you the location found (usually sales floor or backroom, try and be as accurate as you can), and then the reason why (out of temp, damaged, outdated). Then just scan (or you can enter the 4-digit PLU for produce only), enter in the quantity, hit Y or N to confirm the quantity or make a change, and then you're done! There are some things that have chargeback privileges that you have to defect out using SDEF, and a message will pop up saying that when you scan the item, but I usually just took those up to the service desk. Also, there are some things that when you go to scan them out, it'll say "enter a quantity in eaches from 6 to 99". I'm not sure why it does that or what it means (I notice it does that a lot for baking items), but I usually just took those to the service desk as well to have them defect out in there.

As far as opening, are you working in a Pfresh store acting as a PA that morning? This was my routine for weekend opens when we came in at 6a (and this was never very rigid as there is always something that comes up, but this was my general rundown):

6a-7a: Deep cull, write down DPCIs for TPCs
7a-8a: Process QMOS, then work ambient, produce, and meat autofills. I also made sure bananas were filled before the store opened just because it was our first impression the way our open market was set up. Then I'd go up to Food Ave and fill my sanitizer bottle right before the store opened, then first break at 8a (or after morning huddle).
8:20a - 10:30a: Complete SDA task lists, and QMOS outdates. Then work on cooler and freezer autofills (we don't have trucks on the weekends, so our flow TM isn't around to push those).
10:30a-11a: I took lunch at 11, so depending on how long it took to push the cooler and freezer autos, I'd use any downtime after that to enter my TPCs in the computer, random cleaning tasks, or fill milk and/or bananas again depending on time.
11:30a-2:30a: If it was a Saturday, which is an order day for us, I'd do the order first thing after lunch. If not and I wasn't able to fill milk before lunch, I would do that next. Then it's just working on CAFs and other little things until you clock out.

PAs are the first in line responsible for ordering, so if Sunday is an order day for your store, then yes, you would be the one placing the order. It's not too hard. Make sure you order bananas, and then you're just basically ordering any outs you have, and anything you're running low on and might run out of before your next delivery. When in doubt, find your CTL, or an LOD.

And then the biggest thing is just setting up your closer for a great evening. Stay on top of pulls, don't leave your QMOS or trash behind for the closer to take care of, keep bananas and milk relatively full, just things like that. I can't tell you how many times I came in to close on a weekend to morning autofills (which meant a packed metro rack of push) still sitting around at 2:30, bananas and/or milk are empty, opener left a cart full of cardboard behind. Granted, there was also a huge lack of accountability in my section, but it's very disheartening to walk in and already be way behind just 10 minutes in to your shift.

I probably just threw a lot of info at you, so if you have any more questions, ask away! There's a handful of current and former PAs here to help out 🙂

 

[KraVance117]

Okay. I need some help with some of these words. Is cull throwing out perishables in the white bin? Where is SDA tasks on the pda? What does TPC stand for? Where do I go to make the order? And I have a 7-1:30 shift so I don't have all those extra 2 hours. Also do I touch vendor milk or only worry about truck pfresh truck milk when I zone/ look at dates? Lastly, should I be looking for expired items in our backroom or just on the floor? Sorry for additional questions

 

[looseseal]

Ahh, so your store is cutting hours just like ours was.... In that case you'll have to disregard the deep cull and jump straight into pulls, and then just cull product as you go. Culling is just going through all the produce/fresh meat and pitching stuff that's of bad quality or past/near expiration. QMOS is the process of defecting it out.

TPC is temporary price cut. PAs can initiate these through the store applications function on the computer in the fixture room. You can TPC product on the sales floor that's within 3-4 days of expiring to try and push sales on the product, since most guests don't like to buy things so close to expiration. You also TPC your ambient, produce, and meat cooler following the 4-7-5 rule (which I can explain later if you like. Basically anything you have too much of and you're not selling it, or anything close to expiration). Since it's your first market shift, I honestly wouldn't even worry too much about doing this part though.

SDA is under all applications (the color menu) in the PDA. I believe it's the 3rd page down. When you click on it, it'll bring up three options: sales floor tasklist, backroom tasklist, and short date. You'll need to complete both the sales floor and backroom before noon. Click on the task list to open it up, and then click on the first location (ie: G11). It'll then direct you to the item's location (G11 (1) 2-4-1). So you scan that location, and you just check the dates for every item in that location. You'll be shown four more options: Okay, Expired, Short Date, or Unreadable. If it's expired, or within 1-2 days of expiring, toss it! If it's within 3-5 days of expiring, click on short date, and then you'll be prompted to enter the expiration date. If you can't read the date, or it has no date, click that, and remove the product from the shelf. You can also select more than one option as well. Same goes for the backroom, only thing is if you find expired product that has to be removed, keep count of what you're taking out of location because it'll ask you how many were removed to keep the counts accurate.

As far as looking for dates, I usually paid more attention to the floor, and did just did a quick check of backroom dates as I did the backroom SDA list.

You can find the order under all applications as well. I think this one is on the second page, and it has a cute little apple icon.

The only milk you have to manually fill is vendor milk, so Market Pantry and then whatever your local distributor is (ours is Deans/Reiter). Everything else will come out on pulls as needed.

 

[lovecats]

That's funny because we are told that we can't touch the vender milk. We can only fill Market Pantry. Anything else in milk is off limits.

 

[doxie71]

That's funny because we are told that we can't touch the vender milk. We can only fill Market Pantry. Anything else in milk is off limits.

Who fills your milk then? Does the vendor come in & do it? Wow. Our Market Pantry comes in with vendor milk we just fill it all at once. We always sell milk like crazy. If we left the vendor stuff it would be empty before we knew it.

 

[Barcode]

I got scheduled in Sales Floor - consumables next week as well, will be interesting. Did Market once at my Super Target, mostly just filled Milk and worked dairy/Frozen pulls lol.

 

[looseseal]

That's funny because we are told that we can't touch the vender milk. We can only fill Market Pantry. Anything else in milk is off limits.

Who fills your milk then? Does the vendor come in & do it? Wow. Our Market Pantry comes in with vendor milk we just fill it all at once. We always sell milk like crazy. If we left the vendor stuff it would be empty before we knew it.

Yeah, that is pretty odd. We were lucky if we even got enough vendor milk to last between deliveries, there's no way we could get away with not filling it!

 

[lovecats]

That's funny because we are told that we can't touch the vender milk. We can only fill Market Pantry. Anything else in milk is off limits.

Who fills your milk then? Does the vendor come in & do it? Wow. Our Market Pantry comes in with vendor milk we just fill it all at once. We always sell milk like crazy. If we left the vendor stuff it would be empty before we knew it.

Yeah, that is pretty odd. We were lucky if we even got enough vendor milk to last between deliveries, there's no way we could get away with not filling it!

The vender is in there pretty often filling their milk so it's not usually an issue.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

That's funny because we are told that we can't touch the vender milk. We can only fill Market Pantry. Anything else in milk is off limits.

Who fills your milk then? Does the vendor come in & do it? Wow. Our Market Pantry comes in with vendor milk we just fill it all at once. We always sell milk like crazy. If we left the vendor stuff it would be empty before we knew it.

Yeah, that is pretty odd. We were lucky if we even got enough vendor milk to last between deliveries, there's no way we could get away with not filling it!

The vender is in there pretty often filling their milk so it's not usually an issue.

My vendor retired. We are doing it ever since. The new guy could not do the job.