MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

[Bosch]

@Bosch Ever see the old gameshow Supermarket Sweep? How many times does a contestant go down the wrong aisle when they don't know the store? If the HRETL can't tell you the fastest way to get to the bedding from the garage in Ikea (assuming they never worked at Ikea) what makes them think a new TM will be able to do that at Target? I give a new TM more time the first few days, but they better be improving and I can tell you the ones I'm cutting in the first round within a week, two on the outside unless I see drastic improvement.

Sometimes that improvement goes the other way and people get worse. Q4 some people get the shaft just because of bad timing. You seem promising, but were brought on 2 days before the first round of cuts. I'm sorry, but if we've got amazing people I'm not investing time into you when a seasonal retention rate is maybe 30% past the first month.

Every year they say how to schedule and what to expect. And every year they do a stress test that is based on you following directions to cram 2 days into one and every year the STLs freak out that they are going to get a massive amount of orders so they over schedule and pick ahead to cheat the system. Guess what, you can't cheat when 2 days falls into 1 day and it's not scheduled.

I always try and over schedule with new people, because they are slow or they call out. Usually I can guess who will be the callouts when looking at the grid. I know we're getting callouts when they put filler slots in, even if those fillers are from other stores. A 4AM shift that's "optional" and 20+ miles from your house is less appealing at 2:30AM than it was when they agreed to it at 5PM.

ETLHR could only tell the fastest routes from her office to Sbux anywhere else good luck.. And they hired all teenagers this year I kid you not. When I complained we didn't have people I was told that no one but the teenagers are applying. And they are all pretty much the same. "You mean I have to hustle? What does that mean?" "I can't text my friends while I am working?"

This year almost none of them would be kept, and part of that isn't their fault our store is such a mess I am shocked when they come back for a second shift. I honestly would "Nope" out the door cause we look like idiots who have no clue what we are doing. But according to our STL its a great crop of kids.

Scheduling is done by the STL so we got what we got. Our new log ETL started the Sunday before Thanksgiving, she is still just trying to figure out what is going on and how to fix this shit show. Stress test? Yeah we didn't have one since we were in a shut down since early October because our INF was so high then the SFS refresh that no one knew if it was supposed to be a remodel or refresh. That refresh was done by myself and the backroom TL while he was doing backroom stuff and I was doing receiving. We came back up for SFS mid week the week before thanksgiving. And it was only started cause the DTL wanted us back up and running and we were told to "make it happen". Nothing was done to address why we got shut down in the first place. We haven't been told about any hiring done for SFS/OPU until we get called over the radio "hey you have a trainee here for training." Gee thanks guys, our game plan for the day shot to hell..

These seasonal kids for the most part are just young and don't know how to work, not their fault, most however should not be kept or even hired for the stress we are tossing on them. Our store is so bad I can't teach the job correctly since we have to cheat the system to just get through a batch. I spend more time teaching work arounds then the job. Yeah the system says the item should be here, but that is just where its tied, it could actually be anywhere. Which is now true more often than not. Yeah we can't get to that backroom location so here is how to print the backroom label, we will print that scan it and see what the product is and then go take it from the floor and restow the item. How do you judge someone when you can't even train them correctly but you have to teach them to be cheaters? Or you give them a plan and its taken by the STL that they are not going to do OPU or SFS but he decides that those hangers can't be empty and for us to drop everything and get that filled right now!

 

[Thunderbird1956]

@Bosch so do you just carry a hip printer with you? I think scanning off my phone is easier personally. Some of it I don't think is cheating the system. Some of it is just teaching how the store thinks.

 

[Bosch]

@Bosch so do you just carry a hip printer with you? I think scanning off my phone is easier personally. Some of it I don't think is cheating the system. Some of it is just teaching how the store thinks.

Oh no, we have to walk across the store to the signing room printer to print off labels, all the printers are spoken for, the only one OPU gets is up at guest services. And I do use my phone until I can't. And honestly the time wasted walking to the printer isn't my fault, its theirs.. They should be grateful that we even have that work around.

Our store doesn't think, until the sky is falling. Then oh well, everything is still awesome! When its not..

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

@mobilelady a tiny request. To create a way in the my go app to fill an order & bypass the epick app. I had a tm manually pull an electronics item to Gs for flex. There was 90 plus flexes & no way to search for guest name or item in epick. The guest couldn’t cancel the order on target.com. So I rang up the guest & told them I would personally cancel after the flex fill was done.
I had a happy guest because I stayed with them & had an solution.
I sold the item to the guest & cancel it when flex filled it. The order was placed at 3pm & not filled until 6pm.

 

[15 Sec. Remain]

@Bosch Ever see the old gameshow Supermarket Sweep? How many times does a contestant go down the wrong aisle when they don't know the store? If the HRETL can't tell you the fastest way to get to the bedding from the garage in Ikea (assuming they never worked at Ikea) what makes them think a new TM will be able to do that at Target? I give a new TM more time the first few days, but they better be improving and I can tell you the ones I'm cutting in the first round within a week, two on the outside unless I see drastic improvement.

Sometimes that improvement goes the other way and people get worse. Q4 some people get the shaft just because of bad timing. You seem promising, but were brought on 2 days before the first round of cuts. I'm sorry, but if we've got amazing people I'm not investing time into you when a seasonal retention rate is maybe 30% past the first month.

Every year they say how to schedule and what to expect. And every year they do a stress test that is based on you following directions to cram 2 days into one and every year the STLs freak out that they are going to get a massive amount of orders so they over schedule and pick ahead to cheat the system. Guess what, you can't cheat when 2 days falls into 1 day and it's not scheduled.

I always try and over schedule with new people, because they are slow or they call out. Usually I can guess who will be the callouts when looking at the grid. I know we're getting callouts when they put filler slots in, even if those fillers are from other stores. A 4AM shift that's "optional" and 20+ miles from your house is less appealing at 2:30AM than it was when they agreed to it at 5PM.

Couldn't resist but grin at the Supermarket Sweep reference. That's what I thought of when I was told you have to be finished by 30 minutes, constantly running speed walking with my cart in front, going all over the store with my 25-30 item batches.

And hey, that "store" on the show had only several aisles doubled on each end. We got about tenfold the amount. How the contestants couldn't find their items, beats me. 😄

 

[PackAndCry]

@mobilelady a tiny request. To create a way in the my go app to fill an order & bypass the epick app. I had a tm manually pull an electronics item to Gs for flex. There was 90 plus flexes & no way to search for guest name or item in epick. The guest couldn’t cancel the order on target.com. So I rang up the guest & told them I would personally cancel after the flex fill was done.
I had a happy guest because I stayed with them & had an solution.
I sold the item to the guest & cancel it when flex filled it. The order was placed at 3pm & not filled until 6pm.

My understanding is this doesn't exist so we aren't encouraging guests to be impatient and show up before they receive the email. You used to be able to pick a specific FA to do in myFA and it was removed, so I'd assume they did that on purpose.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

My understanding is this doesn't exist so we aren't encouraging guests to be impatient and show up before they receive the email. You used to be able to pick a specific FA to do in myFA and it was removed, so I'd assume they did that on purpose.

I saw the confirming email & not completed by tm in my go.

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

I have had situations where I would’ve loved to process one in mygo but IMO it wouldn’t be fair to other guests to process one ahead of theirs so I understand why the option isn’t there

 

[tny760]

And another thing, leadership is sorely lacking in this whole sfs, drive up, store pickup thing. The stl and etls at my store totally ignore it and under schedule it consistently until they need someone to blame. Then it's .... it's the TMS fault for "insert whatever went wrong that they caused." Fuck that noise. You want the pay but not the responsibilities. But you expect me to pick up the responsibilities without the pay?! Right.

its not so much the leadership to me personally, it's the lack of infrastructure and support. we want to compete with amazon in online sales but we don't want to spend the money on multiple pack stations? cmon. we're a single pack station store, we've had roughly 700-800 daily DPCIs the past week. no matter how many people you throw at it, you can't get the work done. people are climbing all over each other to pack back there, then there's nowhere to put the 5+ pallets of packages thanks to the failures of the flow process, nowhere to put the incoming vehicles of picks. it just compounds so quickly. this single pack station process is some mickey mouse, small business setup, not a massive corporation setup. if we're taking 90% of SFS workload from DCs, we need to get 90% more support.

it wasn't much more than a year ago where i'd walk in, bang out my picks and packs, then have a couple hours to help backroom or flow or whoever catch up on their stuff and the place was running like butter on every level.. i've got experienced people coming in as seasonals now, looking at me like "are you guys fuckin serious around here?"

 

[Bosch]

its not so much the leadership to me personally, it's the lack of infrastructure and support. we want to compete with amazon in online sales but we don't want to spend the money on multiple pack stations? cmon. we're a single pack station store, we've had roughly 700-800 daily DPCIs the past week. no matter how many people you throw at it, you can't get the work done. people are climbing all over each other to pack back there, then there's nowhere to put the 5+ pallets of packages thanks to the failures of the flow process, nowhere to put the incoming vehicles of picks. it just compounds so quickly. this single pack station process is some mickey mouse, small business setup, not a massive corporation setup. if we're taking 90% of SFS workload from DCs, we need to get 90% more support.

it wasn't much more than a year ago where i'd walk in, bang out my picks and packs, then have a couple hours to help backroom or flow or whoever catch up on their stuff and the place was running like butter on every level.. i've got experienced people coming in as seasonals now, looking at me like "are you guys fuckin serious around here?"

This all day long..

I feel like a pain in the ass of the entire store since I have to complain about everyone else because it affects my ability to do my job. Their failings turn to our failings but the buck stops with SFS/OPU since we don't get anyone to blame. We are not cared about nor it seems valued or wanted in the store..

 

[Moosechives]

What, you guys are saying that bumping your teams of under 10 core guys to 60+ inexperienced just out of high school 18 year olds that only got 10 training hours a week for two weeks before being thrown into the fire isn't a good tactic? Nooooooooooooo waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay~ Because I LOVE walking through the door in the morning only to have people bitch at me for my team being unable to tell the difference between an OPU and Ship batch. I also enjoy being bitched at for having 20+ pallets of UPS sitting around the backroom because they failed to drop and swap my trailer on Saturday with no pickup on sunday~!

 

[Black Sheep 214]

This all day long..

I feel like a pain in the ass of the entire store since I have to complain about everyone else because it affects my ability to do my job. Their failings turn to our failings but the buck stops with SFS/OPU since we don't get anyone to blame. We are not cared about nor it seems valued or wanted in the store..

^This! SFS/OPU can’t do their job unless the rest of the store does theirs properly first, from truck onload to push to backstocking to BRLM to counts and beyond. Poor SFS/OPU metrics are blamed on the ship/ flex teams, but they are really a reflection of the success or failure of the store process. Not right to blame the SFS/OPU teams for the store’s failures just because they uncover them, but you know Spot, kill the messenger...🙄

 

[Black Sheep 214]

What, you guys are saying that bumping your teams of under 10 core guys to 60+ inexperienced just out of high school 18 year olds that only got 10 training hours a week for two weeks before being thrown into the fire isn't a good tactic? Nooooooooooooo waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay~ Because I LOVE walking through the door in the morning only to have people bitch at me for my team being unable to tell the difference between an OPU and Ship batch. I also enjoy being bitched at for having 20+ pallets of UPS sitting around the backroom because they failed to drop and swap my trailer on Saturday with no pickup on sunday~!

Ain’t it the truth! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

 

[calimero]

Out of : air pillows , bubble wrap , 454 /280, padded envelopes , grip tape ...
how do they expect us to do our job ?

I have to chime in : new TMs .. no one wants to take reponsabilities for hiring them .
We have one OCD TM who has to move the boxes around on the pallet because they have to match .. and he is dyslexic , can’t pick because he can’t understand the aisle numbers .
Another TM can’t see very well even with glasses ..
Another one came high as a kite and was cussing at other TMs ( he got fired )..
One Tm that is so slow , it’s like watching paint dry ..
They moved some non seasonal Tm in SFS because they didn’t get along in their department because they have anxiety / or are just plainly assholes to everybody and they think they are in charge and don’t take well to someone giving them directions ..
it’s like the misfit corner ..
they are supposed to get with me before InF anything but don’t , because they ask someone else on the floor ..
I can’t wait for the season to be over and to have some friends only 4 TMs working there ..

 

[CoolLife24]

I think corporate needs to update their apps faster for each store espessially for opu orders!....so sick of having stuff out of stock and it still allows the guest to purchase and than you have to inf the order due to not able to locate it after checking every possible place for the on hands!

 

[Bosch]

What, you guys are saying that bumping your teams of under 10 core guys to 60+ inexperienced just out of high school 18 year olds that only got 10 training hours a week for two weeks before being thrown into the fire isn't a good tactic? Nooooooooooooo waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay~ Because I LOVE walking through the door in the morning only to have people bitch at me for my team being unable to tell the difference between an OPU and Ship batch. I also enjoy being bitched at for having 20+ pallets of UPS sitting around the backroom because they failed to drop and swap my trailer on Saturday with no pickup on sunday~!

You got that much.. We had two TM's and I think four seasonal kids that worked 3-4hr shifts with 800 or so SFS orders.. And it was their first day. First day. Let that sink in, their first day we were not told we had that many people, myself and the other TM had to train while being threatened that we should be picking over 40 items an hour while training these people. And that we need to come clean or be shut down..


Calimero - being dyslexic doesn't mean you can't understand aisle numbers.. That is fine, then you send him by land marks, sounds like he doesn't want to pick. I am dyslexic and aisle numbers mean there is a system to figure things out. Order is awesome, I get pissed when there isn't a system to find shit. Mindless searching drives me batty.. But a mapped out system? I love it. And dyslexics should at least a few like me have pretty photographic memories I may not remember an aisle number but I can tell you five products around the one you are looking for.

Coolife24, go into audit and zero out that product. Make a list of products that you can't find and you need to zero it out. It drops back into the counts but you need to kill it or the orders will keep coming.

 

[Moosechives]

We learned from a lot of our mistakes last year so we started hiring in early August. It got to the point where we started having 10+ trainees a week with two trainers...But still, even being able to staff for 8100 units a day, we're still behind because carts fill up fast and you can literally only fit so many people at a packstation with this year's pack n shit 2.0 being SO much slower...

 

[YoNanas]

Sorry, don't give me that captain bullshit. All that means is responsibility for no pay. I made it crystal clear that if they wanted me to be a captain, I wanted a raise, even if it was temporary. Fuck that shit. Target trying to get something for nothing.

Now if you're bucking for a promotion in the future, which is never guaranteed I might add, work for free. I'm not that person. I work for Target to make money.

And another thing, leadership is sorely lacking in this whole sfs, drive up, store pickup thing. The stl and etls at my store totally ignore it and under schedule it consistently until they need someone to blame. Then it's .... it's the TMS fault for "insert whatever went wrong that they caused." Fuck that noise. You want the pay but not the responsibilities. But you expect me to pick up the responsibilities without the pay?! Right.

They made my Backroom TL to go SFS Overnite to "captain" them. I clearly can tell he was forced to do it. Completely opposite from his early early morning shifts. He's being used as a fucking utility piece. Forcing him to work 10 fucking hours overnite. 10 fucking SFS captaining hours. And he's not the type of TL that walks around giving orders and himself not doing shit. He actually works. So that's why fuck their "captain" shit. I agree with you that if they want anyone to captain, then they need to give us a fucking raise. The SFS area gets so congested and super busy that you can't keep track and work fast as you want to. And the entire backroom is cluttered with fucking vehicles sitting untouched for days. Then you have fucking TMs who walk one step forward two steps back and don't want to move when they see you in a rush.

I've been captaining the market team and I fucking hate it. It just makes my TL get laid back and when something goes wrong, I get the blame and shit from him. That's why I'm slowly getting laid back myself because captaining is not worth the pain.

 

[Bosch]

We learned from a lot of our mistakes last year so we started hiring in early August. It got to the point where we started having 10+ trainees a week with two trainers...But still, even being able to staff for 8100 units a day, we're still behind because carts fill up fast and you can literally only fit so many people at a packstation with this year's pack n shit 2.0 being SO much slower...

That is what we did last year, hired earlier and then we always made sure that there were two of us there that had brains. One on the packing side, one on the pick side. everyone wants to pack but no one wants to pick. Umm go pick batches, there isn't anything to pack if you don't go pick and double batch that cart before you even think of coming back here. I pick for the three hours when I get it in never even bother to go in the back just grab the first cart I come across that is empty becomes the first cart of my day. These newbies come in and walk to the back and ask where is the stuff to pack and the look of horror when we tell them they need to pick the batches.

 

[unknown]

That is what we did last year, hired earlier and then we always made sure that there were two of us there that had brains. One on the packing side, one on the pick side. everyone wants to pack but no one wants to pick. Umm go pick batches, there isn't anything to pack if you don't go pick and double batch that cart before you even think of coming back here. I pick for the three hours when I get it in never even bother to go in the back just grab the first cart I come across that is empty becomes the first cart of my day. These newbies come in and walk to the back and ask where is the stuff to pack and the look of horror when we tell them they need to pick the batches.[/QUOTE

That's why when any leader happens to help, they pack cause they throw any responsibility for the mess they created onto the TMS. I'd love to pack all day like a couple of the etls did last week. Lazy fucks. Try picking a few hours. No? Too hard. But please bitch about the INF % later.

 

[15 Sec. Remain]

That's why when any leader happens to help, they pack cause they throw any responsibility for the mess they created onto the TMS. I'd love to pack all day like a couple of the etls did last week. Lazy fucks. Try picking a few hours. No? Too hard. But please bitch about the INF % later.

This. When things got rough one day, the STL and available ETL's were in the back packing. But just packing. They were asking, why pickers were missing their goal times, and why couldn't you find these items!?!?

The day I witness one of my store's ETL's or even our STL come and grab a cart & pick the entire batch with NO INFing, I'll eat a roll of bubble wrap.

Until then, please get the f**k out of my way if you're just clogging the aisles on your phones.

 

[PogDog]

Bring back the Manhattan!

Or atleast the ability to search for orders based on an item and associated hold locations. So many "packed" items sitting on pack stations with or without collates.

I get that the programmer had an idealistic view of how the application would be used and how I wouldn't cause issues if used under those parameters. But, throw enough TMs without any previous pick/pack experience into the mix and give them a 30-second training before you rush out to pick another batch, and you're bound to have some less than ideal scenarios.

Honestly, PREP and SORT also just seem completely arbitrary. We don't do the "prep" process other than scan the parent and hit prep complete. And the sort process is one pallet, the trailer we're loading that is just UPS anyway. Also, what does Container Manifested mean?

 

[Proficient]

At my store no tl etls stl helps us we have to take care of it all by ourselves with over 10 seasonal fftms. Constants call offs and NCNS they would just let us know over the walkie.. I literally stress everyday when I get home tired as hell but try to make it fun when clocked in. Every single day/week I check schedules every time incase they mess with it since I’m cross trained af and the other thing I look for is hoping for less hours I really don’t need the bread would rather have many days off that they can’t yell/blame at me for fulfillment failures.

 

[BullseyeBlues]

Thursday through Saturday I was pulled off crowd management to help SFS catch up after several seasonals quit midway through Thursday. Can now prep and pack. Problem is, we have 2 pack stations, and usually like 6 people trying to pack. Have tried to make the picker’s lives easier by making a list of where hot amplified gifting items are and a key of which amplified gifting fixture is which and where they are, since I got roped into being amplified gifting captain on top of hardlines captain. We’re so behind on orders it’s not even funny, despite most of us pulling anywhere from 10 to 17 hour days to try to fix the situation so we don’t get shut down. Even the STL and ETLs have now been taught to pick, prep, and pack in an effort to catch up, but honestly they just get underfoot of the people who are faster paced.

 

[Moosechives]

Honestly, PREP and SORT also just seem completely arbitrary. We don't do the "prep" process other than scan the parent and hit prep complete. And the sort process is one pallet, the trailer we're loading that is just UPS anyway. Also, what does Container Manifested mean?

Is anyone here actually USPS? Sort is completely redundant with UPS. With USPS, you actually have to sort the boxes on pallets by size or even by zip code. For UPS, we've just scanned everything onto one pallet and tossed it on our drop trailer. For "Container Manifested", corporate automatically closes out all your sorts and pallets around the expected pickup time. For example, ours is at 5pm, so if we had 50 things unsorted at that time, they would all be manifested and located on a pallet. Which pallet? fuck if I know. This is a bitch when you're still packing at the deadline and you have a conveyor belt already full of crap. Good luck figuring out which ones are manifested and which ones are new sorts. You still have to scan it through via carrier pickup when it's done though. It doesn't do that automatically for some reason.