MEGATHREAD Flexible Fulfillment

[Guest]

It has been a nightmare since Friday. Guest service is covered with items. Video games, movies, toys, small appliances, clothes, shoes, and Christmas trees. I bet the scores at my store for FF are terrible this week because so many orders were either unfulfilled or late. I left at 10:05pm tonight and there were 9 FF orders still in the PDA. I spent over 6 hours of my shift on the salesfloor pulling FF orders today.

 

[SFSFun]

Going from SHP ZA to SHP ZB wouldn't prevent any "hold location in use" errors that could occur or maybe I just don't get it. Not saying you're wrong I just don't understand is all.

When you go to "create shipping hold locations" on the PDA, you can choose parent/child or single. Single locations have reserved the letters ZA through ZZ.

Single hold locations can have multiple items from multiple batches in them at any time, even after a batch has been completed and scanned into hold. We have a tub for this purpose, and any large items get scanned into it. If we later have another large item, we can still scan it in to that tub, even if the other item from the previous batch is still waiting to be packed. No "hold location in use" error.

So just take that and multiply it, with every tier of every cart being its own single hold location.

I guess we wouldn't have to use a different letter combo for each cart, but it would be hella confusing not to.

It has been a nightmare since Friday. Guest service is covered with items. Video games, movies, toys, small appliances, clothes, shoes, and Christmas trees. I bet the scores at my store for FF are terrible this week because so many orders were either unfulfilled or late. I left at 10:05pm tonight and there were 9 FF orders still in the PDA. I spent over 6 hours of my shift on the salesfloor pulling FF orders today.

Yeah today was a bit insane. We lost a TM for regular SFS tasks because it was too inefficient to have the rest of the team randomly stop what they were doing to go pick one order. Store pickups were literally the only thing she did for her entire shift.

Our hold area was not too messy because we cleaned it up before the crush of Thanksgiving orders that never ended up coming. Only problem was TMs kept taking the trees away with the reshop.

 

[CrimsonRaven712]

Our store doesn't seem to get an outrageous number of FF. We also do not a specific team to do them, it is just whichever backroom person gets to them. Myself or my TL usually do the ones from from overnight after we finish with autos (we are a 4am store, 2am for 4th quarter) and then the openers will just grab them as they drop.

One big issue we have in our store is that our return to stocks never seem to be there. I have no idea how this is happening but I'm guessing that guest services pulls them at night but doesn't actually shoot them out of the gun, but I'm not positive.

 

[Kroneru]

@SFSFun Ahhhhhh, I'm so dumb. I forgot about single locations. Thanks

The collates. They aren't printing. Close to a dozen vehicles of merchandise and only 13 collates printed... 701 said it's a global issue and just wait while they fix the issue.

 

[H2Owned]

@SFSFun Ahhhhhh, I'm so dumb. I forgot about single locations. Thanks

The collates. They aren't printing. Close to a dozen vehicles of merchandise and only 13 collates printed... 701 said it's a global issue and just wait while they fix the issue.

Yeah we are having the same issue at my store we still had 30 pick batches left and all 27 of our carts were full. So the stl told us to use shopping carts and make new locations. ... soon the guests will run out of shopping carts lol

 

[SFSFun]

One big issue we have in our store is that our return to stocks never seem to be there. I have no idea how this is happening but I'm guessing that guest services pulls them at night but doesn't actually shoot them out of the gun, but I'm not positive.

Either the guest service TMs are complete fucking idiots and just give the guests their orders without actually processing it on the iPad. Or they are ringing out a lot of orders through the POS for various reasons and don't understand the repercussions of not cancelling the order when they do that.

If your ETL starts complaining about the RTS metric, just manually key in the DPCI instead of hitting item not here when you can't find the item.

 

[Moosechives]

I was so pissed today because of no collates...We would've easily come clean today but nooooooo we have to go into cyber monday with freakin 50+ carts of packs to do. Stuff didnt even start printing until I was getting ready to leave ._.

Yeah we are having the same issue at my store we still had 30 pick batches left and all 27 of our carts were full. So the stl told us to use shopping carts and make new locations. ... soon the guests will run out of shopping carts lol

Put those locations on a blank sheet of paper and laminate it. That way you can use them again if you need to.

Either the guest service TMs are complete fucking idiots and just give the guests their orders without actually processing it on the iPad. Or they are ringing out a lot of orders through the POS for various reasons and don't understand the repercussions of not cancelling the order when they do that.

The guys up front always do that too. Today, I had the misfortune of finding out that a bunch of TMs were not putting the SPUs in hold after picking them ._. I came into like 16 put into holds with tubs of obvious SPUs sitting right across from the hold location not scanned in.

 

[thatguyattarget]

I was told this morning in a huddle that it was out of whack, company-wide.

 

[Mysterious]

This morning, my flexible fulfillment orders were in the low triple digits. Another TL and myself spent most of our shift trying to complete the orders. We knocked it down to 50. It's time consuming. We had guests who were mad that we couldn't fulfill their orders in a timely manner or at all. Too many guests in-store that prevents it. Barely any help from the ETLs, but what can you do. Try your best.

What makes matters worse is that our iPads at GS stopped working for some odd reason, so it's messing with our location audit.

Even our SFS numbers are bad.

I can't wait until the holidays are over. My DTL gonna be mad, lol. Gotta keep moving.

 

[PogDog]

7am: I arrive to find 4 carts of packing from yesterday, 136 orders to batch. Batch them and start picking.

8:30: fill first cart. Scan to station. Expecting another SFS TM soon. Start second cart.

9am: TM arrives. She starts packing yesterday's workload. No collates from today yet. Notice 50some more orders to batch.

11am: Finish second cart and return to scan into station. TM finishes yesterday's packing workload. Final SFS TM arrives, no collates from today yet. They both start picking, I go to lunch.

11:45am: return from lunch, still no collates. Start my third cart.

Noon: last TM returns to drop off big items. Finds 9 collates from today. Stays to pack.

1:30pm: Finish third cart. No new collates since last 9 printed. Neighbor store doing SFS calls and reports same no collates printing issue. They think they can do a work around with Manhattan. But we couldn't print collates using same method. So, we keep picking.

3pm: worried about what we should do if no collates print. Talked to TL/LOD. Flex and backroom stuff until collates appear is the plan. We continue picking.

3:05pm: 50 collates print! Relief sweeps across team. We continue picking while one TM stays to pack.

3:30pm: I clock out and wish team luck. 6+ carts to pack and two open batches left. Last TM leaves at 7pm. Hoping to return tomorrow at 9am to clear line and no issues.

Thinking that corporate is trying to prepare for the Cyber onslaught tomorrow. Decided to tweak servers/database. Poor timing for that.

This made me realize just how young and vulnerable the entire process is. Hoping an update to the scanning app comes soon and transfers to the MyDevice. Hate the redundancy in the application when pulling from backroom. Hate that saying an item isn't here doesn't adjust the on-hands counts and then auto skips picking those items from future batches. numerous other annoyances that just make me want to chuck the PDA across backroom. Com'on Target, get your shit together. We've been doing this for a month or two, can't imagine the pilot stores dealing with this for over a year now.

 

[Moosechives]

We've been doing this for a month or two, can't imagine the pilot stores dealing with this for over a year now.

Be glad. There was one time during the pilot where any kind of suspension of a batch permanently locked you out and you had to call CSC to unlock it within 24-72 hours. I'm pretty sure we all knew each others names by the time that was finished.

 

[PogDog]

Be glad. There was one time during the pilot where any kind of suspension of a batch permanently locked you out and you had to call CSC to unlock it within 24-72 hours. I'm pretty sure we all knew each others names by the time that was finished.

I don't envy that at all. Been luck in the scheme of things. Wish corporate would ask for feed back from the field. Someway to report ideas to simply the process and streamline for better productivity.

 

[Retail Girl]

Either the guest service TMs are complete fucking idiots and just give the guests their orders without actually processing it on the iPad. Or they are ringing out a lot of orders through the POS for various reasons and don't understand the repercussions of not cancelling the order when they do that.

If your ETL starts complaining about the RTS metric, just manually key in the DPCI instead of hitting item not here when you can't find the item.

Let me explain something. Let's say you look up an order to pull for a guest on mygo. Let's say it takes a while to find it because things are piled to hell and back, the pick labels aren't on there, or the item is in the back. By the time we get back to the ipad, we have to re enter the pin to get into it.

When mygo comes up, it looks like you can hit "process" really quickly, but in reality, it kicks you back to the main list where you have to refund the guest's name and process the order.

In the meantime, the guest just wants their item and to leave, and five other people are staring at you wanting something done RIGHT NOW.

Now...do you want to talk about the back room team members who put everything in a pile on the floor, refuse to put on the pick labels causing us to put stuff back on the floor because we have no idea what the hell it is, or just plain lose orders in back because they don't know where their own hold locations are (and never do their own return to stocks until their etl bitches at the front end for there being return to stocks in the gun that aren't ours).

Or can we agree that some of us are doing the best we can under an avalanche of guest crap.

 

[Tarjayyy]

Today=Flexible NIGHTMARE.

I came into 198 orders to be picked, so I batched and was picking, so 3 batches later I come back to the desk for a new cart, another 48 orders to pick.
Okay I start to panic just a little, our order cap is 200 and we hit max yesterday so there were no carryover orders.
So I grab another cart to pick and pick three more batches, go back to the station, no collates, but that's right 32 more orders.
WTF .
I partner thrwith TL we call CSC, global issue with collates.
Get off phone with CSC, 27 more orders to batch.
Pick 3 more batches, return to station. 26 more orders to batch.
WTF.
Call CSC about order max, the system could not determine cutoff because of glitch so we were going to get a "few additional orders." Get off phone 47 more batches drop.
WTF squared.
Partner with TL and ETL, have a "Guess what- if you have PDA you are picking SFS party with team"
Still no collates, workaround isn't working.
Thinking about drinking a entire bottle of wine.
No collates.
Helping everyone not trained enough with SFS pick batches.
White or red when I get home.
NO COLLATES STILL WTF?
Make some new carts, I am at the letter X. Never thought I would have to make a cart X. WTF.
I think a nice red, two glasses. I hear my name over the walkie for the 1000 time.
STL comes in and I brief of the status of SFS, shows me the "workaround" that isn't working.
Another 23 drop in to be picked, but then it goes dark grey, no more orders will drop. 401 total for the day almost double.
Yep, no wine, vodka tonight. To celebrate cart Y the end of the SFS alphabet and making through explaining everything to the STL without any bloodshed.
WTF.
Pick.
Pick.
Collates begin to push through, trained 12 people on SFS, debrief the closing LOD, luckily an already trained closer knows SFS and will be packing as collates as they come through.
Pick.
Pick.
Pick.
Pick.
Pick.
Clock out for the day.
Home with a nice appletini, to celebrate the fact that at least we were green with pick on time.

 

[GlitterBerries]

Because of our successful run of 211 orders on Thursday, STL asked and had our limit increased to 220 today and we're adding a fifth person... for the next two weeks.

Oh boy, Oh boy

Oh boy, Oh boy

I'm liking the stretch Armstrong version of House you got going on there

 

[SFSFun]

@Retail Girl
I could understand that if it was just one or two orders, but I had days where I would come in to find 10+ orders under RTS, and none of them were there. And we were actually prepared for the increase in volume with around 90 hold locations available.

@Tarjayyy
Wow what a nightmare... Glad I was off today.

I really hope the system ignoring order caps was not a global issue because there is no way in hell that we can handle double our cap of 300.

 

[Ringwraith917]

It has been a nightmare since Friday. Guest service is covered with items. Video games, movies, toys, small appliances, clothes, shoes, and Christmas trees. I bet the scores at my store for FF are terrible this week because so many orders were either unfulfilled or late. I left at 10:05pm tonight and there were 9 FF orders still in the PDA. I spent over 6 hours of my shift on the salesfloor pulling FF orders today.

My store is very similar to this, only the "normal" number of FlexFills we get is about 2 per hour. Usually we keep the gun clear. I left this afternoon & there were still 24 FFs to pull. Since Friday, our backroom looks like a bomb exploded, there are flats and pallets of unworked freight everywhere, and backstock galore. Best of all there seems to have been zero extra hours allocated to backroom this week.
I hate FF so much right now. Can't find anything in our store that isn't on loc in the backroom. It's like guests look on the shelf, see that it's empty, check online, see that it's "available for pick-up" & go ahead and order it. It's seriously driving me crazy.

 

[Retail Girl]

And I could understand if it were one or two orders missing the labels with the guest name on them. But it was 90% until early last week when I came close to threatening someone's life. So welcome to the other side...where we are lucky to get half the stuff up there and in any way that makes sense...much less figure out where the missing RTS stuff ends up.

 

[Nauzhror]

Hah. I left at 10:30 with virtually nothing packed, and 8.5 batches left to pick.

 

[greatteam]

Guest places order
PDA receives order
Guest receives email that their order has been placed
TM pulls order, stocks, and all that
Guest receives email that says order is ready for pick up
Guest comes in, pick from hold, process on iPad.
Guest leaves happy with stuff



Today:
System quits without notice
Guest places order
PDA receives order
Guest receives email "order placed"
Pick, stock, etc
Guest receives email "order ready for pick up"
Guest comes into store
"Hi sorry we're having a global issue. Our iPads are unable to process online orders. We can't cancel them either, so you can cancel it and we can ring it up on the register for you. Oh it won't let you cancel? Well we can still ring it up but you're going to need to call that number to cancel it."
Guest calls number
Number hangs up on guest
Guest angry
Guest rage
"I'm sorry but this is all I can do! I can give you a few apology coupons!"
Guest doesn't like this answer
Guest very angry
Guest will never do this again
Ring items up
Guest Redcard declined
Guest calls RedCard Services
RedCard services tells guest "yes yes we will fix the problem! Place me on the phone with the team member!"
I take phone
"Hello"
"Yes I'm sorry but --click---"
Explain to guest that the people who said they would help her have hung up on me
Call again
RedCard Services hangs up on guest
Guest wants to cancel card.
Guest cuts up card
Guest no longer wants merchandise
Guest leaves in a rage




Corporate, for the love of that little tiny dog will you PLEASE GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!

HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO SEND GUESTS AN EMAIL THAT SAYS "Every thing is currently fucked. We apologize. We will inform you of when it will be unfucked."

How hard?!?!

If you expect us to Vibe all of the time then do the damn same yourselves for the love of all that is red.

I'm getting sick of this shit!

 

[thatGSgal]

Guest places order
PDA receives order
Guest receives email that their order has been placed
TM pulls order, stocks, and all that
Guest receives email that says order is ready for pick up
Guest comes in, pick from hold, process on iPad.
Guest leaves happy with stuff



Today:
System quits without notice
Guest places order
PDA receives order
Guest receives email "order placed"
Pick, stock, etc
Guest receives email "order ready for pick up"
Guest comes into store
"Hi sorry we're having a global issue. Our iPads are unable to process online orders. We can't cancel them either, so you can cancel it and we can ring it up on the register for you. Oh it won't let you cancel? Well we can still ring it up but you're going to need to call that number to cancel it."
Guest calls number
Number hangs up on guest
Guest angry
Guest rage
"I'm sorry but this is all I can do! I can give you a few apology coupons!"
Guest doesn't like this answer
Guest very angry
Guest will never do this again
Ring items up
Guest Redcard declined
Guest calls RedCard Services
RedCard services tells guest "yes yes we will fix the problem! Place me on the phone with the team member!"
I take phone
"Hello"
"Yes I'm sorry but --click---"
Explain to guest that the people who said they would help her have hung up on me
Call again
RedCard Services hangs up on guest
Guest wants to cancel card.
Guest cuts up card
Guest no longer wants merchandise
Guest leaves in a rage




Corporate, for the love of that little tiny dog will you PLEASE GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!

HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO SEND GUESTS AN EMAIL THAT SAYS "Every thing is currently fucked. We apologize. We will inform you of when it will be unfucked."

How hard?!?!

If you expect us to Vibe all of the time then do the damn same yourselves for the love of all that is red.

I'm getting sick of this shit!

This was so infuriating today. Before it went down, I was trying to process someone's order and it kept giving me an error, so I went into the POS to do it and they went on their way. Twenty minutes later they're calling because they received an email confirmation that their order was picked up-- so now they've been charged twice.
The guest is extremely angry since he had to wait such a long time and do this roundabout way to begin with and now he has to come to the store to get a refund for the purchase using the POS. I just had no words to say. I apologized profusely and they hung up on me.

Once the system fully went down, we could look up the item location using their order number and asking the backroom to look it up, provided that they had it with them. Otherwise, if they didn't have the number, we were just running to all FIVE different hold locations throughout the store aimlessly looking for their items and then trying to explain that we would have to reprocess their transaction. Every time the guest would say, "Well, I've already paid online," and every time I would have to explain that they would need to cancel their order or that the order would cancel if they didn't pick up their items within four days and therefore not be charged.

It also made me angry when the backroom would keep fulfilling more orders. Like, why couldn't corporate put a hold on online ordering until this shit got fixed? More people getting confirmation emails that their order is ready, and then getting angry at us when they have to deal with this.

I left work at 4pm so hopefully the issue is resolved because today is Cyber Monday.
This was not my day.
/rant

 

[PullMonkey]

So this is why the service desk kept calling back to ask me about flex orders...
No one told me what was going on. :/

 

[Guest]

This was my face pretty much every time I went to guest service to put an item up for FF during black Friday weekend.

View attachment 1533

 

[greatteam]

This was so infuriating today. Before it went down, I was trying to process someone's order and it kept giving me an error, so I went into the POS to do it and they went on their way. Twenty minutes later they're calling because they received an email confirmation that their order was picked up-- so now they've been charged twice.
The guest is extremely angry since he had to wait such a long time and do this roundabout way to begin with and now he has to come to the store to get a refund for the purchase using the POS. I just had no words to say. I apologized profusely and they hung up on me.

Once the system fully went down, we could look up the item location using their order number and asking the backroom to look it up, provided that they had it with them. Otherwise, if they didn't have the number, we were just running to all FIVE different hold locations throughout the store aimlessly looking for their items and then trying to explain that we would have to reprocess their transaction. Every time the guest would say, "Well, I've already paid online," and every time I would have to explain that they would need to cancel their order or that the order would cancel if they didn't pick up their items within four days and therefore not be charged.

It also made me angry when the backroom would keep fulfilling more orders. Like, why couldn't corporate put a hold on online ordering until this shit got fixed? More people getting confirmation emails that their order is ready, and then getting angry at us when they have to deal with this.

I left work at 4pm so hopefully the issue is resolved because today is Cyber Monday.
This was not my day.
/rant

I just don't get it. It's like we can't acknowledge that we are experiencing an issue because it might break the image of Target as a high functioning store and upset the guest. But yet we upset the guest to the point of wanting to avoid our stores.

It's like the other week when Redcards went down. Could we put a sign on the door saying we were having an issue? No, because it's not brand. Just wait until the guest gets up to check out and tell them "oh by the way our store card isn't working today. Technical errors. Sorry! Got another card? No? Only came with that one because you were only coming here? Well sorry! Sucks for you! You can call the number and complain but they might hang up on you!"

Why aren't we getting more RedCards? Well, maybe because the self checkouts do not ask anything about them and the person watching them can only speak to one person at a time about them, plus the added fact that people who HAD them have experienced your abysmal call center people and decided to nix it.

Don't tell the store teams to get more cards and then treat the guest like ass after we rope them in.

Also, when a guest is upset that their card is not going through, the person on the help line would do well to NOT say "well I don't work for Target. It's not my problem. Goodbye."

Seriously. Our call centers have gone to utter and complete shit. They were useless before, but now they are both useless and rude.

 

[Guest]

Signs are a no-no at Target. They're not "brand". HAHA! Customers want to get their way and they want it now. They don't give a shit if your store sucks.