MEGATHREAD Hang Me (The Softlines Thread)

[MissKitKat]

I was gone for two days, and when I came back yesterday we had 9 unsorted carts of re-shop at the fitting room. At my store, we aren't allowed to use the Z-rack anymore so we have to sort and push straight away, it makes putting away re-shop take even longer than it already did before.

 

[MissKitKat]

The worst part is, we generally have about 7-8 people on our softlines closing team (we're a pretty high volume store) and everyone has their own section. But the problem is no one ever grabs their own re-shop so it's left up to the Operator only. It would help if everyone could just grab their own stuff when they came in but they don't since the TL/LOD doesn't enforce it.

 

[RightArm]

Just a slight correction, NOP and dicontinued items can be backstocked, it just isn't the best idea. I'm not sure if you exactly meant it isn't possible or just not a great idea. And, clearance can be backstocked also. Still not the best idea, but sometimes there is no choice. If there is no room on the floor, the choice becomes either leave it sitting on a tub/flat on the line or backstock it. A HL example is clearance furniture. Fill the floor with representative pieces, then backstock the rest on pallets.

I'm sorry, I was speaking from the POV of my own store. I wasn't aware that that that was not the case in other stores. In my store our backroom ETL will NOT allow NOP, discontinued, or clearance to be backstocked from the Softlines side. We have to find new and creative ways to make sure it stays on the floor and if all else fails our backroom ETL will backstock *new* product to make room for NOP, discontinued, and clearance until it is processed down so that the new product can fit back in.

 

[RightArm]

The worst part is, we generally have about 7-8 people on our softlines closing team (we're a pretty high volume store) and everyone has their own section. But the problem is no one ever grabs their own re-shop so it's left up to the Operator only. It would help if everyone could just grab their own stuff when they came in but they don't since the TL/LOD doesn't enforce it.

Yeh, it's terrible when your leadership doesn't enforce best practices. Is your operator on blue tooth (headset)? where he/she can walk around and do go backs? I've heard it's done that way in some stores but ours is still using a phone at the desk and the operator stays in the fitting room the whole night. She/he answers phones and takes care of reshop/returns and sees to guests going in and out with clothes to try on.

 

[Rolf]

The worst part is, we generally have about 7-8 people on our softlines closing team (we're a pretty high volume store) and everyone has their own section. But the problem is no one ever grabs their own re-shop so it's left up to the Operator only. It would help if everyone could just grab their own stuff when they came in but they don't since the TL/LOD doesn't enforce it.

Yeh, it's terrible when your leadership doesn't enforce best practices. Is your operator on blue tooth (headset)? where he/she can walk around and do go backs? I've heard it's done that way in some stores but ours is still using a phone at the desk and the operator stays in the fitting room the whole night. She/he answers phones and takes care of reshop/returns and sees to guests going in and out with clothes to try on.

Depending on who is working operator and how much guest traffic is at the fitting room, our operator can use a cordless phone. At the very least, this is incredibly helpful for our sales floor team members when the operator needs to go on break.

 

[Rolf]

I was gone for two days, and when I came back yesterday we had 9 unsorted carts of re-shop at the fitting room. At my store, we aren't allowed to use the Z-rack anymore so we have to sort and push straight away, it makes putting away re-shop take even longer than it already did before.

We still get away with the Z-rack luckily, but there is an actual garment rack for the Fitting Room, which isn't as effective or large as a z-rack, but it is considered acceptable and best practice. Our SFT ordered it for us not too long ago. It might not eliminate NINE carts of reshop, but it would definitely help. Maybe you can ask your SFT or Softlines TL to look into it.

 

[kingpin003]

We still get away with the Z-rack luckily, but there is an actual garment rack for the Fitting Room, which isn't as effective or large as a z-rack, but it is considered acceptable and best practice. Our SFT ordered it for us not too long ago. It might not eliminate NINE carts of reshop, but it would definitely help. Maybe you can ask your SFT or Softlines TL to look into it.

I came in to 6 z's of reshop this morning... I need lots of garment racks... :senile:

 

[EvilKitty]

My store has recently switched the TLs around, and the one we got had to go have shoulder surgery. We also lost 9 veterans who were there for more than 3 years, some of them 10 years. I have been there fore 8 years and am a former TL (stepped down for college). We now only have one person during the day, and this is the shoe brand tm. She gets stuck putting away the left over abandons from the night before. There are only 2 closing TMs most nights, and our store is 80th in the company for RTW. Our fitting rooms have a line for several hours a day. We end up leaving at least 4 z's and six or more unsorted carts. We have a horrble looking shoe dept (32nd in the company) because no one is there to maintain it. They have hired two new TMs to replace the ones we lost, and one of them has diabetes and a bad shoulder. The other one is a lazy smart ass who quit a comission based sales job (I would not have hired her because her excuses for quitting are lame and a red flag). We never get caught up. The Hardlines guys can't help with the z's because they put everything away in the wrong place so we have them only do the infant hl zone. Our zone looks so bad most of the time that all the racks look like clearance racks. The truck team refuses to backstock anything so it is crammed everywhere in the back two rows, and we are not allowed to flex anything to the front two rows unless it is totally empty. So the back is torn up and unshoppable, and the front looks empty. I am very frustrated with the company right now. How can they only schedule one person on the sf during the day when we are making 120k a day? I am getting to hate closing because it feels like I am being set up for failure every night. Last night, the fitting room person left after a half hour, and one of the rookies called in. So I came in on my day off. We had no one in the fitting room. Service scores are red company wide so maybe the problem is not all of us being lazy!

 

[konk]

That sucks. I can say however that being a diabetic is no excuse.

 

[EvilKitty]

Well, she is an older lady and is retired. She feels sick after an eight hour day and only wants to work 4 hr shifts. I think she thought it was going to be a fun, easy stress free job to keep her from being bored. Her son offered her money to quit and her husband wants her to quit. She is very slow, and also can't see well. My boss helps us zone, but she wants to go behind and superzone everything. I have to tell her that we have no time for that and pick up the pace. I feel like I am the boss again. Which is funny, because I never got a raise this year. When the older lady want to skip breaks, my boss tells her to go and praises her for the "good attitude." Niceness and good attitude aside, it doesn't get the job done.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Well, she is an older lady and is retired. She feels sick after an eight hour day and only wants to work 4 hr shifts. I think she thought it was going to be a fun, easy stress free job to keep her from being bored. Her son offered her money to quit and her husband wants her to quit. She is very slow, and also can't see well. My boss helps us zone, but she wants to go behind and superzone everything. I have to tell her that we have no time for that and pick up the pace. I feel like I am the boss again. Which is funny, because I never got a raise this year. When the older lady want to skip breaks, my boss tells her to go and praises her for the "good attitude." Niceness and good attitude aside, it doesn't get the job done.

At least, she tries to do the job. My bet is, no call outs from her, either.

 

[MissKitKat]

The worst part is, we generally have about 7-8 people on our softlines closing team (we're a pretty high volume store) and everyone has their own section. But the problem is no one ever grabs their own re-shop so it's left up to the Operator only. It would help if everyone could just grab their own stuff when they came in but they don't since the TL/LOD doesn't enforce it.

Yeh, it's terrible when your leadership doesn't enforce best practices. Is your operator on blue tooth (headset)? where he/she can walk around and do go backs? I've heard it's done that way in some stores but ours is still using a phone at the desk and the operator stays in the fitting room the whole night. She/he answers phones and takes care of reshop/returns and sees to guests going in and out with clothes to try on.

We usually use a cordless, not a headset. It certainly helps. I guess the problem is that from about 8am-4pm the Operator is the only one in all of SL. Maybe in lower volume stores that can fly, but it definitely cannot here

 

[MissKitKat]

Does anyone else have a HUGE problem with overstocking things in SL (particularly RTW)? I mean, our Clearance racks in RTW are SO full, we literally cannot fit anything onto them. We currently have 14 clearance racks, as well as two tables of clearance. Is that normal?! Whenever I zone RTW there is an ocean of clearance on the floor from guests since they have to remove items to even look at the clothes!, Not to mention that almost all of our regular racks are so full you can barely zone them without everything falling off onto the floor! Tables aren't AS bad, but a lot of the time I noticed that the morning team who puts out the product doesn't backstock anything, they just set it behind the other shirts (which then fall over, get dirty, and fall onto the ground). Ugh. It's getting so frustrating.

 

[babytrees]

Does anyone else have a HUGE problem with overstocking things in SL (particularly RTW)? I mean, our Clearance racks in RTW are SO full, we literally cannot fit anything onto them. We currently have 14 clearance racks, as well as two tables of clearance. Is that normal?! Whenever I zone RTW there is an ocean of clearance on the floor from guests since they have to remove items to even look at the clothes!, Not to mention that almost all of our regular racks are so full you can barely zone them without everything falling off onto the floor! Tables aren't AS bad, but a lot of the time I noticed that the morning team who puts out the product doesn't backstock anything, they just set it behind the other shirts (which then fall over, get dirty, and fall onto the ground). Ugh. It's getting so frustrated.

I haven't counted our clearance racks but that is about right. We were finally able to convince the backroom to properly backstock our backstock so that the tables looked decent. THEN our horrid backroom ETL got his way and the sales floor looks the worst it has in years. But his backroom...is so clean, too bad the guests can't shop back there.

 

[MissKitKat]

The biggest difference in SL that I noticed since I transferred to a new store is that the FR position is different. For instance, at my previous store the Operator had to go up for backup, even with the phone. Sometimes I had to ring out guests while I helped a guest on the phone. They never, ever do that at my new store. At my old store the phone also rang overhead all the time, we never took it off, usually because the Operator and one other person had to zone all of SL together and the cordless didn't ring. At this store the Operator doesn't zone, and the phone never rings overheard, it either rings to the cordless or the phone at the FR. (Definitely liking the new store more, haha.)

 

[RightArm]

Does anyone else have a HUGE problem with overstocking things in SL (particularly RTW)? I mean, our Clearance racks in RTW are SO full, we literally cannot fit anything onto them. We currently have 14 clearance racks, as well as two tables of clearance. Is that normal?! Whenever I zone RTW there is an ocean of clearance on the floor from guests since they have to remove items to even look at the clothes!, Not to mention that almost all of our regular racks are so full you can barely zone them without everything falling off onto the floor! Tables aren't AS bad, but a lot of the time I noticed that the morning team who puts out the product doesn't backstock anything, they just set it behind the other shirts (which then fall over, get dirty, and fall onto the ground). Ugh. It's getting so frustrated.

I haven't counted our clearance racks but that is about right. We were finally able to convince the backroom to properly backstock our backstock so that the tables looked decent. THEN our horrid backroom ETL got his way and the sales floor looks the worst it has in years. But his backroom...is so clean, too bad the guests can't shop back there.

LOL! Now you sound like you're at my store. Our backroom ETL is the same way. As for clearance we're often borrowing high capacities from other departments and changing them out with the quads in RTW so we can fit more clothing. Thing is our PATL is very neat, organized, and orderly. Making sure clearance is done right and has as much room as we can deliver benefits his team as well as ours so we're not fighting that particular battle alone. I won't say our racks aren't occasionally over-stuffed but it's not an all over RTW problem. And certainly we can still find the floor covered with clearance but it's often more because the guests shop that way than it is because things are so full they can't move.

 

[Yesmaamthatwillfit2013]

Omg.. Same problems here clearance is a disaster and the PATL can barely get through RTW on Tuesdays let alone make it look nice. I try to skim the tables and I swear the crap just keeps getting pushed back.. There I sometimes no winning especially when the VA workload is huge and there is like noone to do it. What do your guys routines in softlines look like? Anyone have a great SL area they like to share tips on?

 

[RightArm]

Omg.. Same problems here clearance is a disaster and the PATL can barely get through RTW on Tuesdays let alone make it look nice. I try to skim the tables and I swear the crap just keeps getting pushed back.. There I sometimes no winning especially when the VA workload is huge and there is like noone to do it. What do your guys routines in softlines look like? Anyone have a great SL area they like to share tips on?

When I said our PATL is neat and organized I meant that all our clearance racks are not only separated by % they are also separated by size. His team does this during their mark down process and our zoners just keep it that way when they zone. Our guests have said we have the best clearance areas of any of the local stores and they like being able to go to the racks with their sizes on them instead of having to sort through everything we have.

 

[kingpin003]

I had to teach myself how to read the adjacency to set tables. But! We finished 100% of the workload for this week. :excited: Which is awesome because I only had 3 days to do it in and every time I tried delegating tasks to the other openers, the morning LODs pulled them. We're celebrating the little wins though, and hoping next week doesn't overwhelm. Closing team is still very weak and even with ample TMs still did not finish recovering the store. Any tips for how to make the closers more productive? Maybe a routine or strategy you've seen be successful...

 

[RightArm]

I had to teach myself how to read the adjacency to set tables. But! We finished 100% of the workload for this week. :excited: Which is awesome because I only had 3 days to do it in and every time I tried delegating tasks to the other openers, the morning LODs pulled them. We're celebrating the little wins though, and hoping next week doesn't overwhelm. Closing team is still very weak and even with ample TMs still did not finish recovering the store. Any tips for how to make the closers more productive? Maybe a routine or strategy you've seen be successful...

Can you tell us how many closers you routinely have on ERT for SL? Two? Three? How are your areas typically divided for zone? Boys/Girls... Infants/BBW... etc.One of the issues we had to work through was getting our ETLs standing LOD to understand which areas took more time and which were really fast. In other words they were putting too many of the more time consuming zones together so that a zoner was set up to fail right from the start while giving another zoner too many of the less time consuming zones so they had time to finish theirs and just goof off for the remainder of their time. The work load really needs to be divided as evenly as possible. Another thing... are you zoning RTW before store opens? Or is it part of the ERT work load?

 

[kingpin003]

This week it's been anywhere from 2(where we split up front/back- one starts in Men's, the other in girls and work toward each other then do the same in RTW) to last night we had 4(1: RTW + Sleepwear, 2: Mens + Hardlines Baby, 3: Infant Hanging + Shoes, 4: Boys, Girls, Accessories). We are a Low Volume 6AM store and our opener comes in at 9AM so we have to recover it at night.

 

[Reshopper]

We're a lower volume store and this is how we've been closing:
-The operator (if we have one at night) will zone men's and activewear
-We generally get the GSA/GSTL to get themselves or another cashier zoning in girls and accessories.
-We have 2-3 team members wave through softlines. Depending on how the zone is going, they will either stay together or split up once rtw is done. It's up to the softlines captain (usually the TLOD)
-One TM does softlines reshop all night, unless the TLOD/LOD decides that the team needs help zoning.

We usually get a decent looking zone, but it's been so busy lately and we've been understaffed, that our one zoner tonight was unable to even get through RTW's zone. And supposedly our store focus is Apparel and Accessories this month. Sad.

 

[EvilKitty]

We do a wave zone, with everyone zoning together. Each person takes a row, and leap-frogs to the next. It helped immensely with ncns, because people knew eachother better. Most of us on the closing crew are friends, and people don't want to screw their friends. It also helped with turnover. The only exception is like last night, we had 4 closers and normally there are two. So 2 started in RTW, and two in Mens. We worked our way toward eachother. Honestly if we had to close alone, in areas like we did when I first started there, I would not have made the friends I did. It also helps with training, so that if someone skips something or does it wrong, others are there to address it.

 

[babytrees]

wave zoning doesn't usually work in our store because we have a bunch of nincompoops. They are slow, wander off and chat with each other incessantly when they have adjoining areas and are way worse when in the same area. We also don't have any midday zoners or openers most of the time so we are constantly playing catch up. One of our best is on a LOA. And our TL's are getting the shaft when it comes to hours also.
It doesn't help that as a FRO I have been filling three z racks (at least) a night between re-shop and the items guests don't want. At one point recently they put about 5 in the back room so that there was less swamping the fitting room.

 

[lovecats]

I know this has absolutely nothing to do with this thread but every time I read the title (Hang Me) I keep hearing the Roger Miller song, "Dang Me!". Am I the only one?