MEGATHREAD Hang Me (The Softlines Thread)

Jenna120 said:
Yay, I found the Softlines thread!

I am new to retail so there are days when I wish I had just 10 minutes inside a guest's closet at home. 10 minutes. For 3 days in a row. Then they would feel my pain by the time I'm done.

I'm not new to phone customer service though, so playing social worker/mother confessor at times isn't too bad and I can control a call pretty well. But today I got one of those calls I absolutely hate, the ones where the person at the other end doesn't seem to need to breathe and wants to tell you their life story. Lady, I really didn't need to know that the panties you bought didn't fit past the tops of your thighs nor did I need to know that the perfume in the wipes you bought caused a rash in your, um, bikini area. And you didn't have to repeat the fit of the panties a second time. You just simply had to say that you had a return question for opened items, specifically a pack of underwear and a package of pre-moistened wipes. I didn't need the visuals.
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I am sorry, I know this is innocent

But it is probably the creepiest thing I have read on these forums.
(I am gutter brained innately, so don't feel offended)


BTW! Welcome to the Softlines thread.
 
BigEyedPhish said:
I am sorry, I know this is innocent

But it is probably the creepiest thing I have read on these forums.
(I am gutter brained innately, so don't feel offended)


BTW! Welcome to the Softlines thread.
Click to expand...

Wow, I have a dirty mind and it didn't go there, lol. :D No, definitely innocent, just the hanged clothes on the floor, every folded shirt unfolded and balled up together, makeup on the clothes, torn buttonholes and straps, the swimsuit straps wound around the bar a couple of times and fastened shut.....all the little things they do to Softlines on a daily basis.
 
Jenna120 said:
Yay, I found the Softlines thread!

I am new to retail so there are days when I wish I had just 10 minutes inside a guest's closet at home. 10 minutes. For 3 days in a row. Then they would feel my pain by the time I'm done.

I'm not new to phone customer service though, so playing social worker/mother confessor at times isn't too bad and I can control a call pretty well. But today I got one of those calls I absolutely hate, the ones where the person at the other end doesn't seem to need to breathe and wants to tell you their life story. Lady, I really didn't need to know that the panties you bought didn't fit past the tops of your thighs nor did I need to know that the perfume in the wipes you bought caused a rash in your, um, bikini area. And you didn't have to repeat the fit of the panties a second time. You just simply had to say that you had a return question for opened items, specifically a pack of underwear and a package of pre-moistened wipes. I didn't need the visuals.
Click to expand...

Welcome to retail and welcome to the softlines thread. I've been doing this thing roughly ten years now and it's amazing how people equate your job security with their right to trash everything they touch. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a parent tell a child to leave things all over the floor because they pay someone to pick that stuff up and we need to make sure they have a job. -_- Idiots.... imagine what I could accomplish on a daily basis and what kind of store we COULD have if we didn't have to be your maid service. I've had that thought myself many a day but not in the closet since. I'd really like to enter their house right after they finished cleaning up and making it beautiful and just tear it a part and leave it in shambles and tell them that I did it because I didn't want them to be bored..... muahahahaaha *cough*.....
 
I am so frustrated. In the past 2 months, we've hired two new tms...one lasted maybe 2 months, the other 3 weeks. Two more veterans left as well. We have only a handful of people left. Everyday its call outs, NCNSes, and people showing up late. End to end has been a disaster because my leadership just doesn't seem to have a clue. My ETL says she is going to work on getting me out of SL but I'm kinda stuck right now due to lack of staff. Our store usually has staff turnover but softlines seems to be the worst. I don't get it.
 
Doglover89 said:
I like this idea a lot.
Questions: 1) What happens at night?
2) What do tms with limited availability do, such as one who works only nights or weekends?
3) What is your TLs role?
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1) Since we haven't rolled out end-to-end in the rest of the store just yet, our closing routine is pretty much unchanged from before..one operator and one or two SL sales floor depending on the night. Closing has become much less of a focus most nights, things don't have to be as perfect since my morning team rolls in at least 3 times per week to clean things up. I should also mention that the four of us in our owned areas also take care of backstocking, price change, and some signing for our areas as well. I'm sure things will start to look a lot different once the full store rollout happens in a couple of weeks.
2) The issue of availability is actually pretty serious in my store now, basically the ETL in charge of the Style team (which includes softlines) schedules tms with open availability first before even looking at those with hindrances. We're located literally across the street from a State university and have a lot of students so I'm worried about how some of our dedicated and veteran tms will be negatively affected by this new scheduling procedure, but hopefully it works out.
3) Basically Leadership got split between Style (SL, home decor, domestics, and cosmetics) and Essentials (everything else). Our ETL sales floor became head of style with SrTL harldines and SrTL softlines/front end..honestly they'll pretty much be doing what they did before except now my ETL can't just ignore softlines since it's most of the style department
 
Electrilines said:
Blood-stained bottoms & foundation-stained tops!
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Yes! I think a bunch of the guests at my store are bronzing or contouring their boobs lol.

Someone tried to clean a blood bottom with like a tide pen or something or other. The cleaning chemical smell was coming from it but it was not clean. I'd never be in that situation, but I think I would've gone to self checkout and bought the damn things instead of leaving them there for someone else to find.
 
Yetive said:
Don't forget the deodorant.
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I found out stockings/pantyhose removes it pretty easily so I've been using charge back pantyhose to wipe it away. My mom saw some Walmart employees using something to remove deodorant so I googled one day.


So... I think mostly resellers bought the VB line. We're getting so many returns of it. I know this happens with every designer line but it seems to be worse with this one. I think we have more items now than we started with. On the bright side, the people who saunter in a week later to check out designer lines aren't disappointed this time lol. And I think the ridiculous skirt I like will actually go clearance
 
Ahem said:
So... I think mostly resellers bought the VB line. We're getting so many returns of it. I know this happens with every designer line but it seems to be worse with this one. I think we have more items now than we started with. On the bright side, the people who saunter in a week later to check out designer lines aren't disappointed this time lol. And I think the ridiculous skirt I like will actually go clearance
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Weird. We still have pieces left, but our VB area has shrunk to about a quarter of the starting size. There have been a few online returns we didn't start with but most of it is gone. There's a few styles that hardly anyone has touched but most of what's left are the teeny sizes.
 
It sold pretty well on days one and two. Then they condensed the racks for it, then a few days later a constant flow of returns started so it's all squished up. We have a lot of the kids stuff. No one bought the rain jackets, booties, receiving blankets. We have a million of those Wednesday Addams dresses.

We're still selling VB but it seems like the returns are outpacing the sales. In my first unsorted this morning I think I hung 15 pieces that were returned still in the plastic bags from the website.
 
Well E2E is working so very well in our softlines :heavy sarcasm: Was just informed that the team is behind on Z-racks. I was in on my day off to note the Z-racks just sitting in departments full of clothes. And I can't even seem to get on the same page with my SRTL because her shifts rarely match up with mine. If they want this darn thing to work they're going to have to pull it together and reorganize. Right now it's just a big mess. *sigh*
 
So with this SL e2e rollout, what exactly does the VMTL own? I run softlines with a second TL and put together the style team, but now I guess everyone is technically the style team. My VMTL basically just set mannequins and helped with the VA's. I set up the shoes and intimates brand team members, and no one has really been able to explain to me exactly what the VMTL owns.
 
DialMforMonkey said:
So with this SL e2e rollout, what exactly does the VMTL own? I run softlines with a second TL and put together the style team, but now I guess everyone is technically the style team. My VMTL basically just set mannequins and helped with the VA's. I set up the shoes and intimates brand team members, and no one has really been able to explain to me exactly what the VMTL owns.
Click to expand...
If you look at the guide for style team that came out this week, from what I understand, SL will have all the TM's and the MBTMs will report to the leader of the area they work in. VMTL is to set the vision or something.

The guide was in this week's Stores Weekly email... Think from Monday.
 
squirrely said:
The guide was in this week's Stores Weekly email... Think from Monday.
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Yeah I looked that over on Monday, brought it to my etl's/stl attention, and was met with confused looks. Since we're expecting all these team members to know everything are they going to be getting a pay raise? Last I knew pricing/Plano tm's were paid more then sales floor.
 
I'm not quite wanting to be on the style team, but the idea of the VML being my TL sounds appealing. He motivates me and encourages me more than my actual TL.
 
squirrely said:
If you look at the guide for style team that came out this week, from what I understand, SL will have all the TM's and the MBTMs will report to the leader of the area they work in. VMTL is to set the vision or something.

The guide was in this week's Stores Weekly email... Think from Monday.
Click to expand...

What does MBTM stand for? I get that TM is Team Member. What's MB?
 
Gotcha....thanks. Probably would have figured it out if it were not for the "M"...lol.
 
So I'm hearing different things on the softlines new roll out. You've got those talking about TMs given charge of different areas in which they do everything for that area from the floor up. Then I've been hearing that each team will have a designated person who does an individual task for that dept. I'm confused. Are both accurate?

For example, store 1 is managing all the tasks in softlines by breaking down what's to be done day by day and assigning each TM on shift to do what's scheduled for that shift to be done.

Store 2 is managing the same tasks but has assigned specific TMs for each task. So you have TMs that do all the softlines POGS, TMs that do the research and price change, and TMs that manage the truck stuff, etc. and then those TMs are scheduled according to when the processes are to be done or whatever...

Those of you who have started on E2E in your softlines dept, how is being broken down in your store? I'm just curious... We're heading that way soon ourselves.
 
RightArm said:
So I'm hearing different things on the softlines new roll out. You've got those talking about TMs given charge of different areas in which they do everything for that area from the floor up. Then I've been hearing that each team will have a designated person who does an individual task for that dept. I'm confused. Are both accurate?

For example, store 1 is managing all the tasks in softlines by breaking down what's to be done day by day and assigning each TM on shift to do what's scheduled for that shift to be done.

Store 2 is managing the same tasks but has assigned specific TMs for each task. So you have TMs that do all the softlines POGS, TMs that do the research and price change, and TMs that manage the truck stuff, etc. and then those TMs are scheduled according to when the processes are to be done or whatever...

Those of you who have started on E2E in your softlines dept, how is being broken down in your store? I'm just curious... We're heading that way soon ourselves.
Click to expand...

We started E2E but fall into neither category. We do the same tasks as before: reshop, push cafs, zone. Plano is scheduled under SL to do our pogs supervised by our SL TLs. Pricing does the pricing. We now have mids scheduled every day. That's it for the changes at my store.
 

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