MEGATHREAD Hang Me (The Softlines Thread)

Doglover89 said:
Next week SL starts pushing the truck in my store. Word on the street is that I'm going to be responsible for pushing all hanging BY MYSELF with one other coworker responsible for the folded, etc. in carts. Does this sound right? I'm pissed. We get 5 trucks a week, and I am scheduled for only 3 of those days but my ETL is making me switch my schedule so that I'll be there for 4 of the 5. Why do I feel like this is going to be an epic cluster f*ck?
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In our store SL owns the z-racks and Flow owns the carts. So flow breaks down the truck and sorts and hangs. They push all zracks into their departments and then start on the carts. Once they clear the carts they join the HL side of flow to help there. SL schedules under VM a merchandiser for the z-racks. But I understand that the volume of the store is probably determining how everything is broken down. And I know this isn't the final set up for us. It's just the start.

We're slated for the 2.0 upgrade in June some time... once that happens it will be interesting to see how it changes again.
 
Ahem said:
I... Thought we worked in the same store until the part after this. I had 9 unsorted this morning, there were call outs Saturday, and Sunday night was... Well clearly terrible because I guess I left myself 9 carts lol (clopened the fitting room)
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I think it largely has to do with your set up, your leadership, and how well you're equipped to succeed. Our SRTL takes it personally if the FR blows up. She won't stand for it, even if she has to call a smart huddle of the TLs to unbury it. One year she had TLs from HL pushing zracks of gobacks in SL because she told them it was part of being "global" and she needed help. The point is, she doesn't just gripe about it and do nothing. She makes sure it gets done. Some of you have that kind of leadership in your stores too and some of you, unfortunately, do not. It does make the difference.

I'm hoping the new schedule will address the issue of bodies on the floor to get the work done. I feel like without someone to keep an eye on it, the truck push could easily usurp the reshop in a constant battle to get everything done.
 
Doglover89 said:
What volume are your stores? I'm in an A, and we've always had 2-3 on racks and 1-2 on carts/other stuff. Do you come clean after every truck? We rarely if ever do and that's with the 4 regular softlines flow folks working, plus sometimes us SL folks or other flow people helping.
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A volume too. We come "clean" in the sense that every rack is worked. But they're only supposed to keep 2-3 of each size on the floor, so the remainder gets sent to the backroom where it won't be touched for months.

The TM who does it has an 8-hour shift and is the most veteran softlines TM. They might have two people doing racks on Saturdays.
 
Doglover89 said:
Wow, really? Not allowed in my store. We only have hanging backstock during 4th quarter and even then my leadership hates it.
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Likewise and when we had hanging in fourth quarter and the backroom was griping along the lines of "Who's going to remember to come get it?" we told them our TL had it all planned out. By the end of 4th quarter we had cleared all the bars and purged most of the stockroom. After that they quit questioning our methods.

Is it just me or are they sending a lot more folded items for the tables than in the past? I used to get one set to fill the table once and then replenishment would come in pieces in the trucks and now it's like I get two whole sets for a table up front and have to backstock half of it. -_-
 
@RightArm that day I came in to 9 carts my etl had the smart huddle in the fitting room. It was kinda hilarious because some things they didn't quite get (like you can't use a toddler hanger on a woman's shirt just because it has the right size label lol), but it definitely was a big help.


Idk what volume we are, but we get a truck a day for some reason. I think I've been seeing 3-4 names as far as sl flow. They push the carts, and most of the racks. First they sort the racks and any reshop from the previous night together. Idk their process other than that, but whatever isn't finished, sl tms finish. They don't do shoes, accessories, or rtw anymore. My shoe tm loves it because she didn't like how they pushed anyway. I hate it because now I'm expected to push accessories and do fr duties. When it was slow the first couple of weeks of e2e, it was cool. I like working in accessories tbh, but it's busy now. Me and the other fr people can't keep up with it. We usually come clean except for accessories lately.

I'm sorta fascinated by all the differences in how diff stores are doing this end to end thing.
 
I was , am, I'm not sure anymore, flow softlines tm. My areas are shoes and accessories. It is a lot. I did my pricing in accessories on Friday. Glad I don't have to do pricing everyday, kind of boring IMO. I could go on for days about end 2 end in softlines. To put this in perspective I have been de trashing and pushing softlines for five plus years. Deo with a 5% raise. I am no slug. They removed the slugs from softline flow and put them in hardlines.

#the struggle is real

#only the strong survive
 
Well, E2E is finally killing us. Summer shoppers are increasing in the store and go backs are insane and then there's the z-racks to push. Also, they're cutting our 4am team and having this zone all day scenario... so the times we look good are going to be random? heh. We don't have the bodies on the floor to come clean so we're falling behind pretty fast. I meant what I said about my SRTL...so I'm kinda curious to see how she solves this one. I was told they are hiring on 5 more people... we are low staffed for sure and too low to handle the increase in work effectively. This is the first week of our "all day zone" concept. Looking forward to seeing how it works out. Staying positive as much as I can because I know our leadership well enough to know that they won't tolerate a crappy store for long. They'll figure something out even if they have to tweak this E2E setup until it fits/works. Keep you all posted.... :)
 
Ahem said:
@RightArm that day I came in to 9 carts my etl had the smart huddle in the fitting room. It was kinda hilarious because some things they didn't quite get (like you can't use a toddler hanger on a woman's shirt just because it has the right size label lol), but it definitely was a big help.

Idk what volume we are, but we get a truck a day for some reason. I think I've been seeing 3-4 names as far as sl flow. They push the carts, and most of the racks. First they sort the racks and any reshop from the previous night together. Idk their process other than that, but whatever isn't finished, sl tms finish. They don't do shoes, accessories, or rtw anymore. My shoe tm loves it because she didn't like how they pushed anyway. I hate it because now I'm expected to push accessories and do fr duties. When it was slow the first couple of weeks of e2e, it was cool. I like working in accessories tbh, but it's busy now. Me and the other fr people can't keep up with it. We usually come clean except for accessories lately.

I'm sorta fascinated by all the differences in how diff stores are doing this end to end thing.
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That's pretty darn funny but I'm glad to hear they're getting in there and rolling up their sleeves. Morale is bad enough with all these changes. If Leadership doesn't get off their asses and get in there to lead/help/encourage they will lose more people before the change is complete. Might be good to lose some of them but they're stupid if they lose them all.

It is very fascinating how each store is interpreting these new mandates for their store. The full E2E as it was laid out by corporate does not work as well in small stores where you don't have the bodies and the payroll to support it. Guess that's why they finally did something smart and gave them the free reins to tweak it a bit for their store. I just hope all leadership are wise enough to take that initiative if they need to. I know some will go by the book to their detriment because that's how they roll and I really feel for the TMs who have to deal with that when it's not working.
 
And we're starting to push the carts from the truck too. -_- Clocked over 17K steps today as I cleared zracks and carts for boys and girls and NIT. Still in the hiring process to fill the gaps and trying to keep everyone positive as we work our way through this. :) They were smart and started putting our SL Flow under softlines hours so they can help us out.
 
Really dumb question that I haven't figured out the answer to yet. How do you know what needs spider-wrapping? Whenever I go into baby hardlines, I'll see a $100 baby monitor spider-wrapped sitting right next to a $150 monitor that isn't.
 
Jenna120 said:
Really dumb question that I haven't figured out the answer to yet. How do you know what needs spider-wrapping? Whenever I go into baby hardlines, I'll see a $100 baby monitor spider-wrapped sitting right next to a $150 monitor that isn't.
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Anything 49.99 & up that is electronical should be spider wrap. Give to electronics tm & we will do it for you:)
 
Jenna120 said:
Really dumb question that I haven't figured out the answer to yet. How do you know what needs spider-wrapping? Whenever I go into baby hardlines, I'll see a $100 baby monitor spider-wrapped sitting right next to a $150 monitor that isn't.
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I would say anything over S100 in baby. Any doubt, just check with your ap person. They would be thrilled you are asking the question!
 
Okay so week 1 of SL doing its own truck push is over. I was originally scheduled for 3 of our 5 weekly trucks, and wound up working all 5. My leadership is basically relying on ME to run this process. I come in, push all or almost all Z-rails by myself and then help with carts, and half the time do shoes or RTW swim reshop (a huge beast in my store). Then it's like "doglover, how much longer you need for the truck? I want you to help with reshop!" I am exhausted before my 7.5-8 hour shifts are over and our long-time SLTL knows it too. I was made to teach our other two truck-pushing tms how to backstock, and that was relatively painless, but now, as the only SL tm who is pricing-trained, I am being made to assist a pricing tm with teaching the entire. team. how to do price change. I'm already disgusted with the amount of work that's been heaped on me. I wish my TLs/ETL would take a more active role in facilitating the truck push as well as with training the team. I don't feel that those things should be my responsibility. I'm not paid enough.
 
I can relate 100%. I was supposed to work Tuesday, but was too sick so I unfortunately called out, for one of the first times since last year. My first officially day with End2End was Thursday. I pulled a few Softlines batches, worked them out, and backstocked. No go backs and it was pretty stress free and I still got a lot done. Friday.... I get in to do go backs, which is what my shift was technically for (kind of a weird time) Nope, I'm helping push. I pushed two carts before having to watch Operator for 45 minutes over several different times (breaks/lunch). I was not able to be actively working on go backs and had also accumulated lots of back stock, was cashiering for about an hour between everything else as a back-up, and was burnt out. I was running around trying to get stuff done and was getting direction from the VML to help push, the ETL-GE to do go-backs, the operator to watch her breaks, and the Electronics TLOD asking for status updates. Finally I said "At this point I'm just trying to get the fitting room clear. We've got 2 full Z-Racks, and three full carts and I'd like to work on them without side tasks and no support." And then turnt my walkie off. Our new ETL-SF started helping with RTW gobacks and goes "As a longer-time TM, how do you feel about this all?" And I was like "I hate it. This is absolutely ridiculous." And he kind of paused and then came back and was like, "Why?" And i told him everything that I had been made to do for the day and he said, "Wait, thats right. We didn't have much support from the other TMs. I'll take care of it." It felt so nice to be heard, but yeah I just feel like it's such a big mess right now. I try to be super optimistic but I was just BURNT. I don't want another day like that ever again anytime soon, but I am glad to say I did get the back stock done 100% thankfully. I finished at 5:25 and then just clocked out right at 5:29/5:30 because I was exhausted. /rant
 
Yeh, the amount of work currently heaped upon a team that's not entirely filled out yet is ridiculous. Our senior SLTL and our second SLTL are fortunately heavily involved in the process as they try to figure out the best way to schedule and make it all work. They push carts and z-racks with us and right now it's a learning process for everyone. Hopefully they'll find those extra 4 bodies they need to hire soon. :) And yes, I agree... it's exhausting. I've put more than 17K steps on my pedometer in one day and I wonder how our SL Flow ladies ever managed to do this all the time with no help for years. Massive respect for them.
 
My store is a low volume super target, but I already hate End to End. I've been in charge of baby and accessories which is separated by sleep for the past 2 weeks. Not to mention during that time I've been in charge of fitting room. The amount of work I'm expected to do in 4 hours before I take over the fitting room is crazy. We have already had 2 people leave for my department alone and honestly I'm looking for a new job. So many management issues
 
Our softlines set up right now is very interesting. Before E2E went down at our store, we had 4-5 softlines flow women beasting every truck, scheduled mostly 5 hour shifts (with one 2.5 and moving to another work center) including baby hardlines and finishing at or before stock time every day. Now, different story. When the hours were redistributed, they cut one softlines person from the team, and reduced the hours for the morning by 40-50% for the TM's remaining. So for a person used to being scheduled 20 hours per week, it is a huge change for them to be scheduled 10-12. They moved the hours to the afternoon, and there are times, especially when there are a lot of repacks, that the truck is getting carried over to the next day. The morning softlines TM's have indicated that they will work later, so it's not an availability issue. I don't know what those Softlines TM's are going to do because I know they need the money as much as everyone else does.
 
speedy said:
When the hours were redistributed, they cut one softlines person from the team, and reduced the hours for the morning by 40-50% for the TM's remaining. So for a person used to being scheduled 20 hours per week, it is a huge change for them to be scheduled 10-12.
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It's funny; all of us with open availability (or nearly open) are getting 35-40 hours. Those with more limited availability are pretty much getting what they want. I haven't been under 36 since we started this. We've been averaging 2-3 openers plus an FRO, two mids, and two closers plus an FRO. For the most part, they are all 7.5-8 hour shifts. Two or three of us push truck in the morning with the rest working on reshop and the mids zoning a bit here and there if they have time. We've been swamped with reshop lately, but tonight we had a person working a late mid-shift plus three closers and a closing FRO so hopefully they can catch up.
 
What I am struggling with is how many things we're expected to juggle at once. I'm on workload/plano for all of softlines but when there is no workload/plano then I'm supposed to be helping out wherever I can. Went in to find no workload for the week and started helping push truck. There were 4 of us working on it. SRTL said it wasn't so bad today, we got it all done before noon and I'm thinking in my head, GIVE us 4 people EVERY opening shift and we'll kill it every time. Not going to happen though. The coverage is not the same every day and that's not her fault. See, we're short a few bodies that are needed to fill all the rotations. We don't get trucks every day of the week. I'm hoping tomorrow is one of those days of no truck. We could use the break.

We're supposed to do reshop, zone, and rack alignment all the time and all at the same time. When the fitting room isn't buried it's easy to do this and it works well but when the fitting room is buried in five or six or eight or nine carts of reshop that hasn't even been sorted or hung I'm torn between trying to catch up everything and do all the zoning and rack alignment too. Drives me crazy. This morning I found two CAFs pushed into the mix. -_-

I can push a jammed pack zrack in an hour if I'm not zoning everything. But the more you add to the "to do" list the less reshop gets put away. The balancing act is insane and I'm not the only one going home with 15K or more steps on the pedometer and exhausted as all get out.
 

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