Archived How long does it take you to zone a whole department?

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For me it all depends on my mood. If Im in a f#ck it kind of mood and dont feel like being the only one to zone my department correctly that week I can get through a department in as little as an hour. If I feel like doing it correctly I can take up to 3 hours zoning to POG, pulling overstock, researching, filling endcaps, PTMing, etc.

As far as difficulty of zoning I think Market, Stationary, and Cosmetics are the most tedious while Domestics, Kitchen, and Sporting Goods are the easiest.
 
As an LOD, these are the expectations I set (Time including helping guests. Given strong TM's and a moderately-shopped store. Pulling pegs forward, bringing everything home, making 'walls,' touching endcaps, picking up strays):

A (HBA/Cos/Pets) - Longest. Should take no more than 2.5h with two people. I'll take go-backs out to them as they work sometimes, in which case I can understand it taking longer (potentially the entire 4 hour shift because it's so heavily shopped)

B (Cards/Stationary/Kitchen) - No more than 1h. This should be done quickest, I give TM's other blocks to zone along with B.

C (Domestics) - No more than 1h.

D (Furniture/bedding/etc.) - No more than 1h.

E (Toys/SG) - Depends on time of year. 4th quarter I like to have one person in E their entire closing shift. With the help of our electronics TM, zone from SG to toys should be completed in around 2.5-3h and go-backs should be done by the end of the night.

Seasonal - Again, depends on time of year. Holiday set the first half of November is nearly untouched throughout the day, so I'll send in TM's to do quick zones as they finish their blocks. December is another question though...I'll have one person inside seasonal for their entire shift on zone and go-backs, leaving heavily shopped areas for the last hour. Around this time of year I'll send TM's either here or to Toys to help when they finish their zones.

As people finish I will put them wherever our biggest ops are. In the perfect close I'm able to trade zoners go-backs (for their blocks) for their stray carts throughout the night so that everything is sorted and bins at GS are empty at the end of the night.

Now although I set these expectations and follow up with TM's throughout a closing shift some of them fall short or end up taking a ridiculous amount of time . Ex. The other night it took one of our seasonal TM's THREE HOURS to zone B.
Of course, I don't expect everyone to meet these marks but it helps give a perspective on where you're supposed to be at what times so you can set goals for yourself. That's why you get those awesome LOD's that are like "_____ DO YOU COPY? HOW'S THAT ZONE COMING? WHERE YOU GUYS AT IN THAT ZONE? DID YOU KNOCK THAT BLOCK OUT YET? AM I ANNOYING YOU YET? NO? HOW BOUT NOW? ..NOW??" :pardon:
 
Probably the worst dept to zone is Toys, H&B or Domestics.

H&B because there very small items.
Domestics because of all the folding.
Toys because its constant destruction.
 
nobiliscus said:
As an LOD, these are the expectations I set (Time including helping guests. Given strong TM's and a moderately-shopped store. Pulling pegs forward, bringing everything home, making 'walls,' touching endcaps, picking up strays):

A (HBA/Cos/Pets) - Longest. Should take no more than 2.5h with two people. I'll take go-backs out to them as they work sometimes, in which case I can understand it taking longer (potentially the entire 4 hour shift because it's so heavily shopped)

B (Cards/Stationary/Kitchen) - No more than 1h. This should be done quickest, I give TM's other blocks to zone along with B.

C (Domestics) - No more than 1h.

D (Furniture/bedding/etc.) - No more than 1h.

E (Toys/SG) - Depends on time of year. 4th quarter I like to have one person in E their entire closing shift. With the help of our electronics TM, zone from SG to toys should be completed in around 2.5-3h and go-backs should be done by the end of the night.

Seasonal - Again, depends on time of year. Holiday set the first half of November is nearly untouched throughout the day, so I'll send in TM's to do quick zones as they finish their blocks. December is another question though...I'll have one person inside seasonal for their entire shift on zone and go-backs, leaving heavily shopped areas for the last hour. Around this time of year I'll send TM's either here or to Toys to help when they finish their zones.

As people finish I will put them wherever our biggest ops are. In the perfect close I'm able to trade zoners go-backs (for their blocks) for their stray carts throughout the night so that everything is sorted and bins at GS are empty at the end of the night.

Now although I set these expectations and follow up with TM's throughout a closing shift some of them fall short or end up taking a ridiculous amount of time . Ex. The other night it took one of our seasonal TM's THREE HOURS to zone B.
Of course, I don't expect everyone to meet these marks but it helps give a perspective on where you're supposed to be at what times so you can set goals for yourself. That's why you get those awesome LOD's that are like "_____ DO YOU COPY? HOW'S THAT ZONE COMING? WHERE YOU GUYS AT IN THAT ZONE? DID YOU KNOCK THAT BLOCK OUT YET? AM I ANNOYING YOU YET? NO? HOW BOUT NOW? ..NOW??" :pardon:
Click to expand...

These times are only realistic if they have been maintained and you are zoning destruction from one day. I took an hour to zone just the kids bedding aisle..rewraping unwrapped blankets, removing overpush, in general tearing apart the entire aisle because it looked like a bomb hit it.
 
You can tell he's completely out of touch because of his times. With those times he only wants a fake zone completed. Toys and sporting goods done in 3 hours during 4th qtr? Domestics (TOWELS) in an hour? Stationery in less than an hour? I want to work at your store because there must be no foot traffic. Oh HBA doesn't take 4 hours, much less.
 
Ugh. I could have strangled my fellow hardlines TMs tonight. When we started the zone, there was three of us. For every aisle the two zoned together, I could zone an aisle (they were too busy gabbing/shopping to bother. Then, we ended up with five of us. Four people standing around slowly zoning an aisle in the time it took me to zone an aisle. I am not kidding. I had suggested a couple of times that it would go much faster if we all took an aisle, but they weren't having it.

Finally right before huddle, I asked our LOD to put a stop to the party. He sent the two talkers (think really young girls on their first jobs who are easily distractible) and sent them off to a different area of the store. I thought it was a bad idea to send them together, but at least they were sent together away from me.

I like working with the guys in hardlines. We talk, we zone, but we do both at once and work different aisles and just leap frog over each other to the next aisle as we go. But the girls? They all want to work the same aisle together, on top of each other, re-zoning what the other one has just zoned because they are paying no attention and never get more than two feet from each other. Them, I just ignore and bust through what I can.
 
So, whoever thought it would be a great idea to put a guy who is self-admittedly the world's worst folder in softlines has a great sense of humor. My past two closing shifts have had me in men's. The department is usually trashed by the time I get in. I usually zone across the racetrack first and then head to the graphic tees because they are really popular in my store. Last night I head in and picked up enough merch off of the floor to fill a Z-rack.

I hate doing "fake zones". Merchandising and POG work are my specialties, so I'm used to having everything set perfectly. I also had a manager at another company who insisted on a "grand opening" zone every night. It freaks me out on the days where I do infant hardlines and there are labels missing and/or sitting on the shelves. I always get complimented on my work there. I've also been told that I'm doing "better than they thought I would do" with the time I had available.
 
JustJoe said:
It freaks me out on the days where I do infant hardlines and there are labels missing and/or sitting on the shelves.
Click to expand...

You sure wouldn't like toys this time of year. :D If the labels are missing, the aisles could be MPG and may reset soon.
 
All I know is dry market takes way to freaking long. Just pulling a few items up in each spot covering the diamond takes about 2 hours in my store. The reason being people always leave their abandons over in market, including empty starbucks drinks, and freezer and cooler items which have to be QMOSed. Always find empty cardboard displays from various product laying around. Usually the drink enhancers like mio or the tuna fish, etc. Sometimes Ill take a 3 tier cart out there to start the zone and when I finish it is completely full and stuffed.

Add in having to go up front to get perishables that a guest didnt want, answering calls for market and sometimes other areas because the 3-4 other salesfloor teammembers dont remember they have walkies, as well as helping guests in Small Appliances, Pets, Cleaning Supplies, Home Storage, Seasonal, Automotive and Sporting Goods and it takes a while. The percentage of guests I help that arent looking for anything in dry grocery is probably about 70% even though thats where I am.

Whats even worse is I ALSO have to zone freezers, coolers and all of pfresh. I work pfresh and have to get the dry zone done, with no help other than myself. The schedule right now has pfresh til 10, but typcially we are only there til 9. In that time from about 2-9 or 2-10 pfresh has to work out all the CAFS from 12-5 so 6 hours of pulls, push out milk, eggs, bananas. Have the LOD sales work at 4, and usually zone up the pfresh area that is going to be walked beforehand with no help at all from salesfloor with "fresh and full by 4". Throw in 2 breaks, a lunch, attending huddle, helping guests, answering calls, daily cleaning tasks, meat coupons, the night cull and zoning coolers, freezers, dry market and it is a crazy stress driven insanity building shift.

And what pisses me off, is that during our normal hours before the holidays I would do all of the above while Hardlines still struggled to get their zones done and sometimes only half way through A with 40 minutes til closing even though they came in 3 hours before. Just have to shake my head.
 
pfreshdude said:
All I know is dry market takes way to freaking long. Just pulling a few items up in each spot covering the diamond takes about 2 hours in my store. The reason being people always leave their abandons over in market, including empty starbucks drinks, and freezer and cooler items which have to be QMOSed. Always find empty cardboard displays from various product laying around. Usually the drink enhancers like mio or the tuna fish, etc. Sometimes Ill take a 3 tier cart out there to start the zone and when I finish it is completely full and stuffed.

Add in having to go up front to get perishables that a guest didnt want, answering calls for market and sometimes other areas because the 3-4 other salesfloor teammembers dont remember they have walkies, as well as helping guests in Small Appliances, Pets, Cleaning Supplies, Home Storage, Seasonal, Automotive and Sporting Goods and it takes a while. The percentage of guests I help that arent looking for anything in dry grocery is probably about 70% even though thats where I am.

Whats even worse is I ALSO have to zone freezers, coolers and all of pfresh. I work pfresh and have to get the dry zone done, with no help other than myself. The schedule right now has pfresh til 10, but typcially we are only there til 9. In that time from about 2-9 or 2-10 pfresh has to work out all the CAFS from 12-5 so 6 hours of pulls, push out milk, eggs, bananas. Have the LOD sales work at 4, and usually zone up the pfresh area that is going to be walked beforehand with no help at all from salesfloor with "fresh and full by 4". Throw in 2 breaks, a lunch, attending huddle, helping guests, answering calls, daily cleaning tasks, meat coupons, the night cull and zoning coolers, freezers, dry market and it is a crazy stress driven insanity building shift.

And what pisses me off, is that during our normal hours before the holidays I would do all of the above while Hardlines still struggled to get their zones done and sometimes only half way through A with 40 minutes til closing even though they came in 3 hours before. Just have to shake my head.
Click to expand...

Sounds like my store! It seems like anyone who hasn't worked PFresh thinks we have all the time in world, when in fact we struggle every day to get the basic things done!
 
Your pfresh team has to zone dry market? That stinks. We don't touch dry at my store; the regular zone team does that. We do have to zone freezers/coolers and PFresh, but if it gets busy, fuhgettaboutit.
 
Snook said:
Your pfresh team has to zone dry market? That stinks. We don't touch dry at my store; the regular zone team does that. We do have to zone freezers/coolers and PFresh, but if it gets busy, fuhgettaboutit.
Click to expand...

How would your typical closing shift look? What do you spend all that time doing if not zoning?
 
mspk said:
How would your typical closing shift look? What do you spend all that time doing if not zoning?
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Culling, QMOSing, filling vendor-supplied items such as milk and eggs, perishable CAFs (meat, dairy, produce, bakery, frozen) - you name it, they do it.
 
mrknownothing said:
Culling, QMOSing, filling vendor-supplied items such as milk and eggs, perishable CAFs (meat, dairy, produce, bakery, frozen) - you name it, they do it.
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Our Pfresh area would look sooooo much better if that was all we had to focus on at night. I can only dream...
 
Our entire store is zoned every night, usually takes an average of 3.5 hours to do all 80ish isles we are assigned. That includes helping quests, reshop and register back up.
 
Right. At my store us two PA's are responsible for the ambient room so we have to make sure it's swept, mopped, expired or damaged product is removed, dated product is organized by date and scanned into the SDA app (we also frequently go through the dairy cooler, primarily for the yogurt), etc. I can easily spend the last hour of my closing shift in the back room just cleaning, but lately we just haven't had time.
 
Snook said:
Your pfresh team has to zone dry market? That stinks. We don't touch dry at my store; the regular zone team does that. We do have to zone freezers/coolers and PFresh, but if it gets busy, fuhgettaboutit.
Click to expand...

Ya, when we launched we actually got help for fresh and full by four AND didnt even have to zone freezers. That quickly changed since salesfloor NEVER got around to actually zoning freezers so they made us do them. Then they struggled even getting into dry market so they tacked that on to our workload as well. Also, except for these last couple weeks for holidays, its just 1 opener and 1 closer with ZERO overlap and we leave an hour before closing even, 10 right now for extended holiday hours with a 4-8 mid, usually 9 though by ourselves.

But ya in one night, CAFS, daily cleaning, Milk Push, Meat Coupons, Culling, QMOS, helping guests, backing up, zoning all of G (except the 5 aisles of paper), so G6-G44!! You know what the sad thing is. Despite being rushed dry market looks better than all the other zones...its...what it is I guess haha.
 
does everyone finish zoning the department your assigned for every night? I know that sometimes I'm zoning a certain department and suddenly one of the TL's tells me to go zone a different department (if there was a call out and no one was zoning it all day)

sometimes by the end of the night I don't get to the last 10 isles for example
 
targetgirl123456 said:
does everyone finish zoning the department your assigned for every night? I know that sometimes I'm zoning a certain department and suddenly one of the TL's tells me to go zone a different department (if there was a call out and no one was zoning it all day)

sometimes by the end of the night I don't get to the last 10 isles for example
Click to expand...

If I know I won't be able to finish a department I walkie the LOD and they'll either send someone over to help or come up with another plan. We really try to get every department zoned, but it doesn't always happen.
 
yeah but is it like bad to ask for help if your not gonna finish? Like does the lod get mad? I know that sounds like a dumb question haha
 
doing cosmetics (through A18) would take me about an hour and a half, with no reshop, cleaning, etc. With any of that it would take about 4 hours.

I love doing men's, shoes, IHL....I love everything being in it's place. Though poor shoes often gets the short end of the stick. We have a TM who is JUST shoes and can't seem to just zone them in that 4-5 hours shift. If all I had was shoes and I was in there for 4, 5 hour shifts a week...I would be in heaven and could do it in about an hour and a half. With the rest it will be about a full 6 hour shift because they always make softlines go up for back up first and I will often have the privilege of spending an hour to two off the floor covering the fitting room break with any of these areas.
Girls, boys, infants is the next easiest for me
then Jewelry/Acc/Sleepwear/Active wear-mainly for the reshop and that awful yoga pants wall...everybody neglects that. If no, or little, reshop I will focus on the panty bins and that wall and it will take me two hours.
RTW is the longest, scariest one!!
 
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