Is this Real Life? (A Market vent thread)

We were getting a lot of backstock, too. We are changing on-floor counts as we go when that happens. We also have a bunch of tied-but-not-set sales plans that are affecting the size of the pulls as well. Our ETL-LOG has a tendency to change the expectations as she sees fit for the day, and it isn't always a better choice.
Be careful about tying and lying as one can get fired for doing that. TLs have been fired for enabling that. As Fluttervale said if you have things tied but no salesfloor for it, your batches will always be large.

I understand the whole changing back to something else after only three weeks is ridiculously silly, especially when the product is extremely novel or niche, but give the product a chance on the salesfloor to sell. For example, I would rather have to backstock 10 million of those silly Halloween/Thanksgiving coffee pods one time than every day until it gets kicked off for the next sales planner and goes clearance.
 
So, yesterday was another day of "do this, not that" and "no, do this, then that." One batch, 282 items to start, then it kept growing, and eaches were 1000+ again. Got about 70 items in and then ETL-LOG decided I needed to help out the new dairy DBO after working some (small) u-boats.

I need to get used to these "mood swings" when my TL isn't around.
 
Yeah we sent some back, but we don’t have enough uboats to use to pull autos/OFOs on when there’s a truck. The 3-tiers would get filled up faster than we could free them up. 🤷🏻‍♀️
 
TIS THE SEASON FAM!!! Two weeks out is the holiday end caps! Prepare your depression to carry pallets of canned veggies and pallets of turkeys.
Our store is the cleanest it's been because tonight is Inventory. (Cue minor key organ music)

ETA:the counting has begun...the dairy DBO didn't precount the pallet of cider or the pallet of vendor milk...and the guy dealing with frozen today still has to organize the turkey pallet.
 
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Our store is the cleanest it's been because tonight is Inventory. (Cue minor key organ music)

ETA:the counting has begun...the dairy DBO didn't precount the pallet of cider or the pallet of vendor milk...and the guy dealing with frozen today still has to organize the turkey pallet.
Our inventory is this week too 😶😳
 
TIS THE SEASON FAM!!! Two weeks out is the holiday end caps! Prepare your depression to carry pallets of canned veggies and pallets of turkeys.
We already received 3 pallets of turkeys Only market pantry and they are in the bunker.

We just got lots and lots of egg nog on today’s dairy delivery
 
We already received 3 pallets of turkeys Only market pantry and they are in the bunker.

We just got lots and lots of egg nog on today’s dairy delivery
I went ahead and set that revision yesterday when I saw the nog come in. I'm actually really happy that we are getting the Promise Lands nog back. That stuff plus a little whisky kept me going last year.

---

How about those turkey prices though? My market is lower than what the birds came in marked as so I have to rescale EVERYTHING :/
 
Any time my stuff came in lower we just ran with it. They don’t give payroll to rescale every turkey.
 
Any time my stuff came in lower we just ran with it. They don’t give payroll to rescale every turkey.
That's usually how I handle it though this year, half are coming at last years price and half are a lot lower than that and my market price is even lower than that. I can't escape it; gonna have to scale every bird. I'm planning on getting a breakroom table with wheels and using it to keep my scale in the back by receiving and my bunker. No point in hauling 15k pounds to the front of the store then to the back this season.

It’s pretty damn early for turkey, people don’t buy that until the week of thanksgiving
Typically, I sell about 800lbs the week after Halloween, 1500lbs Nov week 2 and 2500 weeks 3 and 4. I have my typical bulk orders picking up the end of Nov week 1 to get them out of the way.

That being said, I don't know what is going to happen this year with our price being lower. I don't know if Walmart is going to compete and I doubt our regional grocer chain has the power to do either.
 
I feel all of your pain.

I'm a recent promotion to PA (Promoted within my 90 days to boot. Hardlines for a month, Grocery for a month, PA for a month now), and it's driving me absolutely crazy.

My store is on a razors edge from being one of the top dogs in sales for our district. We're green YTD in every department...except Grocery, where we're down a few points YTD, though up MTD. We're supposed to have two PAs, plus our CTL, and yet here I am as the only PA under our CTL, with three team members technically under me that are essentially full time positions. Our HR insists on writing our schedules, and failing miserably to ensure that neither the CTL or I are working turnarounds or scheduled for more than couple hours of us both working together in Pfresh. My CTL is absolutely amazing, but he's just as harried and haggard as I am, especially with the time of year it is, and with how much work we're having to pick up because of the lethal combination of incompetent vendors, ineffective and tuned out ETL-Hardline and outright hostile ETL-Guest Service, FA, SBK and Flow team leads that get on us about what we need to ensure that our workstation runs smoothly (I'm looking at you, ETL-Guest Service. To hell with you for allowing your FA people to order 3 times as much product as they need and then complaining to us when we moved all of it out of 01F and 01C because it was taking up space we needed to stage seasonal dairy and turkeys. Half of it was boxes of...boxes that could have been staged in the damn FA backroom in a corner!)

Our qmos is consistently amazing, but that's mostly because we tend to order very conservatively, because we haven't been able to get through to the ETL-Logistics and the Flow Team Lead that just because it's on the pallet three times a week (I hate that we're M/W/F with no weekend schedule) doesn't mean it can be pushed out, and that just because there's a hole on the floor next to it doesn't mean you need to fill it with a different product (very, VERY huge annoyance for both my CTL and myself), mostly because with us having to do backroom SDA because morning backroom refuses to do it, along with our SDA, basic open procedures, waking bananas, etc. means we have absolutely NO time at all to run EXFs and manual pulls before our truck drops.

Not to mention the fact that we have to deal with major cuts on every truck, having to fight for a PDA on order days and then justify why we need a PDA until at least 10AM to the Backroom TL, a non-salesfloor team member suddenly being transferred onto us for SF training and PFresh training, a brand new TM that's super driven but utterly incompetent and, oh, the fact that I'm not even fully trained. My CTL may or may not (no admission here) have forced through several LPs and Certs for me because we simply didn't have time for me to actually get it done with both of his PAs quitting on the same day.

I was never trained on how to properly stack a metro, I don't know how to clean a single thing and I have to force our HR to schedule me at times with our CTL so I can have him explain how I actually do something, since none of our ETLs know the slightest thing about PFresh, besides the fact that grocery drives over a quarter of sales.

I'm so very tired of being expected to know every single facet of how to run PFresh, though I appreciate my CTL because he's behind me 100% of the way and is really happy with everything I've done so far, and the fact that Steritech didn't ding our workcenter at all aside from a couple noncrits and that District and Regional both think our PFresh is one of the best they've checked. And, in all honesty, I think I'm underpaid (south of $9/h) for the work expected of me (PFresh runs it's own Stand Alone Researches, has to fill the water wall because flow/backroom won't, Ordering, Cleaning procedures [Though, like I said, I haven't clue one on how to do pretty much any of the cleaning procedures aside from, "Grab the sterilizer and wipe down any shelf in milk that only has a couple things on it and is dirty], and everything else.)

That went on much longer than I thought. I'm just so very tired of the grind. I love the work, just wish the soul shattering grind would ease up a bit so I can actually learn everything I need to know to be an effective PA.
We have the same kinda metros at our store.

it looks like you br tm doesn't know how to read. Pork on the top shelf, hell no it says "pre cooked" and ground meat on the bottom next to chicken as i laugh at all the qmos you had to do that day.

oh and I see those REV's on the 2nd shelf, ouch more qmos.

Alos that 3rd shelf has some sort of beef or maybe even chicken parm. ontop of ground meat. more qmos.


I hope things have goten better at your store.
This is literally the hell hole I’ve been thrown into but on the dry side..

However.. my tl has been on leave for an unknown amount of time for back surgery and me (being the most senior member of dry at 3 months [total employment time at 1 year]), trying to run a market team with the team hating me..

Unless something changes in the next 30 days unfortunately I’m leaving the target family. It’s unfortunate because I love the work and some of the people but I am grossly underpaid and understaffed for this type of situation
 
I am a PA in Market, was just promoted about 5-6 months ago. I work in an A Volume store (which I think is high Volume) store. (We were top 20/1800 stores in Volume Black Friday 2012) And every given month anywhere from 25-29% of my stores volume leaves through my work center in Market.

Even though it is this close to Thanksgiving we on average, have 3 people in Market throughout a day

An Opener (Who is usually my counterpart PA).
from 6:00am - 2:30pm

A Mid who is usually me, anywhere from 9:00am-6pm (Sundays) or 11:30-8:00pm

And the Market Closer 6:00-11:00 (I close one day a week 2:30-11:00.
Market has always been a Very High Intensity area (which is why I like it and thrive over here, I can't gain weight no matter how much McDonald's I eat, or get enough sleep, no matter how much zZZQuil I take.

But this is getting borderline ridiculous...

The Market section of my store is the consistently the only positive section of my store in Sales (And Vibe, I have yet to see a guest comment that falls outside the "AMAZED" category. and yet they have trimmed back hours even though it is easily our busiest time of the year... (We get 80 cases of Turkeys tomorrow) yay..

Are any other Market Team Members (Or team members from other area's experiencing this) in other stores experiencing this same thing?
I'm in market we are basically the black sheep of the store no one cares about us until it's time for a visit then we get chewed out lol
 
We are drowning in dairy / freezer.
We have 2 full pallets in dairy and 1 1/2 in freezer untouched. We only schedule 1 person for dairy and 1 for freezer. How can they do the 1 for 1s and push 2 pallets of truck push
 
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We are drowning in dairy / freezer.
We have 2 full pallets in dairy and 1 1/2 in freezer untouched. We only schedule 1 person for dairy and 1 for freezer. How can they do the 1 for 1s and push 2 pallets of truck push

as from me ETL and TL figure it out, it needs to get done. then they walk away. great I asked you because… yeah…
 
Did I mention only allowed 1 uboat in dairy and 1 uboat in freezer
You fight them on that. I had to for my area. Or hell get them to get your metro racks/fast movers. It’s a world of difference when things can all be broken down at once vs running back and forth and having to sort more.
They need to realize that the regular truck doesn’t have to put hands on as much stuff.
To me it sounds like they need to hire another person. Get a couple dedicated vehicles.
Still pushing my leads for more racks so we can quit back stocking completely.
I spent a week resetting the dairy cooler and redoing the sto logic and I could honestly get it on fast movers by type and negate most backstocking that way. But my store is only like a 30 mil store.

New task at hand is missing out on having a frozen bunker so the endcaps get neglected because we’ve gotta have turkeys out.
 
So.

Much.

Gravy.

Do people not know how easy it is to make at home?
Actually, it's a pain in the ass. The thickener and fat has to be exact proportion, itsy bitsy off ruins it, and guessing fat in meat drippings is rough. Lumps no matter how well you blend it if you can't mix fat and thickener before adding liquid (such as drippings, since you have to add after to keep the fat/thickener proportions as exact as possible). Salt is always off, either too much or too little, even if you use a measuring spoon every single time you make it. The color is always off because of the color of the thickener. And there's the pain of standing at the stove waiting for it to finally boil and doing nothing but stirring for exactly 60 seconds, no less no more.
 
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