Is this Real Life? (A Market vent thread)

[Produce Queen]

Nope. They don't even know that we have a scale, lol. I'll be lucky if they tell me that there's a change.

Teach them. It's worth the time.

 

[doxie71]

Did everyone reweigh the ribeye and the af applewood spiral hams at their new weights ?? If not you better do it now, just saying.

When there's a price change on random weight meat doesn't your price accuracy team re-label for you? They should, including the backstock.

Hahahahaha that's funny. They always were just like they this price changed. Have fun. And then moved on to the next task.

 

[daninnj]

Is anyone else's Pfresh falling apart? Label strips and even the metal label holders falling off, broken product pushers, lights in the open cases falling off, the black metal plates above the fans collapsing, etc. We don't have any freezer strips even though we order them. We've had Pfresh since '09.

 

[sigma7]

Mine isn't falling apart so much as we just never get time to clean. There are fixtures that I've ordered several times and have yet to receive (Lunchables pushers, tyson trays, 22" freezer pushers...I think that's it).

 

[Merricme]

I come from being a CTL and at my new store I have a brand new CTL failing. It's faintly amusing due to the fact the stl keeps telling them to partner with me. But he snubs me off, I enjoyed market minus for the truck it was a great learning experience that helped me grow as a logistical leader. So I will say this for once I took something useful from target go go learning :3

 

[pfreshdude]

I come from being a CTL and at my new store I have a brand new CTL failing. It's faintly amusing due to the fact the stl keeps telling them to partner with me. But he snubs me off, I enjoyed market minus for the truck it was a great learning experience that helped me grow as a logistical leader. So I will say this for once I took something useful from target go go learning :3

I enjoy everything in Market other than Vendors...drive me crazy with all the extra work I have to do in regards to them

 

[Merricme]

Vendors! They aren't team members what extra stuff do you do? Mine did things for me to get extra room in the store.

 

[wokkawokka]

The most the vendors ask us to do is print labels/signs. They typically fill their own spaces and will sometimes set their own market endcaps. If they need something pulled, backroom does it for them. The most laborious thing I have to do with a vendor is walk the wine/liquor order.

 

[BigEyedPhish]

The most the vendors ask us to do is print labels/signs. They typically fill their own spaces and will sometimes set their own market endcaps. If they need something pulled, backroom does it for them. The most laborious thing I have to do with a vendor is walk the wine/liquor order.

My CTL is newer and our communication is horrible, so they will come to me and tell me "So and So" told me this was my end cap this week. So I end up stripping it for them and giving them labels.

It is either this or there is a problem, my CTL told another vendor he can have this end cap, but a Sales Planner was supposed to be set here for another Vendor. Not damaging my CTL's word or taking this Sales planner away I have to try and find a place to put it..

There are also the times my vendors bitch at me (jokingly) about why I wasn't there to print signs for them/shoot labels, when it was my weekend off and whoever they asked never did it (they probably forgot/didn't know how).

Another is, if I have a vendor who hasn't been keeping his Sales planner full for awhile, I will condense it and give whatever free space there is to a Vendor who has "like" items that are also on sale if they are interested (and they almost always are).

Its important to have a you scratch, I scratch relationship with your vendors.

I may just be a PA, but I think it is an inside joke in my store who actually runs market (me). Although with the "New" CTL responsibilities I am probably a CTL's dream.

 

[looseseal]

Is anyone else's Pfresh falling apart? Label strips and even the metal label holders falling off, broken product pushers, lights in the open cases falling off, the black metal plates above the fans collapsing, etc. We don't have any freezer strips even though we order them. We've had Pfresh since '09.

We just had two isles of freezer go down within 4 days of each other. We have a cooler endcap that has gone down 4 or 5 times already. The label strips in our milk coolers always fall off, and we had a huge leak in our market area from the cooling system... and it hasn't even been a year yet.

 

[wokkawokka]

Yikes; sounds like you need to blow up your SFT's work order list with requests until he/she is able to escelate the issues for you.

Our pFresh is in decent condition for being five years old. Our backroom freezer has all sorts of icing issues which has now spilled over into the dairy cooler...the wall seams in the dairy cooler frost up. We've been told that it's a byproduct of having those rooms installed after the store was built and is a structural flaw...not really anything anyone can do unless we pretty much rip out both the rooms and start over. No way anyone will pay for that, so we're consigned to the occasional ice-chip and keeping things in the dairy cooler away from the walls enough inches so none of the product freezes by accident. It's not a Steritech issue unless ice is dripping on food or either room is out of temp (which they're not), so we just keep cardboard on the top shelves under the fan in the freezer and bring someone in to chip ice every now and then. Meh.

 

[pfreshdude]

Vendors! They aren't team members what extra stuff do you do? Mine did things for me to get extra room in the store.

Status and Red Status forms and all the BS that comes along with all of that because they are so incompetent they cant even fill the shelves up. Which is funny because thats how they actually make money. You know? By actually having the product in stock.

One example is the share a coke promotion. Talked to the rep about getting the checklane rolling display that was supposed to be in store and set on that sunday. I come in sometime after that during the week and still not here. Took them like 2 weeks to get that rack in even though we had a message board saying to partner with them and to set it that sunday. Then when we asked them about it they just didnt seem to care at all and would just get to it whenever they please even though we had allready talked to them about having it in the store per targets message board.

Or how about half the time I walk the bread aisle there are 10+ outs ALL THE TIME for each vendors bread. I remember one Monday I counted and one of the Bread Vendors had 18 outs and the other one had 31!!!! 31!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or one of our Wine merchandisers was writing orders that would come in with like 5 cases for the week and thats it, even though they were out of like 10 different hard alcohols and the back refrigerated case was missing a few things as well.

Or how about Kellogs rep. There was a back endcap that had alot of their product on, which they knew at least 1 week maybe 2 weeks in advance before it set. Always look like crap and they never merchandised it. I just flexed over it like a week before it was changing out because it looked terrible

Basically just comes down to alot of the vendors being terrible on instocks. Coke isnt even coming two days of the week now apparently. So we have to check the coolers at the checklane and make sure that gets done and all that. Its gotten better but OMG sometimes I just dont know what to say.

 

[Merricme]

If you don't like the vendor roll score him red for 6 weeks. Make a action plan. He can t follow the action plan call his dm. His dm can't Handel it have thr stl Handel it. The stl can't the dtl will step in. Or just call coke say you don't want the rep he isn't doing the job and get him fired. Bimbo bread was being a shit head to me so I got the dm to come in and he blew up

 

[pfreshdude]

If you don't like the vendor roll score him red for 6 weeks. Make a action plan. He can t follow the action plan call his dm. His dm can't Handel it have thr stl Handel it. The stl can't the dtl will step in. Or just call coke say you don't want the rep he isn't doing the job and get him fired. Bimbo bread was being a shit head to me so I got the dm to come in and he blew up

And this is what I mean by extra stuff. Im just a PA too not even a TL.

 

[Gulfcoast]

Did any other CTL (Salesfloor tls now, I guess, after the org change) get assigned pets and chemicals in addition to their normal zone/4x4?

Because I'm drowning here. My team of four (not counting myself) are an A volume store that pushes between 23 and 27% of total store. I have one PA that doesn't want TL responsibilities, despite agreeing to them when promoted, one tm who works hard, but is complaining about hours and not getting weekends off, one tm who's as slow as molasses and then my closer, who is an angel and the best worker but feels put upon because she has to pick up the slack (she has every right to feel that way). I myself have to do all the vendor relations and salesplanners, in addition to them pulling me all over the store because "your responsibilities are over the entire store now" after being told "you need to focus on your own department".

Salesplanners are routinely tied and flexed and I've been told there are probably a dozen "permanent" endcaps that probably aren't permanent. I get zero support, except when I complain about it to our etl, who is a former softlines etl and has no idea how grocery works.

I haven't competed my wtv or gone through and done any backroom audits in weeks because I've been having to support backroom and pull cafs, cover gstl call ins and work the pulls eight hours straight.

On a side note, does anyone else have to flow their own meat and produce pallets?

 

[Meli4Target]

Yes, my CTL has dry market, p-fresh, mini-seasonal pets, and paper. she doesn't have chems though!
i feel your pain trust me. Do what you can. Are you able to cross-train other tm's in your department? My store has 4 PA's plus 3 or 4 tm's who are market trained.

on a side note..does anybody know the part number, for the rolling metro racks..the ones that you can use to put your pulls on. my store does not have enough!!

 

[wokkawokka]

You sound like you need more PA's...an A volume store should not have just one PA. We're a new B, and we've had two since we got our remodel (and we were a C for the longest time). At an A, you should have at least two, maybe even three full time PA's. That would take a lot of the pFresh responsibilities off of your shoulders. And to your PA who doesn't "want TL responsibilities", tell 'em to suck it up. Anything related to perishables is THEIR responsibility, not a CTL's.

We (the PA's/pFresh team) don't work any of the pallets from flow. We've always had one flow TM scheduled every pFresh truck day who owns produce and meat and will usually push it all himself, or give direction to other TM's to assist him to push. Dairy and freezer is a multi-flow TM push, but we keep produce and meat to one or two people so it's more consistent.

 

[Gulfcoast]

You sound like you need more PA's...an A volume store should not have just one PA.

We're actually on the cusp of going to a double A/A+. My store beats supers in comp% and regularly competes in sales with our supers.

Are you able to cross-train other tm's in your department? My store has 4 PA's plus 3 or 4 tm's who are market trained.

Cross training happens when I have the time, but I'm regularly told to keep my hands off TMs that have the necessary mindset, patience and timeliness to work six pulls an hour and handle vendors, planners and task lists, because "they're necessary for (insert random workcenter, usually flow or electronics, here)" or "you don't get all the good employees".

My store has always had dry grocery, paper and pfresh under the CTL, but they recently added pets and chemicals to my "domain".


Staffing has always been an issue at my store. Our STL and ETL-Hr have been on job for about two years, at most. HR was an outside Target hire and our STL only ever worked low volume C and "D" stores. She has the mentality that CTLs are essentially extensions of the pfresh team and that pfresh team members are responsible for everything in the grocery block (dry, paper, food storage, freezers and the pfresh U), including all planners and some revisions.

Our flow TL can't control her team and their metrics are absolutely broken. They don't back stock any product, and commonly leave freight stashed away in inaccessible locations in the store where it won't be found for hours. It usually takes a team of five to six three or more hours to work just the freezer and dairy (deli and dairy temp groups) pallets.

Our ETL-Log had no control over any part of her workcenter, and is constantly brushing off any complaints about her TLs and TMs, when she isn't hovering over my shoulder telling me that everything I do is wrong.

My team is supposed to be cut somewhere in the 250 hour range, but we routinely have to make do with 180 hours or so, because flow can't control their overspending and my department "gets extra hours because you work your own produce and meat pallets". That maths out to one opener, one mid and one closer, with myself (the "CTL", though I'm not paid CTL money, since they drug their feet and purposefully delayed my promotion from PA until after the org change did away with the CTL paygrade) usually having to play one of those roles.

So my opener has to: cull, sda, process qmos, and work one pallet of meat and two pallets of produce before eight am by themselves (M-W-F), in addition to the seven thirty autofills. On top of that, if it's a planner week, begin working on the planners I've mapped, tied, dropped in the gun, set up the shelving necessary in the fixture room and printed labels for.

I just wish Spot would quit peeing on my leg and telling me it's raining. I'm almost completely burnt out after a year. We also only have two hardlines TLs (of which I'm considered one) and two softlines TLs. We have a Senior TL in hardlines also, but she only works LOD shifts and has her head up her ass because she's busy schmoozing for an ETL position.

Sorry for the walls of text.

 

[qmosqueen]

so i got a talking to today from the LOG-ETL, an a-hole, about not filling the bakery tables.

here is the story this weekend our FDC truck on Saturday was not finished we left 1 freezer pallet, we had 3 1/2 freezer pallets on Saturday, not to mention the 5 dairy, 3 produce, 1 meat, 1 banana pallets, and 196,000 in sales and on Sunday 213,000 in sales, so that freezer pallet is still in the freezer and will get done on Tuesday with Tuesday's pfresh truck. We had 8 metros in the dairy cooler of backstock on Monday, today, morning so I worked them all out and got down to 3 metros by 1 PM of true backstock. And did nothing with the empty bakery tables, well the log-etl didn't like this and wanted it filled. We don't even get those disgusting blue-iced cookies in and the cookie and cream mini cupcakes are not coming in either. most of the bread was on that pallet that the logitics-zone didn't finish on saturday. I was told to pull off those bakery boxes and push them to the floor.
my answer was "yes sir" "right away sir" ... i would have liked to say something else but kept that to myself. was I wrong to push dairy backstock metros and not the bakery ??

 

[sigma7]

Bakery table outs are no good. It really glares at you more than dairy, so getting it appropriately full should always be a priority. But alas, there's not enough time in the day to get everything done. As long as you can justify your decisions then you should be set. That said, if your ETL wants the bakery table filled, stop what you're doing and fill it. When there is more backstock left over and other things aren't getting done, you can at least say that you got the bakery table filled...which is all they asked you to do.

 

[BigEyedPhish]

Bakery table outs are no good. It really glares at you more than dairy, so getting it appropriately full should always be a priority. But alas, there's not enough time in the day to get everything done. As long as you can justify your decisions then you should be set. That said, if your ETL wants the bakery table filled, stop what you're doing and fill it. When there is more backstock left over and other things aren't getting done, you can at least say that you got the bakery table filled...which is all they asked you to do.

The Key is to making sure the Bakery Table is STRICTLY filled to Capacity at all times. If it is you will usually always have some left in the Freezer, when it is over pushed and is thrown away because more was put out than you would sell, you will constantly have problems.

I use Grey dots marked with the Capacity I put them under where the filler would place the first product making it easy to tell the capacity

 

[Gulfcoast]

Bakery table outs are no good. It really glares at you more than dairy, so getting it appropriately full should always be a priority. But alas, there's not enough time in the day to get everything done. As long as you can justify your decisions then you should be set. That said, if your ETL wants the bakery table filled, stop what you're doing and fill it. When there is more backstock left over and other things aren't getting done, you can at least say that you got the bakery table filled...which is all they asked you to do.

The Key is to making sure the Bakery Table is STRICTLY filled to Capacity at all times. If it is you will usually always have some left in the Freezer, when it is over pushed and is thrown away because more was put out than you would sell, you will constantly have problems.

I use Grey dots marked with the Capacity I put them under where the filler would place the first product making it easy to tell the capacity

I do the exact same thing.

The trouble is when you have over zealous TMs that don't work in consumables.

I swear, every time we train a new TM on the meaning of gray dots I find one of them either asking me why I have outs on the table when it's full, or my dots go "missing", despite then being on the table and not the label strip.

Don't even get me started on flow team just throwing whole boxes of product up when the table isn't on end of season push. That's why they just put everything on a 3 tier these days and push it to my opener.

 

[wokkawokka]

Our problem is not over-stocking. It used to be, but we made some modifications to our table (added baskets, capacity stickers, yelled at TM's, etc). so it's rare to see things overstocked. No, the problem is that the backstock is not getting backstocked in the freezer...kind of hard to fill the table when it's all sitting in 3 tiers and tubs all week. And it's scattered, so it's not like I can grab a cart and just repush. It's killing me.

 

[Gulfcoast]

Our problem is not over-stocking. It used to be, but we made some modifications to our table (added baskets, capacity stickers, yelled at TM's, etc). so it's rare to see things overstocked. No, the problem is that the backstock is not getting backstocked in the freezer...kind of hard to fill the table when it's all sitting in 3 tiers and tubs all week. And it's scattered, so it's not like I can grab a cart and just repush. It's killing me.

Do not even get me onto that. I could post a thousand words essay on why the lack of backstocking causes my hair to fall out faster and faster.

Even better is when you have a big metro, a tub,a flat and the ice vehicle full of multiple trucks worth of backstock.

Oh, and you can't forget the pallet/flat full of Starbucks and food ave stuff they over ordered on but never seems to get worked out.

 

[pfreshdude]

How do you guys even have room to have all that stuff...Our freezer is super tiny and could only fit a few things before it would be full and you have to be able to put a pallet or two of freezer when the truck comes in. Our backstock is always done. Isnt this supposed to be one of the main functions of backroom...WTF is your backroom doing instead.