Archived More things for cashiers to stress over?

[Kalaen]

my store has been doing this since Christmas at least. we were told you can sell it with anything electrical. i mysupported last Christmas about selling it with kids leap frog and those types of things. i think in feb, is when we were told, anything electrical in the store at all.

Yeah, I knew that there's more things that it can be sold with, but the sign that's supposed to be at all the registers shows all the big things that cashiers are now "required" to ask if the Guest wants a service plan for--TVs, game systems, the like. But there won't be a prompt like REDcards do, the cashiers are just supposed to know to ask.

So... in regards to the clearance "failure" - I'll be honest. If there is a clearance tag over the actual barcode, I WILL peel it back enough so that I can scan the actual barcode. That way, if the price that comes up is different than the one listed on the clearance tag, I can input the clearance tag's number and compare.
. . .

I hardly get clearanced items with scannable tags, unless it's a repackaged tagged one.

The only clearance tags (meaning the red labels) that are able to be scanned are Repackage/As Is and Online Item labels. In these cases, whoever applies these tags should mark out all of the other barcodes so they are not able to be scanned--in order to prevent the issue mentioned of people not knowing you can (and should, because these exist as a price markdown, which won't be applied to the regular barcode) scan the red label. Red labels that are actually Clearance will just have the DPCI. However, for all three varieties, the label SHOULD not be placed over the barcode, anyways--it's supposed to be in the upper right corner of the face side of the product.

 

[pellinore]

Hooray! Hooray!! Hooray! We have finally received large bags! We've only been waiting since August 8.........now if the portable handles would arrive....they were also ordered on August 8.

 

[smurf101]

I do the store orders, a pallet of bags do cost $800.00 there are 36 boxes on a pallet, when i first started doing the ordering, there were 44 on the pallet and it cost $1100.00. so they decide to keep the price close and just taking a row of bags off. Usually they do not take more than a week to get in. I can order mine on a friday or monday, and have them on our wed or friday truck. It could be, that they didn't get ordered. My order is submitted/transferred on fridays. I can and do sometimes start my next weeks order the next day, i can send it, but will not get submitted till the following friday, when it is actually accepted. Last Christmas, the DC ran out. So if the person incharge of making sure things are there, for the front end, is new, makes sure they have a pallet or two doing into Christmas season in the back room. They do get hard to get at that time. I have seen it, sometimes be almost 3-4 weeks in delivery.

 

[frontendwizard]

The good news about the medium bags is that they are increasing the size back to 44 i believe atleast for the holidays.

 

[pellinore]

Hooray! Hooray!! Hooray! We have finally received large bags! We've only been waiting since August 8.........now if the portable handles would arrive....they were also ordered on August 8.

Still waiting on the portable handles!

 

[pellinore]

Talked to my Logistics LOD and told her that it has now been over a month since our handles were ordered. She said that we ought to order them again.....said that if something doesn't arrive in a two week time frame then it is possible that our stuff got sent somewhere else. Makes some sense....but it still took quite awhile from when we ordered our medium bags and when we got them.

 

[pellinore]

Talked to my Logistics LOD and told her that it has now been over a month since our handles were ordered. She said that we ought to order them again.....said that if something doesn't arrive in a two week time frame then it is possible that our stuff got sent somewhere else. Makes some sense....but it still took quite awhile from when we ordered our medium bags and when we got them.

There must be a god in heaven.....we FINALLY got our handles on Monday!! Not only are some of the cashiers incredibly happy, but so are some of the guests!!
We've got a couple of cashiers that have never seen the handles before because they started in September.

For now, I'm on cloud nine!
Silly, isn't it that something so simple can make someone happy!

 

[pellinore]

Hey everyone, our store had some high powered VIP visitors about a week ago....and late in the day our DTL was still at our store talking w/ several of our LODs. I went to the DTL and commented about an issue about printed price tags and how the price tags are now scanning quite well. I mentioned that it was nice to have this first issue taken care of and now we only need to get the bags taken care of. The DTL said that he's talked about this, but no one seems to be listening to him. So....I told him about this website. He asked me to have one of the LODs email the info to him. Well, I did better than that....I wrote down this site address and told him to stop by here and read about all the problems that stores are having with their bags and that after reading then he might be able to get others to listen to him.

Haven't gotten any feedback from our DTL, but next time I see him I'll ask if he stopped by this site. Sure hope that he'll say that he did!
If I don't see him soon, I can have an LOD email him and ask. Let's all hope that he looks and gets other to notice too!

 

[redeye58]

If he hasn't visited this site before, it could be a real eye-opener to more than just problems w/bags...

 

[mrknownothing]

Don't forget, though: everyone must be anonymous, especially if higher-ups can see the site.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

I am sure that spot does take a peek at us, daily. Think about certain things had changed recently at the store level.

 

[Barcode]

We better not go to "pay for bags".... I can foresee being called to lanes every 5 minutes getting ***************ed at by a guest saying the cashier isn't bagging efficiently enough, and charging them for more bags than they need..... Yup...

 

[redeye58]

If ya think that's bad, wait'll the guest has the cashier overfill the bag to the point that the handles rip then screams about "how crappy the bags are" & they're "not paying for another bag" because "it was the cashier's fault for overfilling them".
Yeh, that'll be fun....

We already ask guests if they need a bag when it's only 1-2 items & most say no.

 

[bowlteambowl]

Or when the guest feels the need to reach over the counter and grab their own bags (I HATE when people do this).

That is definitely a pet peeve of mine when I'm on the registers. One good yank from a guest and that little tab at the top has been ripped off the whole stack of bags, and there's no way to get them to stay on the pegs after that.

Our medium bags work fine as long as the guests leave them alone, but the tiny bags are just impossible for some reason. Every time I see a guest come through the line with a greeting card I cry a little bit inside.

 

[mrknownothing]

That is definitely a pet peeve of mine when I'm on the registers. One good yank from a guest and that little tab at the top has been ripped off the whole stack of bags, and there's no way to get them to stay on the pegs after that.

Our medium bags work fine as long as the guests leave them alone, but the tiny bags are just impossible for some reason. Every time I see a guest come through the line with a greeting card I cry a little bit inside.

I don't have a problem with the tiny bags, but the large bags are a CPR (Colossal Pain in the Rear). I'd rather do greeting cards than those giant toys that people buy lots of around Christmas.

 

[pellinore]

Hey, at our store we are now getting new bags! The boxes list the country of origin as "United States".....and so far, with these new bags there doesn't seem to be the problems that we had with the old bags.

I sure hope that these bags work.....they should make life for us as cashiers much better!

I'm wondering if all of our comments about the bags finally got seen and were taken seriously. In any case....have any of you gotten these new bags too?

 

[wifey954]

haha Im cracking up reading this because 1. it is sooo true and 2. because I WISHHHH my cashier's would either recycle or use the "junk" bags. They just crumple them up and stash them in the bottom stray bin. I have told them a number of times that the bags are very expensive and to just use the ones that are lying around.

You have no idea how excited I get when I get a batch that doesn't stick together, come off the pegs when you only want one bag, or rip. At my store, we try to collect all the junk bags and recycle them if they can't be used.

A bag use metric? When they could be using all that time and money to find a better bag manufacturer........

 

[wifey954]

We havent gotten any new bags but I do think that we need new money pens..aka counterfeit pens. Since they switched to the cheaper kind, they dont work as good. I get on top of ALL the TM's, not just the front end, when it comes to marking all the 100's, 50's 20's and now 10's... but sometimes ii feel like they just mark it because its a norm to them. I tell them to think like a GSTL/GSA when it comes to certain things, like what would we do or say? this falls under the empowerment category. I do believe that there is a lot of pressure put on the cashier's though, although it is their jobs, they cant control EVERYTHING. Like today I was talking with one of my cashier's who has been working for Target for just about 8 years now and she mentioned to me that my GSTL has come up with this "brilliant" idea that the cashier's should start loading the guests cart for them during and after the transaction is complete. Realistically, I don't believe this will work. Maybe after the guest is done paying or something but really? I was like iight bet, so when we are on back up and there is definitely more then 1+1 in the line, the cashier/TM will stop....walk around...and start loading all the bags for the guest, unless the guest has beat them to it. loll... Do any other stores have their cashiers do this? If so, does it work?

Hey, at our store we are now getting new bags! The boxes list the country of origin as "United States".....and so far, with these new bags there doesn't seem to be the problems that we had with the old bags.

I sure hope that these bags work.....they should make life for us as cashiers much better!

I'm wondering if all of our comments about the bags finally got seen and were taken seriously. In any case....have any of you gotten these new bags too?

 

[redeye58]

We always trained our cashiers to load the basket for guests 'cause you can see if anything got missed under the kiddie seat or underneath the basket.
We had a LOT of loss due to cashiers NOT doing BOB (bottom of basket) until one of our trainers started doing it with every new cashier. Our paid & left was cut in half, too.

 

[targetismylife09]

We always trained our cashiers to load the basket for guests 'cause you can see if anything got missed under the kiddie seat or underneath the basket.
We had a LOT of loss due to cashiers NOT doing BOB (bottom of basket) until one of our trainers started doing it with every new cashier. Our paid & left was cut in half, too.

Wish our cashiers would do that; we've had a ridiculous amount of paid and lefts lately. Of course the guests always end up back at the service desk griping at us because "the cashier didn't give me all my stuff"! Never mind that the guest was probably talking on their cell phone throughout the entire transaction and couldn't be bothered to hang up and pay attention to what was going on around them.

On another note, has anyone noticed that their newer cashiers are being lazy and not scanning individual items, just lumping them all together on the receipt? For example, guest brings up 2 shirts that are the same price but different DPCI numbers, Lazy Cashier just scans one of them twice making it look like the guest bought 2 identical items. Later when the guest tries to do a receipt look-up to return one of the items, it appears that their card was never charged for it! ARGH!:dash1:

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Yeppers!

 

[wifey954]

Yessssss I have seen guests on the phone, and not on the phone, completely just leave all of their items. I get on the cashiers about utilizing BOB(bottom of basket) & LISA (look in surrounding area). I am not sure about all stores registers having this but ours have mirrors in the bottom wall of the register in front if it. That way they can see what is left, if anything. I also get on them about scanning the "same item" twice even though the DPCI is specific to size, color, design, etc. I tell them that they can check at the register for the DPCI for a different size. For example: Lets say the guest brings up a medium shirt without a barcode or DPCI (although most clothing has a little tag on it on the inside), and the guest goes back to get another but its a XL. All you have to do is push 'item look up' as if you are going to check another store for it, change the size (K3), select the size then K1 (select)..hit K1 again to select the highlighted one and the DPCI for a medium will come up even if your store doesnt carry it you have the number and will not have to scan the XL in place of the medium. I am able to do it under a min. so there isn't much wait time. I just thank the guest for trying to help but if for some reason they have to return the item, it will show up that it is not there because we did not scan a medium, that an XL was scanned. They are fine with waiting if it means they wont run into any future issues.

Wish our cashiers would do that; we've had a ridiculous amount of paid and lefts lately. Of course the guests always end up back at the service desk griping at us because "the cashier didn't give me all my stuff"! Never mind that the guest was probably talking on their cell phone throughout the entire transaction and couldn't be bothered to hang up and pay attention to what was going on around them.

On another note, has anyone noticed that their newer cashiers are being lazy and not scanning individual items, just lumping them all together on the receipt? For example, guest brings up 2 shirts that are the same price but different DPCI numbers, Lazy Cashier just scans one of them twice making it look like the guest bought 2 identical items. Later when the guest tries to do a receipt look-up to return one of the items, it appears that their card was never charged for it! ARGH!:dash1:

 

[redeye58]

Re: mirrors - they don't work when you've got kids surrounding the cart. Had a guest who knew this & almost got out w/o paying for 5 boxes of coke underneath (almost the same color as the cart).

 

[wifey954]

Yea...there are ways to avoid this. Having the guest pull their cart around. I am going to try the "load the guests cart" theory and see how it pans out. Maybe I am wrong, but I swear I know I am going to get that one PO'd guest who has one item to purchase and they are the next in line, and the guest being checked out at the moment has a $300 transaction. loll grrr some ppl are never satisfied. Oh well. just like the express lanes at our store. We have 28 register at the front CL1-4 are GM express lanes and CL25-28 are market side express lanes, and I try to always use them on my shift but recently the schedule doesn't allow me to put someone there. From what my ETL-GE tells me, our store shouldn't even have express lanes so I am not sure why we do. But it is nerve wrecking when I hear an old person say *old lady voice* "why can't you open an express lane, all of these registers and not one express lane. You ppl need to do your jobs and serve us customers. Poor customer service. Never in my day was I treated this way". <<< No lie, this is exactly the complaint I got when the cashier that was in the express lane was sent on their break.... lmao Not even 5 mins into her break and this is the reaction I get. Again, I always try to have one open but sometimes it is nearly impossible. The other day I somehow managed to survive my shift (a few days after xmas) with only 4 cashiers until 4pm, that was without anyone being late and no call outs. I didn't even try to include the photo TM as an extra cashier because we had so many stray carts in the center stock room that had to be sorted, I knew between guests, they would be busy. But I am still alive

 

[redeye58]

When they complain about express lanes not being used, give them the survey slip. You could also give them the comment card but make sure they call guest relations since the cards no longer go to corp, just into an ETL's box.