Archived New Fr procedure is it just us?

[Blackhawks54]

You all have a point. I kinda feel like it's all over the place at my store. Bear with me as I'm trying to make this as short as possible. During the weekdays we have an opening FRO and sometimes one or two mid SLTM's. Then we have a few who work truck/brand in the morning plus the VMTL. If there's no mids the opening FRO can barely do reshop. The FRO will stay at the desk. But we've tried asking a brand TM near shoes to find an item for a guest or bring another size in kids, etc and that seems to work out well. Then there is usually only a closing FRO and one SLTM at night. I don't close a whole lot, but the past couple times I did, the SLTM will have a lot more zones than FRO. If the GSTL/GSA calls for backup, the SLTM is the designated one to respond for SL. The FRO will only come up if no one else responds and put the phone on night service. When zones are done, one sorts reshop and one does touch ups the rest of the night. We barely get reshop out but the LOD says that truck can take care of it in the morning. It's crazy.

Weekends are different as more people are scheduled. Lately I've seen that two people are scheduled FR during the day: one opening and one mid, sometimes weird hours like 3-7. The closing FRO will either have no zones or will zone men's performance, maternity, RTW clearance and plus. It depends on the LOD. But now that it's mentioned it kinda doesn't make sense because it may seem to not be busy and the mid FRO will just zone somewhere else in SL or do reshop.

I may try directing calls to different SL departments next time to see if that works. I used to work at another store a few years back and I did that. It seemed to work out just fine.

 

[Ahem]

In my store fr never zoned or put out reshop. Sometimes the morning fr tm will if it's slow. And at night they do the rtw clearance. I'm hoping your store is a lower volume because I can't even imagine that on top of the other crap. We're supposed to be giving phones back to hr in my store but they're also now letting my time make the schedule and no humans interfere with it so idk how that's gonna work out. Guess it depends on how the robot feels

What is a&a?

 

[Yetive]

Apparel and Accessories.

 

[Doglover89]

I haven't really worked FRO since E2E got underway, but we put a Z rail right where guests walk out of the rooms. We ask people to hang unwanted items there, and the FRO will organize it by department every so often. We do not have whiteboards by the rooms. In the morning, she will hang out close to the fitting room, sorting and reshoping if possible, as well as covering phones while the HRTM takes her breaks. Right now there is a bit of overlap between opening and closing FROs so one will either work reshop or help sort if needed during that time. Evening operator is responsible for phones from about 3:30-close. She also zones RTW at night if there are only 3 closers. We are high volume, so this is quite difficult, especially on weekends. Our other 2 closers will come help with tables, clearance, or swim at the end of the night. When the zone is done, we work on the fitting room area together, organizing and pushing out what we can. The rest stays for the opener.

 

[Blackhawks54]

Wow that's different! we have to have another SLTM cover the FRO's breaks, but at night during the week usually the other closing SLTM uses the cordless and puts the phone on night service to keep zoning or touch ups. And yeah I think we're a lower volume store but we're in a big strip mall so we tend to get a lot of guests. So I'm honestly not sure lol

 

[SFSFun]

What they seem to be doing at my store is having the FR focus solely on greeting guests and walking them to a room, and sorting reshop (we have three racks behind the desk).

She does not answer the phone and does not leave the FR for any reason. Other TMs bring reshop up from he service desk.

The TL made a map of the fitting rooms on the computer, then printed it out and laminated it. The FR TM keeps it on a clipboard and uses a dry erase marker to write number of items in each room.

They got rid of the rack right outside and when guests leave, the TM will interact with the guest by asking if everything worked out, and if not, she'll just take the items and add it to the pile on the desk waiting to be sorted.

I'm pretty impressed so far. It's resembling what a fitting room should be.

 

[Blackhawks54]

Yeah that's what my store wants us to do too in terms of focusing more on guest service than task. One of my coworkers made a little FR cheat sheet for rooms allowing a certain amount of items (first Room on the left has 5 things, next room 4, etc and then big rooms for families and handicapped or more than 10 items). Some TM's use it, but several of them let the guest pick their room and write the number of items on the board.

We tried the rack outside the fitting rooms for a little while, but I think it became too cluttered. I also felt like it was difficult
to move the stuff from that rack to the main z-rack because guests kept coming in and out. But a lot of the time we had it when we used to have the FRO help out on the floor and it kinda worked lol.

 

[Ahem]

We switched to those hurdle racks... the ones that are next to the mannequins in rtw and men's (we didn't do 2.0 yet) with no wheels. We have one outside of the fr. And one on the other side to transfer what we've fixed. Sales floor person comes in and takes it off the hurdle and transfers to their z. Unfortunately, we don't always have the staff for that to work. When it is working, it looks a lot nicer and neater than the z rack or the um... metro carts. Of course it fills up faster and on some days we're still busy enough that it's hard to keep up with the reshop from GS and the stuff the guests don't want. Sometimes salesfloor people come through and help with the hurdle to catch us up.

Some days we have two people in the fitting rooms. They often steal the second person and it defeats the purpose. When it's going according to plan, there's one on the outside maintaining the hurdle and greeting the guests, and one behind the counter keeping up with what guest service and the front lanes send. The gstls are now keeping a separate cart for sl crap that the guests don't want instead of it being added to the stuff with service desk before coming to us.

I wouldn't mind the whole extra personal thing but sometimes we actually have all ten rooms empty at once and it just overwhelms the crap out of me

 

[Tessa120]

We've got two of those smaller racks. I love it because instead of sorting it on the z-rack and then transferring it to a cart to put away I can just sort on one of those, grab it and go, while leaving the other one for the guests.

The only thing I can't manage is putting the folded stuff in the basket area. Whenever I move the lower hanging clothing around, I knock over my stacks and have to refold them when I get to the tables. So I usually put those in a cart or the basket of the second rack and wait until I can do those separately.

 

[softlines gal]

At my store we stored with white boards about 3 weeks ago . We count the items and put the guest name on board .

 

[Ahem]

We've got two of those smaller racks. I love it because instead of sorting it on the z-rack and then transferring it to a cart to put away I can just sort on one of those, grab it and go, while leaving the other one for the guests.

The only thing I can't manage is putting the folded stuff in the basket area. Whenever I move the lower hanging clothing around, I knock over my stacks and have to refold them when I get to the tables. So I usually put those in a cart or the basket of the second rack and wait until I can do those separately.

On those, I extend the bar on top and put the long stuff there. We have hella maxi dresses right now though so sometimes it's a bit much. I hate those damn metrocarts (apparently that's the official name. Idk why I remember it) though tbh. I liked regular carts better just because I get shoulder pains from the constant reaching up, and I get more knee pain from getting junk out of the baskets.

I've mostly been fitting room for months so I haven't actually had to deal with it other than putting stuff on them constantly. We use those racks for every dept except rtw.

 

[Yetive]

Metrocart?
We have a rack for guest items, and another to sort onto at the FR entrance. Not z racks, but the chrome ones used for bras. When the sorted one gets full, it is switched out with an empty one. We have 8 of those racks, and use 1 of them to store hangers in the closet. We also have a chrome shelf on casters for folded items.

 

[Ahem]

The metrocart is like a mini z rack... But without the z on the bottom. Instead the bottom is a basket. The top bar can extend on both ends so that you can hang long stuff without it dragging into the basket or getting tangled with the second tier. I'm sorry this description sounds nonsensical. Gonna see if I can find a pic. We actually call them mini-Z racks in my store but I read in the fitting room guide (my tls wrote it, though so maybe they made that name up?) that they were metrocarts and I just haven't forgotten for some reason... Probably because it sounds crazy.

Edit: When we first got them I sent a pic to another tm and asked "wtf am I supposed to do with this?" But I deleted it :/. So I drew one lmao. In my little awful drawing, one side is extended out. If both sides are open, I'd guess they're about the same length (at the top) as the regular z rack. There's pros and cons.

 

[Yetive]

Ah. We have 1 of those. That is the one that stays at the FR--the red rack is what we call it.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

We have one, too. I like them.

 

[Blackhawks54]

I wish we had those metrocarts. They look so cool! Right now we just have two big z-racks to sort, one for swim and one for the rest of hanging softlines. And a TM just wheels one of them out depending how much reshop is on it. For folded Softlines, we just use one of the three tier carts to sort. We also use the three tiers for zoning, which would be nice to use the metrocarts so that the long dresses don't drag

 

[Yetive]

Order on SAP. Those big z racks look terrible.

 

[Blackhawks54]

The z-racks are hard to maneuver sometimes lol I'll talk to my VMTL about the metrocarts

 

[SFSFun]

I wish we had those metrocarts. They look so cool! Right now we just have two big z-racks to sort, one for swim and one for the rest of hanging softlines. And a TM just wheels one of them out depending how much reshop is on it. For folded Softlines, we just use one of the three tier carts to sort. We also use the three tiers for zoning, which would be nice to use the metrocarts so that the long dresses don't drag

Every store should have one. We were sent one without ordering it at the beginning of the year, and the PMT received a work order to put it together.

 

[Ahem]

We had two initially, then one day I went in and we had one for every dept. I like the idea of them, but when I was on the floor, I'd always sit at a mannequin base so I could get the stuff out of the basket and put it into a cart. Less bending that way. I do like them for sorting in the FR though.

We don't use them for rtw or swim now, because they'd fill up too quickly. When the store was slow, I used them for those areas.

 

[Yetive]

We triple hang a couple of the chrome ones for swim. Also, we use plastic baskets from home storage on the bottoms of the chrome ones for non-hanging. Just grab the basket and carry it to basics, tables, etc.