Archived Sales Floor Shift Always Understaffed

[flygirl]

HL TL and Elec -

According to AE 2014 by this time we were to help TM's gain more control of setting sales plans. Zone.

With My time roll out hours were guest service focused, but there may be more hours for those busy days!

Caf Drops at 12-6.

Here is an example of Sales Floor Schedule at my store:

Consumable 1 6-2:30, Consumable 2 2:30-6:30

HL 1 11-3, HL 2 3:30-10

SF 9-4:30 SF 2 4:30-10

Operator 9:45-3:15 Op 2 3:15-10

Standard week day

5-8 4x4s delegated out, once Cafs drop we are continually pushing. Hell, till even 8 at night. We take in 4-5 trucks M-F but only given hours for three trucks a week.

Which means the hours are taken from sales floor.

There is never enough coverage, TLs literally have to struggle to set sales plans. Many times leave 4-8 behind (I Do get everything except clearance/dually located E/Cs set)

It's an impending cycle waiting to spiral out of control, and yet I am told to be more flexible... Oh, and then leadership/mentor updates for WTV that literally do no good. Other than talking about what we're trying to fix, when we can only work on symptoms and not the cause (ie. Cannot complete zone, cannot do 4x4s).

I refuse to take away from process teams that are already slaughtered from hours.

In discussion with my ETLs it seems we must grin and bear it. Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus. I know from experience now these events DO bite my in the behind when reviews come around, and I understand that nobody, just nobody cares because if they actually were to tell others their grand ideas of 4x4s weren't working, then they would be in line to be termed.

Is there actually a resolution? Or is this what I have signed up for until I've earned enough managerial experience to move on.

TM for 1.5 yeras, TL for 1.5 years.

 

[BullseyeBabe]

I'm right there with you. Today:
ETL-LOG, "Softlines you have five pulls and stockroom b."
Me, "Thank you ETL-LOG. I'm still pushing truck, but I'll start on pulls as soon as I finish."
ETL-LOG, "What do you mean, 'Still pushing truck'?" Go to ch 3!"
I had been on a register all morning and was pushing truck cause they sent the flow team home.
They don't accept being stuck on a register as an excuse for not getting anything else accomplished. If we don't immediately respond to back up requests it's the end of the world! All they want is everything and we're all just exhausted.

 

[eleuthreophile]

I'm just a TM but I feel your pain. We have CAFs on the line at 9pm sometimes because the entire salesfloor is stuck back up cashing because they only scheduled four cashiers THE ENTIRE DAY and nothing else is getting done, let alone actually zoning or pushing reshop. I am dreading fourth quarter. Just keep a good attitude if you can. There ARE TMs that care, TMs that have been there for years and hate to see their store go to shit. My store isn't doing any better than yours and I haven't stayed here for five years to watch it all fall apart.

 

[Bosch]

Is there actually a resolution? Or is this what I have signed up for until I've earned enough managerial experience to move on.

TM for 1.5 yeras, TL for 1.5 years.

No, it will not get better and in fact its getting worse. We were told since Plano has a heavy schedule those hours must come from the sales floor and other work centers like In-Stocks and price change. To bad Plano couldn't be bothered to actually push the POGs they set. Like all the Market/freezer pogs and pets end caps. Nope, set and forget. So in my scanning I found all these empty places and the batches were huge! And that meant they took forever to push, add being in constant back up and crazy Saturday busy, nothing got done..

ETL's were doing price change all week since they took the TM hours and gave them to Plano, In-Stocks as a skeleton crew to just make it look like the store is full and to keep the horror of overnight flow sort of in check.

I have had bad days but yesterday was a new level of hell.

 

[flygirl]

ETL's were doing price change all week since they took the TM hours and gave them to Plano, In-Stocks as a skeleton crew to just make it look like the store is full and to keep the horror of overnight flow sort of in check.

That seems like a horrifying act to commit! ETLs wasting time stickering things? I'm guessing they don't even push out the clearance. I walked back there and saw 6 vehicles of clearance on the line and just started a sort of mad laughter. If I am HL for 8 hours during CAF push and the only HL, I am responsible for clearance as TL, but how? Hah.

I guess if that is how corporate wants to run their company.

 

[ZombieGurl]

lol i wish my store would give me more hours instead they take em all and give em to logistics and salesfloor... my pog team has to pull and we do push all of our batches every day... also we dont have to set salesplanners yet the tl's do and plano pushes all of their stuff and all of the clearance every day

also in my store they give the br more hours and they do the pushing. they are scheduled till 9pm at night and push caf's

 

[Bosch]

ETL's were doing price change all week since they took the TM hours and gave them to Plano, In-Stocks as a skeleton crew to just make it look like the store is full and to keep the horror of overnight flow sort of in check.

That seems like a horrifying act to commit! ETLs wasting time stickering things? I'm guessing they don't even push out the clearance. I walked back there and saw 6 vehicles of clearance on the line and just started a sort of mad laughter. If I am HL for 8 hours during CAF push and the only HL, I am responsible for clearance as TL, but how? Hah.

I guess if that is how corporate wants to run their company.

Yeah I know but if you are on salary you can come in on your day off and no one cares. There is so much clearance he had done days of ticketing cause there is no pricing TM's to actually work the back room work load, only the sales floor then go home.. 3hr shifts for the two of them...

 

[calimero]

My typical flow day softline side!
I start at 8 am , (3 of us) but wait , operator doesn't come in until. 9 am ...
Oh ,no problem , while breaking out repacks close to fitting room ,I have time to answer phone and take care of guests ....
First SL tm starts at 12 !( me )
At 11 , I have to cover FRO break !!! And back up cashier
Even if I didn't get my first break yet ...
But FRO takes her sweet old time ...
Oh what ? We haven't quite finish pushing softline?
The other 2 tms have instock at 11.30 am ...
I still have 2 zracks of new merchandise to put in , and reshop to get done ...
My 1 st break , and lunch , FRO lunch ...
Back up at register ...
What the heck , add 3 4X4 for the fun of it ....
Zone?

On non truck day , I start at 8 ( FRO at 9 ) , but now we have mcclane truck to push , and huddles where we are told to push whatever is left on the line , or mini seasonal ....
The 2 nd SL tm usually comes in at 3.30 pm ...
It is exhausting ...

 

[consume]

I grossly misread that. I was about to argue. Hardlines definitely isn't undershafted

Yeah you're right

 

[calimero]

We are all understaffed! Hard line has most days ,one tm and one tl! Plus electronics! Which often goes :
Elec tm : who will cover my break?
Tl : I will !
The other tm ends up at the register with me ! And you can hear the call button somewhere ... Maybe Plano will get it , or maybe not, the 2 Plano tm took their lunch at the same time ...
I am wondering sometimes if we are not set up to simply fail! If they want to close the store , they should simply do it!

 

[Nauzhror]

they only scheduled four cashiers THE ENTIRE DAY and nothing else is getting done

I really am glad our store never does this nonsense.

Today we had 9 cashiers and 3 GSA's scheduled that I can recall off the top of my head, and I might have forgotten a cashier or two.

 

[eleuthreophile]

My store is ULV (lately we've been doing maybe $60k on the weekends). Last night, we had two cashiers past 6pm (one only until 9:30), one HLTM, one SLTM, an electronics TM, and a GSA. Plus a srTL. That was it, on a Saturday night. We NEVER have more than one GSA or GSTL on at a time, except during the holidays.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

I am at a ULV as well. We are down to 5 key carriers, to the point where I have to close on the weekends (I'm the LOG SrTL). We don't have TL's or GSTL's to close with. It's just you as the only leader in the building. Good luck getting a lunch in.

Last night I had:
1 Cashier to close
1 HL
1 Elec
1 Market
1 Fitting Room

Total sales were around 85k

We're on a reverse caf schedule as well (our cafs are the size of autofills and autofills are small) so my team pushed until 8PM, then reshopped.

We rarely ever zone at night these days, our store looks like garbage and it affects team morale.

It's bad enough I can barely finish a truck (flow only scheduled for 4 hours lolololol)

 

[Retail Girl]

I am at a ULV as well. We are down to 5 key carriers, to the point where I have to close on the weekends (I'm the LOG SrTL). We don't have TL's or GSTL's to close with. It's just you as the only leader in the building. Good luck getting a lunch in.

Last night I had:
1 Cashier to close
1 HL
1 Elec
1 Market
1 Fitting Room

Total sales were around 85k

We're on a reverse caf schedule as well (our cafs are the size of autofills and autofills are small) so my team pushed until 8PM, then reshopped.

We rarely ever zone at night these days, our store looks like garbage and it affects team morale.

It's bad enough I can barely finish a truck (flow only scheduled for 4 hours lolololol)

You don't even have a GSA to oversee the lanes on a close? That's beyond ridiculous.

 

[Retail Girl]

What's super fun is having the SrTL for the salesfloor scheduled as THE hardlines person during the day. This means there is no one to take hardlines phone calls, no one to call from hardlines for back up, and generally no one from hardlines to assist with carts. I really like this SrTL, but seriously, just give me a regular hardlines TM out on the floor so there can be someone for guest service and such.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

I am at a ULV as well. We are down to 5 key carriers, to the point where I have to close on the weekends (I'm the LOG SrTL). We don't have TL's or GSTL's to close with. It's just you as the only leader in the building. Good luck getting a lunch in.

Last night I had:
1 Cashier to close
1 HL
1 Elec
1 Market
1 Fitting Room

Total sales were around 85k

We're on a reverse caf schedule as well (our cafs are the size of autofills and autofills are small) so my team pushed until 8PM, then reshopped.

We rarely ever zone at night these days, our store looks like garbage and it affects team morale.

It's bad enough I can barely finish a truck (flow only scheduled for 4 hours lolololol)

You don't even have a GSA to oversee the lanes on a close? That's beyond ridiculous.

I have a service desk, which sometimes is a GSA.

If I do get a GSA scheduled, typically they do a multitude of things, like getting carts, backing up, helping with ad takedown, etc.. But it's rare.

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

What's super fun is having the SrTL for the salesfloor scheduled as THE hardlines person during the day. This means there is no one to take hardlines phone calls, no one to call from hardlines for back up, and generally no one from hardlines to assist with carts. I really like this SrTL, but seriously, just give me a regular hardlines TM out on the floor so there can be someone for guest service and such.

As a replen-srtl even when I'm taking a truck I respond to backup calls, and if necessary I'll pull flow TM's to backup at the front or Rx. My flow TMs get carts -every day-.

Why wouldn't your HL SrTL respond to backups or take calls? It's his job.

 

[Retail Girl]

I seriously think my head just exploded. Who shuts down the lanes? Grabs change? Fends off the pain the ass guests when the cashiers are new? Who keeps the cashiers on schedule for breaks and lunches? This just seems to be something that cannot end well most evenings. Especially on an 85k day! For ULV, that's hella busy!

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

I seriously think my head just exploded. Who shuts down the lanes? Grabs change? Fends off the pain the ass guests when the cashiers are new? Who keeps the cashiers on schedule for breaks and lunches? This just seems to be something that cannot end well most evenings. Especially on an 85k day! For ULV, that's hella busy!

For the lanes, most of our SD people are trained as GSA and able to do this.

For fending off guests - the LOD.
For breaks, we have like 1, maybe 2 cashiers, they walkie me when they need to go.
Lunches? I can't remember the last time a cashier at my store was scheduled more than 4.5 hours.

 

[Retail Girl]

What's super fun is having the SrTL for the salesfloor scheduled as THE hardlines person during the day. This means there is no one to take hardlines phone calls, no one to call from hardlines for back up, and generally no one from hardlines to assist with carts. I really like this SrTL, but seriously, just give me a regular hardlines TM out on the floor so there can be someone for guest service and such.

As a replen-srtl even when I'm taking a truck I respond to backup calls, and if necessary I'll pull flow TM's to backup at the front or Rx. My flow TMs get carts -every day-.

Why wouldn't your HL SrTL respond to backups or take calls? It's his job.

Because he's busy doing SrTL things, I guess. Our other SrTL who was hardlines before he was moved was the exact same way. I'm usually too busy doing my own thing to worry what others are doing, but it's pretty obvious when we are begging people to pick up phone calls for that part of the store, begging for back up because the softlines TM is on break and there is no one else but the process teams who apparently are exempt from back up, or when the electronics TM is begging for their break or lunch and can't get the SrTL to cover for them because SrTL, well, you tend to notice something is broken.

 

[Retail Girl]

I was at guest services most of the night tonight because we had to shift a semi-trained cashier to guest services due to a call off. The entire front end looked like it exploded when all was said and done, because I needed to stay close to guest services. I cannot imagine doing that on a consistent basis and having any hope of having anything brand, ever.

 

[Guest]

The sales floor is always understaffed at my store. We always have massive callouts on the weekends. People just don't want to work on Saturday or Sunday.

 

[eleuthreophile]

If I do get a GSA scheduled, typically they do a multitude of things, like getting carts, backing up, helping with ad takedown, etc.. But it's rare.

My store too, but we almost ALWAYS have a GSA. Who closes the lanes if there's no GSA or GSTL?

 

[signingminion]

I think I will never complain about being understaffed again. Today's sales goal was likely in the 80-90k range. To close we had two or three cashiers, guest service, a gsa, fitting room, sl, hl, a hl trainee, consumables, carts, electronics, and the lod who did sl since it's their area. Plus fa and sbux. Two hour overlap in consumables and electronics. And the cart kid can ring.

Granted I had to order, push every caf from all day cause the opener couldn't be bothered, backup for twenty to thirty minutes at a time, take care of the the tier of cardboard the opener left since yesterday from the perishables order, etc. But I got the reshop mostly done and the endcaps zoned. And the floor filled-to capacity even. Instead of giant empty holes.

We've also been doing decent on the 5-6 trucks we take a week, which normally doesn't start till the end of October. Still short people but they let them stay late, even if it means overtime. Same with setting sales planners.

 

[Nauzhror]

Our store has NEVER not had a GSA scheduled for a closing shift.

We had them call off and no one fill in, but never intentionally scheduled that way.

The closest we come to that is the opening GSA + cash office is the same person so there's no GSA till around 10:30, and then they usually make sure a well seasoned cashier is scheduled to open and depending who it is (myself or one other cashier will get given the keys, the others are just asked to call the LOD if they need keys for anything) the GSA gives them the keys and has them function as GSA till the actual GSA is done in cash office.