MEGATHREAD Signing Tips, Tricks and Quips (along with howls of despair)

HearMeRawr3 said:
Does anyone know what the part number (or name) of the black piece is that goes around the base decks and endcap bases? My PMT and I have been searching like crazy.
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The black metal piece that runs on the bottom of basedecks is called a kickboard. I saw some whilst hunting in the signing area for some TV fact tag holders, but I didn't get the number. Try punching kickboard into SAP and seeing if you get results. Will try to see if I can find the number tomorrow.
 
Hardlinesmaster said:
I got that off the fixtures guide. The description said round base deck do 18 inches & 22 inches. Sorry for the confusion.
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I meant, if that's not the black piece that they meant...if that makes sense. I wrote down the number for a end trim piece.
 
@HearMeRawr3 well it seems everyone has been very busy! Here is the page with all the guides you could ever want in a lifetime. Also, as I was looking for the part number, all I could conclude was: it's probably located it one of those excel guides where you literally have to go though the whole store line by line and look at every line to see if you can find it unless you are lucky enough as the 2 above with their resources or flat out knowledge.
 

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Signduck said:
@HearMeRawr3 well it seems everyone has been very busy! Here is the page with all the guides you could ever want in a lifetime. Also, as I was looking for the part number, all I could conclude was: it's probably located it one of those excel guides where you literally have to go though the whole store line by line and look at every line to see if you can find it unless you are lucky enough as the 2 above with their resources or flat out knowledge.
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My pmt's bible is organized by where is used, alphabetically. Love him.
 
Does anyone have the part number for the old 3x5 sign holder? It looks like those flip labels for flrxing but teh size is 3x5. Thanks for helping!!
 
Shirohime said:
Does anyone have the part number for the old 3x5 sign holder? It looks like those flip labels for flrxing but teh size is 3x5. Thanks for helping!!
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Monday.... We have a ton. But then... That is like 3 days from now & I will have to remember....
 
Sbux babe said:
So my signing gal, who has been with spot 25ish years provably 18 at least doing signing, is retiring in a few months. She will be training her replacement, but one thing I would like to do is revamp the signing area. As it is now, she knows where EVERYTHING is, but it takes my team a long time to try to sift through her mess, I mean stuff. So when we try to set anything, it's nearly impossible to find the boxes we need. I would love to organize this area so that it is more user friendly and make my process run more efficiently. Any ideas? How do you organize your signs? Your displays, your backer paper, etc. any pictures would be great also! Thanks in advance!
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The problem is that your team is trying to sift thru her stuff, not that she knows where everything is =P

Think of it like a high-security prison where you want to visit an inmate. You have a guard bring the prisoner to the glass wall with phones to possibly protect you or them -- you don't just go up to them in the open prison and open random cells looking for them, because then all the other prisoners escape and then the guard is held accountable. The guard knows which cell the prisoner is in, not you, or if that prisoner is even held there at all.

1. You might be assuming way too much (pardon this rant, but please read it)..

It simply must be this way. Saying that the signing area needs to be better organized is like using a fireman hose at full pressure into Receiving. You're just ruining all the electronics and making them inoperable, smearing all the ink on the carefully-tabulated stats, scattering papers everywhere, destroying receipts, not to mention molding/rotting the wood of the desk, creating slip hazards, etc.

Signing is always missing from our stuff in the first place that isn't due to messiness, and there are about 12 different ways it could be missing that we could check that explains why it is missing.

The people who stack ISM pallets are not Target -- they are some third party who ship it to the DC already pink-wrapped, and the DC merely diverts it to the specific stores. This third party couldn't win the starting brackets of a Tetris or Jenga tournament, if the prize for winning were their own mother's freedom, seems like. They stack stupidly and obviously heavy things on top of obviously delicate things, they put boxes for one store on another's pallet, and several other no-brainers. I've gotten gloves and open box-knives left inside the pallet, also, wrapped inside.

The people who look for signing in the signing area and and blame it on mess just have no idea. (a) Sometimes the POG has the wrong part number listed, (b) sometimes the supply side of the signing printers don't make it or don't know to make it and it doesn't even show up on the catalog to order before the POG arrives and things call for it. (c) Sometimes the signing is damaged from no-brainer stacking and needs to be re-ordered. (d) Sometimes Redwire has already stated there will be a delay on a type of sign or backer. (e) Sometimes the early set notes will say that a sign or backer will be delayed. (f) Sometimes the transition packet won't tell us that it should be carryforward and that we should have had it already, but yet people will tear down the backer that's there, fold it all up, and throw it away and we never even received any new supply. (g) (h) (i) (j) (k) (l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s)... You might think it would "look bad" on you for not having the backer on the EC that called for it, but it is 20x worse to the signing person, who, by the way, can probably give an answer that a DTL would understand about the whole process and let you off the hook.

The fact that organization and efficiency is needed sounds great on a piece of paper or as a "going forward" plan for the DTL visit, but the doing of it reveals there are about umpty-hundred roadblocks that, when actually put in context, make loads of sense why it will always seem like a mess to anyone other than the signing person. It will never be hospital efficient, and it will always be a field-triage tent. If there is any signing area that is neat and organized enough for a casual passers-by approval, then I suspect someone involved is doing some hardcore deception.

2. Try dividing the salesplanner stuff from the otherwise, so that the sneaky-fingers who set SPLNs can rummage thru their own mess, and keep those urchins out of the ISM.

3. Try convincing MySupport to send you an ten-pack of the 8x8x8 ISM boxes without anything inside.

This way, you can assemble them and tape them all together into a grid, and then keep at least 50x of each kind of widely-used backer paper in a consistent stash that the signing person can just reorder-fill when it gets low. I just started this recently, and it really saved the day this past week when we didn't have enough of that white punched wifi-looking backer for Electronics and I had a big stash of it already on hand.

I would recommend visiting the floor to find out which kinds your store uses frequently and just writing the numbers off the paper already on the gondolas. Then when the extra arrive, mark the cells of the grid so that the last-4 of the backer DPCI can be seen easily from the lip, so anyone looking for it from the POG can just pull out 2 or 10 or whatever they need without having to open anything.

4. Do not consider your new signing person to be trained until they have had minimum one complete year of direct experience. After that, their performance should begin improving, because they will at least know what to timidly fear/expect from last year's time about that time. Moving them off after a few weeks or 3 months is not really enough to get the actual range of duty involved. Several people at my store tried and gave up, passing on it once they realized the scope of the work involved =P
 
BigEyedPhish said:
I have a question I have been very curious about.

I know that Signing (specifically the kits they come in) are able to be backstocked, I am just wondering if it pulls when the pog the signing belongs to is batched. (ei. just like a regular item). Remodel coming up and am not getting anytime to sort. So I figured that backstocking all the signing in a specific location and having it pull would have the system organize itself.. as each POG is tied and batched.

I feel like pulling up the backroom detail report for this specific location (that the signing pulls from) could also help with auditing some how.
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I would not advise trying to backstock any signing in any way, because the labels are notorious for being completely wrong and doesn't work at all like normal backroom things. Part of the problem is that the ISM people who box them can't make anything a consistent size, and you'll have just an awful time of trying to sift everything out individually. Just put everything for a single set on a tub if possible, and wheel the tub out to the POG area being set and let them pick thru what they need. Then the signing person can damage-control whatever is left, and resume from where they left off if they skipped something. Backstocking signing is a horrible, rotten, no-good, very bad idea by my experience =))
 
HearMeRawr3 said:
Does anyone know what the part number (or name) of the black piece is that goes around the base decks and endcap bases? My PMT and I have been searching like crazy.
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The black part of the gondola base is called a kickplate and there's not a single part number for them because they come in a lot of sizes. I would start with ED0006 (just remember ED for end-deck). I tried ordering them myself a while ago but at the time it looked like the black portion only came paired with the basedeck (the upper surface of the endcap base) portion, not separate (and truly, a new basedeck would just look nicer anyway). The part numbers vary according to width and depth, so there are probably several. If I can remember, I'll double check the part number for the 4-foot inline kickplate when I get in.
 
signingminion said:
Display process is changing this month, they will now be backstocked in the appropriate backroom group. So that's off your plate...
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More like adding me an entirely new other plate =P

Now, instead of receiving all of the displays neatly and smoothly into one-ish mostly-coherent grouping, they're sent down in pieces down the supply chain so that (a) flow will try to stock them, (b) send them to receiving because they scan up as $0.01 and (c) Receiving will mark them down/damage/mispick/etc. Or, if flow manages to stock it, (a) a guest will buy it thinking it is a real one, (b) end up returning it because the cord is cut and the instructions/warranty is missing, (c) GS will mark it damaged and throw it away and I'll never see it again, and (d) MySupport will tell me that I did actually receive it on their records.

Or, it will get backstocked and pulled, but POG will not realize it is a display and try to re-backstock it, it will come up on pulls and attempt to be stocked unsuccessfully since the shelf location will be like shelf 7 on a section that only has 3 shelves and then backstocked again, or rewrapped, etc.

JUST SEND THEM ALL ON A PALLET YA BOZOS

I've told the backroom and everyone I know that does anything backroom related to just bring me anything at all that has a "middle number" of 94 in the DPCI. Everything with a class 94 needs to come directly to me, so I can check it off my list of displays that need to be put out, and to make sure they all have identifying stickers/etc.

If some random person pulls one and tries to put it out, they might not know to cut cords, make stickers, or even check with me to tell me that it did finally come in. If an LOD can just update order counts for displays now, we'll get a million displays mailed to us because they keep resetting it to zero whenever they feel like it because they can't find it, because whoever non-me set it out there without identifying stickers/etc. Don't backstock it, don't open it, nothing. Just leave it in my area, I'll find it and deal with it.
 
Wave Ballerino said:
I would not advise trying to backstock any signing in any way, because the labels are notorious for being completely wrong and doesn't work at all like normal backroom things. Part of the problem is that the ISM people who box them can't make anything a consistent size, and you'll have just an awful time of trying to sift everything out individually. Just put everything for a single set on a tub if possible, and wheel the tub out to the POG area being set and let them pick thru what they need. Then the signing person can damage-control whatever is left, and resume from where they left off if they skipped something. Backstocking signing is a horrible, rotten, no-good, very bad idea by my experience =))
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Well the good news is that I will doing all the signing for our E&E remodel myself.

The bad news is, that was this morning, we start tonight, and I wasted 4-5 hours of my time making it as idiot proof (and as easy) as possible for our random Plano (they are actually Flow) people. Needless to say, after I heard of this I just threw all this shit on a tub.
 

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