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

Wave Ballerino said:
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
Click to expand...

Wait, people at your store actually do their own SP signing? LUCKY!

Mines a mess because people DON'T. I would try to blitz it all out, but I gave up on that after it started impacting my own work, and if its not put up it is thrown into the compactor after a month. If Vendors talk to me about an audit, I tell them the TL of the department responsible, and offer them the sign if they want it to put up.
 
Signkitty said:
@ForeverInMMB and @Signduck

I used metal rings like the kind we were sent to store our ceiling wires.

I also used a ceiling wire to rig it to the shelf.
Click to expand...
It's "supposed to" be on it way but a pic would be amazing!!! Pm it if u don't wanna post it :D but if not thanks for the info???
@signingminion i took a look at my wiper one today.... Yeah I don't know if mine is old or new... But that ain't happenin. I had thought that the swatch holder for domestic trend run might be MacGyvered too.
 
So here is a question for all the signing peeps.... Did anyone keep the plastic ceiling hangers? Or did you trash them? And is anyone willing to post their signing areas either in their fixture room or their bulk area? Or pm it to me? I'm in the process of reorganization and looking for a better process. I have a signing area in the fixture room aside from empl flip stuff. Basically a standard 4ft wako area floor up however many shelves. And the standard area for bulk area. (I think)

The last girl who had it before me was some what of a packrat like worse than me. And I assume the guy before her. Because I'm finding stuff hidden from grand opening... Uff!! Anyway... Any help would be appreciated!!
Also for the those of you who ordered the bin stickers, how long did it take you to get them?
 
I kept the plastic hangers because the metal ones barely fit in some things. Also, I needed to build up a bigger supply of the metal hangers. I ordered a bunch of sizes before I left and they were all backordered. As soon as you get rid of those plastic hangers there's going to be something dumb like the plaid signing again.
 
I kept mine(plastic hangers) . The Thanksgiving signs required them, after we were told to throw them away...

...lemme see what i have for fixture to pics. Otherwise i can take some Monday.
 
BigEyedPhish said:
Wait, people at your store actually do their own SP signing? LUCKY!
Click to expand...
I didn't say they did put their SP stuff out, they just have their own area to put it all to keep their getting their dirty hobbit fingers in my signing pocketses =)

RE: printer booklet-holder - I was told the booklet they sent for printers was a goof, and to just toss it =)
 
I kept all my plastic one-ups, because I have known the signing nerds upstairs to always jack things up in some way or another. I have kept the wires in their own original small zip-bags, coiling them back in the same way they had arrived. It looks like the FOS for BTS is going to be like those plaid monsters kinda, so I can pretty much bet for sure I'm going to need more wires than I have. I also ordered a fark ton more of the wires and most of them were back ordered but some are slowing coming in at least.
 

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