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

Noiinteam said:
Our signing person left in February. You can not even get in the door to our fixture room. I saw signing in the steel. Don't know how it got there or who put it there. Our hamburger never got hung and the lettuce is basically falling out at this point. You have to laugh.
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I used to get signing hours on Saturday to prep the ad for the next day, one week they stopped giving me and the other signing/plano tms prep hours. The NOP signs were not sorted for a two-three weeks, today I finally decided to stay extra to sort it and I am glad I did, as tomorrows ad is HUGE and half of the NOP were actually tied after the print date....
 
GreasyGary said:
We got an email from I think our GVP saying all stores in our group had to have this done by the end of next week. It included pretty detailed instructions and pictures of what they wanted. They said all stores will have to do this, take a picture to verify they've done it and some corporate dude will review all the photos. The "challenge" it was meant to solve was that many stores apparently aren't getting their signing done recently. (I wonder why!)

Essentially, they wanted 16-20 feet (the number fluctuated in the guide. Originally it said 12 feet of DBO cubbies and 4 feet for misc/generic signing, but the end said they wanted a picture of all "20 feet", so who knows..) of backroom type shelving in the fixture room color coded and one shelf per each DBO, including softlines areas like Boys, Girls, Infants, etc.

The color codes didn't match the existing signing labels, either. So I assume that will be changing soon.

In addition, every area will get a new acrylic signholder thing attached to one of their push u-boats. So one of chemicals u-boats, one of HBA, etc. Same goes for one softlines metro rack for each area (Boys, etc), only those are also supposed to get the current VMG attached as well.

So a team member will be set to break down the signing pallet. Anything for the current week (I guess this is going to be a thing now, because usually the pallets are always for the next week) will go directly onto that uboat for the area. Anything for the next week or beyond goes to the cubby, which each DBO is supposed to "shop" at least once a week to make sure they are current.

Hilariously, it says that any pallets for large transitions such as Back to School should just be set aside until they are needed. Without any mention of what happens to the non BTS stuff on that pallet in the meantime, or where we are supposed to put it.

It also said that there would be no additional payroll allocated to doing this project and if your fixture room was a disaster area, well you're gonna have to figure it out. (Paraphrasing that last part).

Of course, my store wasn't set up to have the normal backroom shelving in the fixture room, so we kind of had to make do with the racks that were already in there. It's pretty wonky, but at least our FR was clean etc. If you want, I can probably snag a copy of the email when I get back to work.
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Shit, I just redid my signing area last week by dept. Did you say only stores in the group has to do this or all Target stores eventually? Where is your group located if you don't mind me asking.

I'd like to see the pics they sent.
 
GreasyGary said:
We got an email from I think our GVP saying all stores in our group had to have this done by the end of next week. It included pretty detailed instructions and pictures of what they wanted. They said all stores will have to do this, take a picture to verify they've done it and some corporate dude will review all the photos. The "challenge" it was meant to solve was that many stores apparently aren't getting their signing done recently. (I wonder why!)

Essentially, they wanted 16-20 feet (the number fluctuated in the guide. Originally it said 12 feet of DBO cubbies and 4 feet for misc/generic signing, but the end said they wanted a picture of all "20 feet", so who knows..) of backroom type shelving in the fixture room color coded and one shelf per each DBO, including softlines areas like Boys, Girls, Infants, etc.

The color codes didn't match the existing signing labels, either. So I assume that will be changing soon.

In addition, every area will get a new acrylic signholder thing attached to one of their push u-boats. So one of chemicals u-boats, one of HBA, etc. Same goes for one softlines metro rack for each area (Boys, etc), only those are also supposed to get the current VMG attached as well.

So a team member will be set to break down the signing pallet. Anything for the current week (I guess this is going to be a thing now, because usually the pallets are always for the next week) will go directly onto that uboat for the area. Anything for the next week or beyond goes to the cubby, which each DBO is supposed to "shop" at least once a week to make sure they are current.

Hilariously, it says that any pallets for large transitions such as Back to School should just be set aside until they are needed. Without any mention of what happens to the non BTS stuff on that pallet in the meantime, or where we are supposed to put it.

It also said that there would be no additional payroll allocated to doing this project and if your fixture room was a disaster area, well you're gonna have to figure it out. (Paraphrasing that last part).

Of course, my store wasn't set up to have the normal backroom shelving in the fixture room, so we kind of had to make do with the racks that were already in there. It's pretty wonky, but at least our FR was clean etc. If you want, I can probably snag a copy of the email when I get back to work.
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Must be group specific. No communication sent to my group about signing cubbies.
 
SugarSugar said:
Shit, I just redid my signing area last week by dept. Did you say only stores in the group has to do this or all Target stores eventually? Where is your group located if you don't mind me asking.

I'd like to see the pics they sent.
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The wording in the email was just my group, and I don't recall any language about it being company wide, or even a pilot program. Though if they are changing the color coding on the signing box labels, I'd expect that our group didn't just totally make this up. It could be a situation where different groups are trying different things and the best solution will be best practice, I don't know. But if they ask us to do something else after all that, I'll probably cry.

And we are on the east coast, somewhere between mid-Atlantic and southeast.
 
gsa4lyfe said:
Must be group specific. No communication sent to my group about signing cubbies.
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Yeah, I don't recall any language about it being company wide. I should have been more clear that I believe it meant all stores in our group, not all stores everywhere.

I'll double check the email next time I work, but I think part of it could be read as our group wanted to have this done first or something. I do remember thinking that the 2 weeks they gave us to have it completed seemed a bit short given the state of most of our fixture rooms and how it said they weren't allocating any payroll at all for the project.
 
Alexbegt said:
Anyone happen to know the part number for 7x11 holders and 4x11 holders (if those exist, i know there are special ones for the fridges)? Ours keep disappearing and I'm getting so pissed... I honesty feel people keep throwing them out.
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Which 7x11 holders? The ones that clip on to the label strips or the free standing ones with the white base? I think I have both written down somewhere.

Not sure about 4x11, don't recall using those unless it's something I'm just not thinking of.
 
Alexbegt said:
I used to get signing hours on Saturday to prep the ad for the next day, one week they stopped giving me and the other signing/plano tms prep hours. The NOP signs were not sorted for a two-three weeks, today I finally decided to stay extra to sort it and I am glad I did, as tomorrows ad is HUGE and half of the NOP were actually tied after the print date....
Click to expand...
At my store, I can't wait to see how many were tied and lied. Should be a fun morning.
 
GreasyGary said:
Which 7x11 holders? The ones that clip on to the label strips or the free standing ones with the white base? I think I have both written down somewhere.

Not sure about 4x11, don't recall using those unless it's something I'm just not thinking of.
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The ones that clip into the label strips and thank you!
 
We just throw the signing away. The pallets sit around until someone gets tired of moving them around. Then I get called back to break them down. But to do that, I have to throw away a bunch of signing.

So I finally got asked to build the FOS signing. Built the flamingo, sun, ball, watermelon, and burger. Threw the pinwheel away. But guess what, there's no time to hang them. Lol. So I spent a couple hours building for nothing. It's too funny to watch these people try to manage a multimillion dollar store. They are trying to micromanage every single thing instead of letting the people who know what to do, do it. Oh well, let it sit until it's time to throw it away too.

No info here on cubbies.
 
@GreasyGary Thank you for the info on the cubbies. I am in the Midwest and haven't heard anything yet. Though I did just receive some color coded label strips with dept areas listed on them. One for each area (Style, GM, Tech, Food, and one more). They came with an info sheet showing a 4ft section for area signing and a 4ft section for generic header signing. Set them aside for now as I already have a shelf for each area in my fixture room in a 4ft section right next to a 4ft section with generic signing, lol. I am highly suspicious someone from corporate saw my method for sorting when visiting my store and stole my idea!
 
GreasyGary said:
Yeah, I don't recall any language about it being company wide. I should have been more clear that I believe it meant all stores in our group, not all stores everywhere.

I'll double check the email next time I work, but I think part of it could be read as our group wanted to have this done first or something. I do remember thinking that the 2 weeks they gave us to have it completed seemed a bit short given the state of most of our fixture rooms and how it said they weren't allocating any payroll at all for the project.
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Either way it’s a good idea! I just haven’t seen anything about it yet 🤷🏽‍♂️
 
gsa4lyfe said:
Either way it’s a good idea! I just haven’t seen anything about it yet 🤷🏽‍♂️
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Yeah I had proposed doing something similar back when they first told me the signing position was going away and the work would fall on the DBOs.

Of course, I think an even better idea is to just leave signing the way it was. I know I didn't have stuff still sitting in the back 3 weeks after the set date when I was doing it.
 
yeah, i haven't heard anything irt the cubbies in my area yet. definitely a good idea for stores that no longer have one person scheduled for signing, but with me still getting 30+ signing hours per week it'd be kind of pointless.
 
ThrowawaySigning said:
Here's my signing remodel. So much zip tying and laminating but I think it came out pretty nice 😅
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That looks pretty good. That's similar to what I had before the cubby system. Only I didn't have a bottom shelf because they used the area underneath for pallets. And I just had rough guidelines as to what goes where rather than fixed labels, (Ie- Softlines was always 2nd shelf, to the right, an area for GMTL1, 2, 3,etc) , since it tended to rotate around with one area getting a lot in a given week and the others just a header or two.

But yeah, honestly, that's all that's needed. The only reason it didn't work in my store is that the GMTLs and ETLs didn't prioritize signing and tell the DBOs to get it done. No amount of organization can overcome that.
 
My store has started to use steel as well for signing despite having a pretty large fixture room. They've started throwing away tons of signholders/bulk fixtures/pushers that I'm sure we will need in the future, but nobody sets anything to pog anymore and they didn't ask me what they were for. Betting I'm going to go in there one day and there will be pallets of transition sitting up top.
 
fx0007 said:
My store has started to use steel as well for signing despite having a pretty large fixture room. They've started throwing away tons of signholders/bulk fixtures/pushers that I'm sure we will need in the future, but nobody sets anything to pog anymore and they didn't ask me what they were for. Betting I'm going to go in there one day and there will be pallets of transition sitting up top.
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I got kicked out of the steel years ago. I wonder if they'll move me back.
 
Has anyone started planning for next week 6/16? I get the concept of “worlds” but my sales planners for BTC don’t match all the way with the priority list.
 
Unknown Fixture said:
Has anyone started planning for next week 6/16? I get the concept of “worlds” but my sales planners for BTC don’t match all the way with the priority list.
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I think this new method is incredibly stupid. I haven't looked close at it as I've stopped being involved in the planning process, but since corporate makes the adjacency maps and corporate assigns the endcaps, why couldn't corporate just figure out a way to make these "worlds" fit the adjacency map? No, let's just add extra work into the store when workload is super heavy. Dumbasses.
 
SigningLady said:
I think this new method is incredibly stupid. I haven't looked close at it as I've stopped being involved in the planning process, but since corporate makes the adjacency maps and corporate assigns the endcaps, why couldn't corporate just figure out a way to make these "worlds" fit the adjacency map? No, let's just add extra work into the store when workload is super heavy. Dumbasses.
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Exactly! Especially when there is no hours. I guess I will be winging it.
 
Unknown Fixture said:
Exactly! Especially when there is no hours. I guess I will be winging it.
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If it were up to me, I would ignore their plan altogether and just set to the map. Coming out of BTC/BTS it will be a lot easier to reset those endcaps, but I will go along with whatever my TL decides. Not my circus if it's a shitshow later.
 
anyone read the july addendum?

istg each monthly addendum worries me more and more bc it just confirms the signing role is eliminated completely. idk how my store can afford to keep me in a position that doesnt even exist anymore, esp when im still getting btwn 32 to 40 hrs a week. just doesnt seem like it can possibly last lol.
 

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