Archived The Big & Dandy Backroom thread!

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Instocks merged with big brother BR so I'm assuming it fine asking here.

Even for a high volume (rank 6 out of 7 I heard) over-night store, is it normal for Instocks to have dropped 60+ batches of rsch and exfs in the morning. If we're taking a truck and BR overnight pulls the autofill I can't see that many batches are necessary.

Yes but what is in the batches? If as you are scanning breaking batches to keep things separate it can boost the batch count quickly. So you may have many but they are probably small. Or I can scan and not break them and its one batch but you will be chasing cosmetics, followed by baby, electronics ad bulk plastics all in the same batch.
 
it's bad enough our backroom is going to hell due to no payroll, but the dipshits coming back and cracking the whip like it's all our fault really pisses me off. Do they help backstock, pull research or FFs, or push, or do anything? hahaha.

Even said they would write us up for every single mistake found or missing pull times. I'm just going to quit.
 
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We must have pissed off the electronic gods today because we had a 3 1/2 hour 12 pm caf and a 2 1/2 hour 1 pm caf thanks to mm1 & mm2 being between a 1/2 hour and 1 1/2 hours long. We never burned batches so quickly.
 
Yes but what is in the batches? If as you are scanning breaking batches to keep things separate it can boost the batch count quickly. So you may have many but they are probably small. Or I can scan and not break them and its one batch but you will be chasing cosmetics, followed by baby, electronics ad bulk plastics all in the same batch.

A majority have a hand full or two DPCI count. Then because of bad zones and lazy TMs a good deal of it comes right back. :V
 
Hey all I decided I wanted to get crossed trained in Backroom to help with being more global and maybe getting more hours. What is doing backroom like? and if anyone has any good tips that would be great! :) thanks in advance
 
What is doing backroom like?

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Welcome to the Wild Wild West.
 
What's the mantra for baffles? One per thousand pulls or something, right? How many per week would it take to get coached if it were a semi-regular basis?
 
Hey all I decided I wanted to get crossed trained in Backroom to help with being more global and maybe getting more hours. What is doing backroom like? and if anyone has any good tips that would be great! :) thanks in advance

Dayside Backroom involves:
1.) Pulling the CAFs at the top of the hour
2.) Backstocking merchandise that TM's send back and flow leaves behind
3.) Completing Flex Fulfillments (things guests ordered online for in store pickup)
4.) Pulling batches for instocks and other empties
5.) Pulling sales plans and pogs (At some stores the BR TMs don't pull these)
6.) Pulling items for team members to help guests
7.) Run the baler, make bales, setting the line for the morning/flow team
8.) Pulling price change (clearance items) batches

A lot of what the backroom does is timed, the CAFs and Flex Fulfillments in particular. Flex Fulfillments are easy to complete by the time limit but the CAFs can give you trouble sometimes. You only get one hour to pull a set of batches before the next hour drops. If you don't complete them in time, shit can hit the fan pretty quickly.

You'll work alone for most of your shift & can generally listen to music.

The job is pretty physically demanding, at least compared to the sales floor. You'll occasionally have to deal with heavy & big boxes. You'll also need to conquer your fear of heights (though I found working in the BR helped me with that).

On bad days, the Backroom will be absolute hell. A bad day on the floor pales to a bad day in the BR. On good days it's easier than working the sales floor and more laid back.

Accuracy and speed are key to succeeding in the backroom. If you do those 2 things, you'll do fine. I would absolutely jump at learning the backroom because you will learn so much more on how the store operates.
 
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If you're in the back room, be prepared to MOVE.

I see a lot of sales floor TMs nonchalantly pushing their vehicle, and that pace doesn't fly in the back room. Your mind has to be one step ahead. By the time you finish pulling one batch, you should already know where you're headed next. Jumping from one side of the back room to the other takes a lot longer than working from one end to the other. Our back room has 2 levels, so I know if I'm not on the elevator by half past the hour, it's time to kick it up another notch or call for backup.

One trainee I had for a few months said he lost ~20 pounds since he started. The only thing he was doing differently was working in the back room.
 
A majority have a hand full or two DPCI count. Then because of bad zones and lazy TMs a good deal of it comes right back. :V

We have basically scared off anyone but us pushing our batches so it doesn't come back as backstock. Cause we will shoot for second locs and sales floor never checks end caps. But your In-stocks team is doing it right breaking things up so you don't have huge batches that run though different stock rooms. I try for that as well, more batches but smaller cause I break the areas frequently.
 
So my ETL-LOG has implemented this brilliant new idea for the backroom:

On truck days, once the backroom TMs are finished pulling the autofills, they will go work freight with flow. And not backstock a single thing (we are NOT push-all, so we have stuff right off the truck that needs to be backstocked).

So once 12 o'clock rolls around, the backroom is overflowing with backstock from flow and there are no vehicles to put the CAFs on (one TM said "I guess we're supposed to just throw this shit on the floor and tell sales floor to come pick up an armful").

But don't worry about all the backstock because the closer will take care if it! And anything leftover (likely all of it) will be taken care of the next day...
 
That's crazy lol. I feel for you though, as a TM that has been with target for almost 15 yrs I've had quite a few etls that thought their way of rearranging the entire process was the best way. Most of the time it last at most a few months and goes back to the way it should be. My advise is just to try and muscle through it and wait for it to go back to normal
 
Competition time? I'm just interested in what your guys highest pull count for a week is. I want to see how mine and other people's numbers in my store compare to you guys.
 
We have basically scared off anyone but us pushing our batches so it doesn't come back as backstock. Cause we will shoot for second locs and sales floor never checks end caps. But your In-stocks team is doing it right breaking things up so you don't have huge batches that run though different stock rooms. I try for that as well, more batches but smaller cause I break the areas frequently.

I can understand that. Ok.
 
Competition time? I'm just interested in what your guys highest pull count for a week is. I want to see how mine and other people's numbers in my store compare to you guys.
Highest in my store is usually around 1500. It's always whoever works 7:30 - 4.
 
The highest pull count I ever had was ~2500 but that was 10 years ago. We were a AAA store at the time, CAFs only dropped at 1, 3, and 5 and we spent every ounce of free time pulling manual CAFs to reduce the size of the overnight autofills.

Nowadays, 1200-1500 is what I see our top pullers reaching.
 
Around 4Q, I'll hover between 2.2k and 2.4k. This time of year, it's consistently at 1.9k. They'll probably plummet once pull segmentation numbers are reflected.
 
I usually average about 600-800 but I think last week that doubled to around 1500 (yet I still had trouble completing the CAFs on time) thanks to 11:30-7:30 shifts.

We had a guy that would consistently pull 2K but he ditched us for AP. :(
 
Yeah, there's a report you can access that shows # of pulls as well as errors, which is broken down into types. We're trying to get into the habit of posting it up weekly so that everyone can track (and hopefully improve) where they're messing up before it gets to the point that we have to pull them aside and make a big hooplah over it.
 
How does one see their amounts of errors? I would imagine it's on Workbench?
it's on workbench you go to my performance and then backroom and then one of the tabs will show you everyone who's pulled their baffles and so on
 
On Workbench:
Select myperformance (furthest tab to the right)
Press the Backroom button (A screen should have popped up to tell you you're personal score).
There should be a bunch of links in the top right of the embedded window, you're looking for 'BRLA TM Detail'

It's basically just a table displaying the types of errors you may have caused and what shelf group they were in. The results can be kind of tricky to interpret if you don't know what you're looking at.
 
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