Archived The Big & Dandy Backroom thread!

[Red Buffalo]

You should tweet that picture to your DTL with a catchy phrase. #T####Ready4Q4!

I really should. Our DTL is the former STL of our store lmao!

And yes there are still carts for the guests to use. It's just sad because we have a massive backroom. Like it wraps around three sides of the store. And it all looks just as disorganized as that one aisle. If I worked in the backroom, my OCD wouldn't be having that shit.

 

[SFSFun]

I really should. Our DTL is the former STL of our store lmao!

And yes there are still carts for the guests to use. It's just sad because we have a massive backroom. Like it wraps around three sides of the store. And it all looks just as disorganized as that one aisle. If I worked in the backroom, my OCD wouldn't be having that shit.

Yeah I would be unable to stop myself from at least lining then up side-by-side along the steel.

 

[mikesocal]

Is anyone else's backroom in complete disarray? Like, at my store, since I started working there, the backroom seems like it's entirely disorganized. We've got an aisle that's blocked 100% of the time with probably close to 60 carts full of random product. Clothing items that get hung up at the top of shelves on high racks that's probably been there for a year, if not longer. An entire aisle pretty much taken up by pallets of soda. I shutter at the thought of how bad it's going to be when we start getting Black Friday products in. Supposedly it wasn't like that before the new STL took over.

Anyway, here's a pic of that aisle blocked by carts. Backroom

WOW, I see a big mess but look at that pallet stacked up there with what I assume are store supplies of some kind, maybe shoe boxes or waco dividers. I take it backroom Safety cards aren't done at your store either.

edit: That pallet like that is an OSHA inspectors wet dream.
edit2: I just noticed the pallets of repacks and I have to guess, are the repacks filled with softlines? LOL

 

[Red Buffalo]

WOW, I see a big mess but look at that pallet stacked up there with what I assume are store supplies of some kind, maybe shoe boxes or waco dividers. I take it backroom Safety cards aren't done at your store either.

edit: That pallet like that is an OSHA inspectors wet dream.
edit2: I just noticed the pallets of repacks and I have to guess, are the repacks filled with softlines? LOL

Your guess is as good as mine. The whole place needs to be gone through, honestly. I used to do safety audits prior to OSHA inspections throughout our shop when I worked in auto maintenance and the amount of safety violations I can spot in the backroom, without even knowing the laws pertaining to retail storage, are phenomenal.

I will wind up putting this in the right persons ear to get it fixed though, you can count on that. I can't believe no one has gone above our STL yet to get it under control.

 

[mrknownothing]

Your guess is as good as mine. The whole place needs to be gone through, honestly. I used to do safety audits prior to OSHA inspections throughout our shop when I worked in auto maintenance and the amount of safety violations I can spot in the backroom, without even knowing the laws pertaining to retail storage, are phenomenal.

I will wind up putting this in the right persons ear to get it fixed though, you can count on that. I can't believe no one has gone above our STL yet to get it under control.

If it doesn't get cleaned up quickly, send word to your fire marshal. Surely that mess is a serious code violation.

 

[Firefox]

That looks like as big of an OSHA violation as I ever did see. My STL would raise hell if that ever occurred at our store.

 

[Red Buffalo]

I wish our STL gave a shit about it. Honestly, he's at the store every single day, I don't know how he can just walk by that mess and think that it's the right way to do it.

I know several team members whom, given the hours and opportunity, would happily work overnight shifts just to sort out the mess, myself included. But, being given hours that don't correlate with better sales or higher vibe ratings is a pipedream. The last thing I want to do is get the store into an OSHA or fire regulation shit storm, but that's about the only way to get it worked out without putting team member jobs at risk for breaking the chain of command. It's unfortunate really.

 

[anathema]

I'm not sure how you even have carts left for your guests...

 

[Targe]

Backroom

._.

Off the topic of pulling for a moment as I had a question about backstocking trim-a-tree. Trim a tree is separated into Blue, Green, and Yellow sections in the backroom based on class. Does anyone have a breakdown of classes that make up each color section for department 51? I for the life of me cannot find the necessary info at work on workbench. I find general statements like green is trees and lights but nothing that says blue has class oo, o1, or 02 etc. in it.

You might just have to observe the case stock that comes in. I haven't been doing our T-A-T BS simply because I'm usually occupied by bulk and skid running/stacking. You'll see a trend with the class #s.

Worse comes to worse, pair up with your BRTL/BRTL-LOG/O/NBRTL (If you have one / whatever you call it)

 

[asidius]

Our backroom is just so tiny so it's always a mess. I think we are the busiest store in the district, but have the smallest backroom in the district as well. Yesterday the middle aisle, between the vendor/soda aisle and the line was filled with price change & clearance the entire day. There's probably a price change batch sitting in the PDA from 2 days ago because no one can get in that aisle.

 

[Red Buffalo]

Our price change/clearance aisle is always the cleanest section in our backroom.. Other than the million and a half pull ticket tubs halfway in the aisle. Our scheduling is funny in that our TL is always scheduled 7-3, the other TM is like 7-330, and I'm 8-4. So the last 30 minutes that I'm by myself, I always go back and get our price change section tagged and put on tubs ready to push the next morning.

 

[crumbdumb]

Bad signs...

Fridays are usually uneventful. Today, the overnight team had a truck (they usually don't Fridays, but it's Holiday time) and didn't leave til after 1PM (and didn't even finish their backstock). The LOD (ETL-LOG) made dayside BR push from the line inbetween CAFs nearly all day so we had zero time to backstock. The 6PM CAFs were an hour and a half and I only got the bare minimum help. By 7pm, there were 10-15 vehicles of backstock. I forgot my Advil and was sore like crazy by 5 (and they were out of Tylenol in the equipment/HR room).

Thank goodness I don't close tomorrow (no college home game, so it will be crazy busy), but I do close Sunday and our awful store ETL is closing LOD :dies:

 

[HelpMePlz]

Okay guys, huge question here and I need some opinions before I do a ton of work to improve BRLA..

So I showed a brtm how to pull an empty location audit and she messed up and printed a full master list of br locations. (This shows what is in every Waco/location). I've never paid attention to this before!!! It also shows who bs'd something in the wrong grouping!!! Yay for addressing untrained tm's!!!

Here my question.. I'm thinking now that I'm armed with this master list I should just pick one 1/2 aisle a day and verify what's in the Wacos/locations.. As I go down the aisle and find something wrong about the location I will pull the Waco out a few inches. Then after I'm done a brtm can go in and update all the pulled out wacos.. Aisle complete!!

So, would this be efficient and faster than just updating a whole aisle? Since I'm salary and can afford to take the time to do this I'm thinking this will be great otherwise it would burn a lot of br hours.. What do you guys think? I'm thinking maybe it's harder or more time consuming than I'm guesstimating otherwise the whole company would use it for best practice right?

 

[HelpMePlz]

If I try this and it works perfectly and then it becomes best practice one day...remember it started here by this guy!! lmao

 

[mikesocal]

Okay guys, huge question here and I need some opinions before I do a ton of work to improve BRLA..

So I showed a brtm how to pull an empty location audit and she messed up and printed a full master list of br locations. (This shows what is in every Waco/location). I've never paid attention to this before!!! It also shows who bs'd something in the wrong grouping!!! Yay for addressing untrained tm's!!!

Here my question.. I'm thinking now that I'm armed with this master list I should just pick one 1/2 aisle a day and verify what's in the Wacos/locations.. As I go down the aisle and find something wrong about the location I will pull the Waco out a few inches. Then after I'm done a brtm can go in and update all the pulled out wacos.. Aisle complete!!

So, would this be efficient and faster than just updating a whole aisle? Since I'm salary and can afford to take the time to do this I'm thinking this will be great otherwise it would burn a lot of br hours.. What do you guys think? I'm thinking maybe it's harder or more time consuming than I'm guesstimating otherwise the whole company would use it for best practice right?

This is slow. You should just find out which departments have a lot of errors and locu then re-back stock section by section, aka update. The time you spend checking to see if the right dpci's are in the right spot and pulling out each waco you could have blindly locu'ed the entire section and rebackstocked it knowing 100% everything is perfect. Plus if you spend the time to go through an entire aisle that has very little errors only to find that aisle is backstocked well you've now wasted a bunch of time reconfirming there are no errors. I think I explained that well.

edit: if you are trying to follow up on TM's looking for recognition for who is doing well and who isn't that's a different story all together.

 

[Guest]

Why are the CAF batches so predictable? With the wonderful new system that shitty corporate installed with the CAF batches, the CAF batches are even more predictable.

At noon, the CAF batches are extremely tiny. In the old system, the 12pm CAF batches were usually the biggest of the day.
At 1pm, the CAF batches are usually big especially with SNCK, GRC1, 2, and 3. 2pm is usually like the noon batches. Then it picks up at 3pm. Huge as hell. The usual suspects are SNCK, GRC1, 2, and 3, PAPR, and DARY. Those are usually the biggest batches in general and wow they are sometimes 20 to 40 DPCI per batch on the weekend. At 6pm, the DARY batch is usually gigantic on the weekend.

I laugh at team members that say "the batches will probably be small or not that bad". I usually have a "I told you so" smirk for them.

I finished the 6pm CAF batches today at 659pm. The bubba that was helping me was only scheduled til 630pm. I'm gonna have to talk to the boss and get the schedule fixed because this shit ain't gonna work when Thanksgiving arrives. My bubba helper on the weekend is extremely slow and he's pretty much maxed out on his speed. Slow as hell. I know there is a grace period for new backroom team members but after a month and a half, you need to speed up or get the fuck out. I carry this guy every Saturday and Sunday on my back. He's that slow. And he was horribly trained by the lazy Monday thru Fridayer backroom person. She trained him horribly. He doesn't know half of the shit that a backroom day person is supposed to know how to do. The boss still hasn't given him keys to the balers and crown. I will give you some examples.
I've told him several times about the straight line approach and he still does not understand. He also doesn't understand the concept of skipping in CAF batches. For example, if a pallet of water is on the second level of a shelf but also on the ground level, he pulls from the second level and wastes time doing it. He also doesn't understand the concept of we have to get this shit done in an hour. He doesn't know what M-delete is either. I have told him "if you don't know how to do it, skip and move on to the next location" It's just... I don't even have words.

Another example is how he couldn't pull a research batch that had two DCPIs and a total of 10 items in 10 minutes. Yep true story.
I carry this guy on my back. And I can't say anything because you know reasons.

I don't have the damn time to retrain this bubba because I am constantly carrying him on my back trying desperately to get giant ass CAF batches done, worrying about FF, and trying to make sure that he goes to lunch before his 6 hours and the same for me.

I also love how I tell him something and he's just oblivious to what I say to him.
I took my lunch at 530pm today and there were 3 CAF batches left when I punched out for lunch and I said "hey if you want to take a break after you finish those CAF batches, it's cool with me" and he's like "yeah, okay". So I'm like "okay I'm heading to lunch and he will take a break after he finishes up". Nope. The dummy attempted to work on the last research batch instead of taking a break. I just don't have words.



I will be so glad when I'm free from this hell especially from the weekends. I will be so thrilled when I have my weekends back. Yes, my weekends. Being an employee at Target means that Targets owns the weekends so the weekends are not mine.


I have said this every Christmas season since 2008 but I hope this is my last Christmas season in retail and at Target.

I am so done with retail. I'm done with sweat shop work and manual labor. I want a job in which my weekends are mine and I don't have to be constantly moving and catering to customers. Yes, they are customers. Not guests. No one invites people to Target. They come on their own free will.

 

[ClarkKent]

I didn't have any bubbas to carry on my back today. I was alone all day because of a call out but thankfully the cafs were only an hour each today.

 

[anathema]

Isn't that just the detail report...which is part of the 12 steps...which is zoning by fill groups per day...which is best practice...

 

[j2e86]

The 11am CAFs are by far our largest of the day. I can do the 6pm CAF by myself on some weekdays -- I have to run and am generally sweating pretty good at the end, but they get done.

 

[crumbdumb]

11s are sometimes the "biggest" of the day, but only because electronics batches sometimes ask for thousands of eaches when we only have a couple actually located. So the lookup will have an ELEC batch say something crazy like 3 hours, but in reality it only takes 1-2 minutes.

6PM batches are a mixed bag so far, some manageable days, some not so much. I find that they are bigger than average on weekends, which sucks cuz the opener's gone by then and some ETLs are bad at pulling CAFs, drag their feet with helping, or don't even help unless I ask (which I shouldn't have to if they payed a little attention to how backroom worked).

One thing's clear with the new system is 12s are no longer the worst of the day.

 

[Mysterious]

I use Backroom Detail report to find inconsistencies in the locations. Non-active items, old DPCIs not picked up from Item Merge, wrong area backstocked. It's annoying trying to keep a green backroom, when people keep doing the wrong thing or the system messes up.

As for slow people and CAFs. If they can't keep up with the Pulls, they either clean, do POGs, Update, or Push to the floor. If not, bye.

I'm fair and courteous, but I still live by the code, Speed is Life.

 

[Guest]

The guy that I carry on my back on the weekend told me today that he did not know how to use SUBT. I found that out today. The STL had to show him how to use SUBT. Just when you think you have seen and heard everything at Target. This guy has been working the shithole Target I'm at since early September. He told me that he only had 2 days of training before he was released into the wild aka backroom day.
We had the 1pm, 3pm, and 4pm CAF batches roll today. I only got a lunch break as usual. On Saturdays and Sundays, I usually just take my lunch. No breaks for me.
I also had an always entertaining chat with the n-bomb veteran guy. He asks me while he is leaving for the day "how are you doing" and my response is always "just ready to clock out, as soon I clock in, I'm ready to clock out". And then he replies with some bullshit with "maybe you need to look a different job" and I replied proudly with "I already am and I will let you know when I leave". He just walked off. I hate that fucker. DO NOT ASK ME HOW I AM DOING. It's always the same. I am ready to clock out. I hate retail and Target and that will never change.
I hope that when I do leave Target that n-bomb veteran guy gets to work some of my 12pm to 830pm shifts in the backroom. I also would love it for some of them to have gigantic price change batches with let's say 10 to 15 pallets on a Tuesday.

Why do I hate n-bomb veteran guy? Here are some reasons.
1. When he worked with me on the weekends, he would lie to my face and say he was close to 40 hours and leave the backroom for the day early and just hang out at food avenue or go outside to smoke a cigarette. He would do that for like 15 to 30 minutes and then go clock out. He would sometimes bullshit and talk to his woman that also works there. Why she likes him? No idea. I feel sorry for her. He's a piece of shit.
2. I told my ETL about his early departures due to 40 hours and nothing happened. No coaching or write up. I've pretty much made it clear to my ETL that I don't ever want to work with him.
3. He said the n-word out loud right in front of an ETL and nothing happened to him. That is why I call him n-bomb veteran guy. He's also a veteran. It's bullshit because I asked a backroom team member "what time are you leaving today" and got a coaching.

The n word is a million times worse than "what time are you leaving today". I support free speech but if I get bitched out for asking a fucking question then that piece of shit better getting a lecture for saying the n-word. It's only fair.
4. His attitude and work ethic. He is a lazy piece of shit that bullshits around in the last 30 to 60 minutes of his shift. He's not the only one. Most of the morning backroom assholes are like that.

 

[redeye58]

I would SO love to be a fly on the wall when you give them your two weeks'.
You'll LOVE feeling that stone slide off your shoulders.

 

[Kompa]

What happens when the cats roll. Our 6s have been 1:50ish and no one else but me knows how to pull. The lod is aways busy. A lot of the pulls are cooler Backstock

 

[asidius]

When the Cafs roll, you'll have to deal with the batches you failed to complete from the last hour, plus the new batches that drop. The caf pull timeliness metric takes a hit as well.