(Not sure where to put this, it's just me complaining about everything at my store)
Our store recently failed inventory, quite badly. Our shink was twice the number set by corporate. This is the second year its happened. The first was with New Manager, and now with Scary. I think that NM was partly the cause of both fails. She didn’t actually manage anything. Then, when inventory came around there were tons of mislabeled products, and since no prep was done (normally we start two weeks out), products were in the wrong places and were counted as the wrong item. Also there are many nooks and crankies in the store which we would have cleaned out if we had done any prep. Oh, and since the store was basically not functioning, a whole bunch of items were past discard and should have been written off in the computer but weren’t, so they all were counted as shrink. This was partly fixed this year, but Scary was only our manager for around 8 months. We didn’t even have a full year between inventories and for some baffling reason, this made our numbers look worse. Like, our store is supposed to make $X per year, but we only had 10 months, so we had two less months to make money, but they still expected us to make that total of $X. How does this make sense? Just minus the average profits from those months out of our goal number. But they don’t do that?
Okay, that brings me to another issue. When the store remodeled, our jewelry section got moved back about halfway into the store. Before the remodel it was right up front, in clear view of the registers. In corporate’s infinite wisdom, they wanted seasonal to be right up front. Our store previously had seasonal up front, but to the side, not front and center. So if you walked into the building, from left to right you would have seen fabric to the far left, jewelry in the middle, then seasonal to the far right. Now it’s fabric, seasonal, floral. Jewelry is behind floral. Want to guess the percentage of jewelry that got stolen over the last year?
25-33%
I just heard that we got approval to go against corporate’s official layout and bring jewelry back to the front. I don’t even think having increased employees would completely fixed this theft problem. You’d have to have three times as many employees on the floor, mostly in the evenings. Really, even then it wouldn't fix the problem, which can't be fixed as long as their are no consequences for thieves.
And more irritating are the repeat thieves. I mean, I know there are repeaters that go for jewelry, but they just pocket the whole product. The people I’m talking about take stuff out of the packaging and then stuff it all in one place. In the suiting fabric, in one specific place in the aisle. Today it was empty button cards. Which I actually find really stupid because those are tiny, why bother taking the time to rip them off? Why not just put them in your pocket? Most thieves know damn well that we aren’t allowed to ask them to empty their pockets, so once it’s in there, it’s essentially theirs. But anyway, it just irritates me that they're so confident that they use that same spot each time they steal.
Other than moving jewelry, we also have added a huge number of locking pegs. So if you go into one of these fabric store locations and notice a crap ton of items inside locked cages, on locking pegs, or with empty display boxes, you know why. Well, you probably already knew why, I guess now you’ve suffered through my giant rant about thieves and corporate insanity. *sigh*
Our store recently failed inventory, quite badly. Our shink was twice the number set by corporate. This is the second year its happened. The first was with New Manager, and now with Scary. I think that NM was partly the cause of both fails. She didn’t actually manage anything. Then, when inventory came around there were tons of mislabeled products, and since no prep was done (normally we start two weeks out), products were in the wrong places and were counted as the wrong item. Also there are many nooks and crankies in the store which we would have cleaned out if we had done any prep. Oh, and since the store was basically not functioning, a whole bunch of items were past discard and should have been written off in the computer but weren’t, so they all were counted as shrink. This was partly fixed this year, but Scary was only our manager for around 8 months. We didn’t even have a full year between inventories and for some baffling reason, this made our numbers look worse. Like, our store is supposed to make $X per year, but we only had 10 months, so we had two less months to make money, but they still expected us to make that total of $X. How does this make sense? Just minus the average profits from those months out of our goal number. But they don’t do that?
Okay, that brings me to another issue. When the store remodeled, our jewelry section got moved back about halfway into the store. Before the remodel it was right up front, in clear view of the registers. In corporate’s infinite wisdom, they wanted seasonal to be right up front. Our store previously had seasonal up front, but to the side, not front and center. So if you walked into the building, from left to right you would have seen fabric to the far left, jewelry in the middle, then seasonal to the far right. Now it’s fabric, seasonal, floral. Jewelry is behind floral. Want to guess the percentage of jewelry that got stolen over the last year?
25-33%
I just heard that we got approval to go against corporate’s official layout and bring jewelry back to the front. I don’t even think having increased employees would completely fixed this theft problem. You’d have to have three times as many employees on the floor, mostly in the evenings. Really, even then it wouldn't fix the problem, which can't be fixed as long as their are no consequences for thieves.
And more irritating are the repeat thieves. I mean, I know there are repeaters that go for jewelry, but they just pocket the whole product. The people I’m talking about take stuff out of the packaging and then stuff it all in one place. In the suiting fabric, in one specific place in the aisle. Today it was empty button cards. Which I actually find really stupid because those are tiny, why bother taking the time to rip them off? Why not just put them in your pocket? Most thieves know damn well that we aren’t allowed to ask them to empty their pockets, so once it’s in there, it’s essentially theirs. But anyway, it just irritates me that they're so confident that they use that same spot each time they steal.
Other than moving jewelry, we also have added a huge number of locking pegs. So if you go into one of these fabric store locations and notice a crap ton of items inside locked cages, on locking pegs, or with empty display boxes, you know why. Well, you probably already knew why, I guess now you’ve suffered through my giant rant about thieves and corporate insanity. *sigh*
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