Extra stocking hours

[XCashier]

The back room was such a freaking disaster, and there's an upcoming meeting with all the big muckety-mucks at our store, so our store manager has given us more hours to stock merchandise. We got eight hours instead of five today, filled a lot of empty shelves and hooks, and you can now walk through the stockroom without having to go sideways and suck in your gut, so yeah, some noticeable improvement.

Tomorrow, not only do we get another eight hours, we've got more help. SM has managed to give us a few more people tomorrow to help with the stocking. I don't know if we can completely empty the back room, but it should look loads better by end of shift tomorrow.

Apart from being a nice extra in my paycheck, it'll be good to get the chaos down to a dull roar. Just in time for the next shipment to bring it back to chaos level again!

[Shyla]

Wonderful!

[Kit-Ginevra]

I was expecting stockings given the thread title.I am disappointed

[XCashier]

The backroom does look better, but we're still a long way from emptying it. You can move freely around the room but there's still stacks of large boxes. And I've reached my maximum hours this week.

I told the AM that if needed, I can work an extra three hours Sunday. It won't help for the meeting, but it'll thin it out a little more. Especially since we were informed that next Monday's shipment is supposed to be over 400 boxes!!! Where the hell are we going to put them all?! It's a store, not a city!

[XCashier]

Monday's shipment was nearly 400 boxes (not over, as I originally thought). First, the truck was late, so we ended up having our shifts changed. Second, it took forever to unload the truck, and we had to do some seriously fancy footwork to get the boxes safely unloaded into the stock room. Third, due to some ridiculous corporate mandate, the least necessary items are always the first to be stocked.

To explain that last sentence, we get three different types of boxes: large banded, small banded and case goods. The case goods are usually things like containers. Large banded is stuff like fabric and seasonal items, small banded is important everyday stuff like thread, sewing notions, paints, you know, the things a fabric and craft store is supposed to sell. So naturally corporate wants us to unload the case goods first. Notions, thread, paint, etc. are currently very thin in the store, while containers and other case goods that don't sell quickly are overflowing the shelves.

Further, corporate in its infinite wisdom is cutting payroll while expecting us to hire more people for the season. (As today's Retail comic shows.) So, while the boxes keep piling up in the back and the shelves keep getting barer, our hours are getting cut so nothing is getting done.

[notalwaysright]

Hum, I'm not sure exactly how we've doing it at my store, since I'm not technically part of the freight crew. But I know we like to put out foam and fiber first, because thoes boxes are big and only have a few items in them, so they go super fast. This week they didn't push us to get seasonal out first, yay. I know they're doing yarn and notions, and we always have two people just to stock fabric. We have fleece in yarn boxes in the middle of the "race track," the main aisle that goes in a big U around the store. It's grim.

In our case we have no SM, so I think our ASM is going rogue, and just deciding on her own what need to get done. We hired new people, they start this week. Also our DM has been bothering the ASM because not everyone has done the BOPIS training, which takes 20-30 minutes for each person. She used the word unacceptable, which makes me want to show her exactly WHAT IS unacceptable. We haven't had to cut payroll this week, but the DM is sending her usual blanket "you're doing horrible!" emails, berating all the stores in the district, even though our store is doing good even according to their impossible standards.

[chimera]

And the most common complaint from customers is lack of employees available to help them. Corporate doesn't want to give any more hours unless things get super super dire like boxes stacked to the ceiling in stock room.

We've been getting an insane amount of overstock on lots of items, too. There's little enough time to put out new stuff, let alone go through and work overstock boxes (which are piling up). If there isn't room for something on the peg or shelf, that item is lucky to see the light of fluorescent again unless someone is specifically assigned to work that overstock. It's so insane. We have to keep getting more creative with where to cram and stow away all the extra stuff we're getting.

[EricKei]

XC -- Will the store-level manager allow you to just ignore that stocking directive, and, instead, focus on the important items?

What scares me is that I think I can see their train of "thought" on this one -- if you HAVE to take care of the big bad items first, while knowing that the fast sellers need to be restocked, maybe they figure that you will all work faster to get the "bad" ones done and out of the way that much more quickly, so you can get to the ones that actually sell. It could also be that the slow sellers have a much higher profit margin, and that that's all they care about.

[dalesys]

... the slow sellers have a much higher profit margin...

If, and only if, they don't factor in the cost of using shelf display space for long-term storage of future write-downs.

[wolfie]

But the high-margin items would just FLY off the shelves if the peons were doing their jobs properly and SELLING them.

[taxguykarl]

I was expecting stockings given the thread title.I am disappointed

Just be glad it wasn't stalking.

[dalesys]

But the high-margin items would just FLY off the shelves if the peons were doing their jobs properly and SELLING them.

I now know where to forward all my Nigerian prince emails...

[EricKei]

dale - Aye, but I'm thinking that the people (or person) who made this boneheaded decision didn't think of that. They probably just saw it as "general overhead" and dismissed it (along with the opportunity cost of not constantly stocking something that sells faster, but has a slightly lower profit margin, in its place).

[dalesys]

Like the Soviet chandelier factory that was graded on tonnes shipped, so the glass overcast was ripping down the ceilings. Chicken Little Time!

[notalwaysright]

If, and only if, they don't factor in the cost of using shelf display space for long-term storage of future write-downs.

That's called Seasonal, and it takes up the entire front center of the store.