Man, I would KILL to have someone jump into repacks with me. At first I was reading the OP's post and thought it suspiciously sounded like my store, but we never had a repacks person. Ever. We are beginning to get behind at our store. We had a little bit of bumps here and there, depending on what the areas were doing (like stationary having massive truck due to BTS before it was set, bed/bath before back to college set). The burn out is real and you really don't want to cut those hours. If morale is in the toilet, cutting hours to hire someone else to cut an area would devastate the TMs and then you'll be starting from scratch with a newbie. 40 case stock in an hour IS doable, but even I have missed the mark. If the vehicles were like... right there... and I wouldn't have to run between my area and backroom, I would be on point most days if not faster. But heck, running a flat between groups of guests, some days getting heavy backstock... this just takes time. If your 40 is spread between multiple vehicles...grrr. Then if you're not out there fast enough you're getting told you're not pushing it fast enough. But literally, you're moving as fast as you can. Then after a while your arms become noodles. Stamina. You will inevitably slow down as time goes on unless you work out... and even then...
And repacks. Having your team do repacks. I finally can push mine in an acceptable, average time. It's always this crazy, insane push for time. I feel frantic every shift but I need my hours. And some repacks are worse than others. My coworker said he pushes 6 boxes an hour. At first I was shocked because I got spoken to for pushing more in that time. My coworker explained his area is a lot of small items, usually breakable, so it takes a while. Makes sense. I thought back to myself timing my repacks and noticed the trend. I own the repacks for ALLL of C&D block (though I only own bed/bath/rugs/decor pillows) and only because the other end of C&D for us doesn't have as much and would be stupid for the TM over there to sort through all our things to pick his out. But, sometimes I am full of small items in these repacks-- washclothes, soap pumps and the like, tons of bags of command brand hooks and strips, hearth and hand small kitchen things... On a bad day I can get almost 2 boxes full of these small and rather fragile items on a shipment of 20 repacks. And to kick me while I'm down, much of the soap pumps and hearth and hand are in small boxes that need opened. On my better days and a good average, I figured I can push 8 repacks in 40 minutes. My best time was a bunch of larger things in the boxes- 5 repacks in 20 minutes. That 8 repacks on a bad day with all these little things? Close to an hour- and I am told I'm too slow then. When repacks fall back on the team pushing the case stock, prepare for a lot more unfinished work. Repacks slow everyone down.
Of course, your TM's movement isn't always just them pushing out things. Yeah, even quickly helping a guest or two, you should be able to push 40 in an hour. But responding for backups takes time. Sometimes your TMs will get stuck up there for a while. I missed out on a whole half hour Saturday when it was all hands on deck. Carry outs take time. Going into the back to pull an item takes time. Many times a guest is needy and takes more time than expected. It happens, we all know, and we all know sometimes we get long situations- though they may be an exception, not a rule- each store and it's shopping demographic is different. And sometimes those exceptions at certain times becomes more prevalent.
I can't give any real advise but just telling you as a basic GM how it feels and what we see on our end of things. I see it's a headache for the leaders and they don't want to have to talk to anyone or coach or whatever. But one thing that has really helped us on the floor is communication. Since we are getting behind, our closing lead had to tell the front end to try to not call us as frequently the other day. It helped. Maybe getting service desk to stage vehicles with the go backs or get a cashier- if it slows enough- to start helping with go backs. Our leads have also jumped in with us for a short while to help push a vehicle, which is nice to work with a lead, talk and joke as you work and get that sense of team back all while working faster. It also helps morale. Our lead even admitted how hard modernization has been on them. I know that, but hearing it let's you know everyone is trying to figure it out and no one is pointing fingers.
It just sounds like this issue overall is company-wide. It's not a single-store challenge. But we will all persevere and figure it out together or Target will (hopefully) find the magic equation that we'll all use.
