MEGATHREAD Hang Me (The Softlines Thread)

BullseyeBabe said:
This! This! This!
Our FRO also calls breaks and reminds the LOD to check Flex every half hour. Oh, and we also hand out checks.
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doxiemama said:
I'd love to see SL duties expanded. I already help guests and enjoy it. I probably should look for a job in commissioned sales in a more traditional retail store because I do really well getting guests to trade up or buy additional items. Getting them into a larger size is very simple. Just tell them ahead of time that our sizes run unusually small (partially true) so they might feel more comfortable if they moved up a size. Then I encourage them to try on both the size they think they wear and the next size up "just to try it". Most times they will and end up buying the larger size. My biggest issue with SL is that if you leave the fitting room to go on your meal and nobody is covering it (frequently at my store), you come back to an absolute mess. Among things left behind - a pile of women's undies, all the same style (we're talking about 15 or so), a pee-soaked diaper behind the stool, an iphone under a pile of clothes on the floor (I was tempted to tell the guest that's what happens when you throw your clothes on the floor instead of taking them out of the fitting room). Then the best story of all - the obese woman who couldn't find a bra to fit her and asked me to step into the fitting room because she had a question. I walked in and she was naked from the waist up. She was a bit older, recently had a stroke so couldn't walk easily but wanted me to see how a reasonably sized bra wouldn't fit her. I was absolutely speechless. I did find her a good bra that she could fit into and wouldn't be too much of a challenge to put on, but that image lives on in my brain and it's not a pretty picture.
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Now imagine having a sizing service, where you are trained and expected to bust out a tape measure and help measure the waist of a guest or follow similar procedures every time a guest is unsatisfied with a size. While you are doing that, the phone rings for a call in electronics, which you have to ignore- so it keeps ringing. Followed by a line of guests waiting to try on clothes, and you have no choice but to say- "you can just go in ahead!", all bc you are tape measuring a guest! Before you know it- boom, your desk is cluttered with a pile. Now you are finally done helping the guest with that new service, you finally start answering the 4 incoming calls and you hear, 'one full cart of sort for softlines at guest service!'

Any new service the is geared towards softlines esp FRO should be supported with additional coverage. The reason why many stores have SL scores/brand low is bc routines are not being executed due to coverage or workload.
 
Voicetarget said:
Now imagine having a sizing service, where you are trained and expected to bust out a tape measure and help measure the waist of a guest or follow similar procedures every time a guest is unsatisfied with a size. While you are doing that, the phone rings for a call in electronics, which you have to ignore- so it keeps ringing. Followed by a line of guests waiting to try on clothes, and you have no choice but to say- "you can just go in ahead!", all bc you are tape measuring a guest! Before you know it- boom, your desk is cluttered with a pile. Now you are finally done helping the guest with that new service, you finally start answering the 4 incoming calls and you hear, 'one full cart of sort for softlines at guest service!'

Any new service the is geared towards softlines esp FRO should be supported with additional coverage. The reason why many stores have SL scores/brand low is bc routines are not being executed due to coverage or workload.
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No argument there. New ETL arrived a few months back. Absolutely insisted that the Fitting Room was always covered, except didn't increase TMs assigned to SL. Zoning was out of control. We only had time to do tables and any hanging things on the aisles (guess that's all you have to see as you walk through the store?!). Fitting room looked great except there was nobody left to take the sorted clothes out on the floor. Sorted carts started to build up until we were 11 carts behind and had 4 full z-racks sitting either by the fitting room or hidden in the back room. Obviously, that plan wasn't working. For a while there was less emphasis on manning the fitting room and, instead, getting everything on the floor taken care of. The problem is that when you came back to the fitting room after zoning, there were clothes all over the floor and several merchandise swaps from other merchants (we get a lot of Penney's stuff). Who knows how much stuff has been lifted? The latest strategy is to have the fitting room attendant zone areas closest to the fitting room, but still answer phones and keep half an eye on the fitting room so you can run back and check in guests. Phone ring volume has to be turned up high enough to you can run back to answer phones. Zoning is still half-assed because you spend the evening running back and forth. Until we get at least one more TM in the evenings, it's never going to look right. And towards the end of the month, hours are cut and there's not enough people to cover SL at all, much less the fitting room. I've shopped other Targets and there's never anyone anywhere near the fitting room. So, I guess what we're going through isn't that unusual.
 
Its interesting reading how different softlines is in different stores. We have 3-4 TMs as evening zoners and an FRO. During the day there is usually 1-2 TMs (typically the TL and possibly someone else) and an FRO. I'm jealous that some of you only need to pick clothes up off the floor and fold the tables. We have to have perfect finger spacing on every rack and all racks aligned in a perfect grid. If not the TL/LOD will call you out on it. If at all possible, your reshop should be done. And we dont wave zone. Everyone gets their own areas. Lord help you if yours isn't done by store close.
 
Doglover89 said:
Its interesting reading how different softlines is in different stores.
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We might have higher standards if we had that many people closing. Even with that many closers, if no one works morning and mid, I don't think it'd be possible here. Waving or not depends on who I close with. Some people prefer that way and I personally never fight it if someone prefers that. When I close with someone, I usually like to do the back and give the other person the front half. Sometimes we split the other way and I end up with boys girls infants (which I think is an unfair split in my store).

And the LODs don't know a good sl zone anyway lol. well, two of them do. It'll be one of those days where I'm all annoyed that I couldn't get it how I wanted and I'll do fronts and tops of tables and the lod will be all "you guys did really great tonight!" I do the racks that are visible from the aisle and then hope the morning people have time. But when day coverage is good, the racks don't really require much.
 
BullseyeBabe said:
Anyone else having problems with SLTMs being pulled to other areas? We can't get anything accomplished.
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they're barely even scheduling the more global people in sl, lately. Everyone's a cashier, hardlines or consumables tm. I... Might train at sbux because the tl over there is one of my faves and sl hours are not plentiful.
 
Doglover89 said:
Its interesting reading how different softlines is in different stores. We have 3-4 TMs as evening zoners and an FRO. During the day there is usually 1-2 TMs (typically the TL and possibly someone else) and an FRO. I'm jealous that some of you only need to pick clothes up off the floor and fold the tables. We have to have perfect finger spacing on every rack and all racks aligned in a perfect grid. If not the TL/LOD will call you out on it. If at all possible, your reshop should be done. And we dont wave zone. Everyone gets their own areas. Lord help you if yours isn't done by store close.
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With mytime most stores cannot do this anymore.
 
I believe that we're down to one closer in softlines and one fitting room attendant. Which sucks. They also no longer do six items or less. Thats right, guests can now bring in as much as they want! That won't end poorly in any way!
 
Cat said:
I believe that we're down to one closer in softlines and one fitting room attendant. Which sucks. They also no longer do six items or less. Thats right, guests can now bring in as much as they want! That won't end poorly in any way!
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My store is down to two closers (one of which is using FR hours). We have one person during the day for batches and maybe the TL if she's not scheduled in presentation. So most days we have 3 maybe 4 people all day for SL. It looks like shit. And I can't blame a single one of them. I'm glad I don't close anymore, I'm too anal. I cannot only do front racks or not finger space. I've tried, lol. I'm hoping we get more hours soon. Salesfloor in general could use them to efficiently do their job!
 
Sometimes it seems like they just don't care if SL gets zoned or not. They hardly ever walk it. Some nights all we can do is pick stuff up off the floor. We have stacks of clearance everywhere. Why do we have such an insane amount of clearance? I hope our buyers do better for us this season. I'm really frustrated!
 
squirrely said:
I cannot only do front racks or not finger space. I've tried, lol.
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This is what everyone says. I've seen people quit because they can't do it lol. It can be stressful if you can't give in to the corner cutting. Personal mantra is if they wanted it done right, they would have equipped us with the time and people to get it done. Period. I no longer worry about it. I do detail stuff during day shifts. And when I close I just go "maybe there will be enough people tomorrow to finish this all" except usually I'm the person tomorrow
 
GlobalTL123 said:
With mytime most stores cannot do this anymore.
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That's assuming the store leadership uses the schedule that MyTime generates based on expected guest traffic. At my store, we went back to manually written schedules for the sales floor because the MyTime scheduling just didn't work for us.
 
mrknownothing said:
That's assuming the store leadership uses the schedule that MyTime generates based on expected guest traffic. At my store, we went back to manually written schedules for the sales floor because the MyTime scheduling just didn't work for us.
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Its still guest driven scheduling it sucks
 
sher said:
Sometimes we split the other way and I end up with boys girls infants (which I think is an unfair split in my store).
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Yeah that doesn't sound like a very fair split. Ours is typically the first person in gets ready to wear, second mens, shoes, boys, half of infants (typically toddler clothes), and the third gets jewelry, intimates, active wear, girls, and the other half of infants (the infant hanging and gondolas/infant hardlines). If we have a fourth person, they get boys and all of infants. Its a lot to handle. Trying to get it all done is really rough.
 
GlobalTL123 said:
What exactly are the new directives? Ive only been given bits and pieces.
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According to my TL: 1) No numbers, let guests take in how ever many items they want.
2) Offer to get different sizes as needed
3) Offer "style advice"

We have no time for this. Our FRO has way too much re-shop to deal with, both from guest services and from guests trying on items, plus a ton of phone calls coming in. She's also expected to check the fitting room every hour for empty packages and discarded tags and help zone the area around the fitting room.
 
Expect more, pay less!
Doglover89 said:
According to my TL: 1) No numbers, let guests take in how ever many items they want.
2) Offer to get different sizes as needed
3) Offer "style advice"

We have no time for this. Our FRO has way too much re-shop to deal with, both from guest services and from guests trying on items, plus a ton of phone calls coming in. She's also expected to check the fitting room every hour for empty packages and discarded tags and help zone the area around the fitting room.
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At my store we already do hourly room checks so that's nothing new. I've even run out to get different sizes for guests before and given opinions on how things look when asked. I'm just trying to figure out how a single person can do it all! As it is now without the new extras in place it's all we can do to keep up. Between sorting/pushing all of the reshop from guest services and all of the clothing items guests are bringing back out of the rooms (plus strays picked up from other departments and team members who just drop any and all softlines items on the FR desk), 4x4 in the morning (sometimes taking up to 2-3 hours depending on the area you're assigned), keep up with doing defectives as they're found, working out the occassional CAF, the phone ringing off the hook all day, interacting with guests on the floor... where do we squeeze in time to get each persons name, write it on the board, run around getting more items for them and offer style advice - for every single guest?! I only have two arms!

It's not that I don't want to work hard, I LIKE to keep busy at work. But this seems kind of impossible!
 
We call breaks and lunches and pass out checks too. We are supposed to walk the guest to the FR. Now that they can try on an unlimited amt of everything reshop is out of control!
 
What does it mean to call breaks and lunches?

Hr passes out checks in my store. And if there's no hr, an etl comes in to give them to whoever is picking one up. They keep the checks locked up in tsc.
 
This was one crazy weekend. The entire store was completely trashed. Mountains and mountains of re-shop left. The expectations are just way too high. Backup cashier for over an hour each, push multiple cafs, call buttons, guests calling about random products that they can't spell or describe, the gsa yelling for dpics, ugh. Then we kinda had two lods Saturday night, both repeatedly saying get your signs down and you have touch ups to do here, here, and here. I already can't wait til Black Friday/holiday shopping ;)
 
Doglover89 said:
This was one crazy weekend. The entire store was completely trashed. Mountains and mountains of re-shop left. The expectations are just way too high. Backup cashier for over an hour each, push multiple cafs, call buttons, guests calling about random products that they can't spell or describe, the gsa yelling for dpics, ugh. Then we kinda had two lods Saturday night, both repeatedly saying get your signs down and you have touch ups to do here, here, and here. I already can't wait til Black Friday/holiday shopping ;)
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OMG! Yes! Our trainees. Our poor trainees. We could not keep up with reshop and the zone was red everywhere! I dread going in because the TL will be there and she's not going to be happy!
 

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