Archived Low volume = PA does TL stuff?

[PA 0701]

C&S deliveries Tuesday - Thursday - Saturday

We do orders Tuesday - Thursday - Sunday

 

[Snook]

Weird that your Sunday order is going to be messed up because of Memorial Day. At our store, orders and trucks are only affected if the holiday falls on an actual order or truck day. But we're serviced by an FDC, so maybe it's different.

Our schedule is like this:

Order: Sunday, Wednesday, Friday
Truck: Sunday, Tuesday, Friday

 

[BackroomGuru]

We have a specific C&S team that comes in, scheduled under logsitics zone hours, and handles pushing and backstock of the freezers and coolers from the truck. The opening Backroom TM handles the backroom locations of the SDA while they do the location audits.
At my store, I made the freezer, PFresh and dairy coolers my areas of ownership. I partner with the PAs and the other TMs that work in our market to make sure they know how heavy the pulls are for all areas, audit the milk as I walk past to pull batches and put what's light/empty on the green rack with the pulls to save them time.
One of our PAs took to backstocking produce and meat coolers himself which threw off our location accuracy. I retrained him on how to backstock and pull properly but then also offered to do it all for him so he had more time to zone and task throughout the day.

Side note, our market sales are 26% of our total store sales and we've had the top ranked backroom in our district for three years straight. Not sure if any of that will help you all.

 

[sigma7]

Our FDC deliveries are Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Order days are Monday, Wednesday, Saturday.

When I asked you originally, I had a follow-up question. Now I can't remember what I was going to ask!

 

[salesfloor10]

I'm not the CTL but I have a pretty good idea of the process from seeing the process at my c-volume p-fresh store.

We have FDC trucks Sunday, Wednesday, Friday. Only fresh (produce, meat, dairy) on Sundays. Not sure what the order days are. We have a back room team member trained in market backstock, scheduled under market hours on truck days to do backstock. The salesfloor team (softlines, hardlines, instocks, and ocasionally a presentation team member or two) help work the truck. Our TL or PA primarily work dayside and cull, push pulls, work milk, clean, and help work the truck. They don't really have time for a mid day zone or freshness in dry grocery (which would help out a lot, especially when I take care of pushing clearance most of the time and tend to find tons of out of dates, and the zone would help the often overloaded closing team member.)

 

[pfreshdude]

We have a specific C&S team that comes in, scheduled under logsitics zone hours, and handles pushing and backstock of the freezers and coolers from the truck. The opening Backroom TM handles the backroom locations of the SDA while they do the location audits.
At my store, I made the freezer, PFresh and dairy coolers my areas of ownership. I partner with the PAs and the other TMs that work in our market to make sure they know how heavy the pulls are for all areas, audit the milk as I walk past to pull batches and put what's light/empty on the green rack with the pulls to save them time.
One of our PAs took to backstocking produce and meat coolers himself which threw off our location accuracy. I retrained him on how to backstock and pull properly but then also offered to do it all for him so he had more time to zone and task throughout the day.

Side note, our market sales are 26% of our total store sales and we've had the top ranked backroom in our district for three years straight. Not sure if any of that will help you all.

Funny you should bring that last part up. Our Market section is 25% of total store sales which obv would lead to the zone being shopped hard right? Well we only have the closer til 8 with no overlap and the pfresh team has to zone dry, we dont get an extra Salesfloor or dedicated market TM to help zone. You would think with Market being 1/4 of total store sales we would dedicate more hours to it but nope, not gonna happen

 

[Branders]

Oh yea, I forgot to mention. Due to the increase in sales in P-Fresh last year, our store is able to hire another PA. The position has been open for nearly 2 months so far! I approached three Flow TM's (who I knew wanted to shift from Flow to Salesfloor) and asked if they would be interested in applying for it. Unfortunately none of them wanted it. One said it was due to the later hours he would be working, and the other two said that working in Market seems a lot harder than Flow (they sometimes help push dairy and frozen on our truck days).

 

[sigma7]

Oh yea, I forgot to mention. Due to the increase in sales in P-Fresh last year, our store is able to hire another PA. The position has been open for nearly 2 months so far! I approached three Flow TM's (who I knew wanted to shift from Flow to Salesfloor) and asked if they would be interested in applying for it. Unfortunately none of them wanted it. One said it was due to the later hours he would be working, and the other two said that working in Market seems a lot harder than Flow (they sometimes help push dairy and frozen on our truck days).

This pretty much sums it up. PA is by far one of the worst salesfloor roles due to the unrealistic expectations, excessive workload, and cutting of hours. There is just not enough time in the day most days.

I should probably mention that having ineffective leadership (read: total lack of leadership) in market doesn't help make matters any better.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't take a PA spot unless food and market gets a lot of support from the entire store, especially upper management.

 

[Snook]

^^ See, that's where the store culture and leadership makes a BIG difference. At my store, PA is a pretty good position to be in because you get hours, the pay is good and we manage our own tasks. But at other stores, if you don't have that, it could be pretty awful.

 

[pfreshdude]

^^ See, that's where the store culture and leadership makes a BIG difference. At my store, PA is a pretty good position to be in because you get hours, the pay is good and we manage our own tasks. But at other stores, if you don't have that, it could be pretty awful.

I know I complain alot about hour cuts and how things are ran at my store BUT my store leadership is actually fairly understanding about what can and cant get done and they dont really get too upset if something doesnt get done as long as it eventually gets done. For the most part they arent too involved in it anyway, and we have alot of freedom. I wish there were more hours for market because there is always something to do and way too many tasks but what can you do, hours at my store are down for every workcenter =(. Our pfresh is ran VERY effectively otherwise we would of not been able to be #1 in the group last year for our guest survey metrics, but there comes a point in which you cant cut any more hours without things giving here and there no matter how effective you are.

 

[Determinism]

^^ See, that's where the store culture and leadership makes a BIG difference. At my store, PA is a pretty good position to be in because you get hours, the pay is good and we manage our own tasks. But at other stores, if you don't have that, it could be pretty awful.

Beginning of a RANT.


Well my store culture and leadership (with the ETLs) in tanking fast. Two weekends ago, I told you all what my new STL did. Well he was at it again this weekend. First off, at my store, PAs nor CTL are in charge of p fresh trucks, logistics is. I was told what happened as I was off Saturday but ran into the mess Sunday. ANyways, our truck arrived at 6am instead of 4am. It was not finished unloading until 630-645. It was a big truck for us, 9 pallets. Our flow team was scheduled until 9am. So come 9am, with only 4 people pushing, our STL says they can not stay to finish the truck because we dont have payroll. The flow team didnt finish the dairy, meat nor produce. But our STL thinks food is not that important, from my point of view. Luckily, our two backroom team members finished pushing the dairy. I was also told by 2 market team members that they had to break down one produce pallet (around 12pm), push the other produce pallet and push it. They also had to push meat then push our milk.

When I came in Sunday morning, the dairy, meat and produce coolers were backed up and had backstock in them all. The remaining frozen was not even pushed. HA HA HA, only on Sunday morning, I had to help the ad team put up signs in p fresh and some dry market. That took a while.

Also on Sunday, I was pushing a tub of meat. I was using a timer so I wouldnt have the product out over 30 minutes. I finished pushing the meat then grabbed the ribs for so I could re weigh them. I push the tub to the back at the 20 minute mark in front, not in, the meat cooler. I then had to help a guest in seasonal whom had been waiting for a while for help. So I rush over to help this guest. Just as a finished up (keep in mind I have a few minutes till I hit the 30 minute mark, my stl calls the LOD and asks if they know where the market team member is. I go to him. He asks me, in a way like I dont know what I am doing, how long has this tub been out? I told him under 30 minutes as I had a timer. He said because it was dripping wet, I had to get it in the cooler. I told him i grabbed those ribs from the floor while I was pushing so I could re weigh them. He gave me this look like I was lying to him and I didnt know what I was doing.

Then, through a mid market team member who was going to help push the left over push from the truck, I found out that my stl told her I wasnt doing anything all morning. He told this to her. She told me this. I was pissed off because they told me I had to help with the ad and he get upset at me because I couldnt finish my tasks. Well, I spoke to the plano TL who was doing ad. I told her what the STL said and she knew. He said this in front of her as well. The plano TL stood up for me and told our STL he couldnt get his tasks done because the morning LODs asked me to do the p freshing ad. The plano TL told me the STL had weird look on his face when she told him why i couldnt get everything done.

END RANT

Sounds like your stl doesnt know **** about groceries. Its because of management peeps like him that make us market TMs want to unionize.

 

[pfreshdude]

Sounds like your stl doesnt know **** about groceries. Its because of management peeps like him that make us market TMs want to unionize.

He doesnt. So my stl was no upset/offended that I left that tub out that he sent a photo of it to my ETL. My ETL told me, in our STLs eyes, it looks bad when any product is out of temp with no one around. Even though I had a timer on me, my ETL said I should have had the timer on the tub. He also said I shouldnt have had broken down boxes at the bottom of the tub since their is a chance of cross contamination. So even though I was helping a guest and the product was out of temp, my STL now gets an impression that I am not good at my job. Well as i said before, he did say that to that market team member he sent over.

Also today, due to our store being over payroll, my STL gave the order to the team that they are NOT to replace anyone who calls out. My mid called out. I arrived at 330. The opener left at 1130. When I came in, their was 3 carts of dairy push (one was a green cart), 3 frozen carts, 1 meat, 1 produce and 1 dry. I also had to finish the order. So I was not a happy camper today. Oh, we also have p fresh inventory tonight, they were left with a mess.

How does an empty box cross contaminate when it is below everything else if nothing is sitting on it?

Also inventory with a mid calling out, having that push, and having to do the order....I would NOT want to be on that inventory team, that is going to be a freaking nightmare. You cant even prep right. I would think that Inventory would be maybe the ONLY reason they would invite you to come in earlier or have someone work the push at least. Seems like your store doesnt care about Pfresh at all.

The one thing that pisses me off above all else in relation to working in Pfresh is that everyone else thinks we have all the time in the world and can just pick up any task and not have it effect us at all.....mhhhmmm...sure......theres too many things to list but if you have worked in Pfresh you know there isnt much "free time" to do anything. Just like you I had to help with Ad once and this was when they changed the starting time of Pfresh to 7. So I basically helped with ad til like 8:30 or something like that, and FINALLY was able to start on my pfresh tasks and was super behind. I think I had all of push to do, research, SDA, culling, the Order, Receiving C+S and staging it, daily cleaning, and possibly changing the water endcap or doing reshop.