Time Wasters that my TL makes me do.

Dream Baby

Dream Baby

Joined
May 6, 2020
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Zone just one or two of my departments aisles just in case we have a visit.

Other TMs zone too but there isn't enough of us to even do the whole department.

Pointless.

PS My TL said later that he might have to zone the backroom room Wacos too!
 
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Dream Baby said:
Zone just one or two of my departments aisles just in case we have a visit.

Other TMs zone too but there isn't enough of us to even do the whole department.

Pointless.

PS My TL said later that he might have to zone the backroom room Wacos too!
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Zoning both is and isn't a waste of time. It's a waste because it's one of those things that can be undone in a few minutes. It's just a repetitve task that is never really completed, at least not for long.

But the alternative to not zoning is a department that looks like absolute shit. It becomes unshoppable. Things have to get picked up off the floor, clothes have to be folded and hung and arranged nicely - so they look pretty when the next guest comes by and messes them up, and the next, and the next, and the next...!
 
Zoning was one of the few things that is not a waste time, exceptions being seasonal during like BTS or Christmas and toys during the holidays.

Backroom WACO management is something that should be done during the slowest times of the year so it can be done right. It's not something you can spend half an hour on.
 
Ringwraith917 said:
A good zone is somewhat resistant to being destroyed. People don't want to mess it up if it looks nice. Once a few things are out of place, it quickly gets out of control
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In Style this is 100% not true. I have witnessed beautiful zones ruined in minutes.
 
Those of us that have been around a long time may strongly disagree with this. I know I do.
The zone held pretty well because a team of us zoned and pushed the reshop, every night. Yes, there were areas that got destroyed, but they got zoned. Our stores used to be really nice to shop in. We were proud of how our store looked. We wave zoned most of the time and we did a pretty good job especially in “softlines”
It kinda breaks my heart to see what’s become of Target.
 
BullseyeBabe said:
Those of us that have been around a long time may strongly disagree with this. I know I do.
The zone held pretty well because a team of us zoned and pushed the reshop, every night. Yes, there were areas that got destroyed, but they got zoned. Our stores used to be really nice to shop in. We were proud of how our store looked. We wave zoned most of the time and we did a pretty good job especially in “softlines”
It kinda breaks my heart to see what’s become of Target.
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When I was first hired we had three closers in Softlines every night, usually we came in at 3 or 4 to close and we only zoned - maybe pushed a rack of reshop if we were able. That's three people with at least five hours each to focus on nothing but zoning. Ready to Wear, Mens, and Boys/Girls/Infants were near perfect almost every night. Fitting room was covered from open to close and the fitting room person collected reshop from the front regularly throughout the day, sorted it and pushed some, and floor folks came and pushed theirs as well. Dayside handled truck push. It worked fine and we looked good.

I don't think i need to tell anyone how much this is not happening now.
 
In my department I am the only one at night.

I do all the pulls and pushes for the entire department.

Usually NO pulls are done until I get there.

Zoning one or two aisles still leaves eight that aren't done.

My department used to have TM that did our reshop and zoned but not since December.
 
BullseyeBabe said:
Those of us that have been around a long time may strongly disagree with this. I know I do.
The zone held pretty well because a team of us zoned and pushed the reshop, every night. Yes, there were areas that got destroyed, but they got zoned. Our stores used to be really nice to shop in. We were proud of how our store looked. We wave zoned most of the time and we did a pretty good job especially in “softlines”
It kinda breaks my heart to see what’s become of Target.
Click to expand...
"The zone held pretty well because a team of us zoned and pushed the reshop, every night."

That was eliminated years ago at my store along with the team that came and pulled all the ad down Saturday night.
 
Dream Baby said:
In my department I am the only one at night.

I do all the pulls and pushes for the entire department.

Usually NO pulls are done until I get there.

Zoning one or two aisles still leaves eight that aren't done.

My department used to have TM that did our reshop and zoned but not since December.
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They focus on the racetrack because it at least presents a decent first impression. It's a quick band-aid fix and looks a little better than no zone at all.

My store has now started insisting that the closer(s) go around and pick everything up off the floor at night in every Style department. If that's what they want, fine, but that means that things like a decent zone in one area or pushing some reshop or sorting that last cart of reshop are not going to get done.
 
Each TL I v closed with had their idiosyncrasies...one just required everything off the base deck by close, one was a stickler about towels being perfect...
 
We used to have a good zone done every night and the reshop taken care of. It's been a very long time since that's happened with any consistency. There's one aisle in my area that someone must really like to zone for some reason because it often looks quite nice even though it's shopped heavily. Otherwise, no zoning, no gathering reshop, piles of reshop behind GS is the norm. Often, the last pull of the day is left for me to push when I arrive early the next day. I think it's partly a scheduling issue and partly because a lot of the evening TMs call off. Whatever, the store looks awful most of the time.
 
A good zone can always be destroyed in minutes, but in general, once a zone starts to slide it snowballs. Tidying up where you can, even if it's not a full zone, is better than nothing.

People have done research about this--when stuff looks nice people are less likely to mess it up (again, in general--assholes always gonna asshole), but if things are already messy, people feel less shame about making it worse.
 
Before , my ETL had me zone all of the market first thing in the morning . Takes an hour and a bit usually and almost 2 hours after a weekend or holidays . It was going so well . Then we got short staffed and TL changed and everything went downhill. Still I always zone all the endcaps/side caps first thing and zone as much as possible while pushing . Some days I get through all aisles and sometimes very less . Zoning is never a waste of time .
Yeah zoning backroom aisles while we have ton of other priority things to do is a waste of time . We have to do the same during visits . Zone wacos, sweep under the backroom shelves and such . Lot of time gets wasted prepping for those visits . It’s even crazy when they cancel the visit at the last moment . I wish we still had the backroom team.
 
rd123 said:
Before , my ETL had me zone all of the market first thing in the morning . Takes an hour and a bit usually and almost 2 hours after a weekend or holidays . It was going so well . Then we got short staffed and TL changed and everything went downhill. Still I always zone all the endcaps/side caps first thing and zone as much as possible while pushing . Some days I get through all aisles and sometimes very less . Zoning is never a waste of time .
Yeah zoning backroom aisles while we have ton of other priority things to do is a waste of time . We have to do the same during visits . Zone wacos, sweep under the backroom shelves and such . Lot of time gets wasted prepping for those visits . It’s even crazy when they cancel the visit at the last moment . I wish we still had the backroom team.
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Zoning is never a waste of time .

True but they don't give us the time anymore!

To it is analogous to training at my store.

My store is only concerned with mandated training not any training to make you a better TM.
 
Dream Baby said:
Zoning is never a waste of time .

True but they don't give us the time anymore!

To it is analogous to training at my store.

My store is only concerned with mandated training not any training to make you a better TM.
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It's not just your store, it's the company, and it's not just Target, it's all retail. Everyone has to do mandated training, it's just the way it is.

My husband was complaining about how they have one of those "voluntary" surveys at his warehouse and that the leaders were hounding people to do it. I told him yup, we have that at Target too. We also had training and surveys at Sears. Nothing new under the sun.
 
Dream Baby said:
Zoning is never a waste of time .

True but they don't give us the time anymore!

To it is analogous to training at my store.

My store is only concerned with mandated training not any training to make you a better TM.
Click to expand...
My store is no different than yours. But only thing is I’m mostly left alone in my department and no one is there to manage/micromanage . I’m able to follow the routine that works best for me and our department . May be they trust what I do or they don’t care as the work gets done at the end of the day.
Im waiting for the Q4 madness to begin and see how it’s going to affect our department . I’m hoping that they hire atleast a couple seasonal tms . I heard a talk that this time they are giving overtime to existing tms instead of hiring too many seasonals. Not liking that idea.🙄
 
I closed the weekend. I had one closing expert scheduled a 5 hour shift to do the entire store. We’re not a small store either and my style TM was actually a checkout advocate I had to pull to zone style. Registers, drive up and fulfillment were blowing up all night. I essentially told the team to hit the endcaps and grab any stray reshop. If we passed an area that was a disaster, I said do a quick zone, but nothing was going to fix the state of the store.

Also, had to pull a cashier to push reshop because front end is apparently responsible for that. The whole weekend was just a disaster. Pick on Time in the 70s, DUWT in the 30s. You can’t survive with no team members and one lead in the building after 4 especially as we get closer to Q4.
 
Our Front ETL was trying to convince our cart attendant to also do Drive Up.

Same ETL said that our "DU surveys" were in the 90% range for the entire year.

Sure. 🤔
 
rd123 said:
My store is no different than yours. But only thing is I’m mostly left alone in my department and no one is there to manage/micromanage . I’m able to follow the routine that works best for me and our department . May be they trust what I do or they don’t care as the work gets done at the end of the day.
Im waiting for the Q4 madness to begin and see how it’s going to affect our department . I’m hoping that they hire atleast a couple seasonal tms . I heard a talk that this time they are giving overtime to existing tms instead of hiring too many seasonals. Not liking that idea.🙄
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Agree with @Dream Baby about zoning not being a waste of time. Guests put random stuff in empty spots, so if I have enough product to have all the facings filled, that keeps things neater overall. (Why we have to have 6 facings of the same Dove body wash is something I'll never understand, along with shelves going so high that they're hard to reach, but that's another issue.)
I'm also left mostly alone because my TL knows I just plow my way through and can usually stay late enough to finish my area. Problem is that it's usually too much and the random help I get is not always very good. When I had a helper, I could follow a really good routine and my area looked great. Now it usually looks a mess. And I sure don't have time to FIFO like I should.
As for Q4 madness, we'll see. I've been asked if I'd be interested in working POG shifts more than usual to get through all the new sets and then switch back to my usual shifts. The TL who asked me said they're trying to move TMs around and max out availability, including OT, instead of hiring a lot of seasonals. This is sort of what was done last year and it worked out pretty well. Getting a few hours of OT here and there is fine with me, makes up for short schedules in January.
 
FlowTeamChick said:
Agree with @Dream Baby about zoning not being a waste of time. Guests put random stuff in empty spots, so if I have enough product to have all the facings filled, that keeps things neater overall. (Why we have to have 6 facings of the same Dove body wash is something I'll never understand, along with shelves going so high that they're hard to reach, but that's another issue.)
I'm also left mostly alone because my TL knows I just plow my way through and can usually stay late enough to finish my area. Problem is that it's usually too much and the random help I get is not always very good. When I had a helper, I could follow a really good routine and my area looked great. Now it usually looks a mess. And I sure don't have time to FIFO like I should.
As for Q4 madness, we'll see. I've been asked if I'd be interested in working POG shifts more than usual to get through all the new sets and then switch back to my usual shifts. The TL who asked me said they're trying to move TMs around and max out availability, including OT, instead of hiring a lot of seasonals. This is sort of what was done last year and it worked out pretty well. Getting a few hours of OT here and there is fine with me, makes up for short schedules in January.
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It is actually @rd123 who said zoning is never a waste of time. Dream Baby was just quoting that line to respond to it. Sorry to be a stickler lol.
 
IWishIKnew said:
A good zone can always be destroyed in minutes, but in general, once a zone starts to slide it snowballs. Tidying up where you can, even if it's not a full zone, is better than nothing.

People have done research about this--when stuff looks nice people are less likely to mess it up (again, in general--assholes always gonna asshole), but if things are already messy, people feel less shame about making it worse.
Click to expand...
This was somewhat true at Sears but has not been my experience at all in Target Softlines. Our guests are feral. They truly don't care how nice something looks. They take a t shirt from a freshly-zoned table or shelf, open it up, then roll it in a ball and toss it back. No regard.
 
rd123 said:
Before , my ETL had me zone all of the market first thing in the morning . Takes an hour and a bit usually and almost 2 hours after a weekend or holidays . It was going so well . Then we got short staffed and TL changed and everything went downhill. Still I always zone all the endcaps/side caps first thing and zone as much as possible while pushing . Some days I get through all aisles and sometimes very less . Zoning is never a waste of time .
Yeah zoning backroom aisles while we have ton of other priority things to do is a waste of time . We have to do the same during visits . Zone wacos, sweep under the backroom shelves and such . Lot of time gets wasted prepping for those visits . It’s even crazy when they cancel the visit at the last moment . I wish we still had the backroom team.
Click to expand...
Previous SD became a bit sus after we scoured the store for too many "no show" visits.
 

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