We call relief help anywhere from 1-5 times per hour on average, but my store has a very sporadic traffic pattern, so we rely on relief help heavily. If you have anything close to a steady traffic pattern, careful, effective scheduling can eliminate much of the need for relief help. As a floor supervisor (now an ACSM) who was around since before/during the quevision/1+1 rollout, I can tell you some of what is or is not supposed to happen: -we ARE supposed to follow the proper relief help sequence (listed in order): 1)crosstrained baggers 2)accounting clerk 3)utility clerk 4)file maint (this is generally part of FE) 5)any other FE worker not on a register 6)FE supervisor pages available help from another dept BY NAME, pages management BY NAME, then enters register themselves (this is very store specific) -we ARE supposed to call relief help from any other depts except those with service counters (ie everything but meat/seafood, RX, and deli/bakery/sushi/salad/cheese) -we ARE NOT supposed to call the same relief help every time; it is supposed to rotate evenly
-- Edited by techelite on Friday 6th of September 2013 06:39:25 PM
I'm talking about front end calling up non-front end people. On a semi-busy day (friday afternoon, senior day, 1st of the month day, etc), how often do they call for people other than front end to come check and bag? At my store a couple of supervisors like to call 3-4 people at a time. Not because they won't go up there and help, but just because they panic I guess. "customer first ___, customer first___, customer first____....." Half the time, you go up there and you're not even really needed (cashiers can bag their own **** a lot more than they actually do!) The reason I'm complaining is because while it seems like calling one person up to bag a few times a day isn't bad, the truth is it takes away a lot of time getting our own crap done!! ALL departments are pressed with low hours, heavier loads. They call me from running my truck in grocery and after bagging for a few minutes, walking back to my aisle, and remembering where I was (if I sat a case down somewhere to stock), I've wasted 10 minutes!!! that's just on 1 call-----they call us several times. It's to the point that they need to just say "customer first EVERYBODY in the store" they might as well!!
Another thing, why the hell are they calling people from grocery, floral, drug gm, produce BEFORE they call the utility (FRONT END) person!!!?
As annoying as it can be to be called up to the front to help out when you have your own stuff to do, it really is important. Keep in mind, when you're working in 1 department, yes you do have customers who rely on your department, but not every single customer does. However, every single customer does have to go through the front end to check out and leave. If there's not enough help on the front end, then you wind up with customers with $200+ orders walking out, meaning the store is losing out on sales big time. So if your department is taken care of and customers can put the food from your department into their basket, but can't get through the long lines to actually buy it, then it ends up being pointless.
I will agree though that yes, the people who are called up should be rotated evenly. My store does that luckily. The only people they call up more than people from other departments are people who normally work front end that happen to be working somewhere else during the day. Me and another cashier are rotated between days for doing demo in produce, so we're almost always the first ones they call up.
At the same time, our store tends to call file maintenance people to other departments at times, which is very frustrating because file maintenance isn't a job where you go home after your scheduled shift ends. You don't get to go home until all of the work for the day is done, even if it takes 5 more hours than you were scheduled for.
Half of the time either we don't have enough baggers, or our baggers are too lazy (believe me, the latter does happen). Usually they exaust every available front end resource before they start relying on other departments. I recently got promoted from bagger to grocery and I've only been called up once to bag. When I got up there every lane had a bagger so I could've gotten an entire shelf of dairy racked in that amount of time. My manager said "I just wanted the people gone" but it was completely unnecessary to sacrifice what I could've gotten done in order to get someone out 10 seconds quicker. When I was a bagger, I did all of the work and no one ever helped me but now they make me help everyone else.
As annoying as it can be to be called up to the front to help out when you have your own stuff to do, it really is important. Keep in mind, when you're working in 1 department, yes you do have customers who rely on your department, but not every single customer does. However, every single customer does have to go through the front end to check out and leave. If there's not enough help on the front end, then you wind up with customers with $200+ orders walking out, meaning the store is losing out on sales big time. So if your department is taken care of and customers can put the food from your department into their basket, but can't get through the long lines to actually buy it, then it ends up being pointless.
I will agree though that yes, the people who are called up should be rotated evenly. My store does that luckily. The only people they call up more than people from other departments are people who normally work front end that happen to be working somewhere else during the day. Me and another cashier are rotated between days for doing demo in produce, so we're almost always the first ones they call up.
At the same time, our store tends to call file maintenance people to other departments at times, which is very frustrating because file maintenance isn't a job where you go home after your scheduled shift ends. You don't get to go home until all of the work for the day is done, even if it takes 5 more hours than you were scheduled for.
Following what anonymous said, I bet our store "borrows" an hour or more every day from my dept alone. That's 7 hours a week which translates to running a few carts of grocery, scanning backstock the way it should be done, etc. When/where do we get these hours back? We aren't allowed to call "grocery first" when we're behind on things.....Many times I'd love to holler at our 6am cashier and say "hey why don't you condition while you're standing up there reading magazines?" they'd blow a gasket if I did that! it's just bs.
Also as AnonymousCutter mentioned, depts are already being shorted even before they begin their daily routine of relying on other depts to do their job. I hate to pick on the front end, but why is it that when I go bag (I'm a grocery clerk) I can bounce back and forth between two lanes but our baggers rarely do this? Point I'm trying to make is, just because there are 4 lanes open doesn't automatically require 4 baggers (myself being the 4th). THey probably think differently but it's the truth!
