I'm a new hire, been on the job for only a few days. It's my first job in retail.
My grocery manager will be on vacation this week. We only have two day stock clerks and three night crews. I've got the afternoon/evening shift. It's also when trucks come in. Problem is, I have no idea how to break those down. I know I have to separate them by aisle but I have no idea what will go where. It'll also take me a while since I admit that I am quite slow at this process. I won't even be able to tell which pallet should I touch and break down. During my first few days, my manager and I broke down no more than seven or eight pallets during the same time, but whenever I look around there's plenty of pallets stacked with items and wrapped.
The totes, I can handle, I'm just worried that they'll make such a big fuss over my lack of knowledge and preparedness. Any help you folks can toss my way would be very, very helpful!
Many of you might be wondering why I'm not at the front end if I'm "slow". Funny thing is, even the Front End manager doesn't know. He's asked management if he can have me, but they insist I stay in grocery.
Also, I should add that I'm the only stocker around during my shift until someone from night crew shows up at around 10 PM. Even then, they expect pallets to have been broken down and set on their aisles.
Well, it's a little late to fix it now, but you would have been ok if you had voiced these concerns to your dept/store mgmt asap so they could rush to train you or make schedule adjustments to compensate.
Well, it's a little late to fix it now, but you would have been ok if you had voiced these concerns to your dept/store mgmt asap so they could rush to train you or make schedule adjustments to compensate.
Ha! They didn't even tell me what was going on until today. My grocery manager didn't tell me he was going to be gone. None of the management people said a word. And since my schedule wasn't published until late Saturday evening (yeah, they suck at publishing schedules on-time).
I tried talking to someone but apparently they were all busy, it being Sunday and all.
If I were you and they did that to me I'd quit and find another job. You haven't invested any significant time with them. So you're not losing much if you quit.
Anonymous wrote:I should brace for the worst, shouldn't I?
You're screwed unless you learn all your isles really quick. Many items don't go where you think they would - I still have to scan a few at times. It is a mile-a-minute job and there are also other organizational rules to learn and follow to a T in receiving.
I don't think they'll give you a hard time on the first few days, but if days turn into weeks and weeks into a month or longer - you'll be expected to breeze through it. Also, the more you learn, the more they'll add to your workload.
I don't normally touch Blue totes because that is a mixture of Drug/GM, Natures Market and Grocery. The Drug/GM person sorts them. So, you are a step ahead of me.
There will be a pallet of Drug/Gm merchandise. Don't bother with that pallet. It will have a combination of candy, shampoo, Glad plastic containers. It might have some paper plates that are for the Grocery department on the top.
I am not sure how your store is set up or if you are putting the product on Lcarts or other pallets.
01 Grocery is mostly larger stuff and the pallets are relatively aisle friendly. 12 packs of kroger pop will be under canned fruit and veggies. Cereal will have its own pallet or be under paper towels and toilet paper. Flour, Sugar, Folders coffee, kroger spaghetti, Ragu spaghetti sauce will be on the other pallets. Catfood will be on top of water and/or juice with ramen noodles on top of that. Soap will have have Large bulk bundles of paper towels on top mixed with cooking oil and Fire logs. 01 also uses some plastic pallets. I would not break those down unless you are supposed to put them on Lcarts or they are way too tall. You will use all your Lcarts just for paper towels. Easier to run off a pallet. The store number is written on a white and yellow tag normally.
69 Grocery has 8' tall pallets and a lot of small stuff that are not labeled very well. The pallets are usually built like a brick wall! There should be about 4 of them for grocery. They never use plastic pallets. They come with the blue totes so they should be next to each other and labeled with the same tag. I think the store number is on a plain white tag. If going on pallets, try to keep like things together. Paper bags with paper bags, soap with soap, hot sauce with hot sauce, etc. Products on this truck are kroger spaghetios, Knorr pasta side, rice sides, Uncle Bens rice, Idaho potatoes, Pickles, olives, tortillas, kroger peanut butter & jelly, starbucks coffee, jello pudding mixes, popcorn, peanuts, Arizona tea, soap will usually be on top of Barilla pastas or on the bottom of a pallet, garbage bags, foil, paper plates, and plastic baggies.
I would break down the 69 pallets. Try to keep the weight balanced from left to right of the pallet. We run the 01 pallets efficiently on nights in our store without breaking them down. When I break down 69 pallets, it takes me about 1 hour and 45 minutes to transfer to Lcarts.
Stacys chips are Deli, other chips, raisons, peanuts are Natures market, mccormic sauce is seafood, plain bags are deli or bakery. All those items are normally in the same place on the pallets so I put them on their own pallet and let the other departments dig their own stuff out.
The pallets I receive are built for proper weight distribution, not to be 'aisle-friendly', so everything for the whole store is mixed with everything. YMMV.
The pallets I receive are built for proper weight distribution, not to be 'aisle-friendly', so everything for the whole store is mixed with everything. YMMV.
yup. We went aisle friendly from the warehouse and then reset the entire store!!!.
All juice used to be in same aisle. Now, large juice containers are 6 asiles away from the juice packs but still come stacked together. Soap is mixed with veggie oil 11 aisles away. I have a good system of breaking down the 01 pallets. When I unload the truck, I can tell if a pallet is missing just by looking at the products. One night I finished unloading the 01 truck at 6am and noticed one pallet missing. Dogfood and salt was missing. I did the order so I knew what should have been there. Then, while I was unloading the 69 truck, the driver got me the phone number for the first stop of the 01 truck. By 7 am, I had located the missing pallet.
Aisles 1, 2 and 9 are mixed in layers. Cereal is pretty much together. Paper towels are together. Juice, pop and H2o are together. Catfood is normally on top of pop 2 liters and falling over! We don't run off pallets at night and spot everything instead for now.
I have been sorting the 69 pallets for 5 years and have a system for if I have to run them. I hope the OP asks more questions. I will try to explain better organization. I used to have to open every box because they are not marked very well. Saved the stocker half their time..
I am wondering:
Do they sort onto pallets so the night guys can run off of pallets or sort onto Lcarts?
Do they sort everything? 01 and 69?
Large items like paper, soap, cereal, juice, dog food bags and water is easier to spot off a pallet and run that way.
Small items like canned veggies, fruit, peanut butter, jelly, pasta, hot sauce are easier to run off of Lcarts.
If the Op can give a general description of the aisles, I might be able to school them with my experience. Generally, all stores are supposed to be set up the same(key retailing) and going to aisle friendly pallets from the warehouse so the stockers can run off of pallets overnight.
The pallets I receive are built for proper weight distribution, not to be 'aisle-friendly', so everything for the whole store is mixed with everything. YMMV.
yup. We went aisle friendly from the warehouse and then reset the entire store!!!.
All juice used to be in same aisle. Now, large juice containers are 6 asiles away from the juice packs but still come stacked together. Soap is mixed with veggie oil 11 aisles away. I have a good system of breaking down the 01 pallets. When I unload the truck, I can tell if a pallet is missing just by looking at the products. One night I finished unloading the 01 truck at 6am and noticed one pallet missing. Dogfood and salt was missing. I did the order so I knew what should have been there. Then, while I was unloading the 69 truck, the driver got me the phone number for the first stop of the 01 truck. By 7 am, I had located the missing pallet.
Aisles 1, 2 and 9 are mixed in layers. Cereal is pretty much together. Paper towels are together. Juice, pop and H2o are together. Catfood is normally on top of pop 2 liters and falling over! We don't run off pallets at night and spot everything instead for now.
I have been sorting the 69 pallets for 5 years and have a system for if I have to run them. I hope the OP asks more questions. I will try to explain better organization. I used to have to open every box because they are not marked very well. Saved the stocker half their time..
I am wondering:
Do they sort onto pallets so the night guys can run off of pallets or sort onto Lcarts?
Do they sort everything? 01 and 69?
Large items like paper, soap, cereal, juice, dog food bags and water is easier to spot off a pallet and run that way.
Small items like canned veggies, fruit, peanut butter, jelly, pasta, hot sauce are easier to run off of Lcarts.
If the Op can give a general description of the aisles, I might be able to school them with my experience. Generally, all stores are supposed to be set up the same(key retailing) and going to aisle friendly pallets from the warehouse so the stockers can run off of pallets overnight.
Hi there, OP here!
I didn't even know there were two different types of pallets. 01 and 69? It shouldn't be a surprise to me, I guess. They threw me into action on the first day.
Here are our aisles:
1-3. Nature's Market
4. Bread, wine
5. Soda, water, juices (apple, cranberry, etc.)
6. Chips, cookies, nuts, popcorn
7. Canned goods
8. Cereal, Peanut Butter, International Section, dried fruit (raisins, fruit snacks, etc.), juice boxes
We break down pallets into smaller pallets by aisle, then take them to the aisle they'll be worked on. Any backstock will be placed on L carts later, though it's primarily night crew who does so.
If it helps any, when I break down pallets with the grocery manager, we've never had more than 4 or 5 pallets. He has them broken down into the following pallets:
Aisle 4, 5, 6
Aisle 7
Aisle 8
Aisle 9
Aisle 10
I think our dogfood comes on its own, with the rest being Drug/GM stuff?
And yeah, he has another pallet for stuff that aren't ours.
Thanks for all of the pointers/suggestions so far, everyone.
I didn't even know there were two different types of pallets. 01 and 69? It shouldn't be a surprise to me, I guess. They threw me into action on the first day.
Here are our aisles:
1-3. Nature's Market
4. Bread, wine
5. Soda, water, juices (apple, cranberry, etc.)
6. Chips, cookies, nuts, popcorn
7. Canned goods
8. Cereal, Peanut Butter, International Section, dried fruit (raisins, fruit snacks, etc.), juice boxes
Don't worry about getting it right at first. With enough practice, you will be a pro in no time. The best suggestion would be to ask the night crew how they like the pallets sorted. I am in Mi so your store might use a different warehouse system. Maybe you have just one warehouse. I may confuse you a little if you only have one warehouse for your store. If you look at the price tags on the shelf, it will show a category number. Grocery will be an 01 or 69 and a few 22s I think. Cookies and chips are 09.
01(aka supertruck with frozen, dairy, meat and seafood department) truck comes from Ohio I thought. Kroger chips, cookies and crackers come on their own pallet from this truck. 69(aka Peyton or KMP) truck comes from Delaware I think and the trailer is locked. The pallets are obvious. Like I said, they are stacked 8' high and solid with little stuff and are delivered with blue totes. Our 01 grocery order averages 500 cases 6 days a week. Our 69 grocery averages 500 cases 3 days a week.
For your store, 1-3 is natures market. There are some cereals that come from 69 usually under large chip boxes. Generally, healthy foods...
12-15 are Drug GM. Books/magazines are a vender here. Most of their stuff comes in blue totes or on 69. Their pallet is obvious with shampoo, lotion and candy on the pallet. A few diapers come on 01 mixed with paper towels.
The pallets you described sound like the Peyton(69) order. Most of the 01 order is already sorted per your aisles from the warehouse at our store.
I try to put like items together like how they are grouped in the aisles. That way the stocker doesn't have to run up and down the aisle to stock the products. Just has to make one run thru. Cake mixes with cake mixes, coffee with coffee and tea. Veggies with veggies. Fruit with fruit. Canned fruit should be in one aisle and fruit cups in another aisle. Pasta with pasta, Mexican food with mexican food. Salad dressing with salad dressing. Soup with soup.
You seem to have a grasp of your mission. You just need practice. Main thing to me is balance the weight from left to right of the pallet so it doesn't flip when one side is unloaded. Stack as neat as you can in a hurry so the product doesn't fall over when going thru doors or around corners...
OP, Just learn the isles well enough to carry more than one item at a time and eliminate walking every change you get - keep it organized, keep the flow, and it will go smoothly.
I worked the night crew for a while last year. This is how we did the stocking (after the 4 of us conditioned the whole store).
The trucks come in 4 days a week, usually around 9-10pm. Night crew comes in at 10 (12 Sat), and condition the store.
Then we would all go to the back, in the dock. We'd take several empty pallets and lay them out. on the floor. Then we'd start working the just arrived pallets down. Unloading them and putting all the products for 1 aisle on 1 pallet. Once in 1000 pallets would all of it be for just 1 aisle.
After breaking down all the pallets, we'd take those correctly stacked pallets out on the floor, and stage them at the back end (closest to the dock, not front end of the store) and then we'd take the brown carts out, load them up, trying to get stuff that is near to each other to make it quicker. Then we'd stock the product. After we got done with that, if anything was left over, we pushed the brown cart to the back and put it on the green carts. If they didn't all fit, then the brown cart would be parked behind the green one.
Now if the warehouse was smart, they'd pack the pallets where 1 pallet is 1 aisle (or at least be better at how they do it if they can't do 1 pallet 1 aisle). With everything mixed around on them, takes a lot more time just to get set up to work.
Not even sure what you guys are talking about. we pull the grocery pallets to the back aisle, get as many empty carts as we can find and start breaking down the load and spotting the cases on the aisles. when its all done we pick up the empty pallets and plastic , take any extra product to the back , take a break and then start stocking. We do not process anything in the back room. About a month ago they ( being the idiots in Ohio) started a new program where each pallet was suppose to be "aisle friendly". no pallet was to have more than 3 aisles mixed in with it. There would be 3 pallets or so that would be mixed pallets and they would have a sign on those pallets that read "mixed". I must admit that the first few loads came in and there was no more than 2 aisles per pallet and many had just one aisle..... but the closer to thanksgiving and the loads getting bigger the pallets came in all mixed up. the sad thing is we have been asking for aisle friendly pallets for years. they would tell us "you store is not mapped correctly" but in reality they could have been doing this all along.... it just costs the warehouse more to do it that way.... its great to be lied to!!!
