I'm sure many of us will experience a lot of things that make us want to beat our heads against the wall this holiday season. Let this be a place to vent such frustrations! I'll start.
This is the first week of the holiday sales here. Mega event with great sales almost everywhere. I run frozen and the hours only allow me to have help on my off nights and 2 other nights a week at most, usually 1. Tonight I had MIC and had to work the 350 piece truck up myself. Usually not that bad of a deal, except our vendors Schwanns & Nestle have so much merchandise leftover from the pizza sales last week that they take up probably about 1/4 of of the freezer. Way overboard, especially when the sales these next 2 weeks are not even very good. We are a smaller store, with a small freezer to be shared between Deli/Bakery Frozen & Meat. Meat's already taking their turkey space which is fine, DeliBakery are just lazy SOB's who never touch their product and bring in way too much & never organize. So, when the frozen truck was unloaded today they could only fit 2 pallets in there, the rest had to go in dairy/meat/produce coolers. So, I work through my load, noticing a lot of things missing, but whatever I probably just haven't gotten to the right pallet yet. When I empty the freezer enough to see what happened, one of the vendors shoved all of my backstock off of one of my allotted silver 4 wheelers, and loaded up even more of his stuff on there. I left a note for him that morning to condense his merch & remove all the unnecessary products due to lack of space, his solution was to steal my space and add more. Rage inducing. Nowhere does ELMS allow to deal with such shenanigans and I am thankful that my store manager does not mind me getting OT to handle such issues. Not to mention, my stuff is all very organized and neat, and every night I work I have to spend time reorganizing the freezer(every other departments product) to allow for everything to fit. After I get through all of this, and work the last of my load I realize there is nothing left and I have a pallet missing. A pallet filled with hot ad items including lots of vegetables, frozen breads, potatoes, pies & pretty much a little from every other area. This means an absolute ton of OOS until the next load on Friday night is worked which I'm normally off for. Now the load is going to be massive, I'll have to come in, and guaranteed it still won't all fit in the freezer because of the vendors & other departments not organizing themselves and taking care of their product. This bothers me mainly because of the inevitable OOS. Currently I keep my department lower than anyone else in the division, rarely having any OOS at all. We're allowed 6, I run 0 with maybe one or two days a week when I'm not here there is 1. And now it's going to shoot up there and ruin my numbers and it'll be entirely out of my control. -_- I can only hope my missing pallet gets found and arrives for me tonight so that I can work it up before I order for the weekend.
I would have removed ALL his product out of your space and let him know that this is YOUR space. And that if he keeps taking over your space, he'll keep finding his product removed from the area. Will he get mad? More than likely. But you know what? Holidays are coming fast. And we the workers need OUR space more than the vendors. The same thing happens at our store. Just be glad you don't have a vendor that literally has a temper tantrum and kicks product over because we remove HIS product from OUR area that is allotted to us. And yes... Literally kicking product over like he is a 5 year old.
I would have removed ALL his product out of your space and let him know that this is YOUR space. And that if he keeps taking over your space, he'll keep finding his product removed from the area. Will he get mad? More than likely. But you know what? Holidays are coming fast. And we the workers need OUR space more than the vendors. The same thing happens at our store. Just be glad you don't have a vendor that literally has a temper tantrum and kicks product over because we remove HIS product from OUR area that is allotted to us. And yes... Literally kicking product over like he is a 5 year old.
I did remove it from my space, and put my stuff back. We've had to refuse deliveries from him in the past for not merchandising his product, leaving shelves empty for almost a whole week. In fact, the last week's displays he had 2 end units which I set for him (as always for vendors), and he never touched them or filled his shelf which was dead empty until the very last weekend of the sale. I looked at his route and no wonder, it's huge. He has all the biggest stores in the area, something like 25-30 stores. I don't see how the company lets him service that many locations when he clearly can't handle it.
If it happens again I'll definitely be talking it to his route supervisor.
-- Edited by DeltaGrocery on Thursday 6th of November 2014 07:39:53 PM
-- Edited by DeltaGrocery on Thursday 6th of November 2014 08:00:52 PM
DeliBakery are just lazy SOB's who never touch their product and bring in way too much & never organize.
That sounds like my store. I'm the only guy working in the bakery department and if I don't get bakery's frozen order, nobody does. Whenever I'm off a day, it'll be waiting for me the next day along with that day's order. If I go on on vacation, the head frozen guy will have a fit because the bakery will still order stuff everyday but they'll only go back and get what they absolutely have to have.
"DeliBakery are just lazy SOB's who never touch their product and bring in way too much & never organize"
yeah, no kidding. Our freezer is allotted: one corner for ice, one for Meat, one for Frozen, one for DeBa. DeBa's corner is ALWAYS packed, their shelves are stacked to the ceiling (all the way from their corner, all along the wall to the door ... I don't think they EVER pull product off those shelves!). Now all of a sudden because they have so much crap on their side they've start building stacks of product along the wall that's for Meet/Frozen! It's ridiculous how unorganized and non-caring they are ... we're the ones that have to keep the thing looking good so the trucks can fit in, all they do is come in pull what comes off the truck and leave the rest right where it's at ... still climbing the wall.
I bet if I just started throwing/scanning out their stuff that's on the walls, they wouldn't even know it's missing ........
I constantly ask the bakery department why they keep ordering the same stuff everyday. If you order something and you don't use it, why are you ordering it again?
So, I'm about to go in on my off night to help work up a huge truck. Here's the kicker, all of it except the ice cream pallet are in produce cooler. There was literally room for only 1 pallet in the freezer thanks mainly to deli bakery. And they have 2 pallets of their own on this truck. They're gonna have a huge amount of loss from today. Maybe that will get the store manager to kick some ass around here.
So, I'm about to go in on my off night to help work up a huge truck. Here's the kicker, all of it except the ice cream pallet are in produce cooler. There was literally room for only 1 pallet in the freezer thanks mainly to deli bakery. And they have 2 pallets of their own on this truck. They're gonna have a huge amount of loss from today. Maybe that will get the store manager to kick some ass around here.
Maybe it's all Thanksgiving stuff. A lot of that stuff has to be ordered in early or else you'll run out because the warehouse (at least our warehouse) will run out close to Thanksgiving. A couple years ago, we couldn't get any 2lb. round pumpernickel breads between the middle of November and the middle of December. I work at a large store and we'll get in two pallets of nothing but pumpkin and sweet potato pies. We ordered 150 cases of pumpkin pies last year (900 pies) and ran out. Then, there will be another pallet of just fruit pies. A fourth pallet will be nothing but Hawaiian Bread and 2lb. round ryes and pumpernickels. Add on top of that all the stuff deli needs for their Thanksgiving dinner orders and you've got a lot of stuff. Now the smart thing to do is for bakery to make sure their freezer is cleaned out before all this stuff arrives. That rarely happens though.
We always pull our trucks every morning. They only sit in the freezer overnight (if there's room for it to sit that long, if not we have to put it away the evening it comes in. Our trucks usually come in at like 5pm)
So, I'm about to go in on my off night to help work up a huge truck. Here's the kicker, all of it except the ice cream pallet are in produce cooler. There was literally room for only 1 pallet in the freezer thanks mainly to deli bakery. And they have 2 pallets of their own on this truck. They're gonna have a huge amount of loss from today. Maybe that will get the store manager to kick some ass around here.
Maybe it's all Thanksgiving stuff. A lot of that stuff has to be ordered in early or else you'll run out because the warehouse (at least our warehouse) will run out close to Thanksgiving. A couple years ago, we couldn't get any 2lb. round pumpernickel breads between the middle of November and the middle of December. I work at a large store and we'll get in two pallets of nothing but pumpkin and sweet potato pies. We ordered 150 cases of pumpkin pies last year (900 pies) and ran out. Then, there will be another pallet of just fruit pies. A fourth pallet will be nothing but Hawaiian Bread and 2lb. round ryes and pumpernickels. Add on top of that all the stuff deli needs for their Thanksgiving dinner orders and you've got a lot of stuff. Now the smart thing to do is for bakery to make sure their freezer is cleaned out before all this stuff arrives. That rarely happens though.
Some of it is, but mostly it's the stuff that hasn't been touched for the last month or so. Basically the stuff along the walls never gets touched, and everything in the middle is the new stock. They have this habit of breaking down a pallet onto dollies, but then just putting them right back in there without working anything for a couple of days, meanwhile more trucks come and no room is to be had. And it's bad because the boxes that bakery stuff comes in are terrible and huge and flimsy, so they always break and are torn open, and not able to be stacked.
There's no problem bringing in stuff early, we all have to, but keeping it organized is absolutely essential with a freezer our size. I helped another store and their freezer looked like a mini football field inside, so much space. With that much space I could literally bring in all of my huge movers for thanksgiving a month early, wrap them up and have them ready and waiting.
I'm not only pointing the finger at them, honestly the vendors are the worst offenders. Still haven't touched their stuff in a week.
But at the end of the day, only 2 pallets were left out of the freezer at the end of my 11 hour shift, both bakery. Maybe the stuff will still be good to use tomorrow, who knows.
Monday is when I've decided to start bringing in my holiday bulk items. They're going to have to deal with it lol.
Smoked a ton of grass during lunch break the other day, then came in worthless. It took me 30 minutes to condition an 8 foot section of baby food. They yelled at me to go home 30 minutes early, "Get out of here now! Just get out of here!!!!" I win, I got to go home early.
Next night I busted my ass as to keep my job. Next night slacked again; I Was supposed to work repack after stocking the load and conditioning. It was already 30 minutes after shift ended. Went home instead. Don't care, good luck firing me, we're understaffed to the max. Cool story bruh? Holidays are fun.
Some of it is, but mostly it's the stuff that hasn't been touched for the last month or so. Basically the stuff along the walls never gets touched, and everything in the middle is the new stock. They have this habit of breaking down a pallet onto dollies, but then just putting them right back in there without working anything for a couple of days, meanwhile more trucks come and no room is to be had. And it's bad because the boxes that bakery stuff comes in are terrible and huge and flimsy, so they always break and are torn open, and not able to be stacked.
I'm not only pointing the finger at them, honestly the vendors are the worst offenders. Still haven't touched their stuff in a week.
Unless it's Thanksgiving stuff as described in an earlier post, I would tell bakery they need to put their stuff in their own freezer. Also, I would ask the store manager if it's possible to refuse any orders from any vendor until they get all their backstock out of the freezer. The third thing you could try is ask if you can put some of the stuff on sale as an in store special.
Smoked a ton of grass during lunch break the other day, then came in worthless. It took me 30 minutes to condition an 8 foot section of baby food. They yelled at me to go home 30 minutes early, "Get out of here now! Just get out of here!!!!" I win, I got to go home early.
Next night I busted my ass as to keep my job. Next night slacked again; I Was supposed to work repack after stocking the load and conditioning. It was already 30 minutes after shift ended. Went home instead. Don't care, good luck firing me, we're understaffed to the max. Cool story bruh? Holidays are fun.
