TROLLY RAGE!!

loopylou said:
I hate the way Tesco managers treat my Mother In Law. She works the nights shifts, she is 61 and a hard worker with an outstanding work ethic. Which they take advantage of.

She is contracted to 8 hours shifts, but they regularly get her to come in 2 hours early and pre sort before the rest of the shift turn up. The rest of the team are much younger and fitter. Then they get her to do the heavy aisles while the others in the team do the loo rolls, tissues etc.

At the end of her shift, if the shop floor isn't cleared the manager will tell her to stay late and help out. She isn't contracted to work on Mondays, but if other people take the day off she is told to come in a set an example to the younger members of the team.

She is getting better at standing up for herself, and is just working out until her retirement, but it makes me so angry.
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is she working for free? if so that's a crime,
 
Justin said:
Being asked if I would like bags when it's clear I don't have my own. What do they think I'm going to do, carry it all on my head like an African? It happens weekly in Waitrose.
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It happens weekly, yet you can't get the hint? How much are you going to complain when everyone actually starts charging for bags, or will you have learnt to take your own by then?

Freefaller said:
The only thing that vexes me is when they've run out of something I was after, or the sell by dates are on the same day as the day I'm going shopping.
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I don't understand this. What is vexing about a supermarket running out of a product? They have limited stock retention space. And secondly, sell by date means by end of day, not the start, again, what confuses you about it?
 
It's quite amusing reading some people's gripes and opinions in this thread, but I guess if you don't work in food retail it's probably easy to complain and not see the bigger picture of things.

I could make a massive post about my store and particularly the department I manage, but I'd probably be here all day :p
 
Women with damn buggies. They stand around with nothing to do, pushing to buggy across the entire aisle blocking the shop, usually while talking to another women with a buggy creating a double barrier.
 
platypus said:
Start now.
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I'll use this one as a short example:

Freefaller said:
The only thing that vexes me is when they've run out of something I was after, or the sell by dates are on the same day as the day I'm going shopping.
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Now I've never worked for a place like Tesco, I've only ever worked for Co-op. I manage the fresh foods department (produce, meat, chilled items, milk and bread) and have done for a while now, and it's actually quite hard to juggle customer demand and your waste budget. VERY hard, in fact.

My budget for waste per week is approx. £217 a day, roughly £1,500 in the summer and about £1,250 during the winter. My backup chiller has enough for 2 cages of stock and nothing else, so across 4 departments (excluding bread, obviously), i've not got masses of room to stock every single item.

Our ordering system works 2 days in advance for everything, and we have no fresh deliveries on a Tuesday. On Monday, you order for Wednesday, Tuesday for Thursday and so on. I do everything I can to keep my range in stock, however if a line's constantly costing me waste of a considerable level then I'll attempt to replace it with something else. When ordering, I have to check the entire department section by section for anything that may be going out of date on the current day or tomorrow, so I can then order it to come in stock in 2 days time. However, with more popular lines and less popular lines you can often get caught with your pants down - keep lots in stock and if they don't sell, you get waste. For example today, I reduced 25 packs of strawberries where I only generally sell 18-20 a day. More will come in tomorrow but that's all I have, so you either take the cheap, but not as fresh strawberries or wait.

Less popular lines are just as difficult - Mangoes for example. I've been told to bring a varied range of produce in gradually and trial each product for 6 weeks, but this means losing one item temporarily while it's replaced with an alternative, just to appease those above me. Mangoes are crap - £1.39 a pop, case size of 10 and I'll sell ONE at full price, the rest reduced or thrown away. That's £13 potentially right there, and I have to have them for 6 weeks on ONE line - my produce section alone has 110 lines without the extra they want me to bring in. If this level of waste keeps up, then I could go over my budget for the week which leads to a backside kicking from a) the manager, and b) the area manager which obviously I don't want.

To counter-act that, I have to cut back where I can but obviously not intentionally to the extent where we're out of stock and the place looks hideous, that'd cause waste on a different scale.. Nobody'd shop there at all! Sadly, it's a very difficult juggling game to master, and for larger stores I'd imagine it's a hideous ballache because I found it tough at first, and still do really. We're a super-seasonal store so in the summer I need to keep best-selling lines handy (milk, strawberries, bread rolls and the like) but I can only order so many of those as well my normal stock because of the limited room.

Hopefully that made sense to you, that's just a quick insight :)
 
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I pride myself on the speed in which I can complete a shop. In-gather items-checkout-gone.

My girlfriend seems to enjoy spending 20 minutes choosing the perfect pepper.

/ovary punch
 
Zatoichi.uK said:
I pride myself on the speed in which I can complete a shop. In-gather items-checkout-gone.

My girlfriend seems to enjoy spending 20 minutes choosing the perfect pepper.

/ovary punch
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Last time me and my girlfriend did a shop it took us 15 minutes to sling stuff in the trolley and get out, she doesn't hang around :D
 
Zatoichi.uK said:
I pride myself on the speed in which I can complete a shop. In-gather items-checkout-gone.

My girlfriend seems to enjoy spending 20 minutes choosing the perfect pepper.

/ovary punch
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Walk in, pick up the stuff I need, pay, walk out. Managed to do 2 weeks of shopping in a 20-minute trip, including driving to the shop and back.
 
el_dazza said:
Hopefully that made sense to you, that's just a quick insight :)
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Yes, its certainly a useful insight.

I too didn't understand Freefallers comment, not necessarily because I understand the complexities of stock management at a supermarket (which I don't), but because it seems obvious to me that a supermarket can't have everything in stock all the time.
 
platypus said:
Yes, its certainly a useful insight.

I too didn't understand Freefallers comment, not necessarily because I understand the complexities of stock management at a supermarket (which I don't), but because it seems obvious to me that a supermarket can't have everything in stock all the time.
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Absolutely, it's totally unrealistic for every item to be in stock all the time, and even the companies see this. Our target for out of stocks is 3% of our total range, but they will allow up to 4%. It used to be 2.5% but nobody ever achieved this, as it was just too difficult still. All these factors are measured and can affect the manager's overall yearly performance targets. Also, in our store of the out of stocks total, less than 20% must be RO's (replenishment opportunities - i.e stock you have in your warehouse or the computer thinks is in stock, if it's actually not then you've got to adjust in on the system), and again that's measured on a monthly and annual basis.
 
platypus said:
It happens weekly, yet you can't get the hint? How much are you going to complain when everyone actually starts charging for bags, or will you have learnt to take your own by then?

I don't understand this. What is vexing about a supermarket running out of a product? They have limited stock retention space. And secondly, sell by date means by end of day, not the start, again, what confuses you about it?
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It's EXTREMELY easy to understand old boy.

I'm after something, they haven't got it any left.

=

Grrrr.

:)



2nd point, thank you for being ever so condescending remarks, however I did realise I made a supermarche faux pas - I meant, best before date, not sell by date.

I shall flagellate myself into a pulp for my atrocious error!
 
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