J.C. Penney's: A very memorable batching incident occurred at a Penney's in Fairfield. This store was in a neighboring district, and a couple vanloads of auditors from our district went over to bail them out. Richard, a blowhard, was assigned to scan a wall full of official Major League Baseball caps. Richard was unsure if he should scan these caps individually or if he could quantity count them, so he made the mistake of asking an even bigger blowhard, Team Leader Moby. Moby didn't know about the caps either, but he wasn't about to admit that to Richard. So he told Richard that he could just scan one and quantity count the whole bunch. Richard did so, Ops Manager Kerwin caught him doing it, and asked Richard, "Who told you this was okay to do?" Richard ratted out Moby, Ops Manager Kerwin got on our AM Jeff for it, and Jeff sought out Moby and proceeded to chew him out. "Why the fuck did you tell Richard to batch those caps?" Jeff screamed at Moby. Moby of course was too chickenshit to stand up to Jeff and defend himself in any way (as if he had a defense) so he did as he always would do when confronted by authority. He merely stared at the floor and mumbled something unintelligible. Several of us auditors witnessed this dressing down of Moby and enjoyed it thoroughly. Oh yes, and thereafter Moby always bore a grudge against Richard.
Long's Drugs: Batching was a bit tricky to do in this store. Some areas would be printed out as requested by the store's manager, but you were never exactly sure which areas the store's personnel would want printed out and gone over. Some areas you could assume would run a high risk of being checked out; areas that would have a lot of dollars in them like electronics, cosmetics, OTC (over the counter products like aspirin and cold remedies), hair color, etc. So in these areas, if you were a smart manager, you would assign veteran or honest auditors of whom you could be certain would count products as accurately as possible. Of course, one thing that could never be counted on in my district was a manager being smart, so frequently newbies or fuckups would be placed in these high dollar areas and then proceed to batch the crap out of them. Then of course those areas would get printed out, the store manager would ask for a recount, and usually I would be sent to recount all the areas that the idiots screwed up. It never failed. This usually happened in every single Long's Drugs inventory. And usually the idiots who batched in these high risk areas would exhibit absolutely no subtlety at all when batching, and be so obvious about it that anyone passing by their area could tell what they were up to.
I once witnessed a veteran auditor named Bernice batching while counting some Cover Girl cosmetics. She took one lipstick from the bunch of many, scanned the bar code with her laser gun, replaced the lipstick in the display, stepped back, took one downward glance at the whole lot of them, and entered in a large quantity in her audit machine. Even without knowing exactly how many she entered for that one scanned item, you could tell it was a big number because her audit machine made a beeping sound. In Long's Drugs inventories (and several others as well) anytime an auditor entered in a quantity that resulted in a price amount of $100.00 or over the audit machine would beep. So it was obvious that Bernice was batching.
This was during a time when I still cared about things like that, so I reported it to the nearest TL, a woman named Helen. This Helen was an honest sort (rarity in my district), so she was shocked when I told her that I saw someone batching. She immediately told AM Dean about it. Dean, who was running the store, couldn't care less and neither confronted Bernice (who at one point was rumored to be dating married Dean) nor took any steps to print out the area and check it out. He just simply ignored it. And lucky for him the store never found out. That was the last time that I would stick my neck out and call attention to anyone batching. If the RGIS manager running the inventory didn't care, why should I?
Counting greeting cards in Long's Drugs was always an adventure in batching. Most of the time one auditor, usually a little, spacy guy named Jake would be assigned to count the cards (financially, no scanning) while the rest of the crew counted everything else. He would take the entire length of the inventory (usually 8+ hours) to count 2 or 3 aisles of cards. The whole store, including the back rooms would be finished and Jake would still be on those fucking cards.
I found out why one day when yet another Long's inventory was almost over, except of course for those damn cards. AM Jeff sent a couple of us to help Jake finish them out. I happened to be in the same aisle as Jake, so I got to observe him count first hand. I watched him pick out one greeting card, turn it over, read the price on it and enter it on his audit machine. He would then step back (shades of Bernice), take a long look at that section, and enter in one number. He would then grab another card a few rows up, or down, and repeat the process. He would do this several times until the entire section was counted (more or less). Jake would then take a reading of the area in his machine, and if he didn't like the way it looked he would back out all the prices for that area, leaving a zero dollar amount in his machine, and start all over again. Three times I watched him do this. For one lousy area. So that's why he took so long to count the cards! It was enough to make you want to scream. Or laugh, I don't know. But it was typical of the screwy things that went on in my district, things that the manager knew were going on but did nothing about. Their excuse for putting up with nonsense like this was that they were always so short of auditors for their inventories that they had to retain everyone, even the goobers and feebs and crazies.
Albertson's: We did this chain of supermarkets about every 3 months. The majority of these inventories began at 4:00 am, when the 24 hour markets were almost devoid of customers, and we could be assured of being able to count most of the store free from interruptions by customers.
Albertson's required a certain number of areas to be recounted, just as a matter of caution. You know, to see if that area had been counted correctly, with cost prices instead of retail ones. Usually the store manager would go around and pick ten sections at random. Each area was one full side of an aisle (or gondola), and the manager would choose one 3-foot section of that area to be recounted. He would write down these sections on a sheet of paper, and give the paper to AM Jeff, who was the one usually running these inventories. Jeff would then pass the sheet to his buddy TL Ethan, who wouldn't recount the areas at all. He would simply check the printouts for these areas, find the totals of the sections needed to be recounted, add or subtract a few dollars, and then write the new totals down on the sheet. He would then present this sheet of 'recounts' to the store manager, who would go over it and be pleased that the 'recounts' were so close to the amounts originally recorded.
The Tides: This was a grouping of three stores located in Bodega Bay (site of the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds"). The Tides was a seafood restaurant, with a fish market, gift shop and gas station mini-mart to be counted by RGIS.
There was nothing too remarkable about the fish market, which consisted mostly of groceries like liquor, chips, soda and candy; we didn't count the fish, or the crabs or lobster. I hated doing that store because I didn't like to see the crabs and lobster, with claws firmly tied shut with rubber bands, all piled one on top of another in a tiny tank. It seemed cruel, and to this day I can't eat lobster or crab. Once when I was there doing an inventory I saw this little girl of about 10 or so, standing in front of the crab tank yelling at a crab. She was taunting the crab, if you can believe it. It was something like, "Yeah, ha ha, you're stuck in there, and you can't get me, ha ha!" Weird.
The gift shop was a bit more tedious, as it had things like bins of all sorts of sea shells, and polished rocks for sale. Some of the shells were very delicate, and you didn't want to handle them for fear they would break. And the jars of polished stones were loaded to the brim and would take forever to count properly. So you would just guess at the quantity of each jar or box of shells and rocks, and no one was the wiser.
The gift shop also had a tiny back room not much bigger than a closet. It had about 4 metal shelving units jammed into it, against the walls. These shelves contained boxes and boxes full of things like shot glasses, wine goblets, and golf balls all stamped with the 'Tides' logo. There were also tons of toy rubber squeaky things like sharks, octopi, and various other assorted crap. It would take hours to count correctly. No one in their right mind wanted to spend a couple of hours in a closet counting thousands of small bits of junk, so you can guess how all of got 'counted'.
Whole Foods: This store was a real pain in the ass to count. For some bizarre reason, Whole Foods required us to count the groceries under five different departments (Grocery A,B,C,D and E). Each grocery item had a shelf tag with its department labeled on it. So instead of flying down an aisle, counting all the items under one department like you would do in every other grocery store, in Whole Foods you would have to stop and check every shelf tag for an A,B,C,D or E. I mean every single tag, because you might be counting fruit juices and one brand would be under Grocery A, while another brand on the same shelf right next to it had to be counted under Grocery E. What a pain in the ass! It slowed the inventory way down, especially since people were always forgetting to check the shelf tags and going on to count everything under one grocery department. Then those areas that they had counted would get printed out and gone over by the store manager, who would of course spot all the mistakes and demand that it be recounted.
Then there was the Vitamins area. Oh my God, another huge gigantic pain in the ass. Being Whole Foods, they had a rather large section of all sorts of vitamins, homeopathic remedies and nosodes, herbs and all kinds of natural health care stuff. But again, unlike every other grocery store in existence we couldn't count all of it under one department, like say HABA (Health and Beauty Aids). Nope, all the products in this area of the store were divided into 4 departments: Vitamins, Herbs, Body Care and BCM (Books, Cards and Merchandise).
Body Care was pretty easy to count: hair products, skin care items, cosmetics, etc. BCM was simple to do as well, It was just books, greeting cards and jewelry. The real annoyance was counting the vitamins and herbs. There were tons of every conceivable type of vitamin in Whole Food. Shelves and more shelves and one 3-foot section after another crammed full of every vitamin from A-Z. There was just acres of it to count, but that wasn't the bad part. The nightmare came from the fact that there were products Whole Foods called Herbs mixed in with all the vitamin bottles. And I swear to God the herb bottles looked exactly like the vitamin bottles. But some stupid little key ingredient would make one bottle have to be counted under Vitamins, and the other under Herbs. And the only way you could tell which was which was, once again, to read the stupid shelf label. The number '50' was for vitamins, and '52' and '53' for herbs. So again, instead of speeding down an aisle counting merchandise at a rapid pace, you had to stop and read every damn label, looking for a 50, 52 or 53. Aaarrggh. Of course, you can imagine how many screw-ups occurred in the Vitamins section. It took forever to count, even with an auditor experienced at counting in Whole Foods.
And naturally the idiot managers in my district would only compound the problem by scheduling two Whole Foods inventories both in the same night. Every month this would happen. And just to make things a little more fun they would often schedule an Andronico's Market inventory on the same Sunday night as both Whole Foods. Three stores going on at the same time, in a district that was always hurting for people. It was a real invitation for disaster.
One time we showed up at the Whole Foods in Mill Valley with just 3 people. The store manager was furious. He made such a fuss that AM Dean, who was running the Andronico's Market inventory in San Anselmo, was persuaded to send a couple of auditors from his store to ours. He sent four people: Lilian, Jake, Lucinda and Abram. Now that may sound generous of him, to spare 4 auditors from his own inventory, unless you worked in our district in which case you realized that Dean had sent four of the biggest feebs around. The four of them were not what you would call speedy counters. In fact, at one point TL Ethan, who was running the store, caught Lilian sitting on the floor in the potato chip aisle matching up UPCs. She was pulling out every bag of chips, turning them over and reading the UPC numbers. She then made separate piles of chip bags with different UPCs, and then counted them. All this just to make sure she counted the $3.99 bags apart from the $3.95 bags. She spent hours in that aisle. I thought Ethan was going to strangle her.
25 comments:
Your stories about batching are pretty interesting. In my district I've seen people fired for batching. Of course, from the way you describe your district, it seems like you all are under a LOT more pressure than we are, and that you're heavily understaffed, so it's understandable that your AMs would overlook batching. For the most part we are expected to follow most of the RGIS guidelines, and people are fired on a fairly regular basis for violating rules on multiple occasions. I can't get over how some of the people you describe still have their jobs with RGIS!! Overall it's interesting to see that other districts have organization problems too and usually make decisions at the last minute, I honestly thought that we were one of the few that couldn't get it together.
Hi, Misfit. I have really enjoyed your blog for quite some time. Funny stuff!
Misfit, I must defend your managers in one small way. You mentioned that the Whole Foods stores were always scheduled against each other on the same night as well as an occasional other grocery store. The main reason for this is because the customers bthemselves do not give RGIS any scheduling flexibility in regards to scheduling their inventories, i.e., Whole Foods always must go on the same Sunday of every month. Your DM must schedule them there, or else. For 50 years, the company has always said "Don't turn down any business" even if it means having trouble servicing the customer properly.This, of course is one of the fundamental problems with RGIS. Because customer scheduling windows are so narrow in so many cases, certain times of the year are extremely busy, while other times are dead. The busy times force RGIS managers the need to hire so many people, thus, the "hire anyone" mentality comes into play because they are so afraid they will not be able to have the "head count".
How the hell can you batch in an inventory that is quantity counted? Obviously you REALLY don't have a clue as to what you are talking about!
Ok, I am SURE that DM Kevin did not want to schedule two Whole Foods and an Andronicos on the same night. Guess what? RGIS is in the service industry - they have to give their customers what they want, not what would be best for the district or the district's auditors.
I'm a DM from the northeast and I have to schedule four Whole Foods on the same night every month. If I didn't, they would use a competitor, plain and simple - they do not budge. And look at it this way - it may be a crappy night for the auditors, for the supervisors running the store, and may even be crappy for the store managers, but Whole Foods corporate office doesn't hear anything bad enough to want to change services - we make some money even though it sucks for everyone involved. Turning down the business because we don't want to schedule stores on top of each other does not make business sense.
One thing that I know that would have helped re the Whole Foods/Andronico's/any other store on the same night: If our managers hadn't alienated so many new auditors with their favoritism towards a precious few, and aloofness to everyone else, maybe more people would have stayed on and those 3 or more a night inventories could have gone a lot smoother.
And as far as batching while quantity counting, that's fairly simple. Hello! You just count all the products as one. I take it you're referring to the incident I mentioned in Long's Drugs. How is it that you don't seem to understand that very simple concept? I'm guessing you would fall under the category of "feeb" or "goober" in my district.
Anonymous at 9:46 pm: Thanks for reading!
BTW, I forgot to mention that when we showed up for the Whole Foods inventory with just 3 people, the store manager was so upset that he told the TL running the store that if we did it again, we needn't come back. In fact, after a while our district lost that particular store, and another district picked it up. So even if Whole Foods doesn't cancel their contract with RGIS re disputes like this, it can have a detrimental effect on a particular district. My terrible district lost quite a few stores in this way.
I haven't been able to write for a while or read the blogs because I have been so busy. But once I was able to I really enjoyed catching up on the reading and it looks like there's quite a few new readers and writers.
I worked for RGIS for 11 years, most of that time spent as a TL. As far as the batching part goes, I feel theres several reasons why it goes on and more importantly why its overlooked by most management.
First of all, DM's are under alot of pressure for their districts to make money for RGIS. If you think that Dm's do alot of screaming, you should hear how their operation managers scream at them. I know, I use to help out in my district office from time to time and have witnessed what I would consider downright verbal abuse.
Second, the pressure is then on the Am's to make good percentages in each and every inventory. Not only are their future raises and bonuses based on THE NUMBERS, but also their positions.
Third, as a TL I knew that the only way that I would continue to be able to get more stores to run and get my own team alot of work was to make good percentages in my stores as well.
Now, let me state for the record that batching does not need to mean inaccuracy. There is actually an art to it. For instance, I use to run a store called Dots. In Dots, we were required to scan each and every single item. Well this wasn't necessary. For example in this store you might have a shirt rack with 3 different style shirts. The sku would not change for color or size. So even though the rack might be a rainbow of colors and all different sizes hanging, there would be only 3 different skus and in these inventories the like styles would be all together making our job and batching all that much easier. We batched but everything was still as accurate as if we had scanned each and every tag.
This was just one example, but there are plenty more of the same in other stores with the same scenerio. Music stores are another that come to mind. In most, again, RGIS is required to scan each and every CD, but the UPC or SKU doesn't change unless the CD does, so if you happen to be counting the Top Ten endcap and you have in front of you 50 of the number 1 selling CD for that week, why would you scan each and every one when all you have to do is count how many are there and scan the first one 50 times. It now only saves time but also makes your productivity look better.
Which brings me to the last reason why batching goes on. It doesn't take long for new auditors to find out that the way to get more work and more money is to be more productive. Yes, you can be a good producer without batching. But when someone who is an average counter in a store scans 450 pieces an hour and you are being honest and scanning each piece and you scan 600 pieces per hour, then you notice the person who is the most valuable to the mangers scans 900 pieces per hour you take it upon your self to see how exactly that it accomplished. And when you find out its through batching and that it gets rewarded rather then punished, then I would say it is the way to go.
Jkat: You're absolutely right on about the batching. And that batching doesn't have to mean inaccuracy. What you described going on in a Dot's store makes sense. Only in my district people didn't batch in a situation like that, but would batch even if there were lots of different SKU's. Sometimes they would do it because they didn't know any better, and sometimes they did it because it was as you described, and they wanted to improve their APH.
By the way, what kind of a store is Dot's? I've never heard of it before. It makes me think of the candy!
Hey everyone, i just found this site about RGIS, i have few nice stories, but the best one is about batch counting by a RGIS area manager in D412, but its to late we just finished a 14hrs JcPenny and i have a longs in the morning. So i will tell the story tomorrow.
Dots was/is a womens discount clothing store. Mostly rags to put it bluntly.
But on the other side of batching we also had our share of auditors that either just couldn't batch accurately or some that just didn't care how they counted. These you had to watch carefully and make sure that they weren't put in areas that they could screw up. I am sure you know what I mean.
anonymous at 9:46 am and 11:49 pm:
Welcome! Glad to have you here. Please continue to read and leave your comments. And I'm looking forward to the batching story from D412.
Anonymous at 11:49pm -
Which am in d412? Linda? Asintha? Cherise? Patrick? Elke? Yolanda? Annie? Cara? Or someone else?
Hey guys I am back, this story is about batch counting by an area manager in our district (D412). I believe it was 2005 2nd quarter, the store was Long’s Drug’s and RGIS area manager was Elke (the dumbest area manager I have seeing working for RGIS). Every Longs she strap a machine and start counting (opps I mean batching), she finish one entire side so fast that even our district or RGIS fastest counter can not finish those area so fast (that don’t mean she is a super fast counter, she can not even key without looking at the machine, but she knew how to batch or plug figures into her machines). She only select area that she can key more than 20 pcs (new Longs program most of the departments can key only up to 20 pcs for the qty) but one TL told me that she keys a back room area number (that all the departments can key up to 99 pcs) and she change to a sale floor number on the portable (Yaa you think she is smart). But this store manager was smarter than Elke; she requested first print out on her area past noon letting her count or batch (this printout was from the trail sizes). By noon Elke may have counted more than 10 areas thinking that store manager will never ask for any printout. Elke was so smart so she gave the printout of her own area to the store manager that knowing it was batched, hey according to one of the TL this 20 ft area of trail sizes had only 2 pages. After looking at the first printout store manager requested more area printouts from Elke and to recount the trail sizes area, our DM (the dumber) was present when the store manager requested more printouts and he the DM has refused to give any more printouts to check because 90% of the auditors has left longs by this time including myself (ohh forgot to tell when Elke and DM present we use the term “dumb and dumber” are in the store”). Any thing after this I heard from one TL and couple of auditors that stay to rap up the store and pull yellow tags. Of course Elke gave few more printouts of her to the store manager to check, store manager wanted all her areas to be recounted, but dumber has refused the request by the store manager. We where think due to this Elke will get terminated but no action have been taken up to date, but dumber got a transfer to Washington. Now Elke do not count because she can not batch any more and her buddy DM is not in our district any more to protect her. Now Elke training her selected buddies to batch count. This only one story about Elke and many more to come.
Hey guys I am back, this story is about batch counting by an area manager in our district (D412). I believe it was 2005 2nd quarter, the store was Long’s Drug’s and RGIS area manager was Elke (the dumbest area manager I have seeing working for RGIS). Every Longs she strap a machine and start counting (opps I mean batching), she finish one entire side so fast that even our district or RGIS fastest counter can not finish those area so fast (that don’t mean she is a super fast counter, she can not even key without looking at the machine, but she knew how to batch or plug figures into her machines). She only select area that she can key more than 20 pcs (new Longs program most of the departments can key only up to 20 pcs for the qty) but one TL told me that she keys a back room area number (that all the departments can key up to 99 pcs) and she change to a sale floor number on the portable (Yaa you think she is smart). But this store manager was smarter than Elke; she requested first print out on her area past noon letting her count or batch (this printout was from the trail sizes). By noon Elke may have counted more than 10 areas thinking that store manager will never ask for any printout. Elke was so smart so she gave the printout of her own area to the store manager that knowing it was batched, hey according to one of the TL this 20 ft area of trail sizes had only 2 pages. After looking at the first printout store manager requested more area printouts from Elke and to recount the trail sizes area, our DM (the dumber) was present when the store manager requested more printouts and he the DM has refused to give any more printouts to check because 90% of the auditors has left longs by this time including myself (ohh forgot to tell when Elke and DM present we use the term “dumb and dumber” are in the store”). Any thing after this I heard from one TL and couple of auditors that stay to rap up the store and pull yellow tags. Of course Elke gave few more printouts of her to the store manager to check, store manager wanted all her areas to be recounted, but dumber has refused the request by the store manager. We where think due to this Elke will get terminated but no action have been taken up to date, but dumber got a transfer to Washington. Now Elke do not count because she can not batch any more and her buddy DM is not in our district any more to protect her. Now Elke training her selected buddies to batch count. This only one story about Elke and many more to come.
Thinking along the same lines of too many stores being scheduled on the same night, the rigid nature of scheduling these stores..... There was a store going one night and the team leader was there waiting for her team to show up and she got two out of the dozen or so who were supposed to be there. This is the one I told you about earlier where no one wanted to bail her out becuase she can't be bothered to bail herself out, much less help anyone else who needs it. The store manager was livid.
I asked my DM, who had called me to see if I could get some of my crew to go help, why he didn't just cancel the store. It seemed like the logical solution to me. If you can't provide good service on that night, then make it another night. He told me that if as little as two stores get cancelled when it's the fault of RGIS, he could get fired! Talk about pressure! I don't know if it's two stores per year or what, but it seems harsh, especially if the DM is otherwise very good.
I'm with you misfit. I used to get pretty cheezed about people batching until I realized that I seemed to be the only one who cared. There are stores where it's just not possible to batch, and there are stores where you just shouldn't. I've watched people go out of their way to count peices so they can scan a single peice multiple times when scanning each peice would be faster and easier. One key to speed is don't think too much. If you have to think about something too much,if you have to sort, count or examine it's going to slow you down. Just turn off the brain and scan every peice. The same can be said when in a quantity keying inventory.
I learned early on the key to higher averages, getting my pick of hours, being requested by people running the stores and getting raises is batching. Batching done correctly is helpful tool.
In my district, there is a limited tollerence for batching. I say limited because we are told that it's not tollerated at all and people have been fired for doing it. But like jkat said, it's easily overlooked if batching is done correctly, and if the store manager doesn't catch you doing it resulting in recounts. Some store managers are quite savvy and they watch. Others are pretty clueless about what we're doing. Smart auditors figure this out. It's the feebs, as you call them, that can really screw things up.
So we batch. Stack of t-shirts with a sticker on the front that says small, medium or large? Batch it. One size fits all? Batch it. Get it counted, get it done and get out.
I agree with you misfit that alot of these problems can easily be dealth with if people are treated well. We've been shorts staffed for months! We hire, but we can't retain. Then we have the nights from hell where they can't get the stores staffed and those who aren't working aren't willing to put in the extra hours to help becuase they're tired of the BS. Where I am, it's not so much alienation and favoritism, though I'm sure that sort of thing does happen. It's other stuff.
It's sad, really. We used to not think twice about finishing one inventory and then running off to another to bail someone out. We wouldn't hesitate to pick up that last minute shift becuase someone called out and they were despirate. These days, it's everyone for themselves. I think eventually we'll get back to that, once the dust settles and we get used to the changes. Probably, also, it's going to take some work and effort from managment as well to bring employee morale back up. Without a doubt, we'll still have these multiple inventory days where there is not enough people to staff too many stores, and we'll still have inventories that go on forever because of it, but it won't be nearly as bad or as frequent if we have the staff we can schedule and if we have a team attitude and are willing to bail each other out.
d412: That was a great story about your AM Elke. I enjoyed reading about her batching, and getting caught by the Long's manager. Good for Long's! And wow, your DM actually refused to have Elke's areas recounted? I didn't know a RGIS manager could refuse a customer's request like that. I wonder what the Long's guy's reaction was. I hope he called RGIS' head office and complained.
That's too bad that Elke's training her pets to batch in her way. Oh well, I bet it will cost her her job in the end. And how funny! that you used the "dumb and dumber" phrase. We used to use that too, when referring to AM Jeff and his friend auditor Jeff. They were two know it all blowhards who thought they knew it all about the inventory business when they had only been on the job for days.
arzon: I didn't know about the "two stores cancelled because of RGIS and the manager's fired". Now of course it makes sense, why in my district all these stores went on as usual even though they were way understaffed. I mean, when you show up for a Long's Drugs with 5 people, and you're supposed to have over 20, there's no way that store should be run. And they couldn't bring in more people because we had another Long's going on at the same time. So Ops Manager Keith had to be called in to count, and he totally sucked at counting. AM Joe who was running the store kept laughing at Keith's incompetence.
arzon, I know exactly what you're saying about "the old days". Maybe it was because I was still new to the game, and cynicism hadn't yet set in, but I too was one of those people who would finish one store and then by request dash over to another understaffed store and help them out. No questions asked, happy to do it and help out. Then as my district got worse and worse, with favoritism seeping in and affecting how we got treated and scheduled, and also how we learned what our managers REALLY thought of us, I too thought, "Well, screw it. Why should I go over and help out So-and-So? What did he ever do for me, except call me a name or make fun of me behind my back. Let him fry in his store!"
to d412 - hi susie!
Misfit...you are so correct about the cynicism setting in and your attitude changes. I was always willing to help out if they called or to go from one store to another.
But when you see the favoritism and game playing they do on a daily basis, it is easy to become cynical. In my district, the favorites dictate what they count in stores, rarely will work weekends or evenings, but when they are in a store, they rule.
So, when you are one of the people who always come running to their rescue and see those who never do get the best treatment, it changes you.
To the DM from the Northeast....I am in a northeast district also.
Misfit is right. If the Area Managers spent as much energy trying to retain people so that they will become efficient and actually stay at this job as they do playing their stupid favoritism games, then maybe those of us who manage to stay at this job would not be working in stores that are shortstaffed. And....you might be able to actually staff your Whole Foods. This company spends a ton of money training and hiring people in December and most are gone by the 2nd week of January because they are treated so badly by AMs and the favorites.
We have hired some really good people with potential at times and we lost them because of poor treatment.
I was in this longs store that Elke ran, I left after the store count was done. I heard the story, we where thinking She will get fired for this but her best buddy at that time was DM Steeve. So she got a way with murder.
We did inform this to the HQ and after that DM Steeve got a transfer or not sure if he got fired due to the favoritism.
Elke is band from few stores, few Longs, some CSK, Albertson. Now she runs only few stores last January she run only little as 12 store when other AM's and even some TL has run more than 20 stores.
Elke was the witch in San Jose district any one that she thinks will be a challenge for her career in the future she and her buddy DM Steve will get them fired from the district or ask them to volunteer transfer to a different district. That what happen to sussie, she was a AAM in San Jose now she is in Salinas, and many more AAM’s , AM’s and also TL got fired and left the district because of this two morons.
But now we have new DM that do not tolerate this thing and that not buddies with any managers or employees treat every one as RGIS employee. So now Elke is trying by spread rumors with her friends (most of them are TL do not know how to make a ray collector, near future I will write about “Elke’s empire” that she was trying to built in San Jose) about one of the AAM going to get demoted due to lack performance. But every employee knows that both of the AAM and All the old and some new TL we have are way better than Elke, meaning better is not been nice I am talking about customer service the way they run stores, the way they treat us the employees and overall performance.
We all hoping that Elke will get fired or leave the company for the better of our district. We need the same district that we had few years ago, the district that we had before witch Elke got hired.
HORRIFYING TRAINING
Those are some interesting stories about Elke and her family.
I got hired in January she gave the training, it was a horrifying training I ever had. She was not sure what the hell she was doing; one manager has to interrupt the training to correct some training materials that she was explaining to us. On the auditors hand book it’s clearly mentioned about the RGIS dress code, but she tell the dress code is not an important fact. That bull sh>>t,if it’s not important why the hell they have a dress code clearly mentioned on the hand book. She ends the training mentioning accuracy is not that important for the newly hired auditors (Inner cover page of the hand book “Code of Ethics” Accuracy first above everything else, and several other pages it’s been repeated over and over and also any auditor can be terminated of breaking that code)
After her training we end up like clueless about this job, out of around 10 new hires 3 quite the job the same day. Few days later I show up to my first job, I wanted to quit that day because in the training she never covered the following materials: how to input all the headers (your store no, ss, worksheet, laser), what is (F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6), Area ticket, filling the area ticket, yellow tag, count left to right top to bottom, and many more. Of course I know all those info covers in the training video, may be this is the way RGIS trains the new hire (let me know if I am wrong), I think this is not an easy job for 6 month every moment I learn some thing new.
In the training she just gave us a machine, scanner and some scanning sheets, ask few new hires to do the actual product shelves and the posters and she left to her office. 30 to 45 minutes later she comes back from her office and informed us that the training is over we can leave. Only myself surviving from that training group, I like to thank some TL and AM that helped me to learn about this job.
I feel so sorry for the new hires that she train; new hires start this job without knowing any thing about Inventory and end of the training they still ends up clueless about this because she never cover any information helpful for the job.
Auditors batch because they feel pressure to obtain and exceed APH(average per hour) guidelines that they might not be able to reach by counting legitimately. Now it's going to get worse, because now there is EAPH(expected average per hour). In the past, all crew members in a store were informed of the magic number during the pre-inventory instructions. With EAPH, the magic number for every auditor is based on hourly wage. When the schedules are sent out, there is an additional spreadsheet listing upcoming stores across the top and various possible hourly wages(in 25 cent increments)going down the left side column. Auditors are to determine their own magic number by finding their hourly wage and going across the page so that the EAPH is known in advance. By regularly meeting and exceeding EAPH, an auditor is assured of getting a raise, despite other previously important factors, like attendance, or attitude. This is not the bad part. The bad part is that if an auditor does not reach his or her magic number regularly over a given number of inventories worked, his or her pay can and will be lowered. Warnings are to be given before the involuntary pay cut is given. The amount is based on the percentage below the EAPH that an auditor averages during the review period. So with this threat to their financial security, auditor are going to use every known shortcut, especially batching. Not that many weren't already doing this forbidden act, but now they have an excuse for doing it. Hell, they practically have the company's blessing to batch, estimate, snake-count, or whatever else it takes to prove they deserve what they get.
Batching and stealing are two offenses that TLs can fire auditors for in my district though firing someone for the former is rarely done and the latter is a rare occurrence. If someone is fired for batching then it will be done by a manager, most likely the DM since our AMs and AAM were all TLs a year ago and still know that batching is a necessary evil.
Also, every month there are stores that I know I will be scheduled for and what day I will get them. Last Friday of every month I will be at Wild Oats Market (Health/Natural/Organic Food and "Hippie Stuff"). I will do the back room wall along with the dairy and frozen food freezers as well as any refrigerated medicines they have. The other stores I know I will be doing are Walmart Costs (Meat/Deli/Bakery/Seafood and now Photo departments) on the last day of every month. I do the same three store run every month and know that the last store will always last the longest due to loss prevention being there and having us recount 1/5 to 1/3 of the 100 areas we lay (it's also four-foot areas btw).
These Long's you talk about sound alot like our Drug Warehouses and May's Drug stores. We do them as facings (scan first item and count back) and while we could batch pretty easily we know that they are going to print out some sections (cosmetics is printed out 100%). Greeting cards are done by two or three people and they are financial as well but are also printed out so batching is prevented.
To the anon that said that you can not batch a quantity count is very wrong. When a store includes departments that immediately makes batching a possibility. We used to have a grocery store in our district (we recently dropped it because of their demands which you will see in a second) that would do 100% printouts of ALL areas in the store. If you were wrong on three or more items in your first four foot section then your entire area (forty foot long gondolas) were to be recounted.
hey anyone, how much does rgis pay it's inventory takers? I say an ad in my area (central ny) and was wondering if itt would be worth applying.
Top Gun here. RGIS is corrupt like any other system and most of the time certain districts AM's and DM are the ones that ruin things where as the supervisors typically make things run smoothely...
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