This is what we were told almost two years ago when this block scheduling was implemented and might crew was eliminated. Clubs were supposed to have a massive amount of coverage on the floor. Member service was supposed to improve. Instead it’s sunken to an all time low. Stocking and merchandising is a constant catch up game. Always struggling. Merchandisers rarely engage members due to the stress of the tasks they’re overloaded with. This excess amount of associates we were promised were supposed to be able to execute audits, resets, layouts, OYI, etc. What happened to all of these promises?
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They should have just had 3 blocks. AM, PM and ON. ON would overlap two shifts if the blocks stayed the same. If not then move PM block earlier to actually have floor coverage and a lot would get done. At my club only 3 people from ON stayed and they never hired anyone really to replace them. So it is what it is.
What an absolute train wreck of an idea this has been thus far. id–ts rule, obviously. Unrealistic expectations expected from inadequate and unachievable direction. Bottom line is what they are concerned about more than anything.
Everything ran so much smoother when we had a night crew. Every day when we opened the club was clean and organized and well-stocked. I was in one of the "test clubs" when block scheduling was introduced, and the honest truth is that there was no "test" – we were told upfront that this was going though no matter what so just deal with it. For a long time the evening shift was getting out everyday after 1 am when we were supposed to leave at 11:30 pm. We were k–ling ourselves everyday trying stock as well as night crew did, but we had so much less time. It took us a while to figure out that it just couldn't be done, so now we just stock criticals, endcaps, pods, 1st feature, and whatever else we have time for and that's it. If stock isn't up to the red bars and every area is low/light, oh well!
No it didn't work on the Westcoast it s—ed. Moving night crew to a 4 a.m. shift was the pits, couldn't get much of anything stocked by 7:00 a.m. I called it quits right before Christmas ,because I knew I wouldn't be able to work around the club being packed ,that was the main reason I was on nights is to get away from members!! So 25 years at Sam's was pretty good even fun at the beginning ,but after the night crew was pulled it was unbearable . I did work the 4:00 a.m. shift for 11 months that was enough for me , and I would still be working there if the night shift wasn't taken away ,got so much work done & the club was clean when the doors opened .
I was one that had to give up nights to go to this nightmare. We have less people to help stock during my shift but are expected to get the club 100% zoned and then what we are required to stock all by 11:30. so if the last member leaves exactly at 8 we have 3 hours to drop what needs to be stocked and then clean up before we leave, all in 3 hours. Now I reiterate if the last member leaves exactly at 8. How can you go from 7 hour shift( breaks and lunch excluded) to 3 hours to expect us to preform as if we had an extra 4 hours. I use to be proud of what I could accomplish on nights now I just try to do my best and hope they can see it.
I read one comment it was to save money, exactly that. The old saying k–ling two birds with one stone is fitting for this situation. You save money by eliminating one shift to put them on another so there's more floor partners to help with members but did they ever think we would be over worked and look mad because we are being pushed and pulled each and every direction...... I think not. Looks good on paper but not in clubs that struggle to hire help. Hopefully changes will come yet again and this time they make sense.
Trying to do resets while we are open is a nightmare (and it seems we're doing resets every other day at the rate HO is cranking them out). Whole aisles are basically tore up and unshoppable while we pull every available associate (we're soooo short handed) to try and get it done, and it takes all day. And then, of course, you have members constantly in the area looking at this random stuff on pallets and flatbeds to be moved asking "how much is this?" "where is that?" slowing you down even more. When this happens, there is an unfortunate tendency among the associates to view members as more of a nuisance than anything else.
I guess its a game of technicalities, moving thirds to first shift does add more bodies to floor, but you lose 5 hours of forklift time and (just to be honest) time without members, which is invaluable. The real issue is that headcount was based on item sales, but through the pandemic, headcount hasn't risen, in fact, in many clubs its gone down by about 5%. Company saw a roughly 15% increase in sales, we should have seen at least a 10% increase in headcount. Clubs getting beat up is because there's not enough associates to do the business. God bless you if you're in a complex club or inner city clubs, basically low headcount and horrible applicant pool.
For some odd reason our club still has a “Softlines girl” that is part of the merchandising crew yet she ONLY works in Softlines. I was told nobody is supposed to be limited to strictly one department and there aren’t supposed to be any “Softlines associates”.
Oh heavens, a reddit user somewhere said they like Sam's Schlep-It-For-Ya service better than Costco's Schlep-It-For-Ya service. That must mean that Sam's is actually kicking Costco's arse from top to bottom and not the other way around. The Sam's haters must all be FOS.
I agree with pretty much everything said. I would add that it is not fair to the paying members for us to always be in their way while they try and shop. Be out of something on the salesfloor that we have full pallets in reserve and have to wait to have it dropped. They may as well do away with having a membership at all.
Lesbihonest, that's just a dumb response, our scan and go and click and pull service is blowing Costco out of the water. Most recently 've seen a member on Reddit asking why we bash SC so much (they recently switched from Costco to SC and liked SC more), and while working for the company s—s Costco is no different. Some of you don't know that because you've been feeding at the soft trough for too long :)
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Let's be honest about how we process this b—s—, OK?
At no point was Block Scheduling EVER intended as a way of improving store operations. The ONLY goal of eliminating the Night Crew was to reduce payroll. That's it. End of argument. Anyone who believes otherwise is legitimately full of sh–.
Even as we approach two years since Bentonville knowingly and willingly blew up the operational health of 599 stores, I still hear the occasional comment, "Well, we wanted to be more like Costco."
m—er, I've spent the last 12 years watching us sh– the f—ing bed as a company in comparison to Costco. In 2008, we were much closer and more comparable with them than we are now, and with what they intentionally did in June 2019 - strictly out of greed, let's not kid ourselves - we have absolutely no business believing we're in the same league anymore. Costco smokes us. There is not one single thing that we do better than Costco from an operational standpoint. The reason Costco has been able to do what they do without a night crew for so long is that they don't open till 10AM, and they bring in a f—ing army at 3AM.
The ONLY way you make Block Scheduling work when you have 3.5 hours in the evening and 4 hours in the morning to set up, is with large numbers of personnel. Forget that they were never going to staff this sh–show properly. And forget that no one really wants to work for this company to begin with. So with that being said, all we ever get are people who have exhausted every other option out there before interviewing with us. At the same time, we're constantly in a position where we're terribly understaffed and desperate for new bodies. What do you think happens? Exactly. We hire anyone with a f—ing pulse and 90% or more of those people didn't want f— all to do with us in the first place.
Surely this has to stand as one of the dumbest f—ing moves I've ever seen this company make. Six months before it was implemented, there was chatter among many of us that it was going to happen in the near future and not one person - from club manager on down - believed it was a good idea. We knew it was a guaranteed trainwreck.
Is anyone out there under the assumption that going to $15/hour base across the board is going to raise the bar? Good luck with that one. We've virtually guaranteed that par personnel levels at every club are going to become even tighter.
No matter what way you look at it, this does not end well.
They did the same thing with click-n-pull. Got rid of all click-n-pull associates. I know, I was one. They changed it to Merch pulling orders and Carts dispensing orders. Look out how well that turned out for them. They've done a 180 on that too. They gave click-n-pull a new name, calling them fulfillment associates, and hired most of us back into that "new" job.
Like Merch had time to pull orders, and cart associates, on the other side of the parking lot, could get orders to cars in five minutes. And they never hired more associates for those positions. Home office must be full of brainless dunderheadeds.
Home office as well as market managers are so out of touch with what really goes on in our clubs ! If they had to do the jobs we are doing they would not last a week
Here in Ohio there's a club that still has a night shift. I wish it was my club.
Lol!! I mean come on!!! Did anyone really think this was gonna work besides the brilliant minds of corporate?? They make changes only based on graphs and numbers. They don’t understand how long it takes to do something the right way. Everything to them takes 5min to do. They lack the knowledge of actually being on the floor and trying to stock something while you are being paged to the front end, jewelry, and to answer a call about green beans that has been on hold for 20mins. Then after the store closes, we are left with a disaster of a store with only 4 people to get trucks and stocking done in 2 hours. Play dumb games, and you win stupid prizes. Then the district manager comes in for a visit and is shocked why things looks bad. Lol bunch of id–ts
HO made this “Nationwide” because it worked on the West Coast.
They don’t understand that the West Coast is different than the East Coast.
Well what HomeOffice didn’t account for was people leaving because they enjoyed working nights so they didn’t have to deal with members. A lot of merchandisers at my club quit when night shift was eliminated. It’d be smart to bring it back because as it is, it’s a catch up game that nobody can catch up with because the club is never fully zoned or stocked