# Question about store on hands



## DC Diva (Nov 14, 2022)

Can anyone store side help me to understand how some stores can be so well stocked while others are not?  There are roughly 5 stores within a reasonable drive of my house, yet the one in my same town always has gaping holes in health and beauty.  Typically makeup has tons of empty holes, hair care too.  Other areas in this store are hit or miss also, but health and beauty CONSISTENTLY Is out of many products.  Is this an online ordering issue, or is this specific stores health and beauty team unable to do their jobs?  I can usually find the items by driving to the neighboring stores, but all are more than 30 miles away.  And ordering makeup online doesnt always work, often times it arrives damaged, I have to return it to the local Target, and their shelves are empty.  If it’s a store issue, why aren’t the SD or ETL dealing with it to prevent lost sales?


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## rd123 (Nov 14, 2022)

May be there are no enough TMs to push stuff to the floor . Lot of beauty products come in repacks and it takes considerable amount to push them and other department TMs usually hate to do it as the beauty aisles are a bit confusing . So the products either end up in random locations or never gets pushed at all . In that case it will show as on hands but none can be found on floor .


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## jenna (Nov 14, 2022)

Lots of factors:

1. Not enough competent workers to put out the freight (as stated above.)
2. Not enough competent workers to pull items from the backroom.  Backroom is over flowing with merchandise.
3. Two different DCs(?) is a possibility.  
4. Theft and/or MisPicks
5.  No one inside the store is Researching/Auditing critical OUTs and Lows.  ie Store thinks Five of an item is in-stock, but Zero are actually on the shelf.  Team members can adjust that count to be accurate.
6.  Cashiering/Self Check Out issues -- Guest buys 5 different flavors of Yogurt, but rings out 1 flavor five times.
7.  Bad zone.  Mis-stocking.
8.  Hidden pallets in the backroom or a storage unit--- could be shippers, pallets wrapped up, but not sorted, etc.
9.  Poor management... or "no" management (short staffed.)  Not able to keep up with freight, so let one or two departments (or more) fall way behind.
10.  Call outs
11.  Fulfillment or cashiering -- these areas can cannibalize a store -- all available workers can be pulled to work in these areas -- which causes the workers to get behind in their areas.
12.  Way too many trucks and too much freight.  Over whelming, and crowds the backroom - makes it hard to find things, and makes staff want to quit or call out.


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## Hardlinesmaster (Nov 14, 2022)

jenna said:


> Lots of factors:
> 
> 1. Not enough competent workers to put out the freight (as stated above.)
> 2. Not enough competent workers to pull items from the backroom.  Backroom is over flowing with merchandise.
> ...


THIS! we had pallets of unpushed OTC & beauty found in a trailer during our remodel.


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## jenna (Nov 14, 2022)

Some stores have numerous pallets of Style (Clothing - shoes) - they just remain in unsorted Repacks, and get wrapped up and put in the backroom or storage unit.

ETA:  Some stores are just drowning in freight, right now.


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## MrT (Nov 14, 2022)

I'll break down how our hours are spent according to my SD.
Truck frieght should take 45 hours to push.  Schedules us 50 hours and says we should be fine.  These are not accurate numbers but you can get this just of what I'm saying
Neglects the fact that he wants 15 hours of pulls every day.
There's pricing to do.  5 hours
There's set workload to do. 8 hours a day
He wants 10 hours of reshop a day
We are now short 30 hours of push.  We fall behind
Next day same numbers but he says have everyone push to catch up but the new truck is 45 hours again and we have 50.
Well that let's us catch up 5 hours of push so we are now short 25 hours so we aren't really any better but we are behind 30 hours again in other areas.  
He cannot figure out why we ars behind.  🙃
Cancels a truck we catch up.  Nothing changes in scheduling 
They add a double next week to make up for cancel, we are back to were we we started in 3 days.  Now we gotta cancel the double because by the time it comes around we were already behind again.
I'm not really sure what else we can do because even if we had more people we are always about even on allocated payroll.

Right now my store has 6 pallets of beauty repacks and misc boxes from the new sets the last couple weeks in the backroom.probably close to 7 after today

We have 35 pallets of style, probably 15 of those are shoes.  This is an improvement from a month ago when we had 46.

There are 3 pallets of tech push that is a jumbled mess that has been kicking around for a month.

There's around 8 pallets of random repacks left to push for gm,  was about 18 last week after we had 2 doubles in a row.

There's about 10 pallets of toy backstock we cannot put anywhere because we are behind on pulls and now every aisles is full of toys on the top shelves

We still have 26 pallets of Christmas and about 30 pallets of mini seasonal to push.


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## allnew2 (Nov 14, 2022)

MrT said:


> Cancels a truck we catch up. Nothing changes in scheduling
> They add a double next week to make up for cancel,


When you cancel a truck is doesn’t really mean you won’t get it . The store is not adding it is the dc sending you the one your store canceled . Cancel doesn’t mean you will never get it . It just means it will come at a later date in the week . You pay the price of canceling if you are store that is not getting doubles everyday . And if you do get doubles everyday and do cancel a truck be prepared to get a triple that week.


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## MrT (Nov 15, 2022)

allnew2 said:


> When you cancel a truck is doesn’t really mean you won’t get it . The store is not adding it is the dc sending you the one your store canceled . Cancel doesn’t mean you will never get it . It just means it will come at a later date in the week . You pay the price of canceling if you are store that is not getting doubles everyday . And if you do get doubles everyday and do cancel a truck be prepared to get a triple that week.


That's not the point I'm trying to make.  I know they don't cancel a truck but that is the proper term.  They cancel sending a truck so the next truck is moved back.  They add a double because they need to catch back up on the trailer schedule.  Sometimes they do sometimes they don't.  The point I'm trying to make is that the simple logic and math doesn't matter to my SD.  He fails to realize what has caused the issue in the first place or in this case the 30th time.  Nothing changes and he just blames the inbound team for not unloading a truck.


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## BurgerBob (Nov 15, 2022)

allnew2 said:


> When you cancel a truck is doesn’t really mean you won’t get it . The store is not adding it is the dc sending you the one your store canceled . Cancel doesn’t mean you will never get it . It just means it will come at a later date in the week . You pay the price of canceling if you are store that is not getting doubles everyday . And if you do get doubles everyday and do cancel a truck be prepared to get a triple that week.


We got 4 trucks a day once... it was wild


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## HInbound (Nov 15, 2022)

BurgerBob said:


> We got 4 trucks a day once... it was wild


We're taking 4-5 trucks a night for the next 2 weeks. It is stressful.


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## FlowTeamChick (Nov 15, 2022)

I'm guessing they have a major staffing problem for that area. My store had a months-long staffing issue for Beauty a while back - one TM called out more often than she showed up (eventually ended up taking an LOA), another one quit with no notice, another one went to on-call when school started up again. And the TL for that area was nice, but not cut out for being a leader so things just kept getting worse. They were constantly rolling truck; others were pitching in, which doesn't always work so well with cosmetics. Piles of clearance and d-code weren't getting pulled out of the back until long after it went salvage. It was just a hot mess and took a while to get cleaned up.
There's a different TL there who seems to stay on top of things a little better. The TM who went on LOA is back and doing better. A Beauty TM from another store transferred in and does a good job. And another TM frustrated with Style shifted in and also does a good job. Still seems to me that there are some problems because no one person is DBO, but it's a lot better than it was. So there's hope for the store you prefer to shop at if they can get their act together.


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## Noiinteam (Nov 15, 2022)

We are taking 12 trucks this week! Never ever has this happened. It will not go well


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## allnew2 (Nov 15, 2022)

Noiinteam said:


> We are taking 12 trucks this week! Never ever has this happened. It will not go well


12 is not bad . We take weekly 14 we are schedule 17 next week because we are closed on thanksgiving


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## jenna (Nov 15, 2022)

Some photos from reddit of a [typical] Target store's backroom.


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## commiecorvus (Nov 15, 2022)

jenna said:


> Some photos from reddit of a [typical] Target store's backroom.





Yeah, no.
This is not good at all.


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## Dead and Khaki (Nov 16, 2022)

Sadly, looks pretty normal to me now.


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## MrT (Nov 16, 2022)

commiecorvus said:


> Yeah, no.
> This is not good at all.


I know I just complained about a new store director and backroom but this isn't me and mine isn't that bad 🤣
Edit: my bad replied to wrong post


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## Black Sheep 214 (Nov 16, 2022)

jenna said:


> Some photos from reddit of a [typical] Target store's backroom.



All that inventory sitting in backrooms, unavailable to guests yet Spot has their money tied up in it. What a waste! And Corporate wonders why sales are down. Here’s a couple of reasons: constantly running skeleton crews and not having backroom teams do not a successful company make.


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## vendordontmesswithme (Nov 16, 2022)

Black Sheep 214 said:


> All that inventory sitting in backrooms, unavailable to guests yet Spot has their money tied up in it. What a waste! And Corporate wonders why sales are down. Here’s a couple of reasons: constantly running skeleton crews and not having backroom teams do not a successful company make.


Then it becomes discontinued but not clearance.   We get rid of it by not damage/ no space to remechandise


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## allied biscuit (Nov 16, 2022)

I honestly don't think Target knows what inventory stores actually have. Having an increase in freight being sent to stores combined with the elimination of some teams (flow, backroom, in stocks, etc) really seems to contribute to this.  The store on hands for almost everything does not match the on floor and backroom counts.


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## redeye58 (Nov 16, 2022)

jenna said:


> Some photos from reddit of a [typical] Target store's backroom.



Looks a lot like my store.....


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## HInbound (Nov 17, 2022)

allied biscuit said:


> I honestly don't think Target knows what inventory stores actually have. Having an increase in freight being sent to stores combined with the elimination of some teams (flow, backroom, in stocks, etc) really seems to contribute to this.  The store on hands for almost everything does not match the on floor and backroom counts.


I'm pretty sure they do. We went hog wild on OFO's for a month and got our backroom inventory really low.

Shortly after, we were sent a ton of product and asked to store it since we had so much empty steel. It came wrapped and everything, which NEVER happens.


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## allied biscuit (Nov 17, 2022)

HInbound said:


> I'm pretty sure they do. We went hog wild on OFO's for a month and got our backroom inventory really low.
> 
> Shortly after, we were sent a ton of product and asked to store it since we had so much empty steel. It came wrapped and everything, which NEVER happens.


I'm not super knowledgeable on logistics, but wouldn't the fact that the backroom inventory could be able to get low a bad thing?


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## HInbound (Nov 18, 2022)

allied biscuit said:


> I'm not super knowledgeable on logistics, but wouldn't the fact that the backroom inventory could be able to get low a bad thing?


We sell a lot, and this was back a little while ago when Target was announcing they were purging inventories, etc. It was mostly bulky items like pallets upon pallets of furniture that could easily be pulled off the truck and thrown in the steel until requested.


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## SugarSugar (Nov 22, 2022)

allnew2 said:


> 12 is not bad . We take weekly 14 we are schedule 17 next week because we are closed on thanksgiving



You do realize not every store has an off-site or as many team members? 12 is not bad for you, but it is for smaller/low volume stores who don't have space for everything.


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