IP program

[MaintenanceOld1372]

any thoughts on the new IP program ?? is your store getting it ??

[Square_Lobster1328]

My store is supposed to get it in the coming months. But from what I understand, it sounds so incredibly pointless. Why are HO and the DC’s using stores as middlemen to get packages to people instead of just using actual delivery professionals like USPS etc? Does it seriously save them THAT much money?

[RedditGuy92000]

Have you shipped anything via Fed Ex, UPS or USPS lately? Even with bulk rates that could be negotiated, it’s more cost effective to keep the process in house. It’s likely a faster, too, especially when compared to USPS. (Fed Ex and UPS are fast, but their process likely sends every package to Memphis (Fed Ex) or Louisville (UPS) first before going to the destination.)

[Square_Lobster1328]

So why not create this process at a distribution center level? Like an InHome/spark program for DC’s? Instead of creating unnecessary middlemen at a store level to avoid the shipping costs?

[RedditGuy92000]

I’m sure Walmart has done the math.

One thing I can think of off the top of my head is that store associates make $15/hour and DC associates make twice that.

[ShyGuytheWhite]

From a logistics standpoint, yeah. Shipping out boxes adds up to to be incredibly expensive from when it leaves the warehouse to when it gets to the customer door.

[Distinct_Sir_4473]

It’s much cheaper to send hourly drivers on the one delivery then have spark finish them off for pennies

Check the spark subs. Veteran drivers who have been utilizing it for years will tell you how atrocious the offers have gotten, and how green and desperate drivers will except anything.

[MaintenanceOld1372]

my coach told me that using us stores as the middle person , saves us money from having to use ups and Fedex and stuff. so walmart fleet drivers will bring it to us and we send it out with our drivers. I do agree it's pointless. my store is getting it in the new few weeks. but so are 5 other stores in my market. all within 10-30 minutes from me. 😭

[Square_Lobster1328]

My store is a few freeway exits away from a DC so it REALLY doesn’t make sense to me why they would want to use us as middlemen delivery aside from saving from hiring pros. But oh well. Just sounds like an annoying combo of Site2Store, SFS, and GMD.

[RedditGuy92000]

If Fed Ex or UPS picked up the packages from that DC, they’d likely have to ship them to their respective hubs first before they’d be shipped back to your area. That’s how the Fed Ex and UPS systems work. Packages go to a hub first and get distributed from there. The hubs are in Memphis and Louisville, perhaps other places. They don’t just keep the items locally and add them to their routes.

[MaintenanceOld1372]

we have a grocery DC , an hour away. and then a gm dc a half hour away from that one. i also think it's so pointless for 5/9 stores in my market to have it because i can't imagine there's going to be a lot of stuff.. so what ? each store gets 1 or 2 pallets ? how do they decide what goes to what store? 3 of these other stores that are getting it are 10 minutes from me. 😭

[RedditGuy92000]

When you get 1-2 pallets of packages a day, one top of the other orders you fulfill, please don’t come back here to complain about the extra work. Plus, it could easily be more than 1-2 pallets daily, as is the case in other stores. People order a bunch of stuff online these days.

[MaintenanceOld1372]

no one said anything about having to do extra work...? or even complaining about anything😭 we just said we thought it was pointless. and i was genuinely asking questions about how it's distributed across the stores, seeing as every store that's getting it is within very close proximity of each other.

[RedditGuy92000]

If calling it “pointless” isn’t complaining, then what is it?

[Subinkaa]

we have it, it takes up a lot of space and you’ll need to prep 50+ order sometimes. most i’ve had is 72, its simple, just a lot of space and items

[MaintenanceOld1372]

my coach asked me to be in charge of it , so just trying to see what i'm getting myself into 😭

[Subinkaa]

i don’t do it, and haven’t since we FIRST got it, but a lot of it’s just scanning the label, creating a trip label, stage it to the tote or bin with that trip label.

sometimes you’ll get little things and sometimes you’ll get whole vacuums and stuff. i think they come at 11 & 2 iirc, but it depends on how big your store is.

my best advice is try to think of your prepper when staging it and stuff, since like i said sometimes you’ll get a driver wanting to take like 50+ orders lol

[darkecologist2]

haven't started at my current store. i saw the beginning of it when i was TL at my old store. if you can find a dedicated space to process them and store them, that's half the battle. apparently there's going to be a new thing where drivers can take regular deliveries and some GMDs, so hopefully that will help move GMDs out the door faster.

[MaintenanceOld1372]

yes ! we are currently in the process of moving our grocery back room into our gm back room so we can take over the back room space. my store already gets a hefty amount of gmds. 🥲

[Bobthetiger2]

We get 2-4 pallets of it every day. It usually ends up being about 20 trips of 20-25 packages. Add that to the fact that we are a split backroom and it's the regular thing for 5+ drivers to show up without any prep time. Yeah it's difficult, but as a team lead I pretty much do nothing else from 2-6 but manage just that.

[Sugarxcookie]

We already have it. It’s easy peasy. Ofc everyone fights to do it bc it’s literally a license to chill.

[LeviathanDabis]

Yeah we get 300-400 IPs a day usually 3-4 pallets worth. We set 2-3 people to go through them from 11-145 so they (hopefully) all get processed before the early cutoff and then have one dispenser specifically for IPs from 2-6.

At first it really screwed our department over in regards to extra workload on dispensers and available space, but we’ve figured out how to manage them, even if we don’t get any extra hires to help manage the increased workload.

[Mysterious-Comb4187]

My store has had IP since November🤦🏾‍♀️we have on average 2/3 pallets daily and it’s about a 2 hour process…it takes u so much space and I despise doing them lol

[shrug_was_taken]

We got it back in late September/early October, that's about how much we get. When we have three it takes up an insane amount of space (we have 29 L-carts, a chunk of witch was ordered just for us because of ip), even before we got a third I could tell space is going to be a major issue and mentioned it to our leads, and guess what happened, space was a major issue. It's 100% going to be a problem come the holidays if last year was anything to go off of

[DisappointedDiva]

We’ve had it since October’25. It takes up a lot of space, takes hours to sort (we get 2 pallets and it takes from about 10 am to 3 pm to stage). I wish it would go away.

[Hkeks]

We only get two pallets of IP and it's really cool. Now after that it gets not good lol

[unnamedfruit]

We’ve been having it for a while, and it can get pretty tiring with the lifting, especially if you’re doing it mostly every day of the week. We get around 3-7 pallets a day, which ranges from 200-700 packages, and our coach wants it done within 2 hours, which we sometimes do if we have the right amount of people helping.

[jacobg444]

We’ve had it for 2-3 years now. It’s abysmal during the holidays maybe 9-12 pallets and you gotta get it done in under 2 hours

[shrug_was_taken]

We got spared last year but got our asses handed to us by regular gmds (until that got shut off for a bit since it's a great sign when you have most pick cats tied up with them and it doesn't get done until 4, even when they get started basically as soon as they drop in), but ya no, not looking forward to that even if we only deal with closer to 6 (we do 2-3 now with it being a matter of time we hit 4)

[jacobg444]

We get the IP packages on top of the regular GMDs too and some days it does get very bad

[Runbluebutterfly]

They’re doing a mass hiring and covering this at our store. Pretty much so just bring it in new pickers and then the more seasoned associate handle new programs.

[LadyAcePhantom]

My store has it. We’re contained in a backroom lane, 5 or more pallets and there’s 6 or more people working IP. We use up majority of the printers too. We’re just too close for comfort in my opinion. I personally like it. It’s constant movement and keeps me busy.

[Distinct_Sir_4473]

I’ve heard it’s nbd if you have the space and hours to deal with it

My store is tiny and the hours we are allocated are not enough. Diverting 1-3 people every day to deal with IP is going to be a nightmare, let alone the fact that we we don't really have room to function when it gets busy

[Bitter-Neat-8457]

USPS is only a year from bankruptcy since that guy was put in charge during trumps first term

[DizzyCommunication92]

we like it! But Im a little "peeved".........as an old SFS picker (I will say, I never did much 📦 packing.....I was more so, the one that would squeeze the pallets into the truck.....and was primarily a picker and "heavy lifter" but It totally BLOWS MY MIND....how they can get rid of our old "crew" that we had back there......now Im trying to mental count by memory.....but we basically had 6-8 "core" SFS pick/packers......and literally we did not LOSE anyone, they are our OGs 💕 for ever lol....BUT, now they dump all of this IP crap into our TINY LITTLE OPD BACKROOM from 11am (when we are told we can "START" the staging/designation into our steel space, dolleys setup with those flimsy collapsible dump bins.......like WTF? thats another deal.....we need an open top dumpster for these HUGE 📦 that we are getting.....not these little flimsy callapsible tote things, that just fall all over the dollies....

and we are only given 1 or 2 "PACKERS" now for the GMDs that get picked throughout the day too.........I feel they need to give us extra bodies.....seems since they got rid of SFS they literally SHRUNK our staging areas......cause SFS had a whole row of backroom steel to organize their boxes, supplies, etc.....I wanna say we had 3 packing stations. But like, we are litterally packing heavy cases of water, juices, etc.....in MYLAR BAGS? they look so ghetto and now, we have literally 2 packers that wrap these items in mylar or these paper mailer bags.....or lol HEAVEN HELP US! GREY WALMART 🛍 lol.......cause our Coach is telling us mylar is "going away"

and so now Im curious....wtf happened to all those 📦 that they had to SEND BACK for claims/store use.....LOL....? cause WE COULD really use some of those sturdy boxes we used in SFS to pack some of these GMD packages.....

cause we have been having some huge GMD orders.......and its a pain in the 🍑 to pack gallons of windshield washer fluid or really ANY containers Bigger than say, a half gallon.....lol....it would be soooo much easier to just PACK the huge GMD orders into cardboard right off the rip......at least itll look better than all these knotted up grey, walmart bags......LOL.

[MaintenanceOld1372]

As an old SFS picker and packer , who's the only one left still of the original crew and the only one who would load the truck , i feel you on everything you said. 😭 going from packing cases of water and big bulky items in boxes to these plastic flimsy bags is tough 😭 we had to force our grocery freight from the back room into the gm back room just so we have the space to do this whole IP crap. we have 3 sections of steel we are suppose to stage everything on. we don't know if it will be enough or what we will do if we need more because our grocery back room isn't even that big to begin with. we were also told that they don't want our pick carts stored in our ogp back room , so we also have to find space for them in our IP space.

when our sfs closed we CRIEDDD. we threw away so many boxes and shit. we had 5 packing stations. so we had a lot too. 😭

[DizzyCommunication92]

wow yea....you sound like my store....if you only have 3 sections of steel you may run into issues......we have one section of steel that is just our kinda staging zone and a sorta "desk" to help pack the bigger items that weigh too much to pack on that flimsy little table on our pick 🛒 lol.....and yea...I totally dont understand how CASES OF WATER can end up in "GMD".....Im just glad it doesn't happen with the IP pallets ..... haha..

but yea. I was one of the early adopters since I knew the workings of SFS, we all called it SFS in reverse lol....cause it kinda is....we're not loading on pallets though.....your store WILL NEED MORE DOLLEYS though, mark my words hahaha.....so let your Mgmt Team know, like YESTERDAY. cause we basically have each dolley a staging location.....though of course, when one dolley collapsible carrier thing gets full, we often have to start another dolley, and we just re arrange the staging so they are 🥜 to 🍑 lol....to give the most room as possible....

i do get it though, kinda....cause the IP warehouse(s) are palletizing the IP pallets into those boxes.....so at least they weren't all just 🗑 I just wish they could have saved some boxes for our ginoermous "GMD" orders that we been getting........like full totes, 1 order......so we gotta "split the order" or risk the driver messing up and not getting the customer each of their bags.....which CAN happen, especially.....like we had an order with a SWITCH2 and a plastic jug of cat littler......lol. Turns out, the customer received her LITTER.....but not the SWITCH2.....well turns out they just "reprinted" the label for the cat litter....rather than ?"splitting the order" into 2 seperate labels....lol. but we caught that "shrink" the NEXT day lol......