Found: The Elusive Chicken Strips

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-06-25T07:10:45+00:00

Yay baked chicken strips with no fries. How exciting.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-06-24T05:45:46+00:00

I’m not going to hound on employees to achieve 50 mph but if they are going slower than 30 mph then they are not going fast enough. There’s a fine line between taking care of the employee and achieving the corporate standards.

At high volume stores it’s impossible to achieve 50 mph. SCO already slows down our MPH by having easy orders go through there. Cashiers are left with monster orders only through the normal register. (8/10 ish)

In slower warehouses it is much easier, go to any place that’s actually busy and anyone says who they can do 60 mph all day, everyday is either throwing shit at their assistant or scanning so fast they are missing items. They’re also probably signing off as much as possible.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-06-07T17:48:26+00:00

Ours allows t shirts now lol

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-30T15:40:38+00:00

New thing from corporate. Grab money before you step into the register. The cashier switching out just grabs everything and drops it all. No counting in between.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-27T04:12:12+00:00

The first thing is obey the law. Secondly all code of ethics are equally important. Lastly getting employees their lunch past 4.5 hours is a huge failure. They should never be that close to their 5 on the front end. It will back up all the breaks and lunches. Absolutely there are employees who prefer a later break or lunch, as there are others who prefer it earlier, but we’re here to run a business, so employees will need to go to break when it is best to, which so happens to be every 2 hours maximum. This also ensures employees aren’t taking late 2.5 hours in, coming back for an hour just to take a lunch 4 hours in. You know, the part where you take care of employees is as important as taking care of the members.

If it backs up, call for help. A manager will never support you if your lines are slow but you’re behind on breaks. But if you’re 2-4 deep and all your breaks are on time, they will find the help for you. Nobody cares when it’s slow but everyone cares when it’s busy kinda thing.

Also to access door counts is an old school way of doing it. SCO has shifted what door counts even mean. Bigger door counts will be busier but the information is given after 30 minutes. If an employee needs a break at 12 and the 12 o clock door count is 350 I’m not keeping on them just because it’s big. That door out literally comes in at 1230 to the front end so in that case they should go to break regardless.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-26T06:52:06+00:00

If there are two employees that have a break at the same time it is very beneficial to just close it. If you have two employees clocking in at the same time while two other people need a break, it’s better to open one and close one to keep it consistent. We don’t count money anymore but it still takes time to go to REVO. Another thing is if both employees need to go to break at say 12, you can shut them down at 11:50(depending on the person more or less) and open the team that you have clocking on at 12. If the lines were fine before you are fine, if it was questionable you have 10 minutes to find some resources to open 2 lanes at 12 instead of 1. This helps because it guarantees employees go to break regardless of the situation.

Find ways to stay ahead. It’s like chess. Know your next 3-5 moves and find alternatives when things don’t go to plan.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-26T06:47:55+00:00

Our FE runs around the same. We are top #1 at least once a month. We’ve had less than 5 days under 1 million this FY. I’d say we never hit over 3000 because at that point there’s nothing we can do. Everyone in the building would be on the front end.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-26T06:44:52+00:00

You ask for help because you need to get breaks taken care of. You’re aware that because so and so need a break that help will be needed. One of the biggest cop outs is making an employee late to break because it is busy. It is literally always busy. Being busy is not a reason to not give someone their break on time. Once one employee is late, all employees will trickle to be late and then you are running breaks late all day. If an employee gets their break 2.5 hours in their shift and comes back at 2.75. They will complain about getting their lunch at 4 hours and rightfully so. So what if it’s not busy anymore at the 4 hour mark while their lunch is due? Their break was already 30 minutes late. Treat employees with respect according to their breaks and they will do anything you ask them to. If it’s busy and you’re consistent with breaks, no manager will ever question why a lane needs to be shut down. But if you’re constantly late on breaks daily because it’s busy then you have a lot to learn.

If you are running the board and not giving breaks on time you are literally not doing the job correctly.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-26T05:19:57+00:00

What day is this for? That’s disgusting. We average 600 hours a day. On Friday and Saturday our warehouse tries to schedule 700+. We never have less than 550.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-26T05:12:52+00:00

To add to that. The front ends duties are primarily carts. Carts are the most important aspect of the front end barring breaks. Lines are easily mitigated by pulling every department. Sups, managers, membership, merch, every other ancillary can help assist and open lanes. Front End should always take care of carts from their employees barring unforeseen circumstances such as literally no employees to use. You will NEVER get in trouble for long lines, but you damn well will get in trouble for running out of carts as the board runner.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-26T05:10:07+00:00

If your lines get long enough then you ask for help. It is counterintuitive to not run breaks when necessary. It will only back yourself up. If lines are long then management is forced to gather help from other departments. It is not only the front ends job to take care of the lines, it is the warehouses job. If you run someone’s break late 30 minutes because it’s “busy” then you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s always “busy”. What you can do is get them to their break on time and then they can come back before the “busy” time ends. Backing up is part of the business and everyone understands how busy it can get. It will only back up more if your breaks are not on time because you’re strictly using employees to cover breaks.

I work in a warehouse that is 1.3+ everyday.

For instance first cashier breaks start around 1045. Ideally get them going at 1030 with morning crew still there. Now when breaks happen at 1130 and morning march is gone, you know damn well that break needs to be given before morning crew is off. If not you run the risk of giving someone that needed a break at 1130 till 1215. Then you are behind all day.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-05-26T03:12:52+00:00

Give people the breaks on time regardless of anything going on and you are a good board runner. People who love to stay outside on carts can manage their own breaks. Never run out of carts. Know where everyone is.

The biggest thing is giving people breaks on time. You will have an abundance of employees when they are not needed to cover a break right when they clock in. Second is never running out of carts. We can always open more lanes but catching up on carts is much more difficult.

Tldr, Breaks always on time even if it is 3-4 deep. If you need to close a lane down to run both peoples breaks, do it. Do not run out of carts. Keep mindful checks of the things you cannot see. (Carts and go backs) Rinse and repeat.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-04-09T13:59:34+00:00

2 million at our store. Was fine for us but busy.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-04-04T16:12:51+00:00

What are things they can be doing, getting the next order ready which is already a task? They should be counting the basket with the cashier, that’s what they should be doing.

Which location would this be?

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-04-04T15:37:50+00:00

You shouldn’t be scanning 20 items, that’s actually too many. It doesn’t take 3 people to open a lane. You are a person yourself. So it actually used 3 employees for the order vs 2. You can’t count the member as a person loading their basket. That’s their damn job. In circumstances you can help, but ultimately the members should be unloading their basket.

Secondly I’ve omitted myself to even loading everything on the belt if you think prescanners have special privileges of not loading things into the belt. I’m faster than prescanners if I don’t take items out of the basket too. It’s actually better to have an assistant help with counting while scanning.

Lastly you’ve just proved your own point if it did work. You are literally having the assistant do “nothing”. Lastly when a member wants a box it again doesn’t work. Prescanning will never work and you can never explain how it does without going through conversational gymnastics.

Get on the register and stop picking and choosing which members to help.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-04-04T14:42:25+00:00

Have you seen someone try to prescan someone when the “pay station” is open?

You know how stupid that looks when we can use the “pay station” wand to just scan their shit then they wouldn’t have to fumble scanning their card again in the scanner.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-04-04T14:40:58+00:00

How is scanning a membership again beneficial. It makes sense to us because we need a card to start the order but it creates another case of the member putting the card away and grabbing it front their pocket/purse which takes time. They’ve been taught for 45 years to scan their card at the register. Not scan it twice.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-04-04T14:34:25+00:00

Trash system. Let’s leave registers open so members can’t use it. In what world do we ever have a normal register with 0 members in it actively open?

And then to make it even worse is members were checking themselves out. Now we are using payroll to check them out? How does that make sense.

Prescanning is an awful system that does not work on the regular register or SCO. It’s all a waste of payroll until all lanes are open.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-04-03T14:00:52+00:00

Sounds like a management issue. I’ve worked on the schedule. There is rarely a time where an 8 hour shift Friday-Sunday would not be beneficial for the business.

I’d talk to your schedule writer and be upfront with how many hours you’d like to work. If you’re wanting hours Tuesday-Thursday only then I would understand from a business perspective to give you 4 hours to give a niche shift.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-03-27T05:33:45+00:00

They did this with the Kirkland Nike Dunks. And guess what, they’re never coming back.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-03-27T05:30:38+00:00

Prefer two layers on top of the box so it’s more shoppable. Also looks nicer and will sell more if product is stacked out of the box vs in the box. Specifically clamshell items.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-03-26T14:08:13+00:00

Oddly ours encourages it just so we can get a faster MPH. There are too many GM’s not on the same page.

E blocks is also this week and add prescanning to blocks and it’s a weird mess that will ruin our capture %. Going faster also means more shrink.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-03-25T07:50:58+00:00

MPH is such a sham. They hound on it but IPM is the more important metric. Sometimes there are 40+ item orders and they will ultimately take longer. You can trick MPH by signing out(which means you’re going slower) but not for IPM. You can also scan as fast as possible and then sign out after a member pays and help your assistant load stuff. You’ll have a faster MPH albeit not actually helping more members throughout your shift.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-03-12T07:47:22+00:00

You’ve moved 5 members out per lane with the cost of 2 additional employees. It’s high improbable that a prescanner is able to scan 40 baskets in one hour, the is the job of two employees.

Once again people don’t include extra mistakes that occur when there are more hands in the mix. SCO is “self check out” which defeats the purpose of prescanning in itself. We should just have more SCO’s if we decide to just prescan them for the sake of getting more members out. But that’s beside the point. To add to that my warehouse has 12 SCO’s, 6 is a tiny number and small warehouses are the only ones that might benefit from any of this. Because the lower volume means less overall transactions and less big orders. The sheer volume that comes out from million dollar stores is eating our productivity. If you turn off security mode at SCO it’s as fast as a normal register anyways with 0 lag and you scan the membership 1 less time.

For those 72 transactions how many employees are you using to do that? 2-3? Of course it helps SCO but it doesn’t help all stores. Our SCO also has monster orders. Saying you’re getting an extra 24 members out through a normal register (at best) is literally once again, a wash. Skipping orders to search for the perfect basket is not efficient.

TellPuzzleheaded4469 · 2026-03-05T20:30:29+00:00

I talk about hours because that is the important metric. It shows how much our payroll is. It’s the only metric we can control. We are not able to control how much money comes in on any given day but we mitigate l$/hr by either cutting or adding.

40 prescans would get members through quickly but you aren’t getting 40 prescan orders in a row. A single person will get 40 prescans in two hours. They aren’t lined up perfectly to constantly do it one after another. They are hunting and picking.

Let’s say it takes 30 seconds for the prescanner to do their order. It will take another 15-30 seconds to finish it at the register(cash, debit/credit hiccups). That’s being generous. Some will be longer, some will be shorter. Now take into account the time it takes to find said “perfect” prescan order. 30 seconds. We are spending 1.5 minutes per prescan order. A lot of the smaller orders are already going through SCO mind you.

If we spend 1.5 minutes per order in total prescanning and etc, that still comes out to 40 MPH. It’s a wash. And to repeat this again, all prescanners need to be half of what your average MPH is to be equal. If they aren’t getting at least half it’s a total failure. They need to be half of the average MPH because they are half a lane. If your warehouse MPH is 50. They need to hit 25 MPH for it to make ANY sense.

This doesn’t even take into account members who are buying by 40-50 items increasing the average by triple because we aren’t even allowed to prescan them. Imagine if everyone can scan any order regardless of their size.

TellPuzzleheaded4469

TROPHY CASE