The Woolworths Thread (6 Viewers)

SS-champion

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If a customer hasnt put their produce in a bag, and puts (for example) the apples a couple at a time into the bag, the SCO will have weight issues as it will take the intial weight in there (only 2 apples or whatever)
Great post very interesting. With this produce issue... it happens a lot!!
eg. customer puts 2 apples in the bag then another 2 and then it says unexpected item!!

The solution: the weight that the produce is weighed at should be the weight it expects in the bag!
 

Harry778

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oooh, online returns for magazines soon.

Thank god! I always seem to be the one who does magazine returns! lol. First shift back at my old store today (now my current store)!! Omg, it was as good as I imagined it. Was on smoke shop from 7-4.30. No more annoying operators annoying me and 'bringing people around' lol. =D=D=D=D
So happy.
 

SS-champion

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Try not to do quantities excessively -> something about reduced hours for the department as it counts as 1 item/customer

IT is monitoring the amount of times you go to POS, they will contact your store if you do alot of scanning items in this mode, as it disables the security features. If you are putting a customer through on SCO, use it like a SCO, not a normal register.
I don't understand the quantity issue... if you put something through as 2 x an item why wouldn't it count it as 2 items?! It might speed up the scan rate but self-serve has the lowest scan rates out of anyone on registers!

In my opinion I'm going to use the POS screen as much as I like (obvioulsy not let the customer use it) eg. when a customer is having so much trouble and has decided to give up I'll just say let me finish it for you! usually I'll just do that in the normal self-serve screen unless there is just way too many weight mismatches!!! and there is! lol... we'll see what happens.
 

ekul444

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I don't understand the quantity issue... if you put something through as 2 x an item why wouldn't it count it as 2 items?! It might speed up the scan rate but self-serve has the lowest scan rates out of anyone on registers!

In my opinion I'm going to use the POS screen as much as I like (obvioulsy not let the customer use it) eg. when a customer is having so much trouble and has decided to give up I'll just say let me finish it for you! usually I'll just do that in the normal self-serve screen unless there is just way too many weight mismatches!!! and there is! lol... we'll see what happens.
I don't get it either... But thats what Area Champ said, so I dunno. I always use quantity on NCR, so I reckon Ill use it heaps on WoWPoS SCO too.

Hahaha yeah true, but when I take over I talk them through it and show exactly what Im doing - bit pointless if Im doing it through POS screen.
 
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i called my manager to ask when they'll be recruiting for new cashiers..

he said he had no idea, it could be anywhere from 1 month to 6 months...
 

Craven

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CSM, 3IC and main weekend supervisor are off for training, holidays and TEE respectively. This leaves four of us.
So you have 7 staff that get regular service shifts? lol, wow. We don't even have a 3IC. We have the CSM, 2IC, another full-time supervisor (who's on holidays at the moment). Then there's me I work full-time between front end and office, another girl that does Wed night and Sat and another girl that does Mon & Tue nights (but shes on holidays too). We have just enough staff with 6 but if anyone wants a day/night off for some reason we are pretty screwed.

Great post very interesting. With this produce issue... it happens a lot!!
eg. customer puts 2 apples in the bag then another 2 and then it says unexpected item!!

The solution: the weight that the produce is weighed at should be the weight it expects in the bag!
So, I don't get what you're saying.. what are the customers doing? Weighing 2 apples, putting them into the bag, then putting another 2 apples into the bag as well without weighing them? lol.

her own staff get into trouble if they do ANY quantities... She said the more quantities you do the less hours are allocated to the Front End...
Haha, wait, on normal checkouts? Silly... any reduction of hours from the use of the quantity button (that only a handful can use) would be negligible. And it's only fair, it does take less time to process an order if you use it, so why should you have more hours :p
 

yoddle

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I was in Sydney for the weekend.

We got on the train at the airport and as i sat down i picked up a discarded woolies docket (i think it's the habit of picking them up off the floor at work).

It was a staff member at Marrickville Metro.

Coincidence!
I loved Sydney, for once the people there were nice, and not rude, like they usually are.
 

SS-champion

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So, I don't get what you're saying.. what are the customers doing? Weighing 2 apples, putting them into the bag, then putting another 2 apples into the bag as well without weighing them? lol.
ok for some reason the self-serve machine is set to accept any weight for produce items, so if someone weighs 4 apples (not in a produce bag) say the total was 1kg, then they place 2 of them in the bag, the security scale thinks that 0.5kg is the weight of the apples (i.e. 2 apples), then they put the next 2 apples in the bag and the self-serve thinks that they haven't scanned those apples = unexpected item, assistance requested > attendant comes over > store log in > checks list > 4 apples weighed and 4 apples in the bag, everything fine but the sco thought something was wrong!!

hope that makes sense probably doesn't. :)

NCR would appect any weight for produce each items (eg. coconut) but not for the ones the customer would weigh at the sco (eg. bananas).
 

grobsh

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Hmm, thats interesting, it's got to be 1 of 2 things.

1. It affects # of items sold, which affects SMS performance, but i doubt this, otherwise all item counts would be screwy.

2. More likely: when i went to training they actually went into detail about how people-planner does the front end grids, and it actually allocates hours based on how long it takes to scan each type of item {as an aside, produce is allocated something like 16 hours per 1000 items, whereas everything else is like 1-2 hrs per 1000 items, so if produce sales plans are out, your grids will be screwed} - my guess is Qty screws up the time allocated to department item times.
very close! its to do with SMS hours for frontend. Basically they work out how many items are produce items, as well as items that are marked down (for anybody that is still using hand-written markdowns) and give frontend a certain percentage of extra hours, based on the fact it takes the few extra seconds to find the item in the drill down menu's. This is an issue for the long-term as if you are constantly using quantities rather than scanning each individual item, they will cut back those hours.
 

ekul444

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So, I don't get what you're saying.. what are the customers doing? Weighing 2 apples, putting them into the bag, then putting another 2 apples into the bag as well without weighing them? lol.

Haha, wait, on normal checkouts? Silly... any reduction of hours from the use of the quantity button (that only a handful can use) would be negligible. And it's only fair, it does take less time to process an order if you use it, so why should you have more hours :p
Ok, so you get the people that don't want to put their produce in a bag, so they put all the individual apples on the scale, weigh them as normal, but then have to put a couple in to the bagging area, then a couple more etc. I believe with WoWPoS SCO to eliminate lots of weight issues fresh stuff is entered into the system as 'Accept any weight'. When the customer puts the first couple of apples into the bagging area it accepts that as the weight, so when they put the next couple it thinks its an unscanned item.

I can see the merit behind eliminating weight requirements for fresh items (especially meat/bakery and quantity produce) but since the SCO knows the exact weight of the produce (since its just weighed it) surely they should have kept it the same as NCR

About the quantity - this is on SCO - I really don't know it either, but she specifically told me to limit the use of it, and that she doesn't like her staff using it all on SCO. Seems a bit pedantic to me.


very close! its to do with SMS hours for frontend. Basically they work out how many items are produce items, as well as items that are marked down (for anybody that is still using hand-written markdowns) and give frontend a certain percentage of extra hours, based on the fact it takes the few extra seconds to find the item in the drill down menu's. This is an issue for the long-term as if you are constantly using quantities rather than scanning each individual item, they will cut back those hours.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up. I think I will still be using quantity though, cause no customer likes to stand there and scan 20 cat foods or 20 tuna cans.

edit: Oh no! Now I keep saying 's-ko'! They've got me already! :p
 
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Craven

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Ok, so you get the people that don't want to put their produce in a bag, so they put all the individual apples on the scale, weigh them as normal, but then have to put a couple in to the bagging area, then a couple more etc. I believe with WoWPoS SCO to eliminate lots of weight issues fresh stuff is entered into the system as 'Accept any weight'. When the customer puts the first couple of apples into the bagging area it accepts that as the weight, so when they put the next couple it thinks its an unscanned item.

I can see the merit behind eliminating weight requirements for fresh items (especially meat/bakery and quantity produce) but since the SCO knows the exact weight of the produce (since its just weighed it) surely they should have kept it the same as NCR

About the quantity - this is on SCO - I really don't know it either, but she specifically told me to limit the use of it, and that she doesn't like her staff using it all on SCO. Seems a bit pedantic to me.




Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up. I think I will still be using quantity though, cause no customer likes to stand there and scan 20 cat foods or 20 tuna cans.

edit: Oh no! Now I keep saying 's-ko'! They've got me already! :p
Oh, okay, I see. I can't speak from experience but the impression I got from the trainer was that the SCO knows how much to weight to expect in the bagging area because the item was just weighed. This seemed straight forward to me, but someone a bit slower in our group asked (when he was saying customers can ring up their own produce items) "how does the machine know I'm not putting more than what I've weighed?" lol and the trainer was sort of like.. well they've just weighed it so it's going to expect that (duh). :p I know when we were roleplaying attendants and customers we were working out ways to cheat the system and we would try saying 1 avocado but putting 2 in the bag and the SCO didn't pick up anything at all. But then again, we just assumed it was still learning the weights of things, since you have to weigh an item 15 times or something before the average weight gets assigned... *shrug*


GO TO SCO!! =D
 

bdude

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So if you guys use your quantity buttons, the hours allocated to frontend get reduced?

I don't mean to be rude, and I do work at the opposition, but that is the biggest load of bull ever. The quantity button is there for people who buy 20 cans of little cat food. Surely it's going to be more beneficial to Woolworths in terms of getting customers through quickly and efficiently if the operator can just go "10" [Quantity] Scan Item rather than trying to scan 10 fiddly little cans of cat food.
 

Craven

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Yeah, but the principle of the system is working out how long it takes to scan all the items that go through the front end and therefore how many operators we need to roster. So if you use the quantity button to scan 20 little cat food items it might save you 30secs off the order so over the week you could end up saving like (totally guessing here) half an hour in scanning items so you have half an hour less in wages up the front end because technically speaking you don't need that extra half hour because you're putting customers through half an hour faster.... relatively speaking, lol.
 

SS-champion

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I think I know the answer to this debate...

If we all scan slower... they will roster on more staff for checkouts! =)
 

ekul444

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Sorry, one more thing... She told me specifically to tell customers that it is an upgrade NOT a conversion - interesting, what do you reckon the reason for that is. hahaha
 
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So you have 7 staff that get regular service shifts? lol, wow. We don't even have a 3IC. We have the CSM, 2IC, another full-time supervisor (who's on holidays at the moment). Then there's me I work full-time between front end and office, another girl that does Wed night and Sat and another girl that does Mon & Tue nights (but shes on holidays too). We have just enough staff with 6 but if anyone wants a day/night off for some reason we are pretty screwed.
We have

CSM and 2IC - each rotate between a Mon-Sat and Tues-Fri roster.
3IC - Monday - Friday
Saturday supervisor
Thurs night/Sun supervisor
And two of us that rotate around everyone else.
 

wixxy2348

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I was in Sydney for the weekend.

We got on the train at the airport and as i sat down i picked up a discarded woolies docket (i think it's the habit of picking them up off the floor at work).

It was a staff member at Marrickville Metro.

Coincidence!
I loved Sydney, for once the people there were nice, and not rude, like they usually are.
Lol, pretty sure I know the store mgr there.
 

bensneddon

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So if you guys use your quantity buttons, the hours allocated to frontend get reduced?

I don't mean to be rude, and I do work at the opposition, but that is the biggest load of bull ever. The quantity button is there for people who buy 20 cans of little cat food. Surely it's going to be more beneficial to Woolworths in terms of getting customers through quickly and efficiently if the operator can just go "10" [Quantity] Scan Item rather than trying to scan 10 fiddly little cans of cat food.
Incorrect use of the quantity function at woolworths has the potential to cause a lot of problems with the automated stock replenishment system (ie. automatic ordering). Unless each SKU is 'quantitied' separately, the SOH counts will become incorrect.
 

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