Yeah, and they print out charts of stats so they can lecture us about it.
And then immediately lecture us about our CCG's .
We are also required to have "If you can, scan!" stickers on all the registers. It was pissing me off to have them on the keyboards, so I peeled most of them off and stuck them elsewhere. Apparently, management got it trouble for it. The label maker is too hard to use, so all the replacements read "if you can scan".
I'd say somewhere between a third and one half of produce is scannable. So they gave us flip sheets that have most of the barcodes on them. What a pain in the ass.
I work in produce, and I can tell you that many of those eensy teensy tiny little oval stickers, such as on the apples, lemons, oranges, avocados, mangos, peppers, etc. do not want to scan when I use our RF scanner to check a price. I am assuming the checkout scanners at the front end are more sensitive or "better" in some way than our RF's, but if they are ANYTHING like the problems we have in scanning the stickers, it is frustrating and makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE to just type in the four or five digit PLU number of the item.
(I understand that Corporate would like the front end to get up to 65% compliance with scanning sticker bar codes, and the purpose is to help cut down on customer fraud......via their buying organic but typing in the PLU for the regular, cheaper, version of fruit or vegetable. )
I assume it is because the stickers are so small, and the ink graphic is a bit too blurry or the black bars too "close together" that the RF isn't good enough to decode the black lines and spaces accurately. Sometimes I can scan an apple to check the price, and after "sweeping" the bar code about 4 or 5 times, suddenly it works! Such as waste of valuable time!!
Corporate needs to know a lot of that produce will not have stickers on them. They fall off and when cashiers cannot see a sticker we ring it up as regular lemon lime etc. all fruit and vegetables looks the same. Only way cashiers knows if they are organic is if there is a sticker on product. I do not think the world will stop if cashiers cannot scan those stupid stickers on produce. I have been scanning for 31 years and I have those produce codes in my brain I do not have to look up codes. Those cheat sheets do not scan half the time. Customers put different fruit and vegetables in the same bag and then you have to try to figure out if they are organic or not. They put apples that is supposed to be weigh with ones that is by quantity and you have to figure out which is which. Corporate needs to work as a cashier and see stupid things that customers does and maybe they would see the light!!. Grape prices are not in the computer. You tell the scan people and they say they put them in the computer but corporate knocks them out of the computer.
This is something that was started over 2+ years ago, they believe it eliminate shrink as cashiers are not just keying whatever item they believe it is. How can a cashier determine an item is organic or non-organic just from looking at the item? How many people can actually tell all the different apples apart. Most store that have an extremely high score either have low produce sales or are using store made sheets with produce stickers on them. In reality there is always going to be stickers that will not scan because there are too many different produce upc (every different vendor has a sticker with the same PLU but different UPCs). In reality its its hard to tell where produce shrink is coming from, I believe the only way they know scanning produce is effective is comparing Organic Sales pre-scanning to after-scanning.
Mr Frontenac your scanners are more sensitive and scan easier then the older laser based scanners. Just remember scan and then place on the platter (scale) or you will have multiple scans. Also if you have the black handheld scanners, you will be able to scan the stacked barcodes.
Yet another Kroger program with good intentions (cut down on shrink, increase reliability of produce inventory), that Kroger screwed up through mismanagement.
If they wanted it to succeed, they shouldn't have tied it to metrics/incentives, that ALWAYS makes people take shortcuts that defeat the whole point of the system (see: people using sheets with produce stickers on them, or typing in zeros before the PLU to make it look like a "scanned" item). And they should have made absolutely sure that items had barcodes that do not fall off, and that properly scan. Also in our store, there's a total of THREE people who can even fix non-scanning barcodes, and two of them are file maintenance so they leave early in the morning. That's just dumb, give that power at least to service desk employees.
Well I still do no believe the handhelds can scan the stacked upcs. When I last tried to scan a produce sticker with an ordering gun, it would always add a Zero before the actual upc, which would eliminate the last digit of the actual upc. If your want to add an item to the system, have a FES/Office Associate do a 6SignON/Price Check and type in the PLU and then write the item not found upc on the slip from the screen. MC/ACE/POS Computer - Data Maintenance - Type in the Item not found and then key in the PLU and save.
At my store, it's completely impossible to do anything like that. The absolute best case scenario is that someone xeroxes the old barcode and sticks it on the registers. Otherwise, we just have to wait for the next load, which may or may not scan.
Haha, I spend a few years learning all the stuff. Back in the day you learned Old School and actually learned how stuff worked and build your knowledge on that. There wasn't a class or a binder to read up on everything, you learned as the did and the 30+ years of experience co-workers showed you stuff. I would say part of the companies problems is that they are not really teaching anyone anything to grow/innovate/sustain the stores. I started before there was a Help Desk or Tolt/Pomeroy, you learned to fix, tape together and rig stuff to work.
Part of the companies problems, it all tasks are too compartmentalized. Your group only handles one small task but it effect 10 others....but its not your problem after your task is done.
Produce Scanning......
Effects Produce Shrink
FE Productivity
GO Procurement
Possible Future Produce Ordering/CAO
GO Data Maintenance/Pricing
If its such a big opportunity why isn't there a company wide champion to address the NOF items, lower scanning store, RF guns not being able to scan stickers. If it eliminates so much shrink, I would think the persons yearly salary would be covered in 1 day/week of shrink prevention company wide. How hard is it to tell every vendor to provide their UPC list to Kroger at time of introduction into the supply chain?
Yes, I make it sound easy, but isn't easier for GO to fix it rather than each store to have to "deal" with the same things.....
Well I still do no believe the handhelds can scan the stacked upcs. When I last tried to scan a produce sticker with an ordering gun, it would always add a Zero before the actual upc, which would eliminate the last digit of the actual upc. If your want to add an item to the system, have a FES/Office Associate do a 6SignON/Price Check and type in the PLU and then write the item not found upc on the slip from the screen. MC/ACE/POS Computer - Data Maintenance - Type in the Item not found and then key in the PLU and save.
EUID... wrote: "Well I still do not believe the handhelds can scan the stacked upcs".
Hey, Please let me make it clear that I CAN scan some of produce "two layer bar codes" stickers with the RF gun. NO question about that.........it does work ........... BUT (and I mean BUT) it is VERY hit and miss. I might "sweep" over it at half-dozen times and suddenly (for no apparent reason) it scans, and the screen shows all the same info as if I just scanned a regular barcode. So it can work.........just not that often, and not very well on the smallest produce stickers.
RF is the store ordering guns. Register handhelds should be able to scan, I knew the newer ones definitely did (Black), but the white ones I'm not sure. IF you scan with an RF, scan the item and then another and see what you see on the screen...most likely will be the same information (on stacked barcodes).
I can usually get the RF guns to scan stacked produce barcodes. The trick seems to be to aim at the center of the barcode, then quickly tilt the handheld up and down so the red laser bar "wiggles" over the center line.
.
