Ok, let me get this off my chest... THESE ZEBRAS SUCK ASSSSSSSSSSS First of all- I'm scanning out leftover markdowns to donation, and the thing just stops scanning. Have to submit, go back in to scanning out donations and continue. THIS HAPPENS MULTIPLE TIMES DAILY! You gotta log in to the zebra. Ok. Then log in again to use the search feature. ...k. And log in again to check your mytime stuff. ...k. And don't forget to log in to do your daily Fresh Start 'training' BS ...k. I swear every hour I'm relogging into this darn thing for something- why can't it just be One log in?? We only got these zebras a couple months ago, and within a few weeks at least a third of them were damaged- they are shaped like PHONES. How often do people drop their PHONE? ALL THE TIME. What happens when they fall? CRAAAACK! At least the RF guns could take a beating!
But to the MAIN POINT(s) Let's start with Daily Counts. We want to ensure we have BOH accuracy, right? Right! Helps us stay in stock. You know what worked- and worked Really REALLY well? Lows & Holes. End of the day, I'm about to go over my ordering, done stocking all my backstock. Go out on the salefloor, make a sweep and scan anything that is Low or a Hole and see what is going on and Fix it. Took about 5 minutes TOPS, could also use this to adjust out inventory that I'm using to produce other items. You know what takes an hour every day now?? Backroom Count and Daily Count. I swear all this does is mess up my accurate BOH because in the time that I get to the back freezer, count what I need to, and get to the salesfloor, count what I need to- items are already piled in people's baskets moving around the store or standing in long lines at the front.. What a waste of TIME and how INEFFICIENT!
Fresh Production?! I wasn't the Biggest fan of CAP for two reasons. 1- If you know your department and product, it just slows you down. 2- Those pages were hard to read! You want me to stock 2 "LAWYS COLS CRRTCK" How in the **** do I explain to my associates that means the carrot cake slices? Most of my associates are English as a second language and you want them to have to try and read condensed jargon?!
But for all that I hated it- I understood the necessity in having my part time associates produce the Right Amount of HIGHLY perishable product- pretty much anything with 5 or less days shelf life.
So now we have Fresh Production! WHOOPEE!! Same issues, but now More of them. Okay, so it still slows you down if you know what your product is and how fast it moves. The items Are easier to read though. But here's the problem- the pictures are quite often either not there or very Wrong. Like it shows a picture of my chocolate donuts when it wants the combo donuts. If that isn't enough, I cannot edit a Thing in it. So it just has this automatic "standard" of 4. 4 for everything, most everything. Items with 120 day shelf life? 4. Items with 2 day shelf life? 4. And it really doesn't matter if you have 18 on the shelf already, you could punch in 2 on the shelf, you could punch in there's 10,000 on the shelf, it won't mess with the BOH, and it doesn't seem to direct it to change how much it wants produced! So WTF is the point of Counting it? I don't even bother anymore, just CLICK CLICK CLICK START PRODUCTION CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK SUBMIT. (20 minutes of clicking check boxes, mind you) And then there are items that have changed so many times they show up no less than 3 maybe 4 times in the list under all the old UPCs they used to have. "Did you produce chocolate extreme brownies?" "Did you produce them again?" "..And a third time too?" If that wasn't bad enough, I have 2 items in my list that are quite obviously PRODUCE items. "Stock this many of this cake.. this many of that pie... and then 4 of the 2 lb bag of mini sweet peppers." WHAT?! I don't think I'm explaining how useless this thing is enough. I've tried with my store management till I'm blue in the face. I'm reach out to my district deli/bakery leader and explained it is Awful and full of discontinued product. Oh! Discontinued product! The list somehow gets updated with all the new stuff we get in, and stuff that has yet to become available, because why not... but it also is still littered with items that we haven't carried in well over a year, or many many years. Of all the 4" pies which are all currently out of stock, the Only one to show up on Fresh Production is the Peach. I haven't had Peach in YEARS. All we carry anymore is pecan, apple, and cherry. No blueberry, no lemon, no PEACH! You would think there would be some kind of registry built in- Oh, this has a BOH of 0- its not coming in, we'll remove it from the production list until its available- NOOOOOOPE ! It'll send employees on a hunt for all these items that aren't available and in store! So no matter how I spell it out to them, that its WORTHLESS and a waste of time- they rag on it to be done Every Day. Because that is ALL middle management is- they are YES MEN. The big bosses want to come up with a New way to do something to streamline and make things simple for new associates or something blah blah blah, and instead of reporting all the Issues with the new processes- they just double down and exclaim, "MY GOD, THIS IS BRILLIANT, MMMM, ITS SOOO GOOD. YA'LL ARE SO SMART. MMMM. I LOVE YOU. GIVE MORE BONUS PLZ"
I had to laugh when I read your message. I have to stop and submit items several times when I scan them out in the morning. You can't even change the totals. The thing just freezes. I'm the bread baker at my store and everything you wrote is true. The bakery manager wanted me to do all the scans while she was on vacation. I told her it wasn't going to be done. We're lucky if we have three people a day during a normal week. When someone goes on vacation, it's just one or two people. The scans are the last thing I'm worried about. Of course I still have to do the scan or CAP for the bread production for the next day. What I did was I made up a sheet with a list of all the breads and rolls that are on CAP ( I still call it CAP). I then go through the list on the Zebra and write done what it says for each item. I do the breakout and if I make any changes, I write them down. When I'm done, I go back through the list on the Zebra and enter any changes I made. One problem I've found is there are some items I bake that never show up on the Zebra and there are others that I might do one or two a day and it keeps telling me to make six. Another problem is there are some days we don't bake. So I have to guess what I think we're going to need to cover that extra day.
I wonder if they've stopped to think about how much more we could actually get done if we didn't have to jump through so many hoops. When I first started in the bakery, we didn't do scans or stuff like that. You went out on the sales floor with a pen and pad and you wrote down what you needed. It was quick and it was more efficient. One time I told this woman from deli merchandising that the scans were causing more problems than they were solving. She gave the standard response of "It's a tool to help you." I said, "A tool is something useful. This is not useful." She didn't like my response.
You sound like one of my bakery coworkers but you didn't mention an extra detail. You also sound like an old school gamer. As ridiculous as this system is, you want to try and make it work or at least beat the system at their own game. Like most "tools" they roll out, they take something simple that is working and screw it up and waste more of our time that could be used to be physically working.
We, as stupid foolish peons, always adapt and make it look like it is working and they will change it again.
I have been using the zebra since Thanksgiving 2021 for center store. I very rarely log in to the telxon anymore. The zebra works well for me. As soon as I get a routine figured out, they update it and I have to train my fingers to do something else to see the data that was easier to get to before they made the update.
The boh scans only work if the person knows how to count and if they understood the programmers' directions. I got second hand directions for some reports that we have to do and I do not think that person understood what the original directions were. He is trying to game the system(cheat) while using the telxon at the same time. Eventually, the powers that be are going to phase out the telxon one function at a time. And his peons are carrying out his orders. I do not think his helpers can even count without their toes.
The zebra (tc-52, touch computer 52) is more powerful than a cell phone. It is twice as thick. Let's admit it. It is a powerful cell phone that hasn't had the phone app installed yet. I heard that might happen. Sometimes I have to log in past several layers of security too. Most of the time I only log in once after I am past the screen lock. I think the trick is to log in the first time and wait 5 minutes before trying to use an app. The key icon will go from the upper left to the upper right indicating that it is ready. Also, around 730 am, there is some kind of rest for me and I have to log in again. But, for my 8 hour shift, I stay logged in.
We are too stubborn to roll over and give up when the kroger upper crust rolls out these genius tools for us peons to be more productive. Truth be told, they roll out these programs to justify themselves being on payroll. Always being paid to solve problems but creating more in the process and having to solve more problems created by the previous solutions. Genius infinite job security.
Anonymous wrote:Most of the time I only log in once after I am past the screen lock. I think the trick is to log in the first time and wait 5 minutes before trying to use an app. The key icon will go from the upper left to the upper right indicating that it is ready.
That doesn't always work. There are times when I've waited several minutes after the key has moved over and I still have to sign in twice. Other times I can do what I need to do before the key moves over.
