First Day of (Actual!) Work

Today was my first day of actual work (as supposed to the computer training, which was pretty boring and consisted mostly of watching long politically-correct presentations about World Class customer service, safety, yadayadayada. Finally, I can actually do my job; I'm both excited and anxious, as I am basically being thrown to the sharks, and expected to learn to swim, survive, and help other people do the same.

As I'm working a store where I know almost nothing about where everything is, I have either two options when a customer asks where to find "X" item: wander aimlessly and hope against hope I will find the item they're looking for in less than a minute, or pray that there is another courtesy clerk / department manager in the area that can help them find it.

Often, unfortunately, I have been unlucky enough to not be able to do either, and I am left to regretfully tell the customer I wish I could help them, but that I'm new at this store, and have no idea where anything is. It's quite embarrassing, and gives me all the more incentive to learn where everything is in this store ASAP, and by any means store policy will allow.

As such, I have formulated a plan to develop a map of where everything (and I mean everything!) in the store is, and goes-- a blueprint of sorts.

My plans for the blueprint go like this:

1. Number code by isle (1A[#1], 1B[#1])
2. Produce locations coded by PLU# (also known as PAUL: "Produce Accuracy Using Label")
3. Include Legend that accounts for every food, product, and item, at the bottom.
4.Add all vital information regarding the back areas, parking lot, offices, etc.
5. Study, Study, Study!
6. Submit map idea to management.

Other than my difficulties with go-backs (putting items back where they belong) and customer assistance looking for items, today was pretty perfect overall. I did make some mistakes-- mostly in regards to properly logging sweep hours:

I had logged sweeps only once for my sweep hour, but apparently you're supposed to log it twice-- once for each half-hour. As it turns out, this is mostly for auditing purposes-- by making sure that everyone logs their sweeps twice per hour, it can help guarantee no hours are missed-- which is what the auditing team checks for.

Update: The information I was given regarding sweep audits is not only wrong, but it's a breach of Safeway contract and sweep policy. This information was given to me by the 2nd Assistant Manager and fellow courtesy clerks, who believe that doing it that way is more efficient, but the store manager, district manager, and health and safety specialists disagree, and for good reason! I'll explain these reasons in a later post, so stay tuned!

I was actually pretty nervous my first day, and although I smiled a great deal, it was a very nervous, strained smile. While bagging the groceries I messed up a little bit, but nevertheless, the day has passed by very smoothly, and amazingly quickly.

My fellow courtesy clerks are fairly supportive of me, but it's the food clerks (colloquially, they're called "Checkers") that are helping me out the most, particularly with finding things, and backing groceries.

They are also incessantly reminding me of important things like "BOB" (Bottom Of Basket), which refers to items that customers (either accidentally or intentionally) put on the bottom of the cart; there is a high possibility that these items might pass through unpurchased ("free"), if both the Checker and I don't work together to make sure that the items on the bottom of the cart of properly accounted for.

As was first introduced in the Tuesday computer training videos, SHRINK, the codename for inventory which leaves the store unpurchased, refers to items that were purchased in bulk by Safeway for sale, but were never sold due to spoilage, breakage, theft, etc. SHRINK takes away considerably from company profits, and is considered one of Safeway's biggest damage control/liability concerns.

Working at Safeway is pretty easy to get used to if you pay attention-- for the most part, everything's pretty automated, and time flows extraordinarily fast. The whole day of work today felt like 15 minutes (no hyperbole!), in fact. The two most difficult things to do (other than go-backs, of course!) were to remember to go on break and lunch. Remember go-backs is going to be a real b*tch though-- that's going to be an ongoing process for sure ;-(

I'm starting to get into the rhythm of things now-- a few more days and I'll have nearly my entire job mastered. Towards the end of the day, I'm no longer feeling nervous, and I can now socialize with customers with ease while still performing my job with a professional grace. Safeway is looking to be a very fulfilling and relatively relaxing job. I think I will love my job more and more as my days here go on ;-)