How to Read the Front End Schedule

The Front End schedules are a complex document that is meant to address several needs: communicating the IN/OUT times and schedules and tasks throughout the day of both the temporary and permanent staff, assigning staff to work at particular locations and at particular tasks, communicating some basic information about the goals of certain position and the chain of command on the shopping floor.

 

Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the schedule for each day as I issue it, and refer to the notes on the schedule for guidance about goals and priorities.

A sample schedule is available here and it might help you to look at it while reading the information below.

Checkout is the Default Task

In the “Temp Coordinator Overall Schedule” section for each person I only specifically list the tasks that are NOT checkout. Any time within your IN and OUT time that is not specifically listed in the schedule detail is time you will spend working a checkout. Look down below in the middle of the schedule to find which checkout you are staffing. If is often the case that one temp person will work at two different checkouts during the day. This could be the case for several reasons, so it is important to look at all the locations to find where you may be working throughout the day. If a temporary staff member’s schedule involves moving around between checkouts, I may indicate that in the Overall Schedule section as follows: for example, “3-5 @ #15” means that from 3 pm to 5 pm this person would be working at checkout #15.

The specific non-checkout tasks you may possibly be assigned are:

“Entrance” — being part of the two-person team that manages allowing shopping members into the building. The main goals here are clear communication of policy with shopping members and making sure that pink shopping tags a recycled to shopping members as efficiently and quickly as possible.

“Unpacking” — helping members at checkouts to unpack their groceries. This is worthwhile at any point, but it is essential whenever there is a line to checkout. Your assistance to shopping members means they can focus on packing and will exit the checkout area more quickly. This allows us to invite the next shopping member to checkout, to retrieve their pink shopping tag and recycle it to a shopping member

“Checkout Assistant” — helping the temp staff working the two double checkouts: 11/13 and 14/16. You will be offering assistance by stepping in as needed to run one of those four checkouts (don’t forget to sanitize the station each time before you start working) and by helping members unpack. Your priority is these four stations, however if the Coop is slow you can feel free to assist at other checkouts, assist the staff roamer by collecting pink tags and/or acting as a line manger to direct shopping members to open checkouts. When it is very slow, please be mindful of your paid time and re-direct your labor to stocking shelves in the Coop with an emphasis on aisles 4-7 which keep you close to the checkout area.

“RCV” — Every day there could be several of you that have some number of hours devoted to “RCV” in their schedule detail in the “Temp Coordinator Overall Schedule” in upper left of the schedule. What this means is that during those hours you should go into an aisle and stock shelves. Some of you have been asked to work in Food Processing by some of the permanent staff and are now expert in that. if you are ALREADY trained in Food Processing then do that work during your RCV hours. If you are not trained, then please go to an aisle and stock items on u-boats or hollywood carts. If you cannot find anything to stock, then please report to one of the permanent paid staff and ask them to assist you  in connecting with a Receiving Coordinator who will give you something to do.

Reading the Break Coverage Notes

If you are scheduled to cover another persons break — which many of you are — that will be listed in three places:

  1. In your schedule it will say “1-1:30 break coverage” to indicate that during that time period you are providing break coverage for another worker.
  2. In the Break Coverage Detail in the upper right of the schedule you can look for that time period to see who you are  covering for and at what location at that time. For example, “1-1:30 Kezia covers Michael @ #11/13″
  3. In the schedule detail for the person BEING covered — in this case Michael  — the schedule would say “break 1-1:30=Kezia” to let Michael know when his break is and who is covering.
  4. In some cases I can work in a break for someone that does NOT require coverage — because the break happens between tasks — and in cases like that it will say in the schedule detail “break 2-2:30= no coverage or no cover.”