Items per minute?

[bean]

Grocery folks, what do your stores want for items per minute?

Our target is 17 IPMs, though several of our cashiers barely hit 14.

I asked my boss to pull up my scan stats for today - I got into a good rhythm and felt like I was doing 18 or so. I haven't seen my stats in several weeks either - I used to average 15-16, but lately I've noticed myself getting a lot faster.

His reaction was pretty good.

" Holy shit Bean, where are you hiding the speed at? You're at 21!" (technically it was 20.8)

He also told me that looks real good for someone that's trying to go for supervisor (which I am).

I don't know if I'll get the supervisor job, I have 1 writeup on file and that's going to work against me. But I'm confident I'll do well in the interviews.

[fireheart]

Out IPM rate was 16.5 originally, now it's dropped back to 15 due to the bag ban. My rate at the moment averages around the 13-14 mark. Because I get taken off the registers quite a bit sometimes, occasionally my rate goes a bit higher because I've spent more time off the floor, so there's less to calculate my average.

I just need to remember to secure my register.

[bean]

How do you stop the timer on your registers?

On ours, the timer stops if you hit the total button. I'm constantly hitting that when I'm on express, express has no belt and room for only 2 bags (and room for about 10-15 items on the counter). If I have to stop for any reason (having a hard time reading a produce PLU, talking to the customer, etc) I'll also hit total. There's not much danger in hitting it, we have to hit a couple more buttons if they're using a card, and even if they're paying cash we still have to hit the cash button, key in how much they're giving us, then hit enter. Weird NCR registers.

My trainer also told me to hit the secure button anytime I'm between transactions to stop the timer, though I found out later that the clock isn't running until you scan the first item in a transaction. I still hit secure as soon as the register finishes printing the receipt though, partly because if it's slow I'll wander away from my register and help other cashiers bag orders.

[fireheart]

We stop the timers, bean, in one of two ways:

1) By hitting the total key. (I do it whenever I pause)
2) Securing our registers.

[SG15Z]

Our target for regular lanes is 30 IPM and Express is 20. My average on regular is 35-40 and I've hit 50 twice now! And I can get to 25 on express, but most people are at 15+/- on express and 25 on regular.

FYI: Our regular lanes have baggers and express lanes don't. That's why their can be such a difference.

But yes I'm very fast. My tender time is pretty awesome too!

[bean]

FYI: Our regular lanes have baggers and express lanes don't. That's why their can be such a difference.

If we didn't have much produce, I could easily nail 40+ IPMs. We only run 2 baggers per shift, which means we might have 4 baggers at any one time (when shifts overlap) - to cover 20 registers!

Yeah, a coworker asked me today what I would change about our frontend if I made it into management - I told her the first thing I would do would be to hire more baggers. Our baggers also have TONS of side work, they work our parking lot for carts, "make ice" (we offer small bags of ice to customers who have meat or other cold items for free, tossed in with the groceries - making a cart of ice takes about an hour and has to be done 7 or 8 times a day), restock bags, clean our dining room, etc etc etc. Our baggers are way underappreciated, I should know, I used to be one of them (and I always jump in to help them out when it's slow). We also have ONLY paper bags, no plastic, so restocking them takes a hell of a lot longer than just bringing out a fresh bundle of plastic crap.

We sell TONS of produce - most of the orders I deal with are at least 50% produce, and you can't just glance at the produce and key in the number, you have no idea if it's organic or not by glancing (it's about 60/40 organic), and we have over 20 different kinds of apples, each of which has their own PLU.

[Iris Kojiro]

How long ago was the writeup? I had a co-worker who was on a patch of thin ice for a while, then about six months to a year later, he had all but cleaned up his act and got promoted to shift supervisor.

I'm sure you'll do fine, especially if the write up was from a long time ago.

[Kinoo]

I've been wondering if supermarkets still do that, I was a checkout chick back in the early '90's and we used to get our speed checked all the time, have to offer boxes instead of bags (way before the green bags) and be tested on fruit & veg knowledge regularly. Maybe I'm just getting old but the same supermarket now has dreadful service.

[Iris Kojiro]

I've been wondering if supermarkets still do that, I was a checkout chick back in the early '90's and we used to get our speed checked all the time, have to offer boxes instead of bags (way before the green bags) and be tested on fruit & veg knowledge regularly. Maybe I'm just getting old but the same supermarket now has dreadful service.

Tests on produce knowledge? I'm a night cashier at one of my jobs and I would fail so bad on the produce. I've only memorized a few codes. To be fair, you don't see a lot of people buying produce at that time of night, or people in general for that matter.

[SG15Z]

Tests on produce knowledge? I'm a night cashier at one of my jobs and I would fail so bad on the produce. I've only memorized a few codes. To be fair, you don't see a lot of people buying produce at that time of night, or people in general for that matter.

Oh I'm a PLU dictionary. Well mostly. I couldn't tell you all the codes for apples, there's way too many to tell the difference. I just look at the stickers. Still I'm amazing at produce. Even obscure items like Ginger Root (4612), or Tomatillos (4801). I'm just that awesome!

[bean]

Oh I'm a PLU dictionary. Well mostly. I couldn't tell you all the codes for apples, there's way too many to tell the difference. I just look at the stickers. Still I'm amazing at produce. Even obscure items like Ginger Root (4612), or Tomatillos (4801). I'm just that awesome!

We sell a lot of ginger, though it's 94612 for us (we only sell organic ginger). I ring it at least 10-15 times a day.

Jicama is 4626, I still haven't memorized tomatillos and always blank on pineapples.

4016 is for large red delicious apples, 4015 is for the smaller ones. 4017 for green apples. I think 4174 is for Jonagold apples (it's definitely some kind of apple).

I still keep the book handy, I've been cashiering less than a year.

I'm better with our internal PLUs - 15708 is our salad bar, 15049 is for single store brand sodas, 15268 is for a gallon of water from our dispenser, 47963 is for a 99 cent cookie, etc.

Iris Kojiro, the writeup is about 3 months old. Everyone I've talked to said it shouldn't count much against me since it was attendance related. If it was cash handling it'd be another story, but I've only been significantly off twice ($10 short twice, every other time has been a dollar or two, I usually balance within a few cents.. don't get written up until you're more than $50 off).

[SilverOrb]

At my store it was like 16. I ignored it though. SM loved me, and besides... I figure if I had to remember 30 diff things that they wanted me to tell the customer and play nice, something was gonna give... So I had a Rings Per Minute of like 12. When I got yelled at I said that I was "very sorry", then proceeded to ignore my tally.

Bad Silver. Bad. Hehe

[bean]

Thankfully we're really not required to "say" anything - we have to greet the customer, ask them if they found everything they came in for, and basically exchange pleasantries at the end of the transaction. Worded however we like. We're also supposed to ask them if they want ice packed with their cold items, though if I have a bagger they usually handle that.

I change it up depending on the customer - I'm a lot more casual with younger customers, or if they greet me casually.

I found out I have some real competition for supervisor now - I wasn't worried about my competition until one more person put in her intent letter today, she's been with the company forever and she'll probably ace the interviews. I have a management background going for me though.