Planogram buttheadery

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Nothing like doing planograms to remind me why doing planograms is so damn frustrating in the first place. And I thought it would be a welcome change of pace today.

The assignment was to set the 12-foot section of snow shovels, ice scrapers and ice melt. Yeah, we put this shit out in the middle of October, and I can remember some times in the past when those things would be needed by now.

Anyhow, we get everything together, put it in where the planogram says it's supposed to go...

...and discover two shovels that will not fit in their assigned spots. Fuck. Time to take everything down and move it around. This required us to remove the cap shelf (top shelf we used to stash excess Christmas ornament sets) so that we could take out the special hooks the shovels are placed on and then put them back into the pegboard.

And this was just to fit one of the shovels in there. The other wasn't going to fit in at all. So we just left those shovels in their cardboard boxes, cut them open to display them, and put them over by the bicycles so they're still on the salesfloor somewhere. Sadly I can see some corporate suit tut-tutting over this.

But of course the printed planogram says everything should fit in the 12 feet allotted with room to spare! But that's to be expected when everything is represented on the planogram sheet as significantly smaller than it actually is.

By the end I wanted to grab those shovels, head up to corporate, find the anal pisscutter (Military folks, I hope I have not used that term offensively) who noodled around on a computer to come up with that planogram, and beat him/her about the head and torso with them.

[powerboy]

Oh IPF, I feel your pain on planograms. Back when I worked at OfficeMax, I had the same problems. I swear that the suits didn't know how to measure

[edible_hat]

My boss changed our convenience store contract on the grounds that the planograms assume 4 square feet of stuff can fit on a 3 square foot display. So now we don't use them.

[Sandman]

When I worked at Staples our DM was introducing us to the new POG designer. I told my DM "OH good! Now I know who to yell at when the POG's dont work!"

They both started laughing.

[lordlundar]

Oh IPF, I feel your pain on planograms. Back when I worked at OfficeMax, I had the same problems. I swear that the suits didn't know how to measure

That's because they don't. Instead of getting engineers in to make the planos (which would make sense, because they work with measurements all the time) They get their marketing yes men to make them, who are more than happy to lie to appease their overlords. (which is something they do all the time)

[RetailSlave]

Our Plano people come up with stuff like putting heavy items on the top shelf (think large cans of cat and dog food, 30 lb boxes of cat litter, etc) and lighter items on the bottom shelves. I told our 3rd shift store director that it is a concussion waiting to happen and she agrees, but we have to put it out according to the Plano sheet.

[Retail Associate]

Whoever it was that figured our planos was brilliant. I never saw one that didn't fit perfectly.

When I worked in Pet & Garden (the garden center converted to the Christmas dept in the fall) I always loved setting planos. A few years ago the big-wigs decided we should have a planogram team who does nothing but planos. We ordinary peons couldn't do them anymore.

As of this year, my dept (fashions) no longer receives floor plans/planos, so everything is a complete disaster. No one on the stocking crew knows where anything goes, so it goes wherever they can find the room. Things get moved around on a daily basis which means those of us who don't stock have to form a search party to find anything. It's very frustrating and a complete waste of time.

The big-wigs are idiots.

[fireheart]

Given that I'm on checkouts, I don't really know much about plan-o-grams but I had to laugh at this. Anyone here wanna assume that business school doesn't include basic math?
Oh and do we have an icon for buttheadery besides and :wall:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Our Plano people come up with stuff like putting heavy items on the top shelf (think large cans of cat and dog food, 30 lb boxes of cat litter, etc) and lighter items on the bottom shelves. I told our 3rd shift store director that it is a concussion waiting to happen and she agrees, but we have to put it out according to the Plano sheet.

I sincerely hope the store doesn't get held responsible if some 80-year-old woman ends up splattered all over the floor from a falling box or pail of cat litter.

I can't for the life of me figure out why some stores specify that larger items should be put on higher shelves and smaller items on bottom shelves, whether on the salesfloor or in the backroom. In fact, my company's best practices for the backroom specifically says larger items should be kept on bottom shelves, and planograms almost always have larger items on bottom shelves on the salesfloor. It's just safer that way.

[Monica]

I had to put together some before. I think the worst thing I ever had to put together was one for dvd's the directions were so unclear and some directions were so unclear.