Wow Mad, that is an interesting layout in your store.  I don't think I have been in a store where pets is near grocery.  That is nice because most people look for pet food near their own food.  (food is food I guess)  At my store pets is on GM side next to lawn and garden and infants faces grocery.  It is always fun seeing how different other Walmarts are laid out.  Meijer (a mass retailer based in Michigan) has pets located near grocery in a lot of their stores.  Good luck with your stackbases.

"Interesting" is a nice way to put it, cvan!

It does make sense to have Pets near grocery.  Our store was a prototype.  The reason I have one aisle near L&G, is because the fishtanks can't be located that close to the grocery side--sanitation laws, I assume. 

When we were remodeled, we were hoping (praying) that the tanks would be taken out, but they weren't.  Mgmt thought that Pets would be put all together, by L&G.  I was so excited!!!! 

They gave us no explanation for not moving the rest of Pets, but I think it's because they wouldn't have had enough room for all my counters. Even if they had re-done HBA, Pharmacy and Cosmetics, there wasn't enough room.

I told the Remodel folks that our store was a "prototype gone bad."

I know my sales and customer service suffer, because I have no help on any shift, and usually I'm not near the fishtanks when someone needs fish.

 

Mad

Now I will have to go look at that Meijer again to see how close it is to grocery.  I never really thought about sanitation issues.  Or worse yet have customers or their children put stuff in the tank that could be toxic to the fish.  When I was in high school I took Biology.  Our teacher had a big tank in the front of the class room with lots of fish.  One day he found some berries from a bush in the class room floating in the tank.  He was quite alarmed and said something about the berries being toxic they were little red berries.  Luckily the fish did not find the berries appitizing.

When my old store was remodeled, to become a supercenter, we got a lot of new customers.  There were no other grocery stores nearby, so a lot of the customers were looking more for groceries than anything else.  When they'd ask where the dog food was, they would get mad and say they weren't going to walk "all the way" over to L&G to get it.

At my store now, with that one aisle near L&G that has fish supplies, small animal and pet bird supplies, folks get really pissy when I tell them that the dog and cat supplies are across from the grocery side of the store.  They often insist that it used to be over here, with the fishtanks.  I tell them that ours is a "special" store; in the nicest possible way.

 

Mad

Tuesday afternoon, my asst mgr told me that I had to change an end, which I had had to set last Friday, in a rush. I told him I had no where to put it.  It had been a pallet display AND SINCE I HAVE NO STACKBASES, I adapted it to that end.  He said it looked terrible, and it had multi price points.  I pointed out that I had labelled a multi pricepoint stackbase for Chemicals the previous day.  He said "It has to be done by the end of the day!" and walked away.

It was 1 pm.  My fish are delivered at 1.  At 1:15, I started checking them in.  At 2 pm, I was called to a safety team meeting.  At about 3, I took down the end, and put up a single item.  Luckily, the old end had pdq's, so I piled most of it on a pallet, and put the pegggable stuff in a box. 

Yesterday morning, a co-mgr walked by and said he was glad I changed the end.  He said the asst mgr told him that he had told me to change it MONDAY.  He was told about it Monday morning.  When they asked him about it Tuesday morning, he acted surpised that it wasn't done, and said that he he told me to do it.  So, he waited until 1 pm, the second day he was told about it, and told mgmt that I hadn't done what he told me to do.  The man is overworked and desperate.

 

Mad

I cursed myself by saying that my co-mgr would address this issue.  He hasn't been in the store much this week, and I haven't spoken to him about it.

I deliberately didn't order the dog food that was on the stackbase.  By Monday, 3rd shift had to cannibalize the stackbase, in order to fill the sidecounter.

Yesterday an asst mgr told me to add something else to it.  Then, after a meeting, they said they were going to change it.

Later in the day, I had 200 price changes to do.  One of those items was the one on the stackbase.  I went over to count it, and it was gone.  Not thinking, I ASSUMED they had added it to the pallet on the sales floor, so I only counted that pallet.  When I brought back a float to unload into my steel, there was the stackbase, in front of my bins.

 

Mad