Society & Culture Supermarket/shopping centre stories

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peternorth said:
What’s it like in a closed store aker no customers.
Click to expand...

I'd love to see the figure for stock replenishment with the stores still open, there's obviously something I'm missing.

I did nightfill as a 15 and 16 year old back in 1983 / 84 when you still had to price things with a pricing gun and nearly everything was in a cardboard carton that you had to cut.

After a stint away in the mines, I returned to Coles in late '89 and was a Nightfill Manager and Ordering Officer for nearly 3 years before I joined the Navy.

Fast forward to 2018 and I transferred from one role in the mines to another, at the time I was doing job share, 2 weeks on and 4 weeks off. I was starting to get bored during my 4 weeks off, so with a Coles 300m up the road, I thought I'd go and get some casual work to fill in some time and gouge back a tiny bit of the 50% wage cut I had just voluntarily taken.

I only ended up doing half a dozen shifts, I had a disagreement with the 'senior' casual, there was no Nightfill Manager, he sooked it up and they never gave me another shift. My daughter works there so I'm in all the time shopping and I have noticed, and my daughter has told me that a lot of the stock replenishment crew are now filling the way I was.

The way they do it generally now, if you gave me the task of writing a procedure and that procedure had to be the most inefficient way of doing a task, I would model it on how stores now restock their shelves. For the small amount they save on wages / penalty rates, it must cost them a fortune in inefficiencies and 2/3 of the time you walk into the store first thing in the morning and it looks like a bomb has hit it. When I worked with them as the Nightfill Manager, if the store was ever like that when it opened in the morning, I would have been sacked within the first 2 or 3 days.
 
Herne Hill Hammer said:
I'd love to see the figure for stock replenishment with the stores still open, there's obviously something I'm missing.

I did nightfill as a 15 and 16 year old back in 1983 / 84 when you still had to price things with a pricing gun and nearly everything was in a cardboard carton that you had to cut.

After a stint away in the mines, I returned to Coles in late '89 and was a Nightfill Manager and Ordering Officer for nearly 3 years before I joined the Navy.

Fast forward to 2018 and I transferred from one role in the mines to another, at the time I was doing job share, 2 weeks on and 4 weeks off. I was starting to get bored during my 4 weeks off, so with a Coles 300m up the road, I thought I'd go and get some casual work to fill in some time and gouge back a tiny bit of the 50% wage cut I had just voluntarily taken.

I only ended up doing half a dozen shifts, I had a disagreement with the 'senior' casual, there was no Nightfill Manager, he sooked it up and they never gave me another shift. My daughter works there so I'm in all the time shopping and I have noticed, and my daughter has told me that a lot of the stock replenishment crew are now filling the way I was.

The way they do it generally now, if you gave me the task of writing a procedure and that procedure had to be the most inefficient way of doing a task, I would model it on how stores now restock their shelves. For the small amount they save on wages / penalty rates, it must cost them a fortune in inefficiencies and 2/3 of the time you walk into the store first thing in the morning and it looks like a bomb has hit it. When I worked with them as the Nightfill Manager, if the store was ever like that when it opened in the morning, I would have been sacked within the first 2 or 3 days.
Click to expand...

Good insights, cheers!

I imagine shopping hours deregulation in Victoria played a role in the decision as well?

Most Coles in the 80's would've been normal shopping times if memory serves (8-6 M-F & 9-12 Sat?) I definitely remember the mad scramble doing shops on a Saturday morning with everybody else if Mum had been working that week. So you fill when the shop is shut. Makes sense.

But then shopping hours were deregulated - and some Coles even went 24 hour for a while of memory serves (mine are 0630-2300 now) so you almost have to fill when the shop is open?

Warning: South Australian posters may not understand this. 😜
 

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Larry Barnsworth said:
Good insights, cheers!

I imagine shopping hours deregulation in Victoria played a role in the decision as well?

Most Coles in the 80's would've been normal shopping times if memory serves (8-6 M-F & 9-12 Sat?) I definitely remember the mad scramble doing shops on a Saturday morning with everybody else if Mum had been working that week. So you fill when the shop is shut. Makes sense.

But then shopping hours were deregulated - and some Coles even went 24 hour for a while of memory serves (mine are 0630-2300 now) so you almost have to fill when the shop is open?

Warning: South Australian posters may not understand this. 😜
Click to expand...

For me Easter Saturday was always the busiest day of the year. Closed Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday and I'm pretty sure the Tuesday was closed then too to allow for the public holidays falling on the weekend. I was young so always got the work, double time and a half. Easter Saturday with a 1 pm closing time, we used to clear $100,000 cash per hour out of the registers. In those days, $100 would fill a trolley or two. Twenty-two registers open and the smoke kiosk, queues halfway back down the aisles at all of them. I remember coming out of the storeroom with a trolley loaded with marked down Easter eggs about an hour before we closed and being knocked over, along with the trolley and when I picked myself up, everything was gone.

Early days, Monday to Wednesday 8-5:30, Thursday and Friday 8-9, Saturday 8-1

100 pallets of dry goods coming in each day of that week.

60 to 80 pallets / bins of fruit and vege daily

20 pallets of dairy daily

20 pallets of frozen daily

plus all of the smaller truck loads for things like milk, bread, biscuits, butcher's shop, specialty deli items, chickens for the rotisseries, pallet loads of raw products for the bakerhouse

The store I started at opened in 1973 and for a couple of years in the mid 70s was the number 1 store in Australia for profit / volume, when I started there after school in 1983 it was about number 5 or 6 in Victoria.

When I was Nightfill Manager from '89 to '92 opening hours were Mon-Wed 8-6, Thu-Fri 8-9, Saturday 8-5, Sunday was still closed. Fulltime nightfill hours were 6pm to 2am and 9pm to 5am. As the manager I used to stay back for 3 hours on Saturday mornings until day management were all in (it was a very nice little earner those 3 hours).

Pallets were pretty much all picked and stacked by aisle at the distribution centre so the pallets could be wheeled straight into the shop and dropped at the end of the aisle, we would also drop one of those large wooden fruit and vege bins at the ends of the aisle, one between each 2 for all the rubbish to go in.
Good staff could load their trolleys so they barely had to move once they got into the aisle to put stock away, it was only at the end of a pallet that you'd have a few dribs and drabs that you'd have to move up and down the aisle for, but even then, you'd load the trolley so you moved around the aisle in sequence of what you had on your trolley. Nowadays, they get those half egg trollies loaded for them for a particular aisle but not loaded in any sequence so they'll move from one end of the aisle to the other wasting time and energy, the trollies they're loaded onto are also no good as a work platform. You're either working from too high or on the floor or cutting stuff you're cradling in your arm.

When I did my 6 shifts in 2018, I worked off those stupid trollies for 2 nights, they were giving me the dog food aisle each time so after a couple of nights I knew where everything went so when I came in for my next shift, I grabbed a flat bed trolley (very good height and work platform) from the storeroom and reloaded from their trolley onto mine, it would take me a minute to load my trolley up and then everything would be in sequence of the aisle, much better, no wasted time moving up and down. The carton rate was 54 I was doing high 50s (I kept a tally in case someone whinged about what I was doing) even with the small amount of time it took me to reload. The senior casual walked up to me on my 6th night, about 10 mins before I was due to go home, I was just loading the last few bits of stock onto my trolley and he commented that, 'there's a lot of wasted time and inefficiency going on in this aisle', I replied to him, 'how would you know, you haven't been down here all night, I'm doing your carton rate easily'.

I never got another shift.
 
Billy ray said:
Seeing the “night-fillers” at any part of day is quite common nowadays. They can be annoying but not as annoying as the staff doing the orders for home delivery with their big carts all over the aisles
Click to expand...

You'd think home deliveries will get to the point where it's just done from a closed warehouse somewhere rather than from a suburban store full of people.
 
Larry Barnsworth said:
Good insights, cheers!

I imagine shopping hours deregulation in Victoria played a role in the decision as well?

Most Coles in the 80's would've been normal shopping times if memory serves (8-6 M-F & 9-12 Sat?) I definitely remember the mad scramble doing shops on a Saturday morning with everybody else if Mum had been working that week. So you fill when the shop is shut. Makes sense.

But then shopping hours were deregulated - and some Coles even went 24 hour for a while of memory serves (mine are 0630-2300 now) so you almost have to fill when the shop is open?

Warning: South Australian posters may not understand this. 😜
Click to expand...
Port Melbourne Coles was 24/7 when I lived there
 
craigos said:
That reminds me. I had to do trolley boy duties one night, no big deal. Collected them all from the car park and started pushing them towards the front doors. Was a nice little decline so didn't have to push much, unfortunately was carrying a bit too much speed and the automatic doors hadn't opened fully and BOOM, smashed the doors off their hinges. Luckily the glass didn't break but we couldn't close the store until a repair guy showed up.

Never had to be trolley boy again :thumbsu:
Click to expand...

I hit a car. Was pushing them up towards the shopping centre and he was coming from the right. He must have been doing like 40 in the car park and then when he saw me he slammed the brakes on. The trolleys were all chained together but they all had probably 6 inches extension on each chain so when you are pushing 15 trolleys and pull up the first one you are pushing, the others still have some roll to them. Slammed into the passengers side door of the car, driver should have just kept going and I wouldn't have hit him. Was pretty s**t scared as 15yo but they didn't care at all.
 
Hamingja said:
I hit a car. Was pushing them up towards the shopping centre and he was coming from the right. He must have been doing like 40 in the car park and then when he saw me he slammed the brakes on. The trolleys were all chained together but they all had probably 6 inches extension on each chain so when you are pushing 15 trolleys and pull up the first one you are pushing, the others still have some roll to them. Slammed into the passengers side door of the car, driver should have just kept going and I wouldn't have hit him. Was pretty sh*t scared as 15yo but they didn't care at all.
Click to expand...

When I was working after school, the last two tasks each night were to pull the pallets into the store for nightfill and to collect all the trollies out in the carpark. There were no trolley bays in the carparks, no tractors of 4x4s towing trailers, it was just all teenage muscle power. The furtherest part of the carpark was approx 200m from the store, half would go do the trollies and the other half would do the pallets. There would be 300 to 400 trollies to collect each Thursday and Friday night and Saturday afternoon. We used to have competitions to see who could go the quickest, who could push the most in one go. No straps holding them altogether, you just had to control that snake with your strength and subtle angle shifts, push a snake of up to 35 at a time. The most I ever saw was 38, most of us were good for 30 to 35. If you were lucky, you'd get someone hanging on the front helping to steer and helping to stop them getting away from you, it was a bit of an art, we were helped by the carparks being mostly empty that time of the night, the biggest challenge was getting them up that steel ramp over the gutter and neatly up against the outside walls.

In front of our twin loading dock, all the carparks were painted out and it was a no parking area so that our trucks could back in. During Easter and Christmas people didn't care, the carpark would overflow and rather than park in the suburban streets, people would risk parking in the no parking area. If they were in shopping and a semi showed up, we'd page their rego over the store's intercom and we'd get centre management to do it over the whole shopping centre. If there was no response by the time we had the tarp off the truck and folded up, we'd wheel out a pallet jack with a pallet on it, wheel it under the car / s jack them up and move them out of the way, usually making it difficult for them to get out when they eventually returned. Another way to move them if they were a small car like a Gemini or Corolla was to have a person on each corner and bounce the car up and down, once you got some momentum happening, they'd bounce out of the way enough to get the trucks in.
 
Was at KMart today. Woman with two children (about 7 and 4). The 7 year old is pushing the pram, and the mum started losing it at him. "Watch where you're going!" "Move out of the way!" "Look out for those people!"

How about you just push the pram yourself you ******* idiot.
 
Herne Hill Hammer said:
For me Easter Saturday was always the busiest day of the year. Closed Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday and I'm pretty sure the Tuesday was closed then too to allow for the public holidays falling on the weekend. I was young so always got the work, double time and a half. Easter Saturday with a 1 pm closing time, we used to clear $100,000 cash per hour out of the registers. In those days, $100 would fill a trolley or two. Twenty-two registers open and the smoke kiosk, queues halfway back down the aisles at all of them. I remember coming out of the storeroom with a trolley loaded with marked down Easter eggs about an hour before we closed and being knocked over, along with the trolley and when I picked myself up, everything was gone.

Early days, Monday to Wednesday 8-5:30, Thursday and Friday 8-9, Saturday 8-1

100 pallets of dry goods coming in each day of that week.

60 to 80 pallets / bins of fruit and vege daily

20 pallets of dairy daily

20 pallets of frozen daily

plus all of the smaller truck loads for things like milk, bread, biscuits, butcher's shop, specialty deli items, chickens for the rotisseries, pallet loads of raw products for the bakerhouse

The store I started at opened in 1973 and for a couple of years in the mid 70s was the number 1 store in Australia for profit / volume, when I started there after school in 1983 it was about number 5 or 6 in Victoria.

When I was Nightfill Manager from '89 to '92 opening hours were Mon-Wed 8-6, Thu-Fri 8-9, Saturday 8-5, Sunday was still closed. Fulltime nightfill hours were 6pm to 2am and 9pm to 5am. As the manager I used to stay back for 3 hours on Saturday mornings until day management were all in (it was a very nice little earner those 3 hours).

Pallets were pretty much all picked and stacked by aisle at the distribution centre so the pallets could be wheeled straight into the shop and dropped at the end of the aisle, we would also drop one of those large wooden fruit and vege bins at the ends of the aisle, one between each 2 for all the rubbish to go in.
Good staff could load their trolleys so they barely had to move once they got into the aisle to put stock away, it was only at the end of a pallet that you'd have a few dribs and drabs that you'd have to move up and down the aisle for, but even then, you'd load the trolley so you moved around the aisle in sequence of what you had on your trolley. Nowadays, they get those half egg trollies loaded for them for a particular aisle but not loaded in any sequence so they'll move from one end of the aisle to the other wasting time and energy, the trollies they're loaded onto are also no good as a work platform. You're either working from too high or on the floor or cutting stuff you're cradling in your arm.

When I did my 6 shifts in 2018, I worked off those stupid trollies for 2 nights, they were giving me the dog food aisle each time so after a couple of nights I knew where everything went so when I came in for my next shift, I grabbed a flat bed trolley (very good height and work platform) from the storeroom and reloaded from their trolley onto mine, it would take me a minute to load my trolley up and then everything would be in sequence of the aisle, much better, no wasted time moving up and down. The carton rate was 54 I was doing high 50s (I kept a tally in case someone whinged about what I was doing) even with the small amount of time it took me to reload. The senior casual walked up to me on my 6th night, about 10 mins before I was due to go home, I was just loading the last few bits of stock onto my trolley and he commented that, 'there's a lot of wasted time and inefficiency going on in this aisle', I replied to him, 'how would you know, you haven't been down here all night, I'm doing your carton rate easily'.

I never got another shift.
Click to expand...

I think I had the opposite experience you did. Worked in one of the smaller stores in WA and turnover was pretty low. Wouldn't have been 100 pallets of dry goods a week let alone each day. Was early 2000s so worked with people who were there when it was still hand pricing each item. We used to split pallets onto trolleys because the orders were so small one pallet could be split across 3-4 aisles. Stuff like soft drink, pet food etc. which is bulky you would just wheel the pallet to the aisle. Before I left they started to move away from pallets to those upright cages and I don't think it made things any quicker. Nowadays when I go to the shops after work at 7-8pm the aisles are full of the things.

Used to baffle me how inefficient the ordering was. If baked bean tins come in a carton of 24 then you need room on the shelf for 24. If you never want to run out, then you need enough room for more than 24. The number of products like that where they would sell say 10 a week and have room for 24 (or less) so the shelf would either be empty or it would be full and someone would have half a carton to put in the storeroom.
 
peternorth said:
What’s it like in a closed store aker no customers.





Yes.

How about bi Lo.
Click to expand...

WA had a BILO supermarket in the 1980s and 1990s that was owned by another company, so the Coles Myer BiLo had to trade as Newmart.

I remember getting a roast turkey leg at a BiLo at the big shopping centre in Glebe Sydney and then I saw an uncooked turkey leg on the surface of a sink. Let's say after enjoying that leg back home I spent quite a bit of time in the toilet.
 

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Scotland said:
I think I had the opposite experience you did. Worked in one of the smaller stores in WA and turnover was pretty low. Wouldn't have been 100 pallets of dry goods a week let alone each day. Was early 2000s so worked with people who were there when it was still hand pricing each item. We used to split pallets onto trolleys because the orders were so small one pallet could be split across 3-4 aisles. Stuff like soft drink, pet food etc. which is bulky you would just wheel the pallet to the aisle. Before I left they started to move away from pallets to those upright cages and I don't think it made things any quicker. Nowadays when I go to the shops after work at 7-8pm the aisles are full of the things.

Used to baffle me how inefficient the ordering was. If baked bean tins come in a carton of 24 then you need room on the shelf for 24. If you never want to run out, then you need enough room for more than 24. The number of products like that where they would sell say 10 a week and have room for 24 (or less) so the shelf would either be empty or it would be full and someone would have half a carton to put in the storeroom.
Click to expand...

I used to order to fill the shelf and then we had CAO, computer assisted ordering. It would keep a rolling 6 week average of every item, if the shelf held 10 cases of Coke and I ordered 8 cases to fill it on Wednesday and we normally sold 14 cases on each of a Thursday, Friday and Saturday, we would fill the shelf and the system would order the extras, day shift just had to remember to get someone to fill it in the afternoon.

Any stock in the storeroom would have a 6 digit number on it, after I ordered to fill the store I would, minus all the stuff off in the storeroom off the order. I loved that part of the job, I was very good at it, 4 hours per night it used to take me. I think the whole ordering process is pretty much automated now.
 
MatthewB said:
Big W used to aswell
Click to expand...
Coles had cafeterias too

830c6d32faa57af4c425d11081acb76f
 
Last edited:
Herne Hill Hammer said:
You'd think home deliveries will get to the point where it's just done from a closed warehouse somewhere rather than from a suburban store full of people.
Click to expand...
Thats done now. Go down Swan Street in Richmond there is a Coles dark store where they do the online orders.
 
Pakenhamsaint said:
Thats done now. Go down Swan Street in Richmond there is a Coles dark store where they do the online orders.
Click to expand...
weird they would have that in a bit of expensive real estate area...it must make economic sense to be there and not in a cheaper location
 
peternorth said:
What’s it like in a closed store aker no customers.
Click to expand...
Working in a closed store was awesome, we use to ride the pallet jacks like a scooter round the store until one twat stacked it and broke his arm and that was the end of the fun.

But having no customers to bother you was amazing, you knew how much time you had to complete your tasks and could just get in cruise control and get it done.
 
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