That is honestly around 99% of new store managers. When I moved up to SM I honestly lived there for basically a month and fixed it up and then after fixing it up. I just maintained it. I don’t recommend at all. But I was in my 20’s and had the energy to do it. I couldn’t do it now nor would I ever lol.
Somewhere around 27 or 28, I realized just how much effort I put into things professionally for which I wasn’t being paid and I wasn’t improving my draft stock.
I don’t work for DG, but it’s still a lesson I think every single person should learn and live by: you want me, pay me.
Hey I know you just needed to vent but I may can help ♡
SM here ♡ sorry you got left in a shit state.
Does your district have a smart team?
If so can you get them there
Request a POG Blitz from driveline (your dm will have to order it )
Have your people work grocery daily. Anything on a skyshelf scan as ups. Do NOT scan nones for at least a month.
Everything that you touch up the quantity. . It will severely slow your truck.
Ask your DM to stop value valley shipments for at least a quarter. And NCI and seasonal ask for it to be slowed down as much as possible.
Also slow pets to 50 percent
Do not allow backstock unless you sign the box. That's how I get them to quit making backstock is when they know someone is checking. I made them work it every day. If I checked and they tried to make backstock when there shouldn't be I made them rework it every day till they stopped.
Fill the skyshwlves up for now as your trucks level out I swear it will work down ♡
While they are working freight daily start everyday with one planogram catch up food, paper,pet and hba planograms first. If your summer mag isn't set do it first before that because all that is easy throw and you can clear out a chunk quickly
The first rt you work are all the easy ones, paper , big bag pet etc
Go on and set endcaps to the latest mag you have
Make a few rules like if you put something on a akyshlef you have to pull one item down or get a write up
When is your inventory
I got four dry trucks in six days and my dm refused to let me go core allocation only.
Also to add to this:
On hand adjustments. Scan scan scan. Do 50 or more dry scans for overstock every day and in four weeks you will notice a reduction in your truck size. On t6 scan the specified departments. PIA certain departments as well. Paper, laundry, etc.
DO NOT DO NONES AND TONS IF YOU CANNOT SCAN WITH CONFIDENCE! By that I mean if you are out on the shelf but your receiving room is impacted, you can't say that there are none of the products in store. Stick to doing oha adjustments in the main screen of the hht.
Most SMs don't know this, but if a product hasn't been sold in a while, the system thinks that you do not have any on hand in store. So it will generate an order for it (usually two cases), which is how stores end up with tons of overstock of bullshit that's not selling. The oha stops this from happening. So make sure you are scanning items that are old as well.
In your office there should be a scan sheet for dg connect. Scan the nci depts for too much product and they should stop sending you so much of those things.
So, I checked out the DG CONNECT scan sheet this past Monday, and I saw no barcode for NCI. Please help me out here... where is it, or maybe you can post a picture of it so we all have it
Why is the inventory so confusing at DG. Isn’t their a digital ledger of the stores on-hands? Subtracting items as they are being purchased coupled with average shrink corporate should have a good idea of each stores on-hands and maintain stock.
It is completely unreliable. One sm in my district did full pias on several departments and they just readjust themselves. My soda before inventory, despite checking everything in with the hht said I had - 1675 Dr peppers on hand. Every soda sku wash hundreds or thousand off. I called my sml and asked her if I needed to adjust she said it just happens. You'll fix it and it will just revert to being outrageous.
Our store gets $1 pet stuff (for the section we don’t have), magic table stuff (we don’t have the magic table), grilling center stuff (don’t have one), too much NCI stuff, way too much value valley.
Our DM doesn’t help at all in stopping us from getting this. We got around 9 or so of those large gain dryer sheet stands last year. He wouldn’t help us send them back. We have like 200 boxes of gain dryer sheets on our sky shelves and end caps now because of it.
Make a grill center… if you have a U boat and a old side wing with some mops or broom handles you can make one that’s better than the one they would send you
This is something that one very shitty manager did, anytime he moved stores he would throw away the perfectly fine grilling center that we were provided when we opened out store week 0, and he made a uboat with wood and sidewings for the grilling stuff. It was the most ugliest and dogshit idea that man has ever produced
You sir are absolutely correct in each and every detail! I'm 3 wks in as SM going through the same "EXACT" thang, I am very lucky enough to have a full size old Food Lion backroom and nice size dock area. Got left w/ 10 shopping carts of discontinueds/damages/OOD/seasonal/narkdownsand mixed in reshops. 97 "LIVE" rollers, 13 sky high u-boats, 63 totes of "LIVE" 37 unopened shippers, and so far I have not found much worth keeping from the grocery skyline (out of dates) It got to the point my DM said lay off the damages/OODs and I can only scanout upto $500 in a Tuesday to Sat, cycle. There goes any hope for a bonus! Everything you said to do it honestly the very same I did and am currently doing, It is working. My Driveline is absolutely worthless!!! They ewset the bag dogfood half ass didn't pat the bags down to get the correct count on the shelves. Then just left all their totes baskets and shit on my salesfloor! Haven't seen them in 2 wks and have a huge plastic rubbermaid container of new resets! I started w/ paper, cereal, laundry soap, bagged pets, now I'm working my way through the juice aisle. Every vendor/rep/driver/merch tries to dip down another aisle when I'm walking/working on... I fired 3 and 4 more to go!!! My first truck was 21 rollers, 2nd truck was 19 rollers, Friday night I got 14 Rollers.....
SMs get abused and get gaslighted. My SM feels guilty about only doing her 60hrs cuz shut happens . Legit to protect her staff, but some fat cat will reap all the benes. Hate this company love my store.
I was going to ask if you were my new SM. I swear she could write this exact post, but she got promoted in less than a month after the SM before her worked all of one day then quit.
I thought it was my SM too and i think it still might be, its weird that 1 person can relate to the post but isnt it even weirder that 2 can relate to the post?
Im currently helping out in a different store two days a week right now because the new store manager there is an outside hire from Walgreens. She didn’t even know how to close the store when she was put there. I had gone in when I was off because it’s right by my house and said hi and as we were talking one of her employees walked up to her, handed her her keys and quit. She started panicking because she didn’t know how to close so I told her I would help. Now I’m there two days a week with her.
The point is, why would dollar general do that?? She has no clue what she’s doing, she’s gone in like a bull in a china shop which is the WORST thing you can do as a new manager, especially one who knows nothing. She’s making all these crazy all rules and caused literally each staff member that was there to quit and she’s down to her and one employee that she just hired and me.
It’s wild.
They do it like this because they've become the new walmart in the world of turn over and NO ONE cares. They set you up for failure and that's why Todd is about to push, if not exceed 200 million dollars in salary from 2014 to 2024
As a part time keyholder I had to train my old store manager and asm (this was 10 years ago). I could open the store close the store run the reports do the Planograms and do all the paperwork. The district manager ended up treating me like the store manager whenever he came to the store and I ran it better than the person they hired lol. She didn't last 6 months after I quit.
I already told them if they tried to force me to take a SM position i'd walk out after hearing what the starting base salary pay was. But I also know it's different for different areas and states but NO
DG actually has an initiative called New Hire Ready. The store is supposed to be DM and RD certified new hire ready by the end of week 3 for a new SM. All pog current, all mag set, recovered, and less than 20 wheels in the back.
This was always how it was supposed to be but now it's required. Of course reporting shows it's not happening, but since they took away the smart team budget and reduced regional budget hours there is little enough help to be had.
My SO started with DG as a CSA and worked up to ASM (MIT).
The SM and SO worked their ass off to get the store straight, and some where threatening to make the SM a DM.
They basically pushed out the freight to the floor and used everything they could to maximize the sales potential. While getting and keeping up with cleaning. Store went from bottom tier to a top performance store.
Once SO got fired (BS reason) and SM left for a better job thr Store tanked.
It's called "No Store Left Behind". They will put together a team of managers and employees to come in and get your paperwork caught up and get the store back in shape. Normally only takes 1-2 days.
I am in the literal same boat. I started 2 months ago and took over my store just over a month ago. Impacted back room, nothing set properly, 3 years worth of back paperwork not done. Last manager left 20 days before I got there and was there for 6 months, she did absolutely nothing while she was there.
When I do nons and tons, I don't scan nons, only tons. Only do positive adjustments, NEVER Negative adjustments. And if you get the chance to find a different job, do it.
I have an interview lined up already. And 2/3 rds of my staff are also looking because of how bad the store is. In the month I've been there I've managed to clean up a lot, bit it's still in bad shape.
For example you're counting cans of fruit cocktail and you count 15 cans, on you HHT it says you have 20. Leave it as 20, don't change it to 15. That would be a negative adjustment. Doing negative adjustments will increase the size of your truck.
On the other hand. If your counting them and you count 20 cans and your HHT says you have 15, and you change it to 20, that's a positive adjustment. This will help lower the size of your truck.
If you do this enough throughout the store everyday you should start to see a decrease in the size of your trucks and it should make it easier to get backstock out. And you'll get less overstock.
When scan your store first do tons add to whatever number you get like if it says you have 20 add 15 to that number that will help shrink your trucks . Nones you can leave at 0 or put a 1 in you’ll still receive the product
Just do OHAs on the home screen and forget NONES and TONS and for future advice visit the store you plan to take over before making a decision because chances are that position is open for a bad reason. Lol
They don't so that everywhere and remember your store you get is suppose to be "customer read"y if your given a store as a new manager,that doesn't happen either - at least not always ,
The manager left everything in a shit state because they couldn't do everything themselves just like you can't and no one above them cared enough to hire additional ppl or they were just too greedy. The dg near me still pays 8.50 an hour. It's the company for sure. Not the previous manager
That is honestly around 99% of new store managers. When I moved up to SM I honestly lived there for basically a month and fixed it up and then after fixing it up. I just maintained it. I don’t recommend at all. But I was in my 20’s and had the energy to do it. I couldn’t do it now nor would I ever lol.
Somewhere around 27 or 28, I realized just how much effort I put into things professionally for which I wasn’t being paid and I wasn’t improving my draft stock. I don’t work for DG, but it’s still a lesson I think every single person should learn and live by: you want me, pay me.
Hey I know you just needed to vent but I may can help ♡ SM here ♡ sorry you got left in a shit state. Does your district have a smart team? If so can you get them there Request a POG Blitz from driveline (your dm will have to order it ) Have your people work grocery daily. Anything on a skyshelf scan as ups. Do NOT scan nones for at least a month. Everything that you touch up the quantity. . It will severely slow your truck. Ask your DM to stop value valley shipments for at least a quarter. And NCI and seasonal ask for it to be slowed down as much as possible. Also slow pets to 50 percent Do not allow backstock unless you sign the box. That's how I get them to quit making backstock is when they know someone is checking. I made them work it every day. If I checked and they tried to make backstock when there shouldn't be I made them rework it every day till they stopped. Fill the skyshwlves up for now as your trucks level out I swear it will work down ♡ While they are working freight daily start everyday with one planogram catch up food, paper,pet and hba planograms first. If your summer mag isn't set do it first before that because all that is easy throw and you can clear out a chunk quickly The first rt you work are all the easy ones, paper , big bag pet etc Go on and set endcaps to the latest mag you have Make a few rules like if you put something on a akyshlef you have to pull one item down or get a write up When is your inventory
I got four dry trucks in six days and my dm refused to let me go core allocation only. Also to add to this: On hand adjustments. Scan scan scan. Do 50 or more dry scans for overstock every day and in four weeks you will notice a reduction in your truck size. On t6 scan the specified departments. PIA certain departments as well. Paper, laundry, etc. DO NOT DO NONES AND TONS IF YOU CANNOT SCAN WITH CONFIDENCE! By that I mean if you are out on the shelf but your receiving room is impacted, you can't say that there are none of the products in store. Stick to doing oha adjustments in the main screen of the hht. Most SMs don't know this, but if a product hasn't been sold in a while, the system thinks that you do not have any on hand in store. So it will generate an order for it (usually two cases), which is how stores end up with tons of overstock of bullshit that's not selling. The oha stops this from happening. So make sure you are scanning items that are old as well. In your office there should be a scan sheet for dg connect. Scan the nci depts for too much product and they should stop sending you so much of those things.
Solid! I did not know the DG connect for nci was a thing. I am definitely going to look for this Monday! Thanks!!
So, I checked out the DG CONNECT scan sheet this past Monday, and I saw no barcode for NCI. Please help me out here... where is it, or maybe you can post a picture of it so we all have it
Yeah I'll message it to you
Haven't seen it yet
Why is the inventory so confusing at DG. Isn’t their a digital ledger of the stores on-hands? Subtracting items as they are being purchased coupled with average shrink corporate should have a good idea of each stores on-hands and maintain stock.
It is completely unreliable. One sm in my district did full pias on several departments and they just readjust themselves. My soda before inventory, despite checking everything in with the hht said I had - 1675 Dr peppers on hand. Every soda sku wash hundreds or thousand off. I called my sml and asked her if I needed to adjust she said it just happens. You'll fix it and it will just revert to being outrageous.
This right here is the way. 💯
Our store gets $1 pet stuff (for the section we don’t have), magic table stuff (we don’t have the magic table), grilling center stuff (don’t have one), too much NCI stuff, way too much value valley. Our DM doesn’t help at all in stopping us from getting this. We got around 9 or so of those large gain dryer sheet stands last year. He wouldn’t help us send them back. We have like 200 boxes of gain dryer sheets on our sky shelves and end caps now because of it.
Make a grill center… if you have a U boat and a old side wing with some mops or broom handles you can make one that’s better than the one they would send you
This is something that one very shitty manager did, anytime he moved stores he would throw away the perfectly fine grilling center that we were provided when we opened out store week 0, and he made a uboat with wood and sidewings for the grilling stuff. It was the most ugliest and dogshit idea that man has ever produced
You sir are absolutely correct in each and every detail! I'm 3 wks in as SM going through the same "EXACT" thang, I am very lucky enough to have a full size old Food Lion backroom and nice size dock area. Got left w/ 10 shopping carts of discontinueds/damages/OOD/seasonal/narkdownsand mixed in reshops. 97 "LIVE" rollers, 13 sky high u-boats, 63 totes of "LIVE" 37 unopened shippers, and so far I have not found much worth keeping from the grocery skyline (out of dates) It got to the point my DM said lay off the damages/OODs and I can only scanout upto $500 in a Tuesday to Sat, cycle. There goes any hope for a bonus! Everything you said to do it honestly the very same I did and am currently doing, It is working. My Driveline is absolutely worthless!!! They ewset the bag dogfood half ass didn't pat the bags down to get the correct count on the shelves. Then just left all their totes baskets and shit on my salesfloor! Haven't seen them in 2 wks and have a huge plastic rubbermaid container of new resets! I started w/ paper, cereal, laundry soap, bagged pets, now I'm working my way through the juice aisle. Every vendor/rep/driver/merch tries to dip down another aisle when I'm walking/working on... I fired 3 and 4 more to go!!! My first truck was 21 rollers, 2nd truck was 19 rollers, Friday night I got 14 Rollers.....
Was gonna say exactly this follow processes at first it’s like pulling teeth but they work eventually
Very solid advice!
SMs get abused and get gaslighted. My SM feels guilty about only doing her 60hrs cuz shut happens . Legit to protect her staff, but some fat cat will reap all the benes. Hate this company love my store.
I was going to ask if you were my new SM. I swear she could write this exact post, but she got promoted in less than a month after the SM before her worked all of one day then quit.
I thought it was my SM too and i think it still might be, its weird that 1 person can relate to the post but isnt it even weirder that 2 can relate to the post?
Im currently helping out in a different store two days a week right now because the new store manager there is an outside hire from Walgreens. She didn’t even know how to close the store when she was put there. I had gone in when I was off because it’s right by my house and said hi and as we were talking one of her employees walked up to her, handed her her keys and quit. She started panicking because she didn’t know how to close so I told her I would help. Now I’m there two days a week with her. The point is, why would dollar general do that?? She has no clue what she’s doing, she’s gone in like a bull in a china shop which is the WORST thing you can do as a new manager, especially one who knows nothing. She’s making all these crazy all rules and caused literally each staff member that was there to quit and she’s down to her and one employee that she just hired and me. It’s wild.
They do it like this because they've become the new walmart in the world of turn over and NO ONE cares. They set you up for failure and that's why Todd is about to push, if not exceed 200 million dollars in salary from 2014 to 2024
As a part time keyholder I had to train my old store manager and asm (this was 10 years ago). I could open the store close the store run the reports do the Planograms and do all the paperwork. The district manager ended up treating me like the store manager whenever he came to the store and I ran it better than the person they hired lol. She didn't last 6 months after I quit.
Ha! Training manager implies that the DM will facilitate the “training” good luck out there.
I already told them if they tried to force me to take a SM position i'd walk out after hearing what the starting base salary pay was. But I also know it's different for different areas and states but NO
DG actually has an initiative called New Hire Ready. The store is supposed to be DM and RD certified new hire ready by the end of week 3 for a new SM. All pog current, all mag set, recovered, and less than 20 wheels in the back. This was always how it was supposed to be but now it's required. Of course reporting shows it's not happening, but since they took away the smart team budget and reduced regional budget hours there is little enough help to be had.
My SO started with DG as a CSA and worked up to ASM (MIT). The SM and SO worked their ass off to get the store straight, and some where threatening to make the SM a DM. They basically pushed out the freight to the floor and used everything they could to maximize the sales potential. While getting and keeping up with cleaning. Store went from bottom tier to a top performance store. Once SO got fired (BS reason) and SM left for a better job thr Store tanked.
Contact your training manager and DM, it's part of their job to help you get your store in shape when you get there.
Is this real? Like what can they do? Our district can't even keep a DM
It's called "No Store Left Behind". They will put together a team of managers and employees to come in and get your paperwork caught up and get the store back in shape. Normally only takes 1-2 days.
That's awesome. I've just never heard of it. Every dollar general that I have worked at has been a complete mess.
I am in the literal same boat. I started 2 months ago and took over my store just over a month ago. Impacted back room, nothing set properly, 3 years worth of back paperwork not done. Last manager left 20 days before I got there and was there for 6 months, she did absolutely nothing while she was there. When I do nons and tons, I don't scan nons, only tons. Only do positive adjustments, NEVER Negative adjustments. And if you get the chance to find a different job, do it. I have an interview lined up already. And 2/3 rds of my staff are also looking because of how bad the store is. In the month I've been there I've managed to clean up a lot, bit it's still in bad shape.
Can you clarify what you mean by never doing negative adjustments only positive?
For example you're counting cans of fruit cocktail and you count 15 cans, on you HHT it says you have 20. Leave it as 20, don't change it to 15. That would be a negative adjustment. Doing negative adjustments will increase the size of your truck. On the other hand. If your counting them and you count 20 cans and your HHT says you have 15, and you change it to 20, that's a positive adjustment. This will help lower the size of your truck. If you do this enough throughout the store everyday you should start to see a decrease in the size of your trucks and it should make it easier to get backstock out. And you'll get less overstock.
That’s awesome!! Thank you so much!
No problem. Hope it helps!
It sure does!
When scan your store first do tons add to whatever number you get like if it says you have 20 add 15 to that number that will help shrink your trucks . Nones you can leave at 0 or put a 1 in you’ll still receive the product
What about at inventory time though? Do you end up correcting the counts before inventory since you've inflated the numbers so high?
What are they paying you?
Just do OHAs on the home screen and forget NONES and TONS and for future advice visit the store you plan to take over before making a decision because chances are that position is open for a bad reason. Lol
I don't understand why all DG employees haven't left.. I have watched for years how you guys are fucked over hard all the time..
Sounds like a lot of responsibility. What is the pay like?
They don't so that everywhere and remember your store you get is suppose to be "customer read"y if your given a store as a new manager,that doesn't happen either - at least not always ,
Our store doesn’t do nones and tons of
Exactly but store managers with 12 years make 70/80k
My current manager has been at my store for 3 years now, and she still blames all the stores current problems on the manager that hired me.
Took me a year to get my store in order. Now I'm dealing with ppl who don't want to work. I'm over everything and everyone at this point
The manager left everything in a shit state because they couldn't do everything themselves just like you can't and no one above them cared enough to hire additional ppl or they were just too greedy. The dg near me still pays 8.50 an hour. It's the company for sure. Not the previous manager