Great 'supermarket staff tell us your reduction policies' hunt

Lanne_2

I have always found Morrisons and Sainsburys to be really pretty good when it comes to marking items down that are going out of date. As I have that trusty deep freeze this really helps alot of either keeping the food bill down or giving us some of those extra treats that I normally couldn't afford. But recently Sainsburys have stopped the 10p at 9pm. I have asked as now there seems to be alot more food sitting there going unpurchased. Which I find shocking especially now with many facing much harder times. What I was told was that if they continue to mark down to really low prices these items are registered as being sold and their warehouse will continue to send the same quantity of those products. Whereas if they actually don't sell the items and they go in the garbage then the warehouse picks up on the facts that too much of a certain item is being sent to the stores and cuts back. So the manager feels by doing this he will end up with less mark downs and waste every evening. Suppose I see what they are say as it is a business but boy it seems harsh when many of us rely of those discount items to put food on the table and stretch the budget. And bottom line is never assume they have to mark things down politely ask and if they say they can't do it because of the rules live with it especially if you shop there regularly.

ShelfStacker_3

lic wrote: »

I am not championing rude behaviour here, but feel that the customer should not be branded as a vulture, when they are merely trying to make thier money go further.

Buying cheaper products of similar quality is making your money go further. Hanging around supermarket staff and harrassing them so they make things cheaper for you is being a tosserImeanVULTURE.

lauzjp

omg, I used to do reductions in sainsbury's - it is psychologically draining having the same people every day standing over your shoulder as you try to do your job, making comments like 'is that it' or about me/ my appearence (nice or not, it's just creepy really).

I would hate to have that job in today's climate, must be a nightmare - but now I'm one of the vultures! I'm not half as bad as what I used to encounter though - I'll look and think will we eat it (if it's only 10p I will at least try it!) and is there any room in the freezer?! If not, I'll walk on.

I must say at the end of the day, a LOT of food is still thrown away. It is a shame that it can't all be left in cardboard boxes outside the shop for people to help themselves instead of rummaging through the bins, which I think is a terrible sight. And liable to a visit from the law. Not because of stealing, but because I wouldn't know who was prowling around the back of the store!

allybee101

There appear to be better reductions at supermarkets that aren't 24 hours. E.g Tesco near my parents is 24 hrs and reductions aren't great. The small Tesco near me closes at 10pm. Bargains are usually there at 8pm.
In fact my first points of call are the chilled reduced section and the stand next to bakery and veg!
I have had stuff for 8-10p. Bargains have included sirloin steak (2 juicy ones) for £1.15 from about a fiver. This was earlier in the day though. Organic milk, 2 pts for 38p. Packs of bread rolls for 14p .
There's never much of any use in the non-perishables reduced section. Although I have had a few cartons of long life milk from there which were a bit battered. Not much of a saving, but I use it anyway.
Never noticed a RFQS section at Lidl though. Do they have one?

jenniewb

allybee101 wrote: »

There appear to be better reductions at supermarkets that aren't 24 hours. E.g Tesco near my parents is 24 hrs and reductions aren't great. The small Tesco near me closes at 10pm. Bargains are usually there at 8pm.
In fact my first points of call are the chilled reduced section and the stand next to bakery and veg!
I have had stuff for 8-10p. Bargains have included sirloin steak (2 juicy ones) for £1.15 from about a fiver. This was earlier in the day though. Organic milk, 2 pts for 38p. Packs of bread rolls for 14p .
There's never much of any use in the non-perishables reduced section. Although I have had a few cartons of long life milk from there which were a bit battered. Not much of a saving, but I use it anyway.
Never noticed a RFQS section at Lidl though. Do they have one?

Wow! where do you shop?!

I have two tesco stores equally away from me, one is 24 hours, the other is the normal 10pm deal.

The 24 hour one will start the reductions at 7pm, by 9pm there is no more to reduce, its all pulled from the shelf as not to be sold by around 10pm. People do get there and wait/hover for ages, generally from 7pm.

The 10pm closing one though, will NOT reduce before 9pm, and even then thats if you are lucky- they are making problems for themselves here as there is often by then, a huge amount of people (its a very poor area) and by the time the machine is working, its 9.30pm. Customers are told if they take something from the shelf to be recuded, it will not be reduced, it has to insted, be left on the shelf until the reducing man reduces it. Generally staff by-pass this rule and will reduce whatever you ask them (nicely!) to do, but for the last few months, managers have benn watching staff or making spot-checks to make sure that nothing is reduced at a customers request, its all done by stuff left on the shelf.
The reason they are "making thier own bed" here is that the store is supposed to close at 10pm, but by the time all the customers are out (because they wait for the reductions, and the reductions will not scan at the till point, and there is a descrpency with the price...) means that staff are working much later then 10pm. I have before, left the store at 10.50pm and I was not the last one out by a long strech!

If I need reduced stuff, and its after 8.30pm, I don't bother with the 24hour store- it will be gone by the time I get there. It is however, enough time for me to get to the 10pm closing store, shop for basics and hang around for half an hour or more!

Colio1989

full-time-mum wrote: »

I don't work anywhere but the very nice lady in Morrisions reduced some pots of daffodils when I asked - they were yellowish and had obviously been deprived of light. She reduced to 20p - I think they were originally nearer 75p - £1. They've greened up nicely now that I've given them some sunshine and a bit of TLC.

So my tip, is if you know your stuff, don't be afraid to point out the problem and ask politely.

Also, beware as quite often Tesco pile stuff onto the reduction area but they AREN'T reduced until they have the yellow price/barcode on them. The cynic in me says they are being sneaky. I don't think you get the buy 2 for £2 style discounts anymore on reduced items

I used to work at tesco and the method was to find all the items that were to be reduced later, condense the shelf to leave room for a reductions area in the chiller and leave all the short code items there. Someone else would then reduce all the items; but they were often called to help out checkouts (all supermarket staff have to help reduce queues by helping at the tills when its busy) so half the stuff there would not be labelled up.

Another reason is that the stuff is left in the reduction cabinet without labels is so that it is almost impossible for people to buy all of their shopping from the reduction cabinet. If the person with the printer is assigned other duties, they be told to reduce a couple of things, do some stock take, reduce one or two more things, gap scan than reduce a few more things. This is so customers prepared to pay full price will return because they got 1 or 2 good deals and cheap customers will have to learn to pay full price. All the short code/damaged goods are put there for convenience, mainly so they can be thrown away when they have run out of code.

Colio1989

I used to work in Tesco and the reductions were done by a specific department; stock control. They were so sick of being crowded by people grabbing whatever they stuck labels on out of their hands and crowding them, they started reducing things by only 10% first thing in the morning, so by 7pm, it had all gone and there were no massive reductions anywhere.

And staff knew who was after a reduction; people who walked round and round the store looking at the same things. So they waited as long as possible before reducing them - after 10 hours working, anything will become amusing. You make people do laps of tesco for an hour - you win. You make them pay full price, you win.

Because reductions are such an unpopular task; people tend to go a bit loopy over them, they are left till last. It wasn't uncommon for 10 people to be stood round a chiller full of stuff, waiting for the bargains that were thrown away because nobody could be bothered to sort it out.

Morty_007

Colio1989 wrote: »

Another reason is that the stuff is left in the reduction cabinet without labels is so that it is almost impossible for people to buy all of their shopping from the reduction cabinet...... cheap customers will have to learn to pay full price.

I am laughing at just how bizarre this is...are you really telling me it MATTERS if someone gets a good deal and manages to buy a lot of reduced items?? I do not count myself as "cheap" (how offensive to suggest this of people who just want to make ends meet!! ) however I do try to buy as much of my shopping at a reduced price as possible!! :j

My DH and I have a a young son. We both work full time, me 40 hours him anything up to 80 hours and we claim child benefit because we can. Our son goes into child care 3 days a week because DH has him Tues/Wed while I am at work and I have DS on Sat/Sun when DS is working to cut down on child care costs. This comes at the sacrifice of never spending a whole day together unles we are on leave. (3 weeks a year (15 days) MAX). We can't afford to buy all our groceries at full price and we do like the odd treat! If I could get most of my groceries at a reduced price one week it would mean I could afford to take a day of unpaid leave to spend some really precious time with my DH and DS.

Please don't assume people who buy the reductions are cheap, for me it is a lifestyle choice I have HAD to make.
Now, whilst I understand that it is a hassle when people crowd around you and ask you to reduce something further and distract you (which is why I don't do any of those things, I wait quietly while the person marks it down and then only take it once it is on the shelf ) you have a job to do and this is part of it:eek:. I can see a number of very simple solutions to this rather than to play games and waste everyones time:

1. learn to put up with it, block it out get it done as quickly as possible and move on to something else once you are done.
2. take everything off the shop floor, mark it up out the back and then put it out once marked (don't bring your pricing gun then noone can ask you to further reduce)
3. ask anyone being rude and grabbing to wait until the items are on the shelf and then they can have what they would like
4. variation on 3: put a notice up to ask people the same thing

I can't help feeling that some of the angst caused by these reductions are down to the fact that if you are doing the reductions you don't get your share of the spoils! I find this "dog in a manger" attitude really ridiculous. Although having said that, I have no doubt that staff are not backward in coming forward if they see something they might like about to be reduced....:rotfl:

Colio1989

Morty_007 wrote: »

I am laughing at just how bizarre this is...are you really telling me it MATTERS if someone gets a good deal and manages to buy a lot of reduced items?? I do not count myself as "cheap" (how offensive to suggest this of people who just want to make ends meet!! ) however I do try to buy as much of my shopping at a reduced price as possible!! :j

My DH and I have a a young son. We both work full time, me 40 hours him anything up to 80 hours and we claim child benefit because we can. Our son goes into child care 3 days a week because DH has him Tues/Wed while I am at work and I have DS on Sat/Sun when DS is working to cut down on child care costs. This comes at the sacrifice of never spending a whole day together unles we are on leave. (3 weeks a year (15 days) MAX). We can't afford to buy all our groceries at full price and we do like the odd treat! If I could get most of my groceries at a reduced price one week it would mean I could afford to take a day of unpaid leave to spend some really precious time with my DH and DS.

Please don't assume people who buy the reductions are cheap, for me it is a lifestyle choice I have HAD to make.
Now, whilst I understand that it is a hassle when people crowd around you and ask you to reduce something further and distract you (which is why I don't do any of those things, I wait quietly while the person marks it down and then only take it once it is on the shelf ) you have a job to do and this is part of it:eek:. I can see a number of very simple solutions to this rather than to play games and waste everyones time:

1. learn to put up with it, block it out get it done as quickly as possible and move on to something else once you are done.
2. take everything off the shop floor, mark it up out the back and then put it out once marked (don't bring your pricing gun then noone can ask you to further reduce)
3. ask anyone being rude and grabbing to wait until the items are on the shelf and then they can have what they would like
4. variation on 3: put a notice up to ask people the same thing

I can't help feeling that some of the angst caused by these reductions are down to the fact that if you are doing the reductions you don't get your share of the spoils! I find this "dog in a manger" attitude really ridiculous. Although having said that, I have no doubt that staff are not backward in coming forward if they see something they might like about to be reduced....:rotfl:

These are not my opinions. I dont care who gets what as long as I didn't have to stay behind at the end of my shift to waste (throw away) all the stuff. But the supermarket's general view was that they would like to spread the reduced things around, rather than let the all go at once because they were judged on profitability per hour and each duty manager wanted the best figures.

If I insulted you, it was not my intention; please accept my apologies.

The problem with doing things 'round the back' is that the wireless computers do not work in staff only areas. This is because of the 2 hour rated fire proof walls between the floor and warehouse block out the signal and the equiptment can only be used on the shop floor.

And staff cannot buy reductions, this is usually considered gross misconduct because most staff are mates and they all have the power to alter prices on almost everything to any price - therefore there is a massive margin for profit shrink.

Often, doing reductions isn't someone's job. It will fall on someone who already has to over see deliveries, work on check outs, rumble, work CTS, work stock, maintain chill chain on deliveries or replenish. So things that they are not required to do, such as reductions, fall to the bottom of the pile because they can get into difficulty if they don't do their priority tasks. I phrased it poorly before, its not a vindictive game, they are the rules. Anything that can be sold for full should be. If your dept has crap stats on your shift, questions will be asked, so it is simpler to just "play the game" and follow the policy.

What is also worth remembering is that the time when we have to do the reductions is the busiest time of day. It may not look like it, but the staffing is lower so there is more for each person to do. Most deliveries come in this time and most replenishment goes on then.

FYI, if anyone has bothered to read my stream of consciousness this far, I don't necessarily believe that this is the right thing to do, or that you need to comply with the way things should be done. We are CSAs and should look out for our customers. This is just what my experience has been and the attitudes towards the subject from the management and some colleagues.

fantasy_dreams

Can someone please explain to me why supermarkets deem it necessary to pour dye or bleach into their bins to destroy food ? If someone is desperate enough to rummage through your bins for food, why not just let them ? They are not likely to sue you for anything ? And the rats will eat it either way, they don't mind a bit of dye.

I really really do not understand this policy and find it to be unforgiveable. If you throw something in your bin, you make a clear statement that you no longer wish to own or use the item. Who takes it away (binmen or anyone else) should not matter.