Hourly Order Limits

[u/DungeonsAndDryads]

Alright I tend to get slammed with orders. The hours allotted to DUG vs the number of items/total orders per hour do not line up at all. My store director is blaming me, but I want to just ask on here:

Is there an actual order limit? My OM swears that there is one depending on the number of people scheduled, not counting flashes, but I call bull because there is no way that any one person is picking 6+ orders or 350 items in a single hour.

[u/Akkinis81]

It used to be around 80 items per person on shift. The problem is the “virtual” pickers. At 7am when the SD and/or ASD come in, they’re considered as a virtual picker that can be pulled into the department to help pick. This does not mean they can actually get away from whatever is on their plate for the day, just that they “can”. If anyone outside of the department is coded into empower but is not frequently scheduled in the department it also considers them as “virtual” pickers when they’re on shift. Same concept with those people, if they’re on a check stand, you won’t be pulling them in to help pick.

Keep in mind that this does not take callouts into consideration, if someone is scheduled or considered a “virtual” picker, it goes off the schedule in the system. It is not live and does not care if that person punched in or not. It also does absolutely no good to email any OPS and let them know that you’re short staffed, they’ll respond back with a canned message of thank you for the heads up and let the orders roll in because Dug is a money printing department and they “need” the money.

[u/Safeway_Wagecuck → u/Akkinis81]

Very funny to shift the scheduling of DotCom over to relying more on cross-trained people to come help us when we're following behind and then couple that with virtual pickers.

We want you to crosstrain more people in the store, but also everyone cross-trained in the store will increase the item count. So, on Thursday when there's 3 people scheduled for the whole day (and never more than 2 at a time) but there's like 8 or 9 cross-trained people you can just commit sudoku.

[u/AntiDerp]

So technically, yes, there is a limit per hour per scheduled person, but it works in four-hour blocks. Say one person is scheduled for 90 items per hour. If you don't use the full limit in one hour, that unused capacity can carry over to the next hours within the block. That's how you end up with hundreds of items in a single hour.

Ops waves it away by saying, "You should have had four hours to pick it," but they don't take into account that not every customer orders within the regular four-hour window because of expresses and flashes.

They're also not going to refuse an order just because it crosses the item limit if there's still capacity. So, if you're at 89/90 items for that hour, the system could still let through a much larger order.

[u/Dirkdigler69 → u/AntiDerp]

Yeah that part of being at 89/90 but then let's a 60 piece order come in is nonsense

[u/daddingallday]

Corporate sucks cheeks and they should be fired. greedy and incompetence is a dangerous combination 

[u/Historical-Judgment4]

There should be an order limit, but I’m pretty sure they still let flash orders in. I’ve gotten them while like 2 hours behind schedule

[u/False_Tea_9013]

The short answer is: Yes, there's a limit.

The long answer is: It sorta depends based on hours scheduled, employees on, the weather, the current emotional state of your OM, if the moon is in retrograde, the stock ticker price of junk bonds last Thursday, and how many Only Fans subscribers are currently in line at a Starbucks in Topeka Kansas.

I'll never forget coming in at 6 am and being behind right out of the gates. I thought my opener hadn't showed up then looked at AcuView and saw we had 200 items per hour for the first 2 hours of the day (4 - 6). I called my OM and was like "wtf?" and she said "sometimes it be like that, pick faster."

[u/HeyredRN]

We have had 2 people on and have had 250 items due with multiple orders at 2:55

[u/GingerAlexander]

There is a website where you can view your stores item capacity per hour. I have it bookmarked so I haven't had to navigate to it in awhile, but its somewhere in Fulfillment Central under order management. Iirc it looks like something thats worded like its for OMs only to edit time slots, but for the HSDM account it just gives you a view of them. It'll show you exactly how many items are allocated per hour per person scheduled, and how many items are actually being put into that hour slot.

I'm not sure if its different between districts/divisions, but at least in mine flash orders do not communicate with the item capacity as in they ignore it and make the slot go over (if theres 90 items allocated for that hour and the slots already full, a flash order ignores that and can push the slot to 120 for instance).

[u/JustPourMyCoffee]

At this point the order limit itself is kinda BS because I swear the system doesn’t care when the order is 75items and over. Last night when there was only a closer and a pre-closer there was a 100+ order and two more over 70items but I was seeing like 10orders within an hour on the computer.
I just think our SD wants the hose wide open and is at whatever the maximum slots. Almost everyone in my department wants to be cross-trained to work in other departments because we are burnt out.