Independent Component #1 - The Receiving Dock Clean-Up

• LITERAL
• (a.) I, Diego Luna, affirm that I have completed my independent component which requires 32 hours of work.
• (b.) The book, Retail in Detail, helped to perform my independent component due to the following points that were brought up in the book: logistics and organization of product.
• My mentor, Andrew Johnson, had let me use his store and take pictures in order to document progress of organizing the receiving dock.
• (c.) Please reference my updated Senior Project Hours log for a glimpse of work performed.
• (d.) I, Diego Luna, have performed over a 3 month period tasks that are beneficial to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in terms of organizing product and making sure that newer products can come in with minimal clutter in the way. More exacting tasks and detail shall be explained further below.
• INTERPRETIVE

Going down to the meat of the potato in terms of introduction here, store management is quite challenging to do in practice, juggling many everyday tasks at once and prioritizing them to fit your current circumstance and situation. As a store manager, you must stay on top of your employees, ensuring they are being productive without being too overbearing on them. Additionally, you must be alert and at the ready in case a customer wishes to speak with you whether it would be voicing a complaint or asking something about your organization/establishment that only you can solely answer. Those two tasks are extremely paramount and the bare basics of management. Customer service AND leadership (making sure your employees are working at a satisfactory level) are the most frequently prioritized aspects of store management. However, there are some behind the scenes work that needs to be done which ties into the two following words: logistics and organization. Now, above states that both customer service AND leadership are generally more refined than organization and logistics. Judging by books I've read and articles published, the authors put a greater emphasis on the former rather than the latter. As a disclaimer, however, the authors don't at all consider logistics and organization as "unimportant tasks."

With the intro being out of the way, I sought out for my independent component to do something both helpful and informational (for myself) for the Habitat for Humanity PV ReStore. It all actually started in the summer when there was one day where our products just couldn't be moved out of the receiving room because it was just a tornado of product and you couldn't safely get things out of there using one person. Just imagine this: you're an employee in a store. You have customers going around and asking for assistance and questions about merchandise your store has for sale. Immediately you go help the customers only to find out that now your truck delivery of new product comes in and now you have to backtrack to clean the receiving room in order to unload that truck and fill up the receiving room yet again! Keep in mind that the truck driver is also now behind on his deliveries because he can't unload his truck of delivered goods. Now your supply line is backed up. After hours of work, you get the problem fixed, but now you think to yourself, "wow, how can we prevent something like that from happening again?"

Below is an example of our old receiving room and what I had previously planned to organize and clean out for my independent component. As you can see and observe it's quite a mess towards the back of the doorway. You couldn't even walk inside. Keep in mind this was during the summer when I took a snapshot of it. Now to the left is our receiving room improved a little bit. There was a time we had another volunteer other than myself over the summer and we both got things cleaned out of the walkway for the most part. Same room, just I was able to walk through and take pictures. Of course, it definitely isn't perfect, but there was a walkway and it wasn't bad for only two volunteers working on it. The summer tended to strike our store down with the disease of "under-staff."

 

Our receiving room changed to a different spot and upon hearing of the "Independent Component," I felt ambitious to clean our new receiving room and do it for a project. It was quite easy to document and it was something I knew how to do quite well (judging by the summer work.) Pictures below will detail the process of how clean we- both the staff and myself- made the new receiving room.

This was the receiving room on Day 1 (1-7-15) when we started to switch from the old one that we had. It was in the corner of the store and it just felt easier to unload products off of the trucks there. Of course, this is also where we stored lots of product that couldn't be loaded into the old backroom, thus gathering dust and taking up important real-estate space. It was quite a mess and would be a significant challenge to clean up, but the management staff were determined to set a goal for the volunteers and staff members to get that space tidied up. So we answered the call of duty and got started.

This was the receiving room on Day 2 (1-8-15) with a tiny bit of progress made. Not extremely evident at first, but we did get some stuff out and on top of that we had more stuff coming in throughout the week. Some of the stuff we moved out into a more secure place involves a giant, wooden, dining table set and plywood along with a large stack of sinks that were formerly plastic wrapped. All of these items were priced and put out in a presentable manner on the store floor. As you can see in the back, as I snapped this shot, a staff member was moving the leftover cardboard boxes to recycling, clearing trash, while my job was to price items and place them on the store floor.

Now, on Day 3 (1-9-15), the staff members and I had cleaned it up till this point where the day was wrapping up for myself. We had a steady walkway flowing and more products just kept coming in on the truck. As you can see in the back, the truck was emptied out by myself and others, thus causing more products to come in. My mentor said I couldn't take pictures until I was completely done unloading all of the items so this is AFTER our pick-up came. Still, making great progress.

In the interest of saving loads of time and explanation of the same cycle happening over and over in teams of cleaning the receiving area, our back room got cluttered yet again when I came back to work on the 14th of January. It really never got cleaner than the above until the very last day of the Independent Component #1 phase. This is primarily due to management putting a large priority on customers and cleanliness of the store floor during the days that we were busy. Lots of staff members and myself had to do things such as organizing the aisles of our store, assembling set pieces of dining room tables together, and sorting through the assortment of church pews we received.

    

This is ties in with store management and organization, despite the minor setback on my main project. Customers enjoy uniformity, organization, and aisles were various items are extremely easy to find. Plus, a lot of these items were priced after cleaning out the receiving area.

Now, fast forwarding to the two last days of my Independent Component #1 work. On January 27th, the receiving room was still cluttered and receiving items which is regular stuff that happens at the ReStore. (Note: the woman in the red shirt is my mentor, Sara Timberlake.) From the left we can see there are couches, pieces of wood, carts of other items in buckets, which are mostly materials such as nails, PVC piping, and smaller items along those lines. To the right is the picture of the same receiving room at the end of the day when other staff members and I cleaned it all up considerably. After an extremely lengthy process, the receiving room finally had a bit more room to maneuver and store items.

• APPLIED

This Independent Component #1 helped to understand the necessity of having days where you have your employees make sure that all of the behind the scenes tasks and aspects of the store are dealt with. When managing a store during the busiest hours of the day, you really can't afford to have a time where the main receiving area of your store is not navigable. Your supply lines of product needs to be clear so that your store can have a better flow of goods, thus generating healthier profits.

At one of the days I was at my mentorship, we had a time within the store where the back was so congested that the delivery truck has thrown behind almost an hour back because the staff members had no room to unload the products. It was an extreme mess trying to sort it all out, especially when you're carrying items like washing machines, refrigerators, and dining room table sets out of there, but luckily the job was done close to the end of the day. We haven't had a bad day like that in a while so it makes life easier when everything on your receiving area is running smoothly and people can properly do their regular jobs instead of having to run to the back and get tasks done in a pinch.

Clearly, the best time of the day to work on store maintenance needs such as this would be during slower hours of store-time. Even when there aren't customers to service or sell merchandise to, there's always something employees could be doing. Remember that the store will never stop for you.