freight team

there hasn't been any comments about this in awhile but i'm going to hope someone is still reading these.  i have been an ima for 6 years-always ups and downs but i always enjoyed my job and my hours.  then we walk around for 5 weeks waiting for an interview for a new job description-that we may or may not be eligible for(even though all of us have done it for years)and wondering which of the 4 will get cut.  we finally get the interview and wait 2 more weeks to find out who or if any of us have this new inventory specialist job.  one of us got cut and another one of us got the new job-but took almost $3.00 an hour pay cut, so he could still be at home with his kids!  the kick off is march 10th-less than a week away and we still don't know what departments we will even be covering.  they took the ordering away and added on another department of price changes, packdown and all the other actions in the cart-so i don't see how they think it's less work on 3 people.  when someone is sick or on vacation-2 people are going to have to cover the whole store.  the dept. heads are totally clueless and have no interest in learning to order.  they keep saying we're going to need your help-like we're going to have a lot of time to lend with another department on us.  i know they are going to try and put it back off on us and this is just their way of cutting back and then putting the work load back on 3 people.the change is effective monday.  the 3 inventory specialists are going to request that our names be taken out of the cart for orders and car requests.  the dept. heads or their back-ups will have to do orders and if they want to put it back on us-then they can raise our payband back up.  i will help and advise when i can but i will not do their orders after friday-they have put us through hell the last couple of months.  not one dept. head has a back-up in the dept. trained. 

they still won't tell us what our schedule is either.i work the 4-1 schedule because it works for me.and all these people all these years complaining about the ima's having a set schedule or walking around doing nothing-not one of them applied for the job.why do you care if you're not interested in the job?when the dept. heads start ordering 1 of 2 things will happen-we will have product coming out our you-know-whats or we will have the highest out-of-stocks ever!has anyone heard about who does the car requests or transfers?i consider that part of the ordering but it doesn't specify this anywhere that i can find.

I also was a IMA for 6 plus years and cannot take the new position because of the difference in pay. The associates that got the new positions found out when the schedule was posted for next week! They also have not been told what departments they will be takeing. There are also Depts that have no interest in learning how to do the orders and I agree with you that all Inventory Specialists should refuse to do the ordering. Great Idea! No backup associates to the Dept. Heads in our store either. I am just glad I got out! Our three people have various hours to come in. I don't see how this is going to work either.

I have worked on nights since June of 06, at this time I have been on nights the longest besides my DH. We have only 4 full time members and 4 part time, whom are getting put on the 8-12 shift, while 1 full timer is leaving and the other 3 including me are being put from Lumber to Garden on fixed shifts. My problem is, having trained the other 3 FT members, being picked by my DH to work his shift to help him, and being an associate the longest I am not getting a raise, while the other 3 FT freight members are getting 2-4$ raises. I do not really want to complain, but being shafted on a raise when the rest of the team is who have not had the HD experience as long as me, feels kind of well.. terrible.

One guy on our Freight team has been at our store-probably at least 4 years. He got cut to part-time and no raise. No one on freight got a raise at our store. No one period got a raise. The people in Receiving got off pretty easy-only having to change hours. The IMA's got cut to 3 and still don't know where things stand-as far as departments they have or hours they work. Everyone on Freight got cut to part-time-except the Supervisor. More aprons on the floor? The freight team is gone before the customers really start coming in and the night freight comes in an hour before the store closes-what good is that? All this was, was a way to cut full-timers to part-time and save millions of dollars and cut people's benefits.

We were also told that it was for more aprons on the floor. We (former nite crew) cannot provide the proper customer service. We know where things are but not how any thing works. We work in different areas everyday and certainly have not been trained in any departments. We leave at 8 am and there are never very many customers at that time maybe on the weekends. but not monday thru friday. Our nite crew starts at 9pm so they really don't see any customers right now either so so much for that. So just add that to all the lies they told us while we were still working nites.

I started out on the freight team at Home Depot over 2 years ago, later went to D 21/22 DH, then to 23/59 DH and now I am morning day freight 4-1 shift with 4-5 part timers, 3 of these may work out so far, 1 never made it onto the floor. My problem with this attrition that HD seems very slow to react to replacements and even if they do react we are talking 3 weeks of background and drug testing before we even have a chance at getting these people on the floor, then they have to be trained/ forklift trained etc. So far this has been the typical HD fiasco and we are not yet in season yet and its been a struggle to get the small amount of freight we do have off the floor. The trouble with HD is they grew too big too fast, got foolish with overspending and corporate kickbacks and now that the economy has basically tanked are paying the price. People this is only the beginning of a rough ride believe me, this is going to get much worse as far as cutbacks, I can see it coming already, my store has mandatory DH training as cashiers, so they use us up front to cover lunchbreaks, now we have to do all ordering, and we have to cover our departments as floor associates because there are hardly any specialists anymore, and then there is the makework paperwork, mostly a bunch of waste of time mumbo jumbo that achieves nothing, just when are we going to find time to do all of this crap? Its crazy folks, and I am looking for another job to be honest, HD is a burning ship and this rat is getting off before it goes down.
The IMA's have been done away with at our store officially, IMS( inventory management specialist) begins this coming week they do all price changes, count audits, packdown tags, etc. Most of them have taken a $3-$4/hour cut in pay to take this job, now thats a pretty big hit to be honest, I would have told them to shove it!

DH supposedly will get a 4% increase in pay for additional workload (BFD) so thats what possibly .50 hour extra? LMAO

More aprons on the floor? The freight team is gone before the customers really start coming in All this was, was a way to cut full-timers to part-time and save millions of dollars and cut people's benefits.
Thats exactly what this is, and the "Aprons on the floor" is just another smoke and mirrors deception, typical of corporate retail folks. I feel bad for my fellow Freight DH's that try to stick this out, for when winter comes again next year and they start cutting hours of all part timers again it will be the FT-DH unloading ALL of the freight themselves. I can see it already.(that is IF this company survives the summer, our floors have been basically virtually empty for the past 2 months). Sorry to be gloomy about this folks, and I realize these companies are here to make money, however the workload expected is getting ridiculous to say the least, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

My last day as an IMA was Friday, March7th.
I spent 4 days training the one and only Inventory Specialist in my store. When my store first opened we had 5 IMAs. Now we’re down to 1 part-time Inventory Specialist for the whole store who has trained for 4 days…6am-11: 30am. She was on her own Saturday. Good Luck!

Today was the official day for the DH's to order.What a joke!They were totally lost.I hate to see inventory levels in the stores in a few weeks.This whole thing is such a mess and HD doesn't even have answers to anything-it's all a big cover-up to the real problem. HD doesn't want to pay people to do quality work anymore-so they are cutting FT to PT and pushing so many good people out the door. All they care about is cutting this and that-it's not about the employees that keep these stores running. They pay the ASMs and SM to sit around and bark orders and sit in the office but the people out on the floor busting their butts just keep getting more taken away from them.The IMAs did orders,price changes,ads,priority skus,buyer clearance,deletion warnings,counts,helped customers,made signs constantly(no one else in our store can do this),covered depts.,requested transfers and CARs and printed and worked all those reports and whatever else I'm not thinking of right now and they single US out to screw over.We're always busy but they let these people that "cover depts."keep hiding in the breakroom or bathroom all day or talking on their cellphone or going out to smoke every 10 minutes and many other things. I mean I know many people in depts. stay there and do what they're suppose to but alot of them(in my store anyway)do whatever they please because they know they can get by with it.No one cares what they do but the IMAs have to go running to help them all the time.And now we are ISAs with another dept. on us.Why not make managers and all these other associates accountable for something?Why are ISAs/IMAs and Freight the only ones getting the major cuts?

Today,D day, our "1" and ONLY Inventory Specialist called in sick. She may have had a bit of the flu that's going around...or she may have had a terrible day on Saturday, first day alone as Inventory Specialist.What's next

Well,I can't say that I blame her-there's no way 1 person can cover a whole store.There are some weeks when there are hundreds of price changes and ads and not to mention trying to do a packdown for the whole store!Maybe she didn't realize what she was getting into.And why exactly does your store only have 1 IS?I thought all stores would have at least 2 but up to 4,according to the stores volume.That's crazy to do that to somebody.I'm having a hard time covering 4 departments and I dread the day 1 of us takes time off and 2 people have to cover the whole store.

I was told my store would have 3 Inventory Specialist. I have no idea what the person I was training was told( I'll have to ask her) as far as job description, but I did check on the HD website and the job description for Inventory Specialist has changed, as well as the IMA description. It doesn’t give anywhere near the info that is on “My Apron” under job descriptions. I truly feel for her. I had 24,26,27 and 29 and often did not complete all that I needed to in 40hrs. How could she be expected to complete even 2 departments. At least we were going in at 4am, which gave us some time without customers. She isn’t even familiar with the store and where things are located. Try to help a customer under those conditions. Hopefully they’ve filled the other two positions for her sake. I wonder who is going to train them. I’m the only "former" IMA remaining and working/training in another department.

This is going to be a complete joke, I am 4 a.m.-1p.m. Freight DH and the shelves are already full of holes in my old depts. (23/59) I had to order for the new 23 DH as she has no time to even get to it with all the nice new paperwork they just piled upon them recently (the new inventory opportunity worklists). I'll tell you right now the best move I have made so far was to take this particular DH position, no more shrink plans, no more specialty binders and those Lundy quotes and sales role plays.
I feel really badly for my fellow DH however and am trying to help them out as much as I can, did ordering for 4 depts on Friday morning alone. Did 2 depts. of price changes this a.m. that took me the better part of the day. I'm telling you folks this just isn't going to work, I can see it already, and when they see their out of stocks go from less than 175 to 400-500 or more perhaps corporate may see it as well, however I doubt it to be honest.
HD stock continues to hover in the mid 20's, pathetic!

The IMS' in our store where told to worry about shooting holes only on Thursday... prices changes (over 450 storewide) were not finished when the left at 2pm yes an hour of OT X 3.... Friday they left at 1 pm and there was still over 250 price changes, now all over due.
Can't wait to hear about all the markdowns that had to be made at the registers! lol

I was thinking about getting a job on the night freight team. Is this a good job. What is the starting pay?

-previous IMA-
I am dumbfounded by what I have been hearing about all of this. In my store I was told that I had 60 days to find a new job either within the store or elsewhere. We had 4 IMA's then. One got fired, one got promoted to DH one went into the lumber dpt I still had not found anything. 2 weeks before what would have been my last day I was training 2 new people and still expected to do my own job, my hours had changed and I had to help customers while trying to train 2 newbies and complete my own job. While training these newbies, I hear that from a DH meeting that Management felt that I was a terrible IMA, which of course is not what my 3 last reviews said. SO they have "a terrible IMA" training the new people who are still now struggling with just getting PD done. (new expectation is that PD is done in an hour and a half. Having only 3 Is's and 2 who still haven't grasped the concept. I am trying to help but still get yelled at. Now the time has passed that I have gotten a new position in the store, and we only have 2 new people trying to walk the entire store for PD in 1.5 hrs, Last winter it was very similar to the same situation as we have now. but there was 2 of us that were experienced in the store and products and the job, we started at 4am and still didn't struggled to get PD done by 8am. that is 4 hours, with 2 experienced ppl. I don't know what is gonna happen next but I know that it is bad. We were told a few weeks ago that if the product is not found to change the count to ZERO. I laughed. I see the OOS now I laugh even harder. ALL pd must be closed b4 IS's leave and they change all the counts to Zero that haven't been found. oh and also there was something wrong in the system with an AD price vs the actual ad. I was told that I should have been checking all the prices in the computer to verify that they were correct in the ad. I laughed yet again, since when is that my responsibility? And even still nothing happened after mngmnt knew!

Crystal Rose in Wisconsin said: -previous IMA-
I am dumbfounded by what I have been hearing about all of this. In my store I was told that I had 60 days to find a new job either within the store or elsewhere. We had 4 IMA's then. One got fired, one got promoted to DH one went into the lumber dpt I still had not found anything. 2 weeks before what would have been my last day I was training 2 new people and still expected to do my own job, my hours had changed and I had to help customers while trying to train 2 newbies and complete my own job. While training these newbies, I hear that from a DH meeting that Management felt that I was a terrible IMA, which of course is not what my 3 last reviews said. SO they have "a terrible IMA" training the new people who are still now struggling with just getting PD done. (new expectation is that PD is done in an hour and a half. Having only 3 Is's and 2 who still haven't grasped the concept. I am trying to help but still get yelled at. Now the time has passed that I have gotten a new position in the store, and we only have 2 new people trying to walk the entire store for PD in 1.5 hrs, Last winter it was very similar to the same situation as we have now. but there was 2 of us that were experienced in the store and products and the job, we started at 4am and still didn't struggled to get PD done by 8am. that is 4 hours, with 2 experienced ppl. I don't know what is gonna happen next but I know that it is bad. We were told a few weeks ago that if the product is not found to change the count to ZERO. I laughed. I see the OOS now I laugh even harder. ALL pd must be closed b4 IS's leave and they change all the counts to Zero that haven't been found. oh and also there was something wrong in the system with an AD price vs the actual ad. I was told that I should have been checking all the prices in the computer to verify that they were correct in the ad. I laughed yet again, since when is that my responsibility? And even still not

johnnystuyv in Pennsylvania said:

Sorry , hit wrong button ! (above)

My question to Rose is , what does this have to do with the topic "Freight Team " ??

Night freight team and IMAs were all dismissed from thier jobs recently

johnnystuyv in Pennsylvania said: Sorry , hit wrong button ! (above)

My question to Rose is , what does this have to do with the topic "Freight Team " ??

jonnnystuyv please dont pawn on people who wants to write about anything !!!
"Freight Team" was a term used to let ppl in on things that were happening at there store after the "freight team" (write off) or what ever you want to call it.So please keep the hall monitoring at school ! Hey everone elese the jay is back. feel free to tell your stories/problems im sure someone here can get some info/insite from it
...THE...JAY...
Im Watching !!

JAY809570 in Kansas City, Kansas said: jonnnystuyv please dont pawn on people who wants to write about anything !!!
"Freight Team" was a term used to let ppl in on things that were happening at there store after the "freight team" (write off) or what ever you want to call it.So please keep the hall monitoring at school ! Hey everone elese the jay is back. feel free to tell your stories/problems im sure someone here can get some info/insite from it
...THE...JAY...
Im Watching !!

You DO love yourself...don't you ? If you don't like my question...DON'T READ IT !!!

JAY809570 in Kansas City, Kansas said: jonnnystuyv please dont pawn on people who wants to write about anything !!!
"Freight Team" was a term used to let ppl in on things that were happening at there store after the "freight team" (write off) or what ever you want to call it.So please keep the hall monitoring at school ! Hey everone elese the jay is back. feel free to tell your stories/problems im sure someone here can get some info/insite from it
...THE...JAY...
Im Watching !!

One more thing , in case you can't read. The title of this discussion is "Freight Team" . Is it really that difficult to start a new topic about ima's ??????
jeeeez !

johnnystuyv in Pennsylvania said: One more thing , in case you can't read. The title of this discussion is "Freight Team" . Is it really that difficult to start a new topic about ima's ??????
jeeeez !

hmm........ I got it......well......Did you ?.....oh yeah another pin pusher. IM Busy Working......got to go .....

johnnystuyv in Pennsylvania said: One more thing , in case you can't read. The title of this discussion is "Freight Team" . Is it really that difficult to start a new topic about ima's ??????
jeeeez !

One more thing .. You ok ?, or just a little unsure about yourself ?
dont worrie were here to help you too ;)

JAY809570 in Kansas City, Kansas said: One more thing .. You ok ?, or just a little unsure about yourself ?
dont worrie were here to help you too ;)

YOU ARE A IDIOT

Hello guys and gals been a while wanting to know if anyone here has a place "chatroom, blog spot etc.." about hd lot of new up comming info and funny stories "the new respect/sexual harrasment class" but let me know !!

And Hd_sux ....have you noticed that im only helping ;)

.....The Jay.....

JAY809570 in Kansas City, Kansas said: Hello guys and gals been a while wanting to know if anyone here has a place "chatroom, blog spot etc.." about hd lot of new up comming info and funny stories "the new respect/sexual harrasment class" but let me know !!

And Hd_sux ....have you noticed that im only helping ;)

.....The Jay.....

I thought you were fired ??? Oh well. Todays another day !P.S. You need a spelling class.

Anyone heard anything else about what may be happening with the freight crew things. A few speculation things have been floatng around. Any ideas?

My guess is the evening/day freight programs will be the next to be slashed, I also believe the OPS ASM's will be eliminated,(they have already streamlined the loss prevention squad, which was basically BIG brother watching the employees for theft and safety violations anyhow total joke and waste of money).... this will probably occur after the summer season, the cuts are not over yet folks, far from it, don't believe a damned thing Blake tells you, he is a GE crook right out of the Nardelli school!

We've been hearing from vendors that other stores in our district are saying the ISA's/IMA's are going to get cut too. I don't know if it's rumor or truth but we're all on edge. It's kind of weird that right after the job for ISA was created, there was a job description for it-along with all the other one's. Now, we have searched and searched and the IMA job description is still posted-but the ISA job description has disappeared. The trainers at district office here were told their jobs are gone and they have to get absorbed into one of the stores or find another job. We haven't had a loss prevention person in our store for a long time. The part-timers in our store are getting no hours-some working 4 hours a week and some going for 2 weeks at a time with no hours. Use to if someone called in, they would call someone in to cover-not now. Now, whatever department it is goes on autopilot. And there are many days when there's not even coverage scheduled for a department. It's bad. I think everyone can feel that more cuts are coming.

Directive for packdown crew as of this week from Atlanta... all overheads are to be purged, striped, department located only, and eliminate everything in 16' high areas. After we get the store cleaned up... a task we had always wanted to work towards but had always been told was an impossiblity, we will be the next to go I'm sure.

when it comes down to the pack down team is suppose to be removing everything from the upper over heads. That has definatly been happing in my store the upper overhead's not suppose to have an palletize merch really in overhead limited qty in the over heads. So I don't know what the future holds for our dept. now. Who knows what the future holds but if they do would be great to know any new news.

"Directive for packdown crew as of this week from Atlanta... all overheads are to be purged, striped, department located only, and eliminate everything in 16' high areas"

Same is being stressed up here, what is going on here is preparation for a quick liquidation of the entire company if needed,...we have PT lumber aisles with absolutely no overstock whatsoever. All depts are told to order according to sales velocity no more no less. This is a company in deep turmoil folks, prepare yourselves and your families accordingly, the outright liars that run this outfit will not tell you any different until the hatchet falls.

I understand that was the directive with everything just kind of scary of what could happen. Really with if they knew something was going on they would let us know what was going on I know they dont' want to but it would be good if we knew even if we have to keep it confidential. Removing uncertainy makes it a lot easier.

Hey, seen some ppl needed some info... here is what i got..if you seen the home depot tv in the break room HD has FIRED over half of the Officers (corp executives)and put a salary freeze on the ones they kept...that is fact !
and yes the temps service that Dist Hr's are talking about are true too !
that is a smart way of workforce management for them now. I dont see stores hiring this season for fulltime or part time, because if you can get temps on a 90 day contract,you dont have to worry about the "allowed hours" in the off season. now that doesn't mean that if you have a full time spot that just opened up you cant fill it with a temp/new hire. so for the temps yes it is a cold shot in hell !!. and hd is so so verry far from liquiding assets, freight in the overhead is dead weight "dollors not moving" as far as the memo everyone got about packdown that's all it is is packdown and shelf management. yes it sucks for customers cause we need to have "your materials for your whole project" or just the things you need in the store. the last thing Dist Hr's want is for you to start a problem in the storres with "what you heard" and that is the reason they wont tell you much, some that are understand will tell you hint or throw something out there but they do not want there names being co-signed on what you tell everyone elese. There will be cuts depending on how this season is going to go this year TRUST ME. of course the smart way to tell is see how many temps stay at your store "perm" or just look at your fiscal year sales plan compared to last year. dont ask your Hr,Asst Mgrs, or Dist Hr's. HD is in a bad spot right now as far as Customers upgrading their Homes. but think a lot is going to depend on what time the stimuls checks are comming or if they are. but that is a big gamble !! nation wide it is...money spent on 1. lifestyle "food,bills,gas" 2.Luxuries "Home,car,cloths,etc.." Ane never say never!! Look at Microsoft !!
hope I helped a little, Just ask.

You realize that several stores just recently closed, so that means there is a whole bunch of merchandise just sitting there--they are probably going to send it to the stores--a lot of it to the ones who are clearing out overheads. I might be wrong about that--but that would be the sensible thing to do--IF i were in charge. Also if I were a store manager, and I knew about this, I would not want to waste money ordering things either. I would try to sell through the merchandise I had...prep for the incoming merchandise by not ORDERING new stuff--especially if I KNOW that at no cost to my store directly--but to corporate, I was getting stock in. Think about it.
I'm a youngin, but I've been with HD for a long time in all kinds of positions, and honestly, I have a LOT of grievances, but on some of these posts, you guys seem to do as much finger-pointing as management does...point fingers, ask questions later. I'd hate to have some of you with a gun.

I know exactly what you mean. All the same things were done to us, although no one has told us we have to do CAR orders again. And I agree with you-it is a part of ordering. In our store, we are still asked to cover orders all the time and what are we supposed to say? No? We all need our jobs, ya know?...but, they took that away from us and told us that they didn't want us doing it anymore. It was just a way to cut people's jobs and cut people's pay-that's it. And most of the people doing orders, still have no clue what they are doing. We have got in so much crap that we never carried and guess what-it sits there and never sells. They just place it-they don't pay attention to anything. It makes me so mad sometimes-I use to work really hard at what I did and others in the store rode us CONSTANTLY about IMU, job lot quantities, having to order whole trucks for pro sells etc. They gave us no slack as IMA's but now anyone can order anything and they laugh about it! Like it's a big joke. I don't think it's funny-I think it's insulting. Even assistant managers come to us and ask us questions and dept. heads and it's like ok-we had this job taken away from us-why should we tell you anything? It's been over a year! And I still feel like something else is fixing to happen-I can just feel it. Maybe it's the CAR ordering thing but I don't know, I think it's more than that. I think there are more cuts in the future. We keep running out of toliet paper, papertowels, copy paper, etc because the store manager won't approve the orders for store supplies. We use to have things like paperplates, cups, forks, spoons, etc in the breakroom-that's long gone. And I think it's going to get worse.

And I still feel like something else is fixing to happen-I can just feel it. Maybe it's the CAR ordering thing but I don't know, I think it's more than that.

RDC it's here

I think there are more cuts in the future. We keep running out of toliet paper, papertowels, copy paper, etc because the store manager won't approve the orders for store supplies. We use to have things like paperplates, cups, forks, spoons, etc in the breakroom-that's long gone I think they are more responsible for the expense line...

My former merchandising services company, CROSSMARK H.I.S, was pushed out of Home Depot altogether by the MEA program. We had been in, from Day One, four years ago, (as Professional Services/RPM), the In-Store Services Initiative (ISSI). The ISSI groups essentially wrote the book for the MEA program, which we hadn't heard anything about until they first took over D28, which was one of my departments. I've always wondered if that was Home Depot's idea all along, as one by one the MEAs took over D21 and 22,(at that point my position was terminated; these were supposed to be permanent jobs, and I asked Crossmark many times if I should be looking for another job. They said, don't worry about it...)