I Pick Online Food Shop Orders AMA

[thismeansnothing]

On a few days off after a run of night shifts and am a bit bored. Plus after the thread about supermarket work I thought I'd set this up. I started this roll 6 month ago and find it interesting mainly because I am a nosey sod! But if you've wondered about supermarket work and the world of substitutions AMA

How expensive can you go when you make a substitution?

Do you have time to pick the longest expiry dates on products or is the etiquette to take from the front of the shelf?

Do you walk around the supermarket picking things up for each order or is there a special warehouse full of goods for online orders?

Do you make an effort to pick fresh-looking fruit and veg or do you grab the first one that comes to hand?

@HollowTalk

Where I work substitutions are an absolute last resort. We are told to sub up if something is out of stock. There isn't a cap on how much but to apply common sense. Like if someone wants a £10 bottle of wine and we send a £20 one questions will be asked. The handset we use does give us sensible substitution suggestions though.

What's the strangest/most random bulk order you've received? Or is there a limit on how many of any given item a customer can buy?

I used to do this at Tesco and used to give people the most expensive poshest substitution at Christmas time if their item wasn't in stock 😁

@JMG1234

We have to go for longest date possible. Where I work all picking is done at night when the chilled delivery arrives and goes on the shelf. We only have 25 mins to do a chilled pick just because of cold chain. So you have to get the stuff from the back of the shelf where the newest stuff will be. Again with fruit and veg we aren't timed (but still have to be quick) we have to get the longest date available so have time to have a look for it.

@BeesAnkles where I am we pick in the supermarket but we do have 2 warehouses that some online shops are picked from. One covers a chunk of London and not sure on the other.

But yes I only send stuff I'd be happy to receive myself. With fruit and veg anything that's been damaged gets wasted. And again anything in a packet the longest dated one gets sent. We are timed on each pick but when you know where everything is and used to how it all works there is time to be quick and check quality of what your sending

Thank you, that's very interesting.

@animalnitrate this weekend we had a big bulk order for pannetonne. Over £600 quids worth

You know what. I'm not sure what the limit is for how much one individual customer can order. I do know that ATM our store is capped at around 10,000 items which will be based on the capacity and number of Vans we have. But can't honestly answer the other bit.

Do you build up a picture of the household as you pick the products on the list? Do you judge?!

[quote thismeansnothing]@JMG1234

We have to go for longest date possible. Where I work all picking is done at night when the chilled delivery arrives and goes on the shelf. We only have 25 mins to do a chilled pick just because of cold chain. So you have to get the stuff from the back of the shelf where the newest stuff will be. Again with fruit and veg we aren't timed (but still have to be quick) we have to get the longest date available so have time to have a look for it.[/quote]
This is pleasantly surprising! I always thought you'd be encouraged to pick tje stuff going off first.

Why are some substitutions so random? Do staff have a game to make the most useless subs?

I've been sent waste paper bin sized bin liners instead of black sacks. Or meat filled pasta when I've ordered vegetarian ones, most of the order was vegetarian food so common sense should prevail surely? Or the bag of fish pie mix (to make a family sized pie) that was subbed with a tiny fish pie ready meal. Admittedly a 'posh' one but not much use when I need to feed 2 teens and me. These were all during lockdown as well so I couldn't even refuse them.

Although my favourite one was the out of stock item that was subbed with the exact same item

[quote thismeansnothing]@animalnitrate this weekend we had a big bulk order for pannetonne. Over £600 quids worth

You know what. I'm not sure what the limit is for how much one individual customer can order. I do know that ATM our store is capped at around 10,000 items which will be based on the capacity and number of Vans we have. But can't honestly answer the other bit.[/quote]
Amazing!!!

That's interesting there isn't a limit. Do you get many people doing what looks like hoarding shops of things like beans, bog roll, pasta etc?

@twinkletwat kind of... Only because each person's order will be picked by 5/6 different people depending what they've ordered. So you only see a snippet of each customer's shop. But sometimes I'm a bit curious. Like who needs 10 jars of bernaise sauce? And the bank holiday gazillion bottles of wine and packets of aspirin make me giggle.

Do the customer requests/comments (ie the comments you can leave about what to pick/what substitutions would be OK etc) actually get to you?

Also, how do really random substitutions happen? Not long ago asked for a jar of hot chocolate and it was substituted with Cardamom seeds. I like to think some warehouse staff were having a bit of fun with a 'who can get the weirdest substitution out' game:)

I know you have to pick what’s ordered but do you think wtf when someone like me clicks 7 packets of bananas instead of 7 single or 6 x 6 pack of milk etc, do you just know they are going to come back? I’ve lost count of how many multi packs I’ve clicked instead of single items. I once had 64 oranges delivered. Is it just me?
.

Oh and there is a limit of 10 of anything in our store, it was 3 during first lockdown.

[quote thismeansnothing]@twinkletwat kind of... Only because each person's order will be picked by 5/6 different people depending what they've ordered. So you only see a snippet of each customer's shop. But sometimes I'm a bit curious. Like who needs 10 jars of bernaise sauce? And the bank holiday gazillion bottles of wine and packets of aspirin make me giggle.[/quote]
Thanks for replying! Interesting to know that several people are involved.

Do you scan as you go round or have to take it all through a till?

@Imnotwhoyoithinkiam not sure where you shop but our handset will only suggest similar items. You can go off list but it will suggests the most logical thing so in theory you shouldn't go too far wrong. So their shouldn't be any cases of ordering nappies but being sent a sponge for example. And again we are told to 'sub up' so if someone orders a certain size of something and it's out of stock to send a bigger pack size or send smaller packs but more of them so they have the right quantity or slightly more. Again a bit of common sense has to go with that bit but subbing for similar shouldn't go to far wrong. And again with veggie or vegan stuff it wouldn't suggest meat options as a sub.

@animalnitrate at the beginning of.covid it was stupid people ordering mountains of tins and porridge and none perishables. But they quickly capped how much bleach, anti bac wipes, pasta etc people could order. And because it was always out of stock they completely took flour off the online ordering site. That made it a lot more sensible. But now it's settled down a bit you do see elements of it. Alot of soups and tinned veg etc. But because I'm not delivering it or know who the customer is etc I don't know if it's their weekly shop or a monthly one where it's a bit more acceptable not be seen to be buying a bit more

Someone must have been messing about that day then. Veggie DS wasn't happy when he couldn't have his favourite pasta

PS its Morrisons.

@Hesnotlocal yes the comments get through to us. On our handset the display is a picture of the item, the price and where it's located. Then any customer comment will be at the side. So this weekend I had someone request that the bananas we sent them were green as they have a hot kitchen and ripen too quickly 😂 fair enough. So any substitution requests go their as well so we do see them.

As for daft substitutions where I work the handset suggests them to us and gives us a few sensible similar options. It doesn't suggest anything random. We can go off list if we wanted But subs are randomly checked as they should be a last resort so stupid ones could be flagged. And obviously a customer can reject substitutions so it would only get fed back.

I shop at Tesco online and I once ordered 1x fever tree aromatic toni and was instead sent a substitute of 2x fever tree Mediterranean tonic. I was well happy getting 2 instead of 1 😁 do you think the picker was in a good mood that day rather than just sending me 1?