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

Right. I'm about to eat my tea, soooo any other questions I'll answer in a bit :)

Thanks, that was fascinating.

This is fascinating me more than it ought to.

I'm learning a lot!

I only found out recently that pickers are timed with a timer that counts down. So the handset knows how many items are to be picked and how long it should take. So for anyone picking in the day when there's customers and they ask the picker where something is it must be very stressful as the clock is ticking! Like Supermarket Sweep or something!

I have ordered groceries online for years and really appreciate being able to do this as work and kids makes it hard to fit large foodshops in. Thanks OP!

@sparklingbrook where I am you are only on a timer for frozen and chilled where you get 15mins and 20 mins respectively. That's only because the items in this list can't be out of the freezer of fridges for longer than that. If you 'time out' and haven't picked everything on your list it creates a new list with the remaining items for the next person to pick a list from that section.

On all picks we get a scoring and it will come up as red (bad) amber (not great but passable) and green (good) based on how quick you are then at the end of the shift you get an overal average. It will also tell you how many items you picked and how many you didn't.

@enough4me your welcome! Luckily my eldest is at school but I never relish a big shop with the toddler in tow 😬😬

I'm a little bit sad that it's picked by lots of different people and someone isn't judging my shopping TBH but it explains A LOT.

We have to buy a lot of gluten free food and I'm always a bit sometimes when we have something gluteny shoved in with everything else gluten free.

I base my online supermarket delivery preference on which of them deliver the white wine chilled rather than ambient .

Do you get to feedback to anyone if you feel the substitute suggestions are silly?

Thank you, this is fascinating. I'm a recent convert to click and collect and I too envisaged someone going round the shop with my list and a trolleyl

@expensivelydecorated click and collect has increased again in the past couple of weeks and is picked at the same time as all the online orders. No perusing the aisles with your list and a trolley unfortunately

@pastabest I haven't come across a stupid substitution suggestion yet. There have been odd occasions when it hasn't suggested anything. And there are a few anomolies where I'd rather offsale something than sub it. Classic example is greetings cards. And every manager says something bloody different around that topic.

As for the gluten things thrown in when the rest of your shop is gluten free. If it's a GF items not available, where I am it would only suggest another GF option as a sub and if there wasn't anything on the shelf or in the back you'd just offsale that one item. Also If you could see other GF items in that customers crate common sense would suggest not to send something with gluten in. Unfortunately not everyone has common sense. But also, I guess people are shopping for more than one person/family ATM so if there's a mix of gf and non gf items the picker isn't to know.

I get my click and collect on a Sunday, on the day lockdown 2 was announced the driver remarked that he could normally fit 18 collection loads into his van but that day they were all so big that 13 filled it. I notice the slots are more booked up now too.

@expensivelydecorated we are releasing more delivery slots over the next few weeks in the run up to Xmas. But as I don't have anything to do with any of the systems we use I don't know if these are for people that have pre booked a delivery or if they are still bookable.

I’ve used Tesco home delivery sporadically since I had my third baby. I’ve now been using them weekly since covid (critical care nurse so zero time plus 3 children, parents and neighbours to shop for).

Honestly, Tesco have been AMAZING. I’ve been so impressed. My neighbour’s vulnerable and the “posh” supermarket she was allocated were dreadful hence me shopping for her. We also have the best delivery drivers, always smiley, always helpful.

Thanks for all you do OP!

Aww thanks @Xigris . Although I don't work for Tesco I know some people somewhere are getting their food for the week/fortnight/month

I'm not too worried about Christmas, I prefer click and collect to delivery and I will get most things the weekend before with anything last minute in store (I go at quiet times).

I didn't get in with delivery at all when I tried it, waiting in and too many subs. Click and collect is great as it's not from our store so I go into the shop beforehand and buy anything I've forgotten or that my email says hasn't been delivered or has been unsuitably subbed. Then out to the car park to get the rest of it.

Really interesting. So you enjoy the job?

@raininsummer

I only started in May after being made redundant in April. It's completely different to what I was doing previously. The shifts are a bugger (midnight till 8am) but it means I'm not having to pay for my youngest to go to nursery so saving a fortune there. I like that I'm not physically or mentally bringing my work home with me (bar this thread). It's physically demanding, I typically walk about 6/7 miles in a shift and there's lots of heavy lifting involved, but again I like that. All my jobs have been quite active and where I've been out and about. I'm not made to work in an office and being in one fixed place 😂 I'm lucky I work with a nice team. Plus I like the monotony and repetitiveness too.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads career wise and unsure what it is a want to do. But for the time being this is pretty much doing what it needs to do for me mentally and financially

Thanks for reply. It sounds very hard physically which is what I expected. I have seen some jobs like that advertised near me but actually don't think I would cope with that side of it now I am very much the wrong end of my fifties.

Yerr when I applied I didn't quite appreciate how hard it can be. Obviously each crate has max weight so it can't be overloaded. But the trolleys depending what's in them can get heavy to push round, then stacking the crates ontop of each other, sometimes up to 7 high you need some power/strength and a good technique to lift it up. Saying that we have a right mixed bag of people that work there from students/gap years, there's a few mums to save on childcare to some people well into their 50s. But you do need a decent level of fitness for it. I often get home and just need to sit.

Do you get training for the manual handling aspect?

@expensivelydecorated it was a 30min video. Which tbh I don't thinks good enough. I've come from the NHS where every 12 month we had mandatory manual handling training which was practical.

I think deliveries have come on a long way from when they first started. There was a conception that pickers pick food that is about to go off. In my recent experience I have found food ordered from Tesco to last longer than things I buy myself at Waitrose which is closer. The fact pickers are taking the time to pick from the back is probably the reason as your thread has highlighted, v interesting.

I have been very happy, I had 27 loo roll for 24, a large free pot of yoghurt that must have been someone else's. I pay a one month delivery fee for a weekly delivery and it has been a godsend as I am also clinically vulnerable. Thank you for your work OP.

How many nights a week do you work, Op? And when do you sleep?