Reflections on 2020 and life as an online order picker

Some of you may know that I spent the last seven months pushing a trolley around a well-known supermarket in the early hours of the morning – having spent the previous twenty five years writing and talking about the retail and retail property sectors. I can tell you that they were very different experiences. So, here I am trying to get back into writing mode…

The operational side of grocery retailing is a tough place to be – far more so than sitting in an office (or at home) pontificating on fund strategy or the future of the shop or the office. Let’s face it, that’s not real work, is it?!

In essence, FMCG retailing is about getting the goods from the warehouse to the store and to the customer as efficiently as possible, with the added complication of maintaining the cold chain for chilled and frozen products.

Indeed, at store level, there isn’t a great deal of room for ‘strategic thinking’. I remember one of my early shifts when I suggested to a manager that we might write a joint article. This drew a somewhat puzzled look, a frown and, in good old Anglo Saxon, a jocular reminder that I should focus on picking orders! It was really just about the nitty gritty of getting the online orders shopped and the delivery vans out on time.

Supermarkets are basically just big warehouses where customers go and pick their shopping, with many (if not most) stores also servicing online orders and click ‘n’ collect. Regardless of trading hours, they operate 24/7, which includes a veritable army of staff receiving deliveries and replenishing the shelves overnight. You wouldn’t believe how busy these places are on the night shift, with stock, trolleys and pallets strewn all over the place. Getting down some of the aisles can be tricky.

Online order picking involves pushing a trolley with eight totes (boxes) around the store and filling it with the items ordered by customers. My shifts were eight hours, with a half hour break, but there was plenty of overtime as it was so busy. In fact, during the first lockdown period which began in late March, online orders pretty much tripled within a few weeks.

A picker also has a hand-held scanner which tells you which item to pick and its location (or ‘nailing’) in the store. This is a code which gives you the aisle number, left or right side, section number, shelf and its position on that shelf. Eventually, you develop the ability to quickly read the code and zoom in to exactly where the product is on the shelf. You scan the product, place it in the correct tote, then scan the tote. Some shops involve just a handful of items, such as bakery, while other shops might comprise almost 200 items. These trolleys become very heavy when they fill up with milk, booze and 24-packs of fizzy drinks.

A hand held scanner showing key IPH stats

Another feature of a picker’s life is the fabled IPH – the Items Per Hour pick rate. Our target rate was around 160 but the fastest pickers can achieve well over 200 on a shift, with figures sometimes exceeding 300 on individual chilled shops where the products are close together on a small number of aisles.

Every click you make on your scanner is recorded and analysed – including the mis-scans, nailing updates, product substitutions (your ‘subs’) and where you don’t provide a substitute (your ‘nags’) - so you leave a precise electronic footprint of what you do on the shift. In fact, pretty much everything you do is recorded – from clocking in and clocking out to being on CCTV most of the time.

Working in the supermarket wasn’t my first career choice, but I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity. I learnt a lot about retail operations and met some great people. I had an eclectic mix of colleagues, ranging from people who had been in the store for 15 years to temps like myself. There were teenagers about to go to college, university students, people who had been put on furlough or made redundant, with backgrounds as diverse as make-up artists, opticians, accountants, event managers and … property researchers.

The latter part of my shifts overlapped with the store being open to customers, so I bumped into a lot of my neighbours, not to mention people I used to get the train into London with. At the beginning, these were somewhat strange encounters and I must admit it took me a while to get used to wearing a uniform and a name badge.

The most enjoyable aspect of the job was the interaction with customers, which was a welcome distraction from the monotony of picking. Most questions related to ‘where’s such and such?’ or ‘can you get something off the top shelf?’. I had a soft spot for the older shoppers, many of whom just wanted a bit of human contact, while one of my best days was when I helped a guy to find the ingredients for a cake he was making for his wife. For all the technology now available, it’s worth noting that people still play a major role in making retail work.

At this point, I would make a plea to those of you in the property industry and the wider service sector who have had the luxury of working at home during the pandemic. And in particular to those who order their groceries online for home delivery. Please remember that numerous people have worked hard through the night to pick and pack your order, load it on to the van and drive it to your home.

Remember also there are still millions of people in the workforce who have to get up, go to work and do some hard graft – in many cases on a meagre hourly rate. They can’t just roll out of bed and switch the laptop on, or ping off a few emails on the mobile to show colleagues they’re busy….

And finally, I will end by giving a mention to my close colleagues – Grace, Carol, Alex, Zach, Dale, Jessica, Namra, Suli, Sanj, Gopi, Liz, Big Chris, Little Chris, James, Tim, Andrew, Lydia, Alan, Donna and Helen among others – you were all brilliant. Thanks for the humour and the banter. I will not forget you.