Supermarkets discussion

[gswindale]

Interesting. The last couple of companies I worked for tended to view Friday nights/Saturday mornings as the best time to do software updates, on the basis that if something went wrong, you had the whole weekend to fix it. But that logic doesn't really work if you're a supermarket and your busiest day is probably going to be Saturday

Depends on the nature of your business and the update I guess.

We're in the process of planning a relatively major software upgrade and our provider initially wanted to do it on a Friday. This was rejected as they mentioned that their upgrade support team don't work weekends and we can't guarantee that no users would not want to log in over the weekend.

Much better to run the upgrade during the week when support can be provided in the unlikely event of issues.

 

[takno]

Depends on the nature of your business and the update I guess.

We're in the process of planning a relatively major software upgrade and our provider initially wanted to do it on a Friday. This was rejected as they mentioned that their upgrade support team don't work weekends and we can't guarantee that no users would not want to log in over the weekend.

Much better to run the upgrade during the week when support can be provided in the unlikely event of issues.

I've most run a "don't deploy on Fridays" rule. When people are continually doing small releases it is hard to enforce, but simple fact of the matter is that nobody wants to be called out at the weekend. When you're in a small company without the budget to run a full support rota, then some mug, usually the boss, is the person who's going to lose the weekend to your misplaced confidence.

Sainsbury's isn't a small company, and while I'm sure the CTO has spent the day biting his knuckles and hoping for the best, I doubt he was actually helping to solve the problem. Friday night does seem like a bad day for a deploy though

 

[johntea]

I work in IT and 'read only Friday' is certainly a thing but these days sometimes you have to bite the bullet, e.g. if a critical security fix is required that is being exploited in the wild hackers don't just have the weekend off!

In the case of McDonalds I'm surprised everything is so reliant on a central connection though, if I was designing a system for them I would probably have some local IT in each branch that just synced up with a central server then at least they could run to some extent 'offline'

 

[jon0844]

McDonald's actually had issues on Thursday morning too, and perhaps every few weeks orders placed on the app don't reach the restaurant. In some cases I've been charged but later the transaction is reversed.

It's near impossible to deal with app related faults (which may also impact their kiosks) via customer services either. At best the app reports a fault at their end, so you don't go trying to fault find yourself (clear cache/data, reinstall etc).

Still, nothing is as bad as KFC where I was quite an early adopter and originally signed in using my Facebook login. Roll forward some years and I can't login because while using the same login (with the right password) it says it can't connect and gets stuck in a loop. They've never figured out how to fix it, so I just don't order anything.

I'm sure they could delete my account or reset it, but they are clueless and I don't have the time. Their loss.

I wonder how many other businesses lose custom through the switch/encouragement of using apps that can fail from login, to order, to payment, to sending the order...

 

[lookapigeon]

Would that be because contactless requires periodic bank verification based on recent transactions, but a correct pin is locally verified against coding on the card.

It's because contactless seems to require 100% online authorisation in most cases these days. It's not a problem with the comms links are working.
Back when it was introduced and the max limit was £10/25 it was a case of the terminal/card deciding the risk collectively whether to go online and phone home for authorisation, most of the times it wouldn't but it was obvious when it did (especially when some terminals were connected via dialup, to be found in the small stores).
At some point when they upped the contactless limits the online authorisation became mandatory, for people using devices to pay it has always been. Hence the no using Google/Apple pay.
I suspect this software update issue had something to do with network connectivity to stores- hence the ATMs falling offline, and people being asked to use chip+pin (for most cards if your card allows, it functions offline with the PIN if the network goes down- however certain bank cards and all prepaid require online authorisation, if the card has these it will hard decline). The smartshop scanners were complaining of no internet connectivity in their screen.
There were lots of handwritten notices hastily made with sharpie on paper - which indicates also their ability to make any printouts or access computing resources were affected too.

 

[takno]

It's because contactless seems to require 100% online authorisation in most cases these days. It's not a problem with the comms links are working.
Back when it was introduced and the max limit was £10/25 it was a case of the terminal/card deciding the risk collectively whether to go online and phone home for authorisation, most of the times it wouldn't but it was obvious when it did (especially when some terminals were connected via dialup, to be found in the small stores).
At some point when they upped the contactless limits the online authorisation became mandatory, for people using devices to pay it has always been. Hence the no using Google/Apple pay.
I suspect this software update issue had something to do with network connectivity to stores- hence the ATMs falling offline, and people being asked to use chip+pin (for most cards if your card allows, it functions offline with the PIN if the network goes down- however certain bank cards and all prepaid require online authorisation, if the card has these it will hard decline). The smartshop scanners were complaining of no internet connectivity in their screen.
There were lots of handwritten notices hastily made with sharpie on paper - which indicates also their ability to make any printouts or access computing resources were affected too.

Makes sense, not least because some network operators seem to get very fixated with doing Friday night upgrades to minimise interruptions to their biggest customers who tend to work weekdays. My last company was network intensive and did around 80% of its business at the weekend, so I'm well used to breaking into a cold sweat at an upgrade notification which we didn't have the scale to argue with.

I think what's vaguely astonishing is how few people have registered the scale of the resilience they are losing by joining in the rush to eliminate cash.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Makes sense, not least because some network operators seem to get very fixated with doing Friday night upgrades to minimise interruptions to their biggest customers who tend to work weekdays. My last company was network intensive and did around 80% of its business at the weekend, so I'm well used to breaking into a cold sweat at an upgrade notification which we didn't have the scale to argue with.

I think what's vaguely astonishing is how few people have registered the scale of the resilience they are losing by joining in the rush to eliminate cash.

The attitude you are up against is this:

Connor Hassan, 25, a tourist from New Zealand, was turned away from the branch because he did not have cash.
Frustrated, he said: "I just want to buy food. Maybe it's just my generation but whenever someone only takes cash it feels seedy, like why can't you take card?
"If no one took card I couldn't eat today."

(extract from BBC News article here)

Whenever we have a 'cashless society' debate it very quickly narrows down to:
a) I never use cash, I never carry cash, I don't know what cash looks like, I haven't done so for x decades. Because I am 100% comfortable with this everyone else should do likewise, indeed they must be forced to do so whether they want to or not.
Or,
b) I've always used cash, why should I change.

The reality, as this incident shows, is that electronic transactions are not 100% infallible and it really might be a good idea for businesses / individuals to have a back up to their preferred method.

 

[lookapigeon]

Makes sense, not least because some network operators seem to get very fixated with doing Friday night upgrades to minimise interruptions to their biggest customers who tend to work weekdays. My last company was network intensive and did around 80% of its business at the weekend, so I'm well used to breaking into a cold sweat at an upgrade notification which we didn't have the scale to argue with.

I think what's vaguely astonishing is how few people have registered the scale of the resilience they are losing by joining in the rush to eliminate cash.

I wouldn't say it was a network operator (or whoever supplies their connectivity) failure per se, but perhaps a config change or software update that broke it.

It also makes sense why they couldn't accept gift cards as no doubt this relies on realtime deduction of the balance in the central headquarters' record, otherwise people could go crazy buying everything in store with more than the card's balance, and also why Argos stores were shut as the browsers are little tablets which no doubt rely on some form of network connectivity.

I'd hazard a guess most of the tills can function to sell without a reatime network connection to HQ as they'd record sales on the instore network and these would get polled by headquarters overnight.

I used to work in a shop years ago that we'd have to do a closedown sequence on the instore network to ensure that headquarters could pick up the sales figures / stock orders / order data for the day.

Since covid people don't really carry cash much as everywhere accepts cards, however, there are a growing number of people who place their reliance on everything on their phone, so they're kinda stuck without a backup, as they can't get cash out, nor can they use the card offline with a PIN. All for the sake of not wanting to carry a piece of 3x2" piece of plastic, which is more robust and less error-prone than your phone.

 

[DelW]

Since covid people don't really carry cash much as everywhere accepts cards, however, there are a growing number of people who place their reliance on everything on their phone, so they're kinda stuck without a backup, as they can't get cash out, nor can they use the card offline with a PIN. All for the sake of not wanting to carry a piece of 3x2" piece of plastic, which is more robust and less error-prone than your phone.

This (in bold) is often suggested but isn't actually true. My local greengrocer's is strictly cash only - the shop has no electronics whatsoever, the scales are mechanical, the "till" is a drawer with dividers, and prices and change are calculated by mental arithmetic. You can also pick your chosen produce (the exact amount you want) from the displays and put it in brown paper bags.

This time last year I was in Porthmadog visiting the F&WHR, and I would say at least a quarter of the High Street shops and takeaways had "cash only" signs.

 

[SteveM70]

Interesting. The last couple of companies I worked for tended to view Friday nights/Saturday mornings as the best time to do software updates, on the basis that if something went wrong, you had the whole weekend to fix it. But that logic doesn't really work if you're a supermarket and your busiest day is probably going to be Saturday

Precisely, and a point I made upthread

When I was working at the Coop and we were rolling out SAP, there were 14 cutovers across an 18 month (ish) period, and every one of them was Saturday night into Sunday morning

 

[Hadders]

It's not as simple as cash v card. If network connectivity is lost then selling anything becomes tricky because you lose control of the inventory.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It's not as simple as cash v card. If network connectivity is lost then selling anything becomes tricky because you lose control of the inventory.

Which asks the question "How did shops manage prior to the internet".

 

[jon0844]

Which asks the question "How did shops manage prior to the internet".

Maybe we go back to the days of 'Open All Hours' where you go to the shop and someone serves you items, and puts the cash through a manual register. (I am sure that's what some Brexiteers would love to see too!)

 

[Hadders]

Which asks the question "How did shops manage prior to the internet".

Different times. Practically everything in shops relies on power and internet connections these days.

 

[SteveM70]

It's not as simple as cash v card. If network connectivity is lost then selling anything becomes tricky because you lose control of the inventory.

I think it depends how long you lose it for in that case. At Coop the stores only fed back stock data to the centre once every 24 hours, last thing at night where 99% of them had closed for the night (there were a very small number of 24 hour petrol station stores that have since been sold to Asda).

Store orders were then generated early hours of the morning which then in turn created the vendor orders for fresh, milk and bread.

Bigger supermarkets might do this more frequently.

But ultimately a store can sell as long as long as it has stock and the means to complete the transaction.

Which asks the question "How did shops manage prior to the internet".

In the 2015 Boxing Day floods Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge Coops ended up shoulder deep in floodwater and were closed for a long time. In both cases we ran a pop-up shop from their car park to provide some sort of an offer.

For the first week or so we had power from a generator but no secure data because of the flood damage so we couldn’t take card payments (my memory is vague but I think there’s a requirement for a secure data line for payments so using a mobile phone wasn’t allowed) and couldn’t feed back stock and sales data. So we did it manually and someone in head office keyed the data for us.

But that was a minimal range - about 250 articles compared to say 4,000 for a normal store.

But it did cause the funniest moment of my time at the Coop and at the same time teach me a lesson about different perceptions of the word essential

Hebden Bridge type woman walks up to the pop-up shop in Royd (it looked like a portakabin with a serving hatch)

Her - oh, what’s this then?

Me - best we can do till the flood damage is fixed. We’ve got the essentials though

Her - good, I’ll take a jar of red pesto

Me - ah, we don’t have that. I can try and get some from another store for tomorrow though

Her - don’t worry, green pesto will have to do

 

[Blindtraveler]

That has given me a much needed smile this morning, as you say totally redefining what people classify as essential. For me, stocking an essential type outlook like that would be things like bread and milk, tea coffee and orange juice, baby food and milk, butter jam and eggs and various tinned goods, stuff you could make a meal out of as well as maybe something like toothpaste soap and shampoo. Pesto of any color would not be on the radar

 

[Bald Rick]

Which asks the question "How did shops manage prior to the internet".

They managed with more labour intensive and less efficient systems, which ultimately made things more expensive (relatively).

 

[takno]

That has given me a much needed smile this morning, as you say totally redefining what people classify as essential. For me, stocking an essential type outlook like that would be things like bread and milk, tea coffee and orange juice, baby food and milk, butter jam and eggs and various tinned goods, stuff you could make a meal out of as well as maybe something like toothpaste soap and shampoo. Pesto of any color would not be on the radar

I don't regularly use it, but it's probably the easiest way to turn dried spaghetti into a basic meal, and something I'd regard as more basic and useful as beans on toast.

Obviously I'd be much more confident of getting beans, butter and bread from this kind of shop in the UK, except possibly in Hebden Bridge where I'd probably be expecting to slum it with jars of olives rather than the fresh.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

They managed with more labour intensive and less efficient systems, which ultimately made things more expensive (relatively).

But at the same time, offering employment in their local areas.

 

[GatwickDepress]

They managed with more labour intensive and less efficient systems, which ultimately made things more expensive (relatively).

The Sainsbury's Archive has a rather marvellous image of an annotated daily stock control routine from the 1970s.

Very inefficient, lots of room for human error, difficult to scale up as the range of products increase, and still ultimately reliant on systems not failing (telephones, postal strikes, etc).

 

[skyhigh]

lots of room for human error

Which reminds me of something that happened at our local 'convenience' sized supermarket about 20 years ago when they were still manually ordering stock in.

They meant to order something like 300 boxes of 6 mince pies, but accidentally ordered 300 cases of 6 boxes of 6 mince pies. They had a best before date of the end of January so they still had piles of them long after Christmas on 5p clearance.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Which reminds me of something that happened at our local 'convenience' sized supermarket about 20 years ago when they were still manually ordering stock in.

They meant to order something like 300 boxes of 6 mince pies, but accidentally ordered 300 cases of 6 boxes of 6 mince pies. They had a best before date of the end of January so they still had piles of them long after Christmas on 5p clearance.

They were lucky with the timing of that mistake as mince pies are forever in vogue in the Christmas and New Year time period.

 

[birchesgreen]

Even with modern systems you still get errors, garbage data is garbage data no matter how it's entered or carried. At my wife's branch one of the partners accidentally ordered 120 boxes of expensive prawns instead of 12, and by the time they came it was too late to return them (even if accepted). Opps!

 

[PeterC]

Did you know you can get a text notification when repeat prescriptions are ready for collection at Boots?

The whole system excelled itself this week. Ordered on the NHS app on Tuesday, text from Boots on Thursday to say ready for collection.

If you are registered with them for repeats you will get the message for one-off prescriptions as well.

The attitude you are up against is this:

(extract from BBC News article here)

Whenever we have a 'cashless society' debate it very quickly narrows down to:
a) I never use cash, I never carry cash, I don't know what cash looks like, I haven't done so for x decades. Because I am 100% comfortable with this everyone else should do likewise, indeed they must be forced to do so whether they want to or not.
Or,
b) I've always used cash, why should I change.

The reality, as this incident shows, is that electronic transactions are not 100% infallible and it really might be a good idea for businesses / individuals to have a back up to their preferred method.

I don't normally use cash but always have a couple of notes in my back pocket as I have been caught out in the past.

 

[takno]

Which reminds me of something that happened at our local 'convenience' sized supermarket about 20 years ago when they were still manually ordering stock in.

They meant to order something like 300 boxes of 6 mince pies, but accidentally ordered 300 cases of 6 boxes of 6 mince pies. They had a best before date of the end of January so they still had piles of them long after Christmas on 5p clearance.

When I worked at Iceland a trainee accidentally ordered a palette of Turkey Bacofoil instead of a case, and it was still there in June. We had the last laugh though, when Blue Peter unaccountably decided to make a model Tracey Island with "large sheets of foil" in June. We had half the branches in the country calling up and begging for a case.

 

[SteveM70]

Even with modern systems you still get errors, garbage data is garbage data no matter how it's entered or carried. At my wife's branch one of the partners accidentally ordered 120 boxes of expensive prawns instead of 12, and by the time they came it was too late to return them (even if accepted). Opps!

They still have manual store ordering?

Most of the major chains have got rid of it completely, with most ordering completely automated other than one-off specials and a few other exceptions

 

[birchesgreen]

They still have manual store ordering?

Most of the major chains have got rid of it completely, with most ordering completely automated other than one-off specials and a few other exceptions

I think it was a one-off special but anyway everyone got cheap prawns that week!

 

[SteveM70]

I think it was a one-off special but anyway everyone got cheap prawns that week!

Fair enough. At Coop the one-offs were a push from the centre, and despite paying over £150 million to buy, install and deploy SAP, supply chain insisted on being able to upload these orders from a spreadsheet, so daft mistakes still happen. As one of my ex-colleagues eloquently put it, "we've given them a bloody Ferrari and they're driving it like a 2CV"

 

[GusB]

Fair enough. At Coop the one-offs were a push from the centre, and despite paying over £150 million to buy, install and deploy SAP, supply chain insisted on being able to upload these orders from a spreadsheet, so daft mistakes still happen. As one of my ex-colleagues eloquently put it, "we've given them a bloody Ferrari and they're driving it like a 2CV"

"Allocations" were the bane of my life. I remember receiving the promotions sheets and if Pringles were on it, my heart would sink; they just didn't sell in our store and we'd end up with case after case sitting in the stock room. They'd also change the barcodes every now and again so that the ones we did have didn't work with the new promotions...

The other one that they kept flinging at us was Glenfiddich.

 

[Gloster]

"Allocations" were the bane of my life. I remember receiving the promotions sheets and if Pringles were on it, my heart would sink; they just didn't sell in our store and we'd end up with case after case sitting in the stock room. They'd also change the barcodes every now and again so that the ones we did have didn't work with the new promotions...

The other one that they kept flinging at us was Glenfiddich.

That was a problem!