Spread two / Left leaf / An order, in three hands
What an order carries
An order reaches this desk by one of three routes, and each route arrives with a different set of things missing.
ORDER REF · raised on receipt
3 × crate, stacking, 45 L
1 × lid to suit
“The lid is for the 45 litre one not the 35, I got that wrong last time I ordered from somewhere. Work address is fine in the week.”
— posted form, same lines, in pencil: “make it 4 crates”Three sentences, and only one of them is an instruction.
The first is the customer pre-empting a mistake they expect somebody to make, which is useful and goes on the line as a note. The second is a condition on the address and belongs with the address, not with the lines. The pencil amendment is a different document arriving later with no reference on it, which is the hardest thing the desk handles all day.
Three ways in, three things missing
A basket order arrives complete and structured: lines, quantities, address fields already separated, and free text that may contain anything at all. What it lacks is a human reading the free text at the moment it is written, so a condition buried in it may sit there for hours.
An order written to the desk by email arrives as prose. It usually says what the customer wants very clearly and almost never says it in fields: quantities are in words, the address is a single run-on line, and the item is described rather than referenced. It has to be read into the order record by hand, and read back to the customer before anything is picked.
A posted order form arrives structured but slow, and it is the only route where the handwriting itself is evidence — an amended quantity crossed through once is an amendment, the same figure written over itself is a guess. Posted forms are kept until the order they belong to is closed, because the paper is the only copy.
Whichever route it came by, the order record it becomes is identical. That is the point of having a record at all: by the time the floor sees anything, it cannot tell which hand wrote it.
Spread two / Right leaf / The desk, before a pick note
The checks made before a pick note is raised
Eight of them, in a fixed order, because several only make sense once an earlier one has passed. None of them is a judgement about the customer; every one is a question about whether the order can be picked as it stands.
| Check | What it catches | If it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Address block complete | A missing building number or a second line that is really a company name | Held at the desk; one question by email, nothing picked |
| Postcode against the address lines | A postcode typed from memory that belongs to the previous address | Held; the customer confirms it, rather than being corrected silently |
| Quantity against pack multiple | Six ordered where the item leaves the bay in fours | Customer asked whether to round up or down |
| Line reference against description | “Lid to suit” with no size, or a size that suits nothing on the order | Held; the suitable reference is confirmed before picking |
| Substitution instruction | An order with no instruction and a line that may be short | Noted as absent, which is itself an instruction: do not substitute |
| Access and timing notes | A gate, a buzzer, a weekday-only address | Moved out of the free text and onto the label field |
| Bay-level availability | A range showing available while the bay it picks from is empty | Line held, or the whole order held, depending on what the customer said |
| Duplicate within the window | The same lines to the same address twice, usually a double submit | Both held; one question before either is picked |
The seventh is the one that justifies the other seven. Availability shown against a range is an aggregate; a picker works at a face. Checking at bay level means the pick note that gets raised can actually be completed, and a pick note that cannot be completed is worse than an order that was never released: it occupies a tote, a picker and a bench before it fails.
Right leaf / Paperwork
The documents an order becomes
Six of them, each raised by the one before it. Nothing in the chain is a copy of its predecessor: every link drops what the next pair of hands cannot use.
- Order record. Everything the customer sent, separated into address, lines and notes, with the route it arrived by and the time. Nothing is deleted from it; amendments are added underneath.
- Pick note. The lines in aisle order with a bay against each, the substitution instruction where one exists, and a column for initials. No address and no access note, because neither is any use at a bay.
- Check sheet. Filled in at the check bench by someone other than the picker: line, quantity found, quantity expected, initials. A short line is written here, not fixed here.
- Packing note. What went in the box, in the box. The customer’s own line descriptions are used rather than internal references, so it can be read against what was ordered.
- Manifest line. One line per parcel handed over: parcel reference, order reference, parcel number out of the total for that order, and the access note if there is one.
- Return record. Opened when a return reference is issued and closed at the inspection bench. It sits against the original order record, not on its own.
Right leaf / The timestamp that decides
Amendments, before and after
Pick noteNot raised
ChangeAddress, work not home
ActionEdit, noted underneath
ToteNone on the floor
Told toNobody. Nothing moved
EditPick noteRaised 11:31
ChangeAddress, work not home
ActionRecall, note withdrawn
ToteHeld at the check bench
Told toPicker, bench, desk
RecallThe same sentence from the same customer, forty-eight minutes apart. An amendment that arrives before the pick note is raised is an edit: the order record is updated, the change is noted underneath the original wording, and nothing else happens. An amendment that arrives afterwards is a recall. The tote is found on the floor, carried to the check bench and held there; the pick note is marked withdrawn rather than completed; a new one is raised. The units already in the tote go back to their bays before anything else is picked, because a unit sitting in a held tote is a unit the stock figure thinks is on a shelf.
Both are ordinary. The reason the distinction is written down is that only one of them can be done without telling anybody, and it is a bad habit to let the other one be done quietly too. A withdrawn pick note stays in the file with the reason on it.