Community supermarket stock clerk - empty-slot handling SOP: how long a hole stays open, when fronting is allowed and from where, and the one fixed rotation move that never buries fresh dates behind old ones - and the out-of-stock card records demand, not apologies

You are a shelf-operations coach for community
supermarkets. Write an archivable "Empty-Slot
Handling SOP" for stock clerks finding holes in
the planogram. Store facts: the store has a
backroom; most items replenish within
[replenishment lead time] days.

Section 1 - Classify (on finding a hole, two
questions first)
1. Is there backroom stock? If yes, refill now
   using Section 3's rotation move - the rest of
   this SOP does not apply
2. If not, when does it arrive:
   - within [short-gap days] days - Section 2-A
   - beyond that, or unknown - Section 2-B

Section 2-A - Short gap (days)
- Fronting is allowed: pull the same item in a
  different size, or a neighboring item from the
  same subcategory, sideways to close the gap
- Only those two moves. Cross-category fronting
  (laundry detergent pulled into the soy sauce
  hole) is banned outright - it scrambles
  inventory positions and the customer's
  shop-by-category logic with it
- Log on the back of the out-of-stock card:
  "gap fronted with [item]" - restore original
  positions when stock lands

Section 2-B - Long gap / unknown
- Do not front. Place the out-of-stock card and
  hold the slot for [slot-hold days] days
- Past the hold: report to the manager for a
  planogram change - let another item have the
  space; a hole that lasts a month is shelf
  footage donated to nothing
- The card is not an apology card: it carries
  the item name plus one tally per customer who
  asks. Tallies are next order cycle's evidence;
  heavily-asked items get chased first

Section 3 - Refill rotation (every refill, no
exceptions; this is the FIFO survival clause)
- Refill from the back of the facing always:
  pull existing stock forward, place new stock
  behind it
- Front-loading is banned - one front-load buries
  the stock that should have sold first behind
  fresher units, which is precisely how near-date
  emergencies are manufactured
- After refilling, one glance at date order:
  earlier dates in front of later ones. Wrong?
  Re-face the whole section

Section 4 - Daily record
- One daily summary: item / days out / card
  tally count, handed to [who]. That page is the
  store's out-of-stock face; the buyer and the
  manager both read it

Prohibitions:
- No "replenish promptly" or "keep shelves
  tidy" - those are goals, not moves
- The fronting allowance is exactly two cases,
  with no "similar items" discretion clause
- No industry inventory-turnover statistics; the
  SOP governs this store's moves only
- Store parameters I did not provide stay as
  [ ] for me to fill

Why it is written this way

Of the three instincts, fronting is the one that needs governing: it looks like hustle and plants two mines - cross-category fronting scrambles inventory positions (counts and finds both suffer), and front-loading scrambles date order (the standard ingredient of a near-date crisis). So the allowance narrows to two named moves, both reversible, both logged. The cross-category ban is written hardest because "similar items" as wording survives about three days before the aisle is unrecognizable.

Rotation gets its own section and the closing slot even though it technically applies to every refill, not just gap-fills - because "new stock enters from behind, earlier dates in front" is the only life-safety clause in the document. Embedding it here means a clerk runs that check at least once per gap, which turns FIFO from a wall poster into a daily move.

The out-of-stock card is where most stores write it wrong: cards full of "sorry for the inconvenience" that no customer reads. Redefining the card as "item name plus tally marks" turns the empty slot into its own evidence machine - a buyer facing thirty asks in a week moves faster than a manager nagging for a month. The daily summary handed up the line is the channel that converts scattered tallies into ordering leverage.

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