Fresh supermarket trainer - the three-day new-hire onboarding SOP: what to learn each day, who leads it, and the three-gate check before working solo

You are writing an onboarding SOP for a fresh-food supermarket.
Draft the "New Hire Three-Day Solo-Readiness SOP" for two roles:
produce clerk/weigher and cashier (shared skeleton, role-specific
differences called out). The executors are the training buddy
(a senior employee) and the duty manager; the document must be
executable without further explanation.

Headline principles, written into the SOP's opening:
- The three days' goal is not "learned the job" but "safe to
  work unsupervised" - nobody watching, no red-line incidents
- At most 5 new operations per day, fewer is better - a
  crammed day-one list teaches nothing

[Day 1] Watch and recognize (touch no product, no scale, no cash)
- Morning: the buddy walks the floor, zones named; three safety
  red lines physically pointed out and repeated back by the new
  hire: where knives live and how they're handed over, the wet
  floor areas, walk-in door operation and anti-lock-in. Exactly
  three - more won't stick
- Afternoon: product recognition - the 30 high-frequency items
  for this role (names, home locations, which are short-shelf-life);
  what FIFO looks like on the shelf - point out a row with dates
  buried at the back
- End of day: five oral questions (buddy asks, hire answers;
  misses repeat at tomorrow's huddle); buddy signs "Day 1
  complete" on the training record

[Day 2] Guided doing (buddy demos once -> hire does it once ->
hire does it alone while the buddy watches)
- Morning: core operations for the role through the three steps.
  Clerk/weigher: culling, label printing, scale tare and zeroing,
  pulling and sticker-tagging near-expiry. Cashier: opening a
  drawer, manual entry of common barcodes, the refund flow,
  shift handover counts
- Afternoon: peak hours beside the buddy, buddy corrects but
  never takes over; every correction gets one line in the
  training record (operation + what was wrong); anything wrong
  three times gets flagged "Day 3 priority check"
- End of day: the buddy reviews the day's correction log, item
  by item

[Day 3] Half shift solo + the check
- Morning: the hire runs half a shift solo (buddy present,
  hands off unless a red line triggers); corrections keep
  logging
- Afternoon: the three-part check - all demonstrations, no
  written test: (1) three core operations demonstrated, chosen
  first from the Day 2 correction log; (2) surprise role-play:
  the buddy plays a customer with three questions (e.g. "these
  greens are wilted - any discount?" "clean this fish for me"
  - role-appropriate); (3) red lines restated with the WHY,
  not the location
- Verdict, three options: pass = solo tomorrow; conditional
  pass = solo, but one daily spot-check by the buddy for a
  week; fail = one more training day, recheck

Solo-clearance red lines (any one occurrence stops clearance
and extends training - zero discretion):
- Hygiene: bare hands on ready-to-eat product, gloves not
  changed when required
- Weighing: the "add extra then round down" move - deliberately
  overloading the scale before zeroing to flatter the customer.
  This one stops everything the moment it appears
- Cash (cashier role): counting large bills by hand instead of
  through the counter

Output format:
- Three-day schedule grid: morning/afternoon cells, each stating
  "what / who leads / what counts as done"
- Training record template (table): date / operation / what was
  wrong / Day 3 priority check?
- The check sheet: each of the three parts with pass/fail
  criteria, written for the buddy to tick
- The red lines in their own bolded box, with a manager
  signature line

Do not:
- Include "company culture" or "company history" - every hour
  of the three days belongs to job actions
- Produce a scoring rubric with a 90-point pass mark -
  demonstration checks have pass / conditional / fail; points
  are fake precision
- Write role differences as abstractions ("cashiers should
  mind their service attitude") - differences must be concrete
  actions

Why it is written this way

"Shadow a senior for three days" fails because it has no structure: the senior does their own work, the new hire learns whatever drifts past, and when the manager asks "ready for solo?", the only available answer is "more or less." This SOP dissolves "more or less" into checkable pieces - a fixed daily schedule, pass criteria per step, a demonstration check before clearance. The buddy needs no teaching talent, only the ability to follow a list.

The demo-once / do-once / do-alone-once sequence is plain skill acquisition common sense, but it has to be hard-coded - the buddy's default behavior otherwise is "you watched me do it" followed by walking away. Day 2's correction log feeding Day 3's priority checks closes the loop: training weight automatically lands on each hire's weak spots instead of the buddy's habits.

Pass / conditional / fail with no point scores is deliberate. A rubric manufactures fake precision - nobody can say what separates 89 from 91 - but "deliberately overloading the scale then rounding down" is a visible fact. Demonstration checks move the judgment onto observable actions, shrink the buddy's discretion, and leave the hire nothing to argue with.

The red lines live in their own no-discretion box because all three share one property: once they become habit, unlearning costs far more than one extra training day. Especially the scale move - new hires think it's a service gesture, and buddies find it awkward to call out. The SOP says it for them: stop, it's the rule, not a judgment of you.