love cutting lists. manager writes them and I go to town on them. In fact when I first started I couldn't read his writing and he wrote them on little papers and taped them by the saw. So I designed a full 8.5 x 11 list on computer printed a bunch off and all he has to do is fill in the blanks with numbers. I put them on a clipboard so I can take it in cooler and load up cart. I don't have the memory I had when I was younger so this works well no wasted time with 20 trips out to look at the case lol! I'll usually take a look after clean up fill any holes with backstock and call it a day. We have a productive routine that works well for us.

In 1981 I left an independent chain as a meat mgr to go to Pathmark as a cutter, due to a better contract and $1/hr higher wages. As low man I was often put on the night shift, 10 PM to 8:30 AM.  10-12 was over time and midnight to 8:30 was an extra $2.50/hour.  Night shift was the toughest job in the dept. I had an idiot meat mgr who did not understand the costs of over cutting and he would give impossible lists like 15 boxes of pork loins, 2 calves, 2 lamb, 4 loins of beef, 6 chucks, and 6 rounds, 4 ribs, plus the morning grind.  If you did not produce 20 high boys of retail cuts you got seriously beat up in the morning. Very stressful! I once had company security come in on me at 3 am because our shrink was so bad. They told me they suspected I was throwing things out. I told them I was an open book so check everything they wanted, but take a look at the case which was loaded to over the load level, including $600 worth of ground beef that by policy had to be thrown out by 8 am. It was like this every night which was why, I told them, that this dept led the division in shrink. They agreed.

Once I was a meat mgr for this company, my lists were much smaller, with more attention paid to the case. During the day my 2nd man would line up production for the cutters and the evening and night cutter were to focus on maintining the case, producing sale items, doing sanitation, and less perishable items like white meat. This worked for me as I was consistently in the top 5 stores of this 150 store chain. 

Lists can be good or bad, depending on who writes them,

I cull the counter every morning and make a list of what is needed to start the morning.Then as cutters come in I make a list for the morning,then the wrappers let us know what we need as the day goes on, we don't need to be going on the counter every 5 min.When I work late I have a list for the guys made up at night to get what they need in the morning.Works for us.

Another aspect of lists was that, if the store mgr wanted the cutter to do something that was not on his list, the store mgr had to write it on his list and sign his name. Often they would not do that and face the wrath of the Meat Mgr the next day, and thus it did not happen. Once I was  a Meat Mgr I covered that possibility by making number 1 on the list "Take care of case as needed" . That probably did hurt pure production but it made the evening and over night cutter more responsive to the needs of the business and more responsive to the store manager.

I've done it with, I've done it without. However, in the markets I worked in, they were 'heat lamp' markets with corporates coming in at any time. For my protection, I had to fill out a cutting list 3 times per day; date and time them and save them for 7 days on a rotating basis. Whether I ever followed them didn't matter, you had to have the paperwork to prove it or else they would fire you. Union shop, fireable offense, alteration or non-compliance with company records. After 7 days they were filed and kept for a year; the supervisor routinely checked them for compliance. Same with cutting tests and inventory sheets, naturally. Cutting the meat and maintaining a good department was the easy part; it was the politics that was hard.

The real secret to a good department was the wrapper's eyes; he or she managed the case and would constantly notify you of minute-by-minute updates: "Got 8 BP's of chx left" or "Put up chicken livers and gizzards" or "Need chuck eye steaks" etc etc.  They were your cutting list!

I make my first list to spot ad items, holes, then my meat wrapper takes over in telling me what I need, I hardly ever go out front after 8 in the morning unless it's for customer service

Once we went to chill pack chicken, re-working it was forbidden and it meant instant termination. We specified a 6 day code on our Holly Farms chill pack even though our main competitor specified 12 days on the same Holly Farms product. The goal was to provide the freshest possible product to the customer. WE had to reduce it prior to expiration and throw it out once it expired even though it had several days life left in it. If our Meat Product Mgr, Sanitarian, or QC inspector paid a visit and found poultry out of a chill pack and store packaged that meant termination for the Meat Mgr or whomever was in charge of the department at the time it was discovered,