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Post Info TOPIC: Too much management
Anonymous Bkry Mgr

Date:
Too much management
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Am I the only one who thinks that Kroger has a problem with Too much management? 
In any given day I'll have not just my own store's co manager and store manager inspecting things, but I'll have regional and division managers poking their head into my dept, asking questions, pointing out what they would like to see improve, I got these 'Pop' team managers who show up and want to rearrange the MASSIVE WALL OF PAPERWORK- daily reports, case counts, CAP, tortilla chart, 15 minute charts, 'getting a good close' paper, OSAT scores.. it goes ON AND ON, and every single month they add some NEW program to it all... (But they've never added hours to spend on all this paperwork!)

Since I was moved to this store shortly after my promotion, I've gotten their inventory under control, sales are double digits up, our daily schedule percent effective rating is amazing because we are still 30-70 hours under scheduled every week (OR MORE!) because they just can't seem to hire anyone, but at the same time our overall daily rating is poor because I would need about 12 part time employees with full availability to meet the company's demands.  Even with their crazy distro of crap that I call 'mandatory shrink' (Pumpkin lofthouse cookies?  GROSS!) I'm always green in my orders, I'm never over bought, we always have what we need and work truck to truck like they want...  

But they just want more and more paperwork and more programs every month, while I'm grossly understaffed and trying to make my department at least 95% in-stock every day (which is hard when I got items that are sometimes weeks or months OOS in warehouse...)
Every time bakery has a big sale item, we do great until the warehouse lets us down and we can't get any more in... This year I can't even order the pumpkin cake rolls, I just have to wait until a case or two shows up in distro and then its pretty much gone in a day...  Whenever that challenge is MM cookies, I guarantee you that the warehouse will be out of MM cookies before the sale begins.  'Pumpkin Pie in July' this year was the biggest joke ever, From July through most of August the warehouse was out of pumpkin pie.

I just don't understand why we have so much emphasis on paperwork and so many managers with great salaries dropping by all the time when we are a store that is clearly succeeding despite being disgustingly understaffed.
And I got two employees who have something like 40 years seniority over everyone else, and get 9 weeks of vacation a year, 10 if they throw some of their personal days down on a week- which leads to some pretty poor weeks where we are struggling to to try and work two jobs essentially and short some 100 hours from forecast, but we still are trending higher sales than forecast.  It just blows my mind that Kroger can't cut some of these managers out and hire some more Help in the stores!  And stop with the massive amounts of daily paperwork, if a store is doing piss poor and overbuying and not meeting their sales-  okay, then I can understand starting to document things and counting cases and such... but in stores where I run a tight ship and make perfect orders?  Why the hell do I have to do this crap?

My typical day is spending 3 to 4 hours wrapping with the baker, scanning orders as they come up- running to the freezer and cooler to check on backstock so I keep my orders low...  then I do our markdowns, scan the pre-packed items in the department for CAP, break down any trucks we have- dating and circling expiration dates checking Use-First stickers-  oh, and they don't even want me to break down trucks in the department anymore, they don't like it looking 'cluttered' for an hour or two, gives the customer a 'bad perception' or something.  So then I have to go with a shopping cart to the back freezer and put up any remaining boxes and work the backstock out to pack out product, More than what CAP calls for, because we're trending so much ahead and CAP is a pretty ****ty tool when you're dealing with items that get 8 days or 15 days or 160 days shelf life....  (great for those 2 to 4 day shelf life items, sure!)  And by then I'm already running past my 8 hours, so I have to punch out- take 10 minutes to sit at a computer to check for online orders, work on scheduling, or check deli-grams...  I don't have time to do paperwork at that point, and I'm not going to spend another hour off the clock sorting binders and counting all the cases I have in the back and front freezers, its just not gonna happen.

And so I get fussed at on a continuous basis that I'm not doing what the company wants, and that I have to lead by example, and that I will get written up if I can't get it done...  and its all BULL**** !
I'm so stressed I wake up early in the morning feeling sick and shaking, my heart pounding in my chest dreading the confrontations I'm going to get at work.

I've started telling them that I just don't have time for it, and until I'm staffed to meet forecast hours, They can worry about the paperwork, not me.  Because I care about the customer, and the customer doesn't give a flying **** if I have a wall of paperwork neatly done every day, that isn't going to help them when tables are empty or when the cake case has little selection.  CUSTOMER FIRST is what I still believe in.



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tov


Senior Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 185
Date:
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If the corporate skipped just ONE walk and read these comments here. Just once. They would see the real picture, the real state of their stores, which they are trying to ascertain with walks. But for that to happen, they would need to CARE. But they don't care, so they keep doing the walks in which they see the fake state, and they chose not to see any input they may get from the "real world". They like it that way.

Yes, too many corporate overseers. They all "know" how they want the store to look like and what we should do. But they don't offer any solutions how we should do it. Because there is no solution, if the hours are cut as deep as they are.

I really don't know what they are trying to do. Seems like they are sawing the branch they are sitting on.

If a person like OP is hitting all the marks, why do they abuse them. Because it is abuse. Shame on you, corporate.

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Anonymous

Date:
Permalink   

Anonymous Bkry Mgr wrote:

Am I the only one who thinks that Kroger has a problem with Too much management? 
In any given day I'll have not just my own store's co manager and store manager inspecting things, but I'll have regional and division managers poking their head into my dept, asking questions, pointing out what they would like to see improve, I got these 'Pop' team managers who show up and want to rearrange the MASSIVE WALL OF PAPERWORK- daily reports, case counts, CAP, tortilla chart, 15 minute charts, 'getting a good close' paper, OSAT scores.. it goes ON AND ON, and every single month they add some NEW program to it all... (But they've never added hours to spend on all this paperwork!)

Since I was moved to this store shortly after my promotion, I've gotten their inventory under control, sales are double digits up, our daily schedule percent effective rating is amazing because we are still 30-70 hours under scheduled every week (OR MORE!) because they just can't seem to hire anyone, but at the same time our overall daily rating is poor because I would need about 12 part time employees with full availability to meet the company's demands.  Even with their crazy distro of crap that I call 'mandatory shrink' (Pumpkin lofthouse cookies?  GROSS!) I'm always green in my orders, I'm never over bought, we always have what we need and work truck to truck like they want...  

But they just want more and more paperwork and more programs every month, while I'm grossly understaffed and trying to make my department at least 95% in-stock every day (which is hard when I got items that are sometimes weeks or months OOS in warehouse...)
Every time bakery has a big sale item, we do great until the warehouse lets us down and we can't get any more in... This year I can't even order the pumpkin cake rolls, I just have to wait until a case or two shows up in distro and then its pretty much gone in a day...  Whenever that challenge is MM cookies, I guarantee you that the warehouse will be out of MM cookies before the sale begins.  'Pumpkin Pie in July' this year was the biggest joke ever, From July through most of August the warehouse was out of pumpkin pie.

I just don't understand why we have so much emphasis on paperwork and so many managers with great salaries dropping by all the time when we are a store that is clearly succeeding despite being disgustingly understaffed.
And I got two employees who have something like 40 years seniority over everyone else, and get 9 weeks of vacation a year, 10 if they throw some of their personal days down on a week- which leads to some pretty poor weeks where we are struggling to to try and work two jobs essentially and short some 100 hours from forecast, but we still are trending higher sales than forecast.  It just blows my mind that Kroger can't cut some of these managers out and hire some more Help in the stores!  And stop with the massive amounts of daily paperwork, if a store is doing piss poor and overbuying and not meeting their sales-  okay, then I can understand starting to document things and counting cases and such... but in stores where I run a tight ship and make perfect orders?  Why the hell do I have to do this crap?

My typical day is spending 3 to 4 hours wrapping with the baker, scanning orders as they come up- running to the freezer and cooler to check on backstock so I keep my orders low...  then I do our markdowns, scan the pre-packed items in the department for CAP, break down any trucks we have- dating and circling expiration dates checking Use-First stickers-  oh, and they don't even want me to break down trucks in the department anymore, they don't like it looking 'cluttered' for an hour or two, gives the customer a 'bad perception' or something.  So then I have to go with a shopping cart to the back freezer and put up any remaining boxes and work the backstock out to pack out product, More than what CAP calls for, because we're trending so much ahead and CAP is a pretty ****ty tool when you're dealing with items that get 8 days or 15 days or 160 days shelf life....  (great for those 2 to 4 day shelf life items, sure!)  And by then I'm already running past my 8 hours, so I have to punch out- take 10 minutes to sit at a computer to check for online orders, work on scheduling, or check deli-grams...  I don't have time to do paperwork at that point, and I'm not going to spend another hour off the clock sorting binders and counting all the cases I have in the back and front freezers, its just not gonna happen.

And so I get fussed at on a continuous basis that I'm not doing what the company wants, and that I have to lead by example, and that I will get written up if I can't get it done...  and its all BULL**** !
I'm so stressed I wake up early in the morning feeling sick and shaking, my heart pounding in my chest dreading the confrontations I'm going to get at work.

I've started telling them that I just don't have time for it, and until I'm staffed to meet forecast hours, They can worry about the paperwork, not me.  Because I care about the customer, and the customer doesn't give a flying **** if I have a wall of paperwork neatly done every day, that isn't going to help them when tables are empty or when the cake case has little selection.  CUSTOMER FIRST is what I still believe in.


 Anonymous Bakery Manager, you already know the answers to your questions:   The hotshots in corporate who think up all the stupid, repetitive and unnecessary paperwork are IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!   They think that problems are solved by writing down more and more and more stuff on paper.  They should ALL be required to work a full month IN AN ACTUAL STORE which (perhaps)  might help remove the blinders from their eyes and the earplugs from their ears.  



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Posts: 3390
Date:
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My hat's off to you for doing what i thought was impossible. Very few bakery depts are actually in the green, because no matter what i do, i can't get my numbers in the green. half my dept. is on cao, so how can i be over ordering? In order to not be over bought, i have to completely run out of items before i reorder them, which could leave a hole for a day or two. That to me, doesn't make any sense.

but in the end, all your hard work is for nothing because corporate treats you the same as the rest of us.

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Anonymous

Date:
Permalink   

Anonymous Bkry Mgr wrote:

Am I the only one who thinks that Kroger has a problem with Too much management? 
In any given day I'll have not just my own store's co manager and store manager inspecting things, but I'll have regional and division managers poking their head into my dept, asking questions, pointing out what they would like to see improve, I got these 'Pop' team managers who show up and want to rearrange the MASSIVE WALL OF PAPERWORK- daily reports, case counts, CAP, tortilla chart, 15 minute charts, 'getting a good close' paper, OSAT scores.. it goes ON AND ON, and every single month they add some NEW program to it all... (But they've never added hours to spend on all this paperwork!)

Since I was moved to this store shortly after my promotion, I've gotten their inventory under control, sales are double digits up, our daily schedule percent effective rating is amazing because we are still 30-70 hours under scheduled every week (OR MORE!) because they just can't seem to hire anyone, but at the same time our overall daily rating is poor because I would need about 12 part time employees with full availability to meet the company's demands.  Even with their crazy distro of crap that I call 'mandatory shrink' (Pumpkin lofthouse cookies?  GROSS!) I'm always green in my orders, I'm never over bought, we always have what we need and work truck to truck like they want...  

But they just want more and more paperwork and more programs every month, while I'm grossly understaffed and trying to make my department at least 95% in-stock every day (which is hard when I got items that are sometimes weeks or months OOS in warehouse...)
Every time bakery has a big sale item, we do great until the warehouse lets us down and we can't get any more in... This year I can't even order the pumpkin cake rolls, I just have to wait until a case or two shows up in distro and then its pretty much gone in a day...  Whenever that challenge is MM cookies, I guarantee you that the warehouse will be out of MM cookies before the sale begins.  'Pumpkin Pie in July' this year was the biggest joke ever, From July through most of August the warehouse was out of pumpkin pie.

I just don't understand why we have so much emphasis on paperwork and so many managers with great salaries dropping by all the time when we are a store that is clearly succeeding despite being disgustingly understaffed.
And I got two employees who have something like 40 years seniority over everyone else, and get 9 weeks of vacation a year, 10 if they throw some of their personal days down on a week- which leads to some pretty poor weeks where we are struggling to to try and work two jobs essentially and short some 100 hours from forecast, but we still are trending higher sales than forecast.  It just blows my mind that Kroger can't cut some of these managers out and hire some more Help in the stores!  And stop with the massive amounts of daily paperwork, if a store is doing piss poor and overbuying and not meeting their sales-  okay, then I can understand starting to document things and counting cases and such... but in stores where I run a tight ship and make perfect orders?  Why the hell do I have to do this crap?

My typical day is spending 3 to 4 hours wrapping with the baker, scanning orders as they come up- running to the freezer and cooler to check on backstock so I keep my orders low...  then I do our markdowns, scan the pre-packed items in the department for CAP, break down any trucks we have- dating and circling expiration dates checking Use-First stickers-  oh, and they don't even want me to break down trucks in the department anymore, they don't like it looking 'cluttered' for an hour or two, gives the customer a 'bad perception' or something.  So then I have to go with a shopping cart to the back freezer and put up any remaining boxes and work the backstock out to pack out product, More than what CAP calls for, because we're trending so much ahead and CAP is a pretty ****ty tool when you're dealing with items that get 8 days or 15 days or 160 days shelf life....  (great for those 2 to 4 day shelf life items, sure!)  And by then I'm already running past my 8 hours, so I have to punch out- take 10 minutes to sit at a computer to check for online orders, work on scheduling, or check deli-grams...  I don't have time to do paperwork at that point, and I'm not going to spend another hour off the clock sorting binders and counting all the cases I have in the back and front freezers, its just not gonna happen.

And so I get fussed at on a continuous basis that I'm not doing what the company wants, and that I have to lead by example, and that I will get written up if I can't get it done...  and its all BULL**** !
I'm so stressed I wake up early in the morning feeling sick and shaking, my heart pounding in my chest dreading the confrontations I'm going to get at work.

I've started telling them that I just don't have time for it, and until I'm staffed to meet forecast hours, They can worry about the paperwork, not me.  Because I care about the customer, and the customer doesn't give a flying **** if I have a wall of paperwork neatly done every day, that isn't going to help them when tables are empty or when the cake case has little selection.  CUSTOMER FIRST is what I still believe in.


 No job is worth this amount of stress. Leave and find something better. You have the experience. Kroger is not worth dying for. They don't appreciate all the hard work you do anyway. No matter how hard you try to keep up with their ludicrous unrealistic standards, they won't ever be pleased. Give them your 2 weeks notice and don't look back. Save yourself from a mental breakdown. 



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Status: Offline
Posts: 981
Date:
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Too much management?

Yes.

Add up their salaries and ponder what value is added.

Why do bad, dysfunctional store directors keep their six-figure payouts and get placed into district and divisional positions?

Why do bad managers seem to have appointments-for-life as though this is the Supreme Court or something?

 

 



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