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Post Info TOPIC: Management issues.
Anonymous

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Management issues.
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I work 3rd shift at my store, and i've been there for nearly a year now, early on I was tricked into taking over a floor position due to another guy leaving, I was threatened with losing hours, or being fired. I was never told I had to do it, just constantly asked IF I wanted to, I finally gave in and said yes, I was promised I would be taking off of the floors, it would only be temporary and to just do a good job and i'd get off. Well almost a year later im still on, I started off rough, got pulled aside one time and yelled at by the grocery manager, he threatened me in the way of, 'you cant stock, and you can't block, you are slow, now you can't do floors, if you don't get it together I don't know what we are going to do with you...' this was after my training period was over, this is about 3-4 months down the road, now I could stock fine and block just as fast if not faster than everyone else, it was my job doing the floors that was bad. So I sucked it up and worked harder to get the job done, I got congradulations regularly from the store manager, co-manager, my night leader and store inspections were always 100% for my part of the work. But the head grocery guy just wouldn't get off my ass, often making comments on my work, saying jokes that were meant to make fun of me however he claims 'i was just kidding' and other wise just always harassing me about things during my job, even while I had the approval of everyone else, including the store vice president when he made a visit.

Now recently with the weather bad here in and my normal hours cut to do my job, the store was trashed, mostly because second shift kids and old people don't do any work, no clean up, no sweeping, no nothing, and management could care less. I had dollar blue-berries on sale EVERYWHERE squished and mashed all over the store, rock salt in every single aisle and a days worth of wet shoes dirt and junk to clean up, I normally work 11:30pm till 7:30 am, the grocery manager in all his wisdom decided to cut my hours (and the other floor guy, we don't work on the same night, so it's just one of us a night) Anyways, cut our hours to 12am, till 7am for that night, and now the rest of the week I am scheduled for 12am till 6 am.

Now with that whole mess of **** in the store no simple 'scrub' up with our peice of **** cleaning equipment that hardly run would pick anything up, I always backmop everything I do no matter how clean it is, so with the mess I had to backmop areas 2-3 times more just to clean up the ****, needless to say the place was so trashed it took me basically all night to get the job done, I skipped parts of my 2 breaks just to keep working on it, at about 6:30 am I finally finished with only half an hour left I figured I had 0 time to buff the floors seeing as how it takes about an hour and a half to do the ENTIRE store if im moving at a good pace and if the ****ty machine doesn't stahl out 40 times. Well I started to do my final floor sweep and the grocery manager came in making smart ass comments such as, 'you know the buffer isn't broken anymore right' (we had it repaired apparently) and I told him that I knew, but the store was in such a bad mess I spent most of the night just trying to clean it up, with this guy of course it's in one ear and out the other. So later on he tells me, 'looks like you aren't gonna make it in time huh' reffering to being able to buff before I had to leave in half an hour this is at 6:30, and I said no, sorry, the store was just so bad blah blah blah, and he says alright just stay and finish, telling me half hour before I had to leave. I told him, well, I can't stay, because I had already made plans and arrangements for my ride to pick me up for the schedule YOU made and put out, not to mention he tells me half an hour before I have to go, and you are supposed to give AT LEAST a 2 hour heads-up which wouldn;t matter because if you can't make ride arrangements you still do not have to stay. And he started to get angry saying, well when a manager tells you you have to stay you have to stay.. so I stood there for a second and I said, well I thought we had to be warned 2 hours in advance, in the most respectable non sarcastic way I could have said it, and he flipped out right there saying whoa whoa whoa, so you are going to throw the handbook at me now, I never said you HAD to stay, but you know what if you want to talk about rules, you arent allowed to use HEADPHONES anymore. (I wear them over night and take them off when the store opens at 5 to be 'respectful' to management coming in and customers) And I just looked at him for a second ... and I said that's fine, and he says because of you now NOONE is allowed to wear headphones on the night crew, I said fine again as only one other person wears them and hardly uses them, but this is something that has always been looked past as long as we had them off during opening time. (my brother says my boss is pissy and was 'retaliating' against telling him I couldn't stay.) So I walked off pissed but still treating him with respect and authority, a few minutes later he was in aisle 1 ordering ****, and I approached him to see if I could figure out what was wrong.

I told him listen, I think sometimes when we talk you misinterupret what im trying to say or take me the wrong way, I wasn't trying to be a smart-ass I was just trying to explain why I couldn';t finish the floors in the time period you gave me and to why I could not stay. He stopped me at that point and said 'rules are rules you still can't use headphones' I kind of looked at him for a minute put my hands over my face and sighed, (I wasn't even talking to him about my headphones) I continued to try and talk to him about what had happened and he just stops me and says, 'I don't care what you think about me, just get your job done' and turned his back to me and walked away.

Earlier on he had told me a few things such as, it says in the handbook that the floors should be completed in 5 hours and other things like you should have been done, however looking in the associates handbook there is little enough mention of a night crew let alone floor guy and I can't find anything in that or on the internet of rules regulations how he should be treating me or anything. The worst part about the situation is I wanted to talk to the store manager about the event, not to tattle but to explain why I didn't finish and explain I wasn't being an ass to the grocery manager or anything, however they used to work 3rd shifts together they have been employed for maybe 50 years combined or something and they are friends I guess, so it's hard and awkward to even approach the store manager because he will just side with the grocery manager.

Anyways, I just wanted to share a few problems ive been having at my store and look to any kind of advice anyone can give me, at all, if I had been scheduled normally I would have finished my job properly as always, most of the time when the store DOESN'T look as trashed as it did I am finished with an hour or more time to jump in and help the other night crew members with their jobs, but that one night was just bad. And this is the only time I have ever been yelled at seriously or not finished my job because of an issue.

So again any advice or ideas on how I can do better or fix this or work it out would be cool, or any links to somewhere where I can read up on rules expectations or regulations or any union help would be great. Feels a little better to get it off my chest, however the weather has still been horrible and I know the store will look like trash tonight, and I am somehow supposed to finish everything in 6 hours so I know it will be another bad night/morning if the grocery manager shows up.

Thank you for reading my long post ;)

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Anonymous

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i am a floor guy if the aisle looks good mop it that will save up time
always scrub front end and produce

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Anonymous

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find a different employer. all kroger management are dick wads that need to be punched in the face. They back talk you constantly...even the HR manager is a bitch.

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Veteran Member

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Posts: 67
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5 hours? I'd like to see that. We got a old man thats been with Kroger 20 years doing ours. He knows all the gossip and everybodies business. The floors is allocated 58 hrs aweek. He's scheduled 45 hrs. It takes him about 5 hours each night,but he walks around,sits and smokes cigs the rest of the night. Everytime I lookup,he's in the breakroom or sneaking out the back door and skulking around the parking lot. If you drop something stocking, he thinks you do it on purpose and insist you clean it up. The real nut buster is those hrs are taken from the Grocery Dept, and we're short on help. Haven't replaced the full timers or pt's thats quit. So we bust ass to pay his check each week. How's that for phucked up. Most Krogers now contract out the work at store expense and not hours from the dept.

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