About a month or so ago I posted about a situation going on at the store I currently work at. Some things have changed since then:
Quevision has been implemented and sure enough, it is making life stressful for everybody on the front end and other departments minus the cashiers. We had an incident on Sunday night where two deli employees were slicing orders for customers and the floor supervisor was paging for one of them to help up front. Needless to say, both employees were taking care of customers and couldn't get away to help. The FS comes back and screams at them, saying "When I call for you to come up front, you need to come NOW". "*District Manager* said that if people don't come up when they are called, he is going to come in here personally and fire them himself". This was witnessed by another person who told me about it. I went to the deli and asked what happened and wrote the number for the harrassment hotline and offered to call one of the shop stewards at home that evening. I ended up calling and told what happened and he immediately said "Thanks for telling me, I'll take care of it, they aren't going to threaten people's jobs over this Quevision ****". The deli manager came to me on Monday and asked for my side of it and said that he/she was going to let the union handle it in fear of it would look like they were taking up for their department. It has created problems since people in the deli are now refusing to come up in the evening.
Which leads to yesterday. We received notice that our manager (who has only been a store manager for five months) and the manager of the other store in the area was switching places. It was a promotion for our manager and a demotion for the other, who had been at that store for around 20 years and is a higher volume store. Our theory is that they are trying to force the new manager into retirement since his way of running a store is more in line with a country store. The new manager takes care of the customers but doesn't care about Key Refailing.
As for VDH, she was less than happy with the management change, since she is losing probably the only protective barrier that was supposedly keeping her from getting fired. She has cleaned up her act considerably since the incident and I haven't had any direct problems in dealing with her.
An alternative theory has been proposed, which is what I will ask here. Speculation today was that several people have called corporate on VDH and that instead of dealing with the actual problem, they are moving the manager because it is easier to move a manager than to get rid of a full time employee with numerous years of service. I don't necessarily buy into this, because the new manager is a people pleaser and doesn't want anybody mad at him, but would Kroger bypass an investigation and move a member of management given the situation I have outlined in the previous thread?
Things are going to be very interesting from this point forward. I kinda wasn't surprised we were losing our new manager, just that it happened within five months. There is a distinct possibility we could have a fourth store manager in one year if our new manager decides to retire as well.
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"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of The Kroger Co. family of stores."
Drew, I work in the Deli myself, and as a department backup and union steward, one thing I fought tooth and nail about, was the use of Deli employees on the front end. It may be different from zone to zone, but I sincerely doubt that it is.. But the use of Deli employees on the front end is specifically prohibited. Every time our store manager would use a deli employee up front, I would call my union rep to file a grievance. The Rep would then come in and look at the schedule of front end cashiers. The first cashier on the list who wasn't scheduled to work that day, he would force Kroger to pay them for the time the deli person spent up front.
Elms assigns hours to departments based on sales, so if they are giving those hours to people outside the department, over one of the people in their own department, that is illegal.
Add to that, in a recent District meeting, my store manager flat out asked if they were allowed to use Deli employees up front to handle this Que Vision (Why can't Kroger spell Queue correctly?), and he was told "No. In no circumstances are you allowed to use a deli employee on the front end."
So if you want an easier life in the Deli, get together with your Union Rep about this.
I totally did not answer your question, I know. But this is a sore spot for me based on personal experience.
I honestly have no answer to your actual question. I think Kroger will do whatever Kroger wants to do if it has a manager it wants to keep. Our store manager is the worst piece of scum you could ever know, but he is much loved by our Zone manager. I have started giving people the 800 number on the poster in our break room, and telling them to call and report what happened. I figure if enough people call in complaints, maybe something will happen to him. I don't know what else to do.
I'm actually not a deli employee, but I work in the meat department which is a service department on its own merits. A lot of times I am the only person who is working back there and by coming up front during busy hours, it takes me away if somebody comes back wanting something cut.
I just happened to walk up after the exchange between FS and the deli people had taken place.
Here is a mini-update from today. Yesterday afternoon after I had left, the HR representative for our zone showed up along with the union rep and asked questions involving VDH and another person who has been creating problems on the front end. One of the cashiers who is generally pretty quiet and afraid to stand up was screaming about VDH when she was being interviewed upstairs. We really don't know if our co-manager, who has had issues in the past, called HR in for this since we are in a transition of receiving a new manager, or if enough people called the 1800 number to trigger an investigation.
The message from corporate: Stop worrying about the past and focus on the future. That being said, somebody else said it is still under investigation.
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"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of The Kroger Co. family of stores."
I am hoping to trigger something at my store with that 800 number also. Today I put up flyers in every department listing your Weingarten Rights, the 800 number, the union rep 's number, and my own number. I also stated that there is currently no daytime Steward at our store. My union Rep told me she had not assigned one, but people had been saying that the Lazy Office Manager was the daytime Steward. I heard conflicting stories. Some say the store manager assigned her, and some say our old union rep assigned her right before he quit. Nobody in the store trusts her. Nobody wants her there if they get called upstairs. So the new Union Rep said she would appoint someone else to the position, but right now, the position was vacant.
On a tangent again about the Deli and Meat Dpt being called up front to check.. Is your meat Department not on a separate contract? In our zone, meat department has it's own union contract separate from everyone else. Because of this, they are exempt from doing anything else in the store. Have you asked your union rep about the legality of your store using the meat dpt. to check?
Haven't checked into it yet, but I am planning on it.
Tonight there were three people on the list for the front end to call. Myself in meat, a girl in deli, and a guy in produce. Given the events of last Sunday night and since I never answer pages unless it involves unloading a truck, the produce guy spent the time up front. Not to mention the front end was extremely short staffed tonight.
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"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of The Kroger Co. family of stores."
