It has occured to me on more than one occasion, that the union associates are missing an opportunity that could put Kroger in their place about ELMS.
You know how they always say, you get x number of hours for sales, or tonnage or whatever. Well guess what, has anyone asked them to PROVE it?? I guarantee you they can't.
That would mean that kroger is using a defective or non-existant program to assign hours to departments based on criteria that are falsified or don't exist. Which, I'm assuming would be fraud.
You can't tell a union employee that if you increase your sales by 10% you will get x number of hours added to your schedule and then it NEVER happens. Not to mention, you end up getting LESS hours to do twice the work.....which you all can prove just by printing out past reports.
Anyone understand what i'm talking about here? Everytime I have emailed a coordinator to ask them to prove to me we got hours for something specific, I never got a reply. Not once. i.e. last year we were supposed to get extra hours to do valentines strawberries and cupcakes based on sales. We ended getting 1/2 the hours to do twice the production so I asked "what were our sales last year?" and how many hours did we get... ?
AH: Forgive me. This must have been the idea you were referring to.......Sounds like you're on to something there. Hmmmm.....Tread carefully, especially if 'they' know you're hip to this stuff~
Really nothing to be HIP about. If they want to keep saying that this "program" does A , B and C based on 1 , 2 and 3, they should be able to back it up with hard numbers, but they can't.
The one downfall is they track every minute and every hour and every penny and then try to convince you they are giving you hours for it, but it's like a mysterious program that nobody understands, they just repeat whatever is told to them.
Every heard of "the emporer has no clothes"? Smoke and mirrors is all it is. It's like anything else in the programming or accounting world, the people with their hands on the numbers can move them around to make it say anything they want and as long as everyone swallows that line... it just continues.
But it's a fair question that they've been hiding behind for years. Hell, I doubt THEY even know how diluted that program is after years of programming errors and tweaks.
If you tell me that i get x number of extra hours if i produce x number of cheesy pizza rolls.........then you should be able to SHOW me on paper where it is. Thus far, I have tested every theory they have thrown out there and none of it is true.
The same goes for STORE PROFILES. I was told to look at the store profile for the deli/bakery. Ok, easy enough. We have a cheese shop that is x number of feet around and 5 shelves high. Our store profile said we didn't even HAVE a cheese shop, thus giving us no hours for it. My coordinator said.. "oh no,, it's just based on sales. That makes NO sense!.. That thing has to be stocked, monitored, cleaned and conditioned every day just like a certain number of linear feet of a bread shelving.
So I measure the bread shelving and IT was off by hundreds of feet! i.e. a 4 foot section of a bread shelf that has 7 shelves is going to take more time to stock and order for than a 4 foot section of 3 shelves. That's the whole point! And i was told it didn't matter how many shelves there were. HUH? That makes no sense at all.
I need to get to bed, luckily I have the day off tomorrow. Could we possible have this conversation on another venue , I hate to vent in front of the whole world..... LOL
yea I totally hear what you are saying however....
We are just pawns in the big kroger game of chess. We / I get paid a weekly paycheck to do a weeks worth of pay. Whatever gets done gets done. Whatever doesnt doesnt. Kroger, not I or you, suffers in the long run for not providing enough hours to the department or store. I do not see why the company would want to sabotage a particular store or department by "running a tight ship based on hours" I do know that the program does have bad data in it. one time it was up to us at our store to go through and make sure the info in it was true to our store. Do that with yours and provide to the ELMS team your findings. We had potato chips makes, tortilla maker, pizza oven, all sorts of crap that no kroger had yet.
but to me bottom line is - hey I just go work my shifts and do what I can. sure it would be nice to have more hours but it is what it is. hell - i got two deli managers then me at my store! i much rather have one manager then i could take the other and get another 30 to 40 hours of production! now thats stupid....
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I am no longer part of the oppressed, evil workforce of Kroger! Can you say "Hallelujah"
Dude, I'm telling you, as smart and experienced as you are----there are things going on behind the skirts that non salaried management not only doesn't know, but is not supposed to know. I was once coerced by my superior to 'round off' hours while doing pay roll. I was stunned: expressed as much. This person said, in response, "Well, we're trying to MAKE a buck, not lose one." Followed by a pointed stare which said 'do I need to get someone else to do this?'
Yea, I hate to admit, I shaved off multiple fractional hours from over twenty associates over an eight week period. Incremental stuff. Saved the store some 4 K. The reasoning being---and I heard this too--"ah what the f--k, they'll never miss it."
