We are in wave 5 for produce and one thing i cannot get over is the signing on the walls..
We have to have product lables for everything in the cooler.
Grapes go there, onions go there, blah, blah, blah. Thats fine but when we need a sign for the trash can, thats to far. I mean come on a sign for the damn trash can, a cleaning cart, the carbord cart, the cut fruit table.
I dont need a damn sign telling me where the **** the trash can is. WTH. That is a waste of paper and time. The signs have already started coming off the wall, Now I guess when the trash can sign falls off I wont be able to find the damn trash.
I mean some stuff is good like the shopping list the new produce sale signs and the new equipment. The new carboard cart is great its like 5 Uboats in one. The blue sales floor carts are great to, but one thing about them is just stupid. We get yelled at if I have backstock already on a Uboat and I work that to the floor with out putting it on the blue cart. what difference does it make.
I thought the purpose of key retail was to save time. Why nitpick over someting so insignificant. I am actually saving time that way.
One thing I have noticed is that kroger thinks we are stupid, that we have no commensense and we should not think on our own. Kroger has no commensense and is going to loose what this company has going for it and that is great customer service.
We wont be able to provide great customer service if we are worried about all the paper work like the the "getting a good close" sheet. Thats crap we do everyday, why I need a paper telling me What I do everyday is just nonsense.
I have spent the last year setting allocations in anticipation for the day CAO would utilize them.
About a week ago I was checking backstock when I noticed my allocations had been changed .. many of them .. by cao itself Apparently someone greater than me flicked a switch to set all the allocations to what compass mapped them.
Pretty much everyone here should know that means that my numbers are all screwed up now.
Just in time for allocations to be part of the mix.
Yep, welcome to wave 5! FredMeyer produce just went through wave 5, as did other departments. Luckily in seafood we really have no key retailing requirements, other than being organized and clean. I have heard the blue cart complaint, it seems retarded to have to move stock from one cart to the other to go work it! Not like uboats cant wheel out to the floor.
Our wave 5 was mostly the new CAO back stock process, which I must say actually works pretty well. I've never had much back stock anyway (busy store, daily deliveries, and im an accurate order-er) but now I have like 4 boxes, so the whole weekly review takes 5 minutes.
The rational behind everything though is that store employees are mindless robots that cannot perform any task without being told how. Sure its good to have guidelines and standard procedures, but nobody needs a trash can labeled. But our general office folks think otherwise! They view us as incompetent dolts that if we just did as we were told, Kroger's sales and profits would skyrocket. Hence Key Retailing.
I'd actually say its more the investors than the company itself. Lets say a big investor wants to buy millions of dollars of Kroger stock. They might on a contingency of a plan to decrease expenses by 2%. Just making up figures, but you get the idea. So Kroger has to think of a way to decrease expenses, and this investor will say "I know of a program......" and this **** is devised to do just that. In their mind, if you work the produce back stock on the blue cart, it saves time because the cart is bigger, etc. So over the whole company they could save x amount of hours in produce from using the big blue carts. They don't realize that you'd have to move stock to that cart, etc.
That's the biggest problem with GO plans from Cincinnati. They never take any feedback into the loop, that say it takes more time to restock produce back stock on the blue cart from a uboat. They just refuse to believe that, because their model says so and so, and they have a degree in process engineering and you don't. Remember the 5-95-5 goal? We somehow have to magically decrease hours by 5% yearly, while increasing sales 5%. At some point this is going to self destruct, with busy stores staffed by one person in each department, unable to stock, order, or serve customers adequately, then everyone will find somewhere else to shop.
Yea I hate that getting a good close sheet to. I think its pointless expecally when I never have a good close. I mean how do you do it all when your doing it all by yourself. I only have 6 hours and spend 2 hours up front ( bagging, pussing carts and running a registar) and a little in floral its hard to get everything on that sheet done. So I get 4 hours in my department to clean,stock, rotate and make bales since everyone is afraid of the machine.
I have worked at Kroger for 12 years and am also the closing person in produce. The one good thing you can do on the closing checklist is to leave comments. An Example of this would be.
I spent over and hour on the front end sacking and pushing in carts.
When I got in there were 3 carts of first crew's trash left for me.
I had to unload the peyton delivery. You get the picture. I know closing can be unpleasant sometimes, but use that comment box to your advantage.
man i never seen so many silly tags before in the deli to order supplies and products. i get the concept but no ne really put in the time and effort on how to put up the silly things. they all fall off or get ripped and destroyed. then what?
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I am no longer part of the oppressed, evil workforce of Kroger! Can you say "Hallelujah"
A friend of mine that works in produce told me that they were told not to bring a buggy of backstock on the floor unless it had at least 15 items on it. Doesn't make sense if you only need 5 or 6 things. Anyone else heard this?
A friend of mine that works in produce told me that they were told not to bring a buggy of backstock on the floor unless it had at least 15 items on it. Doesn't make sense if you only need 5 or 6 things. Anyone else heard this?
Yes that was true I had the manager counting how many boxes i had on the blue cart to see if i had 15 or more. They have changed it to 12 cases or more now.
So now when the manager ask me do you not have any asparagus or broccoli cause there holes. I can say I do have asparagus and broccoli but I cannot go out untill there are 10 more case items that i need to put out, LOL.
They actually had to change the wording in the wave 5 tool kit to reflect that if there is product that needs to be filled then that would constitute less then 12 items on the cart then that is acceptable.
Signage good and bad, but remember this is from kroger. They are a little slooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww, so they need to know where everything is at. Except the phone they forgot to label it.
The key retailing cordinator for my kroger owned company told me that I had TOO MANY Items on my cart. I told them that if I'm going to use a big ass cart I'm going to pack it. He said it was unsafe. I then pointed out that the other cart's top shelf screws fell off and now the shelf won't hold. His solution is to just hand tighten it everynight, but what if I lost the screw? I'm out of luck! I then told him I shoulnd't be using damage equipment cause it's a safety issue as well.
They actually send out an email telling everyone to hand tighten their screws on their blue carts. I can't believe they spent 1500 dollars for that cart that breaks within less than 3 months of use. You would think they would at least get me a ****ing tablet to write my order on and write my checklist on. Instead of some ****ty dryerase clipboard.
I wish krogers produce department looked as good as publix's. Its perfect. Nothing wrong but the higher prices. They must get a truck a day and order just what they need for a day.
Our Union here on the west coast, Fred Meyer Stores, is filing a complaint with OSHA about the Blue Beastie produce carts, as we have been told to always have two full boxes of bananas on them at all times ( 80 lbs), plus the empty weight of the cart ( I guess about +150 lbs), and then plus 12 cases of produce, ( about + /- 400 lbs), on those carts. I was told by our company Produce Director "if you guys won`t do the work, we will find some who will", in reference to the blue carts. ( Them are Fighting words to a Union Member !!!!
They also expect us to pull all that weight behind us, with one arm pulling the weight. Also that lower shelf for a trash box keeps falling down and smashing shins. So, we will get it made optional to use those carts, when and how we see fit, as our Union UFCW will defend us form this nonsense !!
They want us to have only 2 layers of produce on the shelf at all times, ( we are required to now have only one layer of bananas on the shelf at a time, and so our bananas sales are being cut by them getting too ripe in the back room). And we are to do no more hand stacking, just dump it, ( but only two layers please).... ! I bet we start losing biz to Walmart when that one kicks in!!!
So somehow we are supposed to keep it all full , all the time, with only two layers of product everywhere, with not enough hours, and we just did over $15,000 in produce sales on Easter Sat and again on Easter Sun !!!!
Total insanity !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know that the blue carts are a burden but if you know how to use them and work produce correctly the blue carts cut alot of time out of your schedule. I can get alot more done with two cart loads of produce on a blue cart then two cart loads of the grey carts. If you dont make good decisions, you wont get good outcomes. The sad part is my produce department probably out works most produce departments in Washington with 4 people, against other departments that have 6-8 and having 2-3 people working at a time, where as we have 1-2. Not to mention our produce department is the second biggest space wise in the state. They did away with pouring stocking not the hand stocking, but they would let you pour with things like the school boy apples or potatoes. No more than two high also depends on the Store Manager or Produce Mananger, if you get a manager that doesnt have their head up their ass theyd let you put more than two high on the best selling things like oranges, bananas, fuji apples, romas, and avacados. I also agree with the guy that mentioned the Banana rack on the front, though i use it for garbage like he said. I removed the ****ing thing, no use for it just gacked shins.
I wish krogers produce department looked as good as publix's. Its perfect. Nothing wrong but the higher prices. They must get a truck a day and order just what they need for a day.
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I work produce cutting fruit. The produce we get in is AWFUL. I pull my fruit from the floor area, looking for produce to cut up before I use the backstock product.
Watermelon is used in a lot of the various type fruit bowls and I go thru a LOT of them only to find they're rotten inside or nowhere near being ripe. It is a lot of wasted time and slows me down.
Various types of fruit end up in the dumpster after being scanned out. There is a lot of produce waste that is never sold to the consumer nor being used as cut fruit.
Pineapples are another matter entirely. I choose the pineapple that has the most fruit flies hovering around. That apparatus for coring the pineapple is medievel and a real bitch to use. I have to put it in a sanitized sink basin to get any leverage on the handle.
I'm not EVEN going to get into the strawberries that are moldy and soft when they come off the produce truck....like I said...a LOT of produce going straight into the dumpster.
I was doing wave 5 stuff right before I left the company,so I got creative and labeled the sh*t out of the produce backroom. Everything got labeled. Phone. Door. Desk. Shelf. Wall. Floor. You get the picture. I wonder if my labels on the phone handset are still there? One said "speak here" and the other said "listen here".
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My views don't reflect those of anyone, not even me. I may not have even made this statement. It's all lies, all of it!
After 10 years of produce I've just transferred back to grocery. For most produce people I've already said enough. Who the hell goes back into grocery after being in produce? It's the best department right? Well, I've watched a new hire get a management spot in less than 2 years (I'm assuming most of you reading this are as outraged by this as I am, I don't even consider someone a produce clerk until they have at least 2 years under their belt), I've seen one of the best managers I've ever worked for get written up for "working to hard". How in the world are you supposed to motivate and gain the respect of your crew if you don't work? They are taking all the craft out of produce and turning us into Wall-Mart (after all we are the "second largest retail company in the US" so who do you suppose we look up to?). How are they expecting us to not be offended by this? They are forcing us to work as though we are completely incompetent. It's not about having good sales and a full, faced, clean department anymore, none of that matters! You don't even have to work the floor at all as a manager if your bookwork is done. You don't even have to set up the closer, or get the close done for that matter, as long as you fill out the sheet and have the pic sign it, you're good to go! No hard work required! Get ready for the age of cut-n-dump, and if you're curious about what our produce departments are going to look like in 5 years, go to Wall-Mart and look at their one single produce guy snapping RPC's directly onto the shelf and running a $15k sales a day deparment all by himself.
