Let me get to the point. In the deli I work in we've lost three employees in the past three weeks. The first one, moved to the other side of the country after she gave more than a months notice. No one has been hired or scheduled to replace the hours that would've been used for her, but there was time to do that.
Last week we had a girl just not show up after only working there three weeks. Yet managment said about replacing her shifts, "we'll just play it by ear." And we ended up some days with only three people in the deli all day, and were a big and busy store.
And today the dept. drama queen, quit! Called hours before her shift and management isn't replacing her shift. So we will have two people in the deli all day. Yet they still wan't us to get everything done and complain that the dept. isn't as clean as it should be. They are so worried about overtime that they won't call anyone in!
So my question is: How is the replacing of shifts of people who quit or call ini handled at your store?
there r times when things happen so fast demanding immediate action that the mgmt is just thrown for a loop and goes into hiding- some of the weaker ones actually curl up under there desk in the fetal position. I'm sure they are calling around for help or tryin to grab u a few sets of hands but even if they're sucessful ur still screwed for a long time- what if they did hire 3 newbies asap? how could u get any work done training greenhorns?
now throw in the fact that the deli is the most unliked dept to work in and there is so much actual physical work to be done everyday then any new hires will most likely decide after a few days to seek a job elsewhere. u can only do so much but what you can get done make sure it's done correctly, safely, and cleanly- it's better to be empty, safe, and clean than full and dirty where a customer might call local board of health or worse yet there's an employee hurt cause they were shortcutting or leaving a safety hazard in their wake. Good Luck- ur gonna need it!
P.S. I need 500 box lunches by 3p.m. today and 10 full sheet cakes! lol
D'ya know why they do that? BECAUSE THEY CAN. It's a math game in Corporate America---not just Kroger, Wal-Mart or any other grocer/retailer. The average cost of hiring/training a non salaried/non union employee in retail is $5000. If they quit or get fired in one--three months, seventy percent of that loss is recuperated in an average of TWO WEEKS/per ONE employee....a member of the long waiting line of prospective new employees behind them. Probably more, given the profit margin of a given business/store.
People bitch all the time about retail, yet they continue shopping there. That's not gonna stop. Workers bitch all the time about working retail.....That's not gonna stop, either.
where I come from the mgrs. are shellshock from all the butt chewins over using overtime. it's so bad that they will forego dept conditions and product level rather than do the logical thing by using overtime. this is what happens when the stores and their mgmt are micro managed by several layers of upper mgmt pencil pushers from the general office. i agree ot should be used sparingly upon dire situations not regularly but there are times it's a must or the sole basic reason that we are there- "TO SELL GROCERIES TO CUSTOMERS!" is lost. it all looks good on paper in Cinti but once it leaves Fantasyland and trickles down to the real world to us peons it's not uncommon for "the Perfect Program" to create service/product issues.
DO not know what your contract says but in our ka, the can plug almost anyone into the Deli or department to close it up and do minimum work, except the meat department. Loosing one guy to a ne store , a seafood manager that has to work the new store for a wek and lost a part timer. Can schedual 200 with out overtime and need 290 to reach the forcast and elms. Got 59 hours of OT schedualed and told management that we would let them know if more would be needed and let them approve it on acase by case basis.
They did not like it too much but that is life. Do noit like it then I will file a grievance for every minute that anyone outside the market does anything in there.
We lost two people the past few months on night crew and they won't hire anyone. We are severely understaffed, and management refuses to hire anyone, but they love to bitch when things aren't completed.
We lost two people the past few months on night crew and they won't hire anyone. We are severely understaffed, and management refuses to hire anyone, but they love to bitch when things aren't completed.
not always that they do not hire anyone but can not. Nrew store in Dallas has problems because they can not get people to pass drug test or back round check. We had two experiance cutters apply but they both failed drug tests.
Update on this post. the dept. drama queen quit today. thought she was gonna get away with doing nothing because shes pregnant. We wasn't making her do anything she wasn't able to do.
i feel sorry for you. i would advise you to go into "relax mode" and do not pick up your pace any faster than what any other deli employee would do at any other Kroger deli in the nation. when the deli gets overwhelmed by customers, walk over to the deli manager and say "we need help" calmly and keep working at a nice evenkeeled pace. dont kill yourself. if your deli manager is already in the trenches with you - walk over to the intercom and page the co-manager to come to the deli. when they arrive, calmly tell them "we need assistance" & see what they do. keep 'crying wolf" over and over and over. but make sure you do it sort of in a passive way w/o panic.
Good Luck! oh and maybe get sick half way through a shift and tell them that you are going home. Point is you need to slam a ace back at them real hard to make them finally understand and react!
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I am no longer part of the oppressed, evil workforce of Kroger! Can you say "Hallelujah"
Working in retail is always a problem when it comes to lazy employees. At our store, so many new people work so slowly and can never pick up their pace. I work in produce, so there is a lot of work to do all the time, but then they hire all these lazy pieces of **** who don't want to do a damn thing. Hard-working employees get tired of these ****ing decisions that HR makes when hiring people.
just yesterday during a lenghty discussion with my store manager over "the system", he mentioned the soon to be roll out of quotas on performing job functions. like for example, in the deli, you will be expected to slice a customer's order in a particular amount of time. and he went on to mention that if you can not work at that quota you will be removed. he asked me what i thought about that and i told him bluntly that i will deal with that when it occurs.
in retrospect, i guess i understand that we need to stay vigilent on our employee rights and protect ourselves well in advance. so yea, i get where my anonymous friend is coming from through his rambles. i also get what the last poster scoutspromise is saying - there are lazy people around and also hard working ones. i for one do not plan to, oh i don't know, go at warp speed when i work. am i lazy? hell no. do i want a quota. double hell no.
our store's deli has the first ever computerized deli system in the nation. the main premise behind it is for the customer to come place their order then go shop while their order is being prepared. great concept for sure right! but whoever designed the program allotted a ridiculously low timeframe to prepare an order. so now the customer is expecting something to be there at a particular time yet we're still slamming away on the other orders. and here's the catch.... they plan on rolling this out to all stores!
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I am no longer part of the oppressed, evil workforce of Kroger! Can you say "Hallelujah"
