So today I finally went to one of the marketplace stores for the first time.
I'm impressed.
There is so much more stuff there than in the regular stores, it makes the store I work at look sad now :P
But I'm also glad they aren't turning my store into one, I can't imagine them expecting us to have that much stuff out with the amount of people we have now.
I am an ACSM at a marketplace. Worked at a regular store down the road for ~5.5 years and then transferred here about 3 months ago. Big difference. We still sell groceries obviously, but it feels like everything is different. Everything is bigger and more difficult.
This store was finished about 3 years ago. It was very expensive and we had heard that this store was going to be the last marketplace built because they cost too much and made little/no or negative profit. We have 3 regular stores within about a 5 mile radius so apparently the trend is to shop those stores for food, and come here for everything else.
Recently in a store board meeting, since the marketplaces are now turning a profit, we were told that now the company is planning to build more following that model of 1 marketplace located centrally among a handful of regular stores. Basically the marketplace is designed to do/sell what walmart (by far our biggest competition in this area) does, but better.
Oh, and there are far more people to man those extra departments. My last store had less than 100 employees but this marketplace has 220 or more.
I once worked at the Taj Mahal of Kroger store's. it was the only reason I decided to work for Kroger in the first place. How many stores does this company have? I had no desire to be a deli worker just like all the other 50000 deli workers out there. One day - they came to our store and said "we're closing it down" So all us loyal employees were farmed out. And as they pulled out the last refrigeration unit and unscrewed the last light bulb, the store was no more. Just a faded memory for us to keep. And occasional we will reminisce of what once was the best damn Kroger store the company ever had. So several years go by and now we are all just part of the huge Kroger machine. churning away like a meat grinder pushing out Kroger sausage patties. occasionally wonder wtf happened to us. the once proud Kroger Fresh Fair store of Kenwood Ohio. now just a shuttered cavity, a ghost town with tumble weed blowing by. I miss u Taj Mahal. Your doom has led to my doom - in some weird perverse skewed way.
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I am no longer part of the oppressed, evil workforce of Kroger! Can you say "Hallelujah"
I feel you 100% when you say "...occasionally wonder what the hell happened to us." Before Wally, I never EVER saw myself working in retail; first I was in advertising, then many years in the health care field (which I would gladly return to, were it not for the ridiculously low salary compared to the ever increasing education demands).
So yea.....Every so often I'll look about myself and the ever present chaos which is the retail world, and I'll think "Have I died?? IS THIS HELL????"
