This needs to be said somewhere, might as well be here.
I work at a moderately sized store. We go through around 800-1500+ (only more on special occasion) cases per night. We only get two trucks a week. That's all fine and dandy.
It's fortunate to have a good manager, but to have good management? Now that's winning the lottery. And I seemed to be out of luck when it comes to winning that lottery. The nightshift leader is great, but in a position of limited power. The rest of the management is either not in a position to change things, incompetent, or grossly incompetent.
The store does not feel like a well oiled machine. My work environment is not safe (STAR, hah!). I wonder how it functions at all, really. We've had plenty of people quit in the past week, including a person from nightstock (we're already understaffed).
I've read around, apparently for a truck of 1400-1500 cases it's typical to have 7 people there to get it all done properly. In your dreams. We're lucky to have 5. We get 3 to run 800-1000 piece trucks and it's really starting to irk us. Not just because we can't get the work done, but because management thinks it's because we're slacking off. Yeah, the night shifters who are bending, lifting, and kneeling with little respite are slacking off. I've watched day shift grocery how they chat around. Managers will come in and talk to one another for thirty minutes before even starting their work.
For a lot of day shift people I don't blame them. Hell, I don't even care. I do my job, I do it very well. Social interaction is good in a workplace, and retail places tend to hire the chatty sorts of people. I know a guy who will chat your ear off but provides great customer service. Night shift, however, is different. It attracts introverts who prefer to be alone most of the time and focus on their work. I'm not bragging by saying this, since I know day grocery has its own challenges (like an ocean of customers and constant bouncing around that we don't have to deal with), but when it comes to working hard and really burning the midnight oil, we're top tier.
It's not the kind of job you can do 40 hours a week at a fast pace without getting run down unless you're an endurance athlete or something. I am an athlete myself and I don't have the energy do much outside of work. I can only train moderately on my days off when I have them. And sometimes I don't even bother if I work 3-4 days in a row. Otherwise I'll end up getting an overuse injury and have terrible work performance.
If anyone from corporate is reading this, don't take it the wrong way. I love my job. I'm introverted to the core and find the stocking of shelves mildly therapeutic. I'm autistic (my managers don't know this), and find the organization damn near orgasmic. I have an extraordinary eye for detail and continually get commented on how great I can make aisles look (even when I don't think I did a good job).
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The first problem, is well... I guess warehouse is a bit of a problem. We get poorly stacked pallets, improperly rotated products from warehouse, sometimes triple stacked mixed pallets, etc. etc. Not really something I can do much about though. Just deal with it and move on.
Safety is a big problem. Also due to bad management. We have managers stacking wooden pallets higher than 12 (and then telling me not to bother even after I inform them of company policy), the backroom floor is often left a complete mess, and we our powered pallet jack was broken and a complete safety hazard. We brought up this pallet jack with management for MONTHS and MONTHS telling them repeatedly that it's a safety hazard and we shouldn't use it. We just now got a new one and the old one tagged out after it acted up on one of our managers. Apparently our safety isn't important.
Organization is a problem, partly due to being understaffed everywhere and party due to bad management. I enjoy being neat and tidy, but I always temper this with efficiency. Efficiency is always key to profitability, which is really what everyone is interested in. But day managers and grocers have gotten in a terrible habit of just shoving backstock products where they don't belong, hiding ALL of the products so they can write that there's no backstock. It slows us down when we have to pull products off the shelf, leads to ordering errors (ugh this slows us down more), and in some cases leads to expired products (we don't always catch it).
But the worst of all is that management blames us and keeps going on and on about how we're not doing a good job.
This is total BS. We're doing the best we can despite having more volume we can handle. We're SUPPOSED to be rotating stock. We don't. Because we can't. We get yelled at for not finishing the truck if we do. We're supposed to pull three products forward when conditioning and facing, but we can't, most of the time we only pull one forwards sloppily because that's all we have time for. This is a very, very bad tactic. A properly conditioned aisle more important than a well stocked aisle. You only need on the shelf what you will sell in that day, and most of the time you do not sell what you stock until several days later (maybe this is just ordering incompetence, there are changes I would love to make to it, but I won't list them in this post). But an aisle that looks aesthetically pleasing with everything setup well will sell more products which means more profit. Rotating products means less expired products and less shrink (I do a smart rotating system so I only rotate out things that don't sell often or expire very, very quickly).
Management of course can't do anything to really threaten us (they said they'd shift our schedules one hour later if we keep not getting it done... Oh no, you're going to let us sleep in an hour ha). I'm quitting soon to pursue a far, far more lucrative career path (this was only temporary for me, like Hell I'm going to climb the corporate ladder). But thanks to anyone for hearing me out and I hope you too don't suffer from these problems.
If anyone else from nightstock needs some tips with how to speed up I'll be more than happy to help. But really it's all physical.
I am also on a night stock, our store is cutting our hours and adding more to our tasks each week, we are getting it done but like your store our days people don't seem to do anything. Our management never says good job or thanks for busting your backs all night we get talked down to and treated badly. Kroger is by far the worst place have ever worked solely based on employee treatment. I fully agree about the delivery pallets we get more damaged items just from poor stacking than we have from customer or staff damage. We also do not have the time to properly stock the shelves and have proof to that fact because even days has not done their jobs since we find cans and boxes that are expired, some by two years or more.
Personally each night it is two or three of us that stock and pull the entire store, while a long time employee stays in one isle fife the entire night. The other night two of us did all but three isles those three isles each had people in them, from the time we started stocking till end of shift, which we never usually get out on time either, but the manager said we could go then proceeded to flip us off and swear at us because they were going to be there for another hour.
In general our night stock crew are treated like crap, looked down on by the baggers who just stand around and talk, we get yelled at for doing our jobs, the even let some random old guy who does not work for Kroger go around and do carts, we also get yelled at for helping customers many times in front of the customer, and paid poorly for how much we put up with. Most of our crew is ready to walk just as soon as we all find new jobs or another store to transfer too, or if it keeps up we may just all walk and look for new work later, since the union is a joke and does nothing for the people it's supposed to.
This needs to be said somewhere, might as well be here.
I agree completely. Are you sure we are not twins?
We have 6 grocery trucks with about 400-800 cases each night. I think KMP is 400-500 cases 3 days a week.
Night crews always get er done at all companies I have worked for:Retail, grocery warehouse, medical lab, steel fabrication. Day crew has managers that want this done or that done but wait, they need this done right now after such and such is done.
If we keep cutting corners as a team, eventually, we are just running in circles.
Do it right the first time because when oh when are you going to have time to do it again.
Our store needs better organization with everyone on the same page but no time and can't happen currently.
I enjoy working for Kroger and plan to be a grocery manager eventually. I enjoy nightwork.
Hi all, first off let me explain that Kroger (or i should say Dillons) was the only ones hiring out of the 150+ job applications i filled out shortly after coming back from deployment in Iraq so i took the job as a night stocker. I have been working this position for the last 6 months.
Ok, now my Kroger war story:
My job has been absolutely fantastic since i have started untill today. We had a full group Key retailing visit yesterday and our department scored a flawless 100% and all of us working that night recieved gift cards and hand written certificates along with hand shakes from the folks with KEY. Now, the bad.
Last night we had a 1700 piece truck with only 3 people to throw it (one was unloading the trucks so really just 2 people) and really needed help badly but to get it we have to phone our department head or a store manager out of bed to give us the go ahead. Not only were we told no we were basically told hell no! So we figure alright we'll just get'er done the best we can and play it by ear. Fast-forward to 6am and we are not even close to being done but low and behold both the store manager and our department head walk in at the same damn time and start just laying into us with no mercy about **** not being done yet and yadda yadda but to make a long story short our night lead quit, our truck unloader quit, our FASTEST stocker quit leaving just me and 3 other people with one guy thats just as fast as our fastest guy (was) but doesnt put up with managerial badgering and has told them to do their jobs like they are supposed too and let him do his-they had a habit a while back of pestering him over trivial stuff, like the department head would come scan in the morning and find maybe 3-4 holes that werent conditioned that could easily be fixed by him but instead of fixing it he would make the guy drop whatever it was he was doing and start laying into him for a thorough 15 minute bark session and the guy got tired of it and told the department head if its that big of a damn deal just fix it, it takes like 2 seconds leave me alone i got a 200 piece pallet over here with 3 more to go and its already 4am!-they only have him scheduled for 12 hours the entire next week and refuse to bring him on to help us due to management making everybody quit!
I am a Marine. It is my job to get into the trenches, do the hard work and NEVER complain but THIS, THIS is SLAVERY! I did NOT take 3 tours in Iraq just to come back and see giant corporate entities treating people in this manner for 7.75/hour! I am working on a deal right now that could hire allot of people. Once it is open, im hiring all of my night crew buddies as well as anyone left over in the Grocery department at a hell of a-lot more pay than bare minimum or oh wow +25 cents for overnights-get real lol!. They will all walk at the same time.
I also work for Fred Meyer.. My crew gets a truck [sometimes one and a half, right before or after a holiday like the 4th of July] every night but Tuesday/Thursdays. They are at least 900 to shelf every night and can be up to 3000. We never have more than five people. Ever. We USUALLY only have three people, and one of those has to receive the other trucks [produce, meat, dairy, etc.] so it's just the two of us. 95% of the time we get everything done without overtime and it's not a big deal, and no one really has any complaints.. Maybe FM isn't completely Kroger-ized yet? In addition to working graves five days a week, I enjoy time with friends sporadically, workout [I lift weights and such], and cook and clean.
Now I'm incredibly interested in how freight processes differ throughout this large company..
-- Edited by NightStockette on Monday 22nd of July 2013 12:18:15 PM
Man, I feel like I live in a bubble. All these gripes about freight, but I don't see them where I'm at.
I've worked for Fred Meyer since 2006, and got an opening on the grocery freight team about six months later. It was a time where I was just out of my parents' house and needed the hours to survive. No car and lived alone at the time, with nothing in savings, pretty much me against the world, so I was willing to do anything and everything to work my way up. The thing about my store's freight team, though, is that it is a) all journeymen (the whole food dept is like that, really), and b) really fast. So I stuck it out, determined not to be the weak link, so I caught up to them speed-wise as quickly as I could. I couldn't afford college at the time so I resolved to hit journeyman asap then go from there.
So yeah, I endured and not much has changed. I hear people talk about how there's a big turnover, but with us it's been the same group mostly since the beginning. We're all journeymen, our manager loves us, and we're pretty much considered the backbone of the store so we're treated well by every manager and PIC. Four of us can easily handle a 2000 piece truck with time to spare (and no, we're not really killing ourselves over it either; everyone lives a very active lifestyle outside of work, so things like throwing freight don't really feel like much), but we usually get five so we tend to do a lot of extra stuff on top, like shippers and rotation and whatnot. Everyone knows how to order, work multiple departments, do PIC stuff, etc. so it doesn't matter who's scheduled at any given time at all.
I also work for Fred Meyer.. My crew gets a truck [sometimes one and a half, right before or after a holiday like the 4th of July] every night but Tuesday/Thursdays. They are at least 900 to shelf every night and can be up to 3000. We never have more than five people. Ever. We USUALLY only have three people, and one of those has to receive the other trucks [produce, meat, dairy, etc.] so it's just the two of us. 95% of the time we get everything done without overtime and it's not a big deal, and no one really has any complaints.. Maybe FM isn't completely Kroger-ized yet?
Typically we get 1000-1500 and sometimes 2000 pieces with a 4-5 man crew we can get it done quick. Plus we also condition, rotate the aisles. It usually goes smoothly. We have no real complaints because we all work well together and there are is no one to bug us.
HOWEVER......... this one time during the holidays we had a 3000-4000 load coming in. The reason? It was the holiday season and no one was smart enough to order ahead of time. And during that specific time, corporate decided to run us 24 hours. That meant customers literally getting in our way to have us help them or show them where stuff was...FE getting pissed off because we weren't responding to calls to help check, sack, etc. Usually we have pallet jacks on the floor to make the job go faster.., nopenopenope... We had to use dollies. Took forever. At the end of our shift my Nightcrew supervisor wrote a note by our timeclock asking everyone to order earlier being as this was the holiday season. Next day we came in, the note was off, torn in two and tossed away. He taped it together and put it back up.
This 4th if July, we are estimating a 1500-1800 load come in. We are not pulling a 24 hour again, so we should be able to get things done.
Typically we get 1000-1500 and sometimes 2000 pieces with a 4-5 man crew we can get it done quick. Plus we also condition, rotate the aisles. It usually goes smoothly. We have no real complaints because we all work well together and there are is no one to bug us.
HOWEVER......... this one time during the holidays we had a 3000-4000 load coming in. The reason? It was the holiday season and no one was smart enough to order ahead of time. And during that specific time, corporate decided to run us 24 hours. That meant customers literally getting in our way to have us help them or show them where stuff was...FE getting pissed off because we weren't responding to calls to help check, sack, etc. Usually we have pallet jacks on the floor to make the job go faster.., nopenopenope... We had to use dollies. Took forever. At the end of our shift my Nightcrew supervisor wrote a note by our timeclock asking everyone to order earlier being as this was the holiday season. Next day we came in, the note was off, torn in two and tossed away. He taped it together and put it back up.
This 4th if July, we are estimating a 1500-1800 load come in. We are not pulling a 24 hour again, so we should be able to get things done.
Um, if the regular crew is doing the ordering. What exactly does the grocery manager do?
He's supposed to make sure orders go in on time when needed and not wait until last minute when we are nearly out. We asked him about it an he doesn't really give us an answer. Most of the time it's ok.... But during holidays when you know it's going to be busy, why wait until the last minute. Customers get pissed, we get pissed, and store management gets pissed.
All you have to do is order on time. Even if you order too much, we at least will have the product on hand for future sales. IMO, it's better to order a bit too much (not overboard though) than order too little and run out of said product.
But again, it needs to be ordered in advance so by the time holiday craziness comes, we will already have it ready to go out.
He's supposed to make sure orders go in on time when needed and not wait until last minute when we are nearly out. We asked him about it an he doesn't really give us an answer. Most of the time it's ok.... But during holidays when you know it's going to be busy, why wait until the last minute. Customers get pissed, we get pissed, and store management gets pissed.
All you have to do is order on time. Even if you order too much, we at least will have the product on hand for future sales. IMO, it's better to order a bit too much (not overboard though) than order too little and run out of said product.
But again, it needs to be ordered in advance so by the time holiday craziness comes, we will already have it ready to go out.
Sounds like he's getting away with not doing his job, because he knows he can trust you all to a certain extent. He knows the product needs to be in here early, that's literally all the coordinators talk about on conference calls leading up to a holiday. They send out top 200 scan data sheets to order from and the product should be here at least a week early. Is he new and just doesn't know anything, or old with so many years with the company getting rid of him would be nigh impossible and he knows it, and abuses that fact?
It's fine, under normal work weeks to have people order their own aisles for lows & holes, but for displays, holidays, & major ad items, that should fall on the grocery manager because they are the ones that are to have the knowledge to get those done right.
He's been in groc management for about a year. But 5 years prior, he's done reg ordering at another store. And from
What I heard, he did ok, so how can he not know what to do? If you have your scan sheet of needed items, and you have your scan gun, how hard is it to scan the code and make sure it goes in in time? Management is getting pissed, but so far our groc manager hasn't blamed us....yet. But I'll be dammed if I'm going to take the blame. I'll throw anyone under the bus before I take blame for something I never did. I'm hoping that the guy actually put in the order on time for July 4th or there'd gonna be trouble,
They've been hard pressed to find grocery managers in our area that they've been promoting those with little to no experience. After that they have somebody else train them for a week or so then let them free. We had somebody who ONLY had experience as a front end supervisor, get promoted to grocery manager because literally nobody else would take the job. This is at our largest store in the area, that does 1M+ & is 100k square feet.
The situation might be the same where you are at, they promoted somebody that really shouldn't have been.
And about bringing it in early, that's purely because of scratches. The warehouse isn't able to handle every store that it services bringing in bulk of holiday items all within the last couple days of a major holiday. Scratches usually really start 5-7 days prior to the holiday, that's what it's important to bring it in before that.
Also to your point about how hard is it. That part isn't hard, the difficult part are the items that aren't listed on that sheet, but still sell at an abnormally high level that the shelf won't be able to support. That comes purely from experience. But talking with my coordinator yesterday, they said they are looking to improve those scan data sheets in the future, so hopefully it won't be so much of a guessing game.
In addition to working graves five days a week, I enjoy time with friends sporadically, workout [I lift weights and such], and cook and clean. 
