How is Kroger cutting back at your store? I've worked for Kroger for 2 years now, here are some changes I've seen at our store:
1. Big K Soda machine in break room: Still only 25 cents BUT they now put the dented up cans in there. Thanks Kroger! I could barely get mine opened the other night it was so badly banged up.
2. No new work shirt on my 2nd year anniversary. (No cake either)
3. Hand sanitizer....usually one for 8 registers...pump broken.
4. Took our bench away outside that was under cover. We have to smoke around the corner with no cover, in the rain, heat etc.
5. Paper towels, grocery bags, ink pens etc. never stocked.
6. No courtesy clerk most shifts to help bag groceries, cashiers do it. Courtesy clerks do mostly go back and get carts. (By getting carts I mean go outside and play)
7. No floor supervisor after 10:00 pm. Cashier has no override.
8. They hide the plastic bags and ration them out.....managers bonus depends on cutting costs on grocery bags I was told.
The bench was probably taken away because workers outside smoking is seen as detracting from the customer experience. That's fine. It's not Kroger's responsibility to keep you sheltered because you "have" to smoke.
the paper towels and spray bottle things is ridiculous. they should be stocked and filled. bags is the responsibility of your FEM. i'm always in awe how fast pens vanish off the front end.
we generally have no floor after 9p. more fun was having no one in store overnight with an override.
we have managers that hide & ration bags too.
your store cultural council should be doing SOMETHING for anniversaries. mine is not. don't know why.
I am a fem I don't order bags the grocery head stock does. If the bags were not so thin and rip we wouldn't go through so many bags. Yes I have contacted the bag maker but it still don't help
About six months ago, a Dr. Pepper machine was put back into our break room. It was taken out before because employees were banging up the machine and forcing it open so that they wouldn't have to pay the twenty-five or fifty cents to get a can. Fairly regularly, there are cans of Kroger soda/water in the break room as well, so no cut backs there.
I and others get new shirts whenever we ask. No charge, no wait.
We have boxes of hand sanitizer up front and the back and paper towels for both registers and bathrooms are almost always available.
Where people go to smoke at the store I'm at, the building provides cover over the benches.
No issue with bags (other than try not to waste them) and customer service is loaded with pens that get handed out regularly.
We generally have enough courtesy clerks to bag, and the ones that work at 7:00AM or till midnight get a lot of the go backs done.
Our floor supervisors stay until 11:00PM on most nights. One co-manager stays until 11:00PM or later. When both are gone, the self check-out person is there and where I'm at, if you work self check-out, you have an override of your own.
So I'm not seeing the cutting back that you're seeing. I think they continue to try and trim the hours back throughout the store on a weekly basis... but nothing incredibly drastic. That may change with E-Schedule, so who knows. I don't let myself get stressed out about it anymore, so what cutbacks get made, I'll just shrug off. I'm only focusing on my job and that's it.
I am a fem I don't order bags the grocery head stock does. If the bags were not so thin and rip we wouldn't go through so many bags. Yes I have contacted the bag maker but it still don't help
or if they're not thin and shredding they're loose & they don't separate well and you get tons of bags coming off or customers can't get them open. the quality control is ridiculous.
In my store the pop machine in the break room is 35 cents.
If you want a new shirt, you go talk to the HR lady and she'll give you some. No cost or anything.
I wasn't even aware we'd get anything for a 2 year anniversary (but I did get a free deli meal last year) so maybe i'll get something in a couple weeks :D
My 2 year anniversary was never recognized in any fashion.
We don't have pens. I don't know if we ever had pens. Any pens on chains are pried off by employees and customers alike. Management buys pens for themselves, and I am the only cashier who buys his own pens. All the other cashiers steal them from elsewhere. Everybody fights all day long over pens left on the registers. Until customers steal them. It's not like pens are expensive. We had 30 pens for a dollar during the back to school sale. Even a pack of Bic pens is just over a dollar. Walmart generics are even cheaper. I don't get it. I don't see why it's so hard to buy some ****ing pens.
Bags are more poorly made than before. Two years ago when I started, two 2 liter soda bottles could safely be bagged in one bag in any orientation you would like. Quality plummeted for a while until things were falling through unfinished seams, and it's now back up. Not to where it was two years ago, but maybe at an acceptable level.
We have to buy our own shirts. You get the run around about who to buy them from, and then the wait time is absurd.
Hours are a problem. Courtesy clerks are very scarce and we hear a lot of Winco jokes.
Supplies are iffy. It's no one's job to order bags, so sometimes no one orders them. One of the managers ordered bags at the same time another one ordered bags and we got too many, so she isn't allowed to order bags anymore. So that doesn't help. We haven't run out for a while, but I don't know what changed.
Paper towels are a problem. I think it's more that it's no one's job to order them, and maintenance hides whatever ones come in.
Spray bottles are spread thin. According to one manager, the other departments steal them so frequently that it doesn't even matter if we order more. I have seen customers steal them too. I'm thinking about throwing them away one to encourage management to order more. But this could backfire.
The new checkstands they installed during the remodel about two years ago are cheaply made and started breaking and falling apart a few months after they were installed. On the most commonly used register, the cashier bag rack fell off a few weeks back and hasn't been fixed yet. The bag rack on the second most commonly used register is starting to go. The carousels on the express lanes are beginning to seize up.
Broken pallet jacks are not replaced or repaired. Neither are U-boats with missing wheels, etc. No one has a pen unless they bring their own. Things like that.
We sell kroger individual cans for 35 cents that employees and customers can purchase.
I got a coupon the last few years on my anniversary for a free shirt, otherwise we have to purchase them ourselves. We also get a card on anniversaries, birthdays, etc. from the store.
Hand sanitizer is kept on all registers and the service desk.
We have a bench outside around the corner for smoking breaks. Customers often sit there with us which is nice sometimes depending on who it is and not so nice other times.
Spray bottles of water and cleaner, also paper towels are kept at all registers. The store supplies pens which we go through quite a bit of them as customers like to take them also. I buy my own to hang on my shirt because I hate looking for a pen when I need one which is often.
We always have a courtesy clerk to bag/bring in carts.
The bags we always have unless someone forgets to order them. The bags can be a pain at times being too thin or several coming off the rack at once. If I'm helping bagging I always double bag 2 liter sodas or anything heavy because I dont want the bags to break on the customers.
3. No one wants to order bathroom/cleaning supplies
4. Our anniversary cake is gone
We get a Thank You On our anniversary. EVEN THAT Would disappear if it cost anything.
All this to cut back on costs. (They have to have money to pay for dumb assed programs that do NOT work)
Well what the "lowly" employees have done is:
Pulled all our cleaning supplies off the shelf (mop wringers, brooms to replace the ones that are busted and missing, toilet paper, seat covers, etc). We have a cashier charge it to the store. Hey, if they don't want to order our supplies, then we pull them off the shelf because I will e damned if I'm going to do my job with busted cleaning equipment.
Our front end never has enough hand-sanatizer or spray bottles on the front end. We do always have enough paper towels though... which is pointless if you have no spray to go with them.
We almost always have enough bags to go around at least.
We have no types of soda or vending machines in our break room. I wasn't aware that other stores had them.
If we need a new Kroger shirt, we have to buy it ourselves.
Our store doesn't hire enough people. We run pretty much on a skeleton crew, with very few to no one to serve as back-ups for people's vacation time.
i agree with most things shared here, but i must say change your store they are not all ran the same way. I have worked for Kroger over 15 years and i would work nowhere else.
