I was speaking with the lady who trains new hires at our store. I expressed to her my desire to one day become a full time employee. She informed me that a full time position DOES NOT exist at our store outside of department heads and upper management.
Furthermore, it was explained to me that employees experience an hourly "reset", in which hours are drastically reduced from the upper 30's back into the teens. Hours then steadily climb to approach the 40 hour mark and then are once again reset, ad infinitum.
I've only been with the company 2 months. This is fairly shocking news to me. And I doubt I'd have ever been told had I not had that conversation with the training lady.
Which explains why my mother, who worked for Kmart in the 1980s, and was hired in at full time, experienced that when full timers retired, they got replaced with part timers.
Yes, it was definitely Obama's fault in 1985. Uh huh.
If you work at a smaller store you're less likely to be made full time than you would if you worked at a big store. While they do like to keep the total percentage of full time employees down to a certain amount, if necessary they will allow someone to reach full time. This usually happens when a department is given so many hours and there's simply not enough people to give those hours to. We had a girl in the deli bakery department be made full time simply because there aren't enough people to get the work done. If you're on the front end, you'll never be made full time. Checkers and baggers are a dime a dozen. Ask around and see if any other departments are short on help. If you prove to be a good and reliable worker, they'll want to hang on to you.
I worked at a big store that would be the best place to start. I ended up getting full time in 3 months time. Try working in meat, usually they're understaffed.
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My Views and Opinions do not reflect that of the Kroger company. I'm an indivdual expressing my 1st amendment right.
Possible: yes. Difficult to accomplish: very much so.
My advice is to be as flexible as possible for scheduling, come in any time you are asked (to cover call offs, for example), stay overwhen ever asked, offer to work a shift for someone who doesn't care if they are scheduledor not, and learn as many different jobs as you can. It's a long hard road, but you can make it by averaging 36 hours per week for 26 consecutive weeks
The length of time and required number of hours differs significantly by contract. Learn what it is, learn everything you can, come in and stay over whenever possible, and keep track of it yourself. When you earn it, fight to keep it.
When I was first hired, people in my store were pestering me to become full time. I was the one person probably DIDN'T want full time and yet they kept asking me "are you thinking about becoming full time? How would you feel about becoming a full timer?" I don't get it.
Full time is not QUITE impossible, but pretty darn close, depending on the store (and how good you are at sucking up to management. LOL) I work in Deli/Bakery, and shortly after I moved to the store I work at now, we had 4 people in the department that were being scheduled for 12 to 20 hours a week, while a couple were being given enough to be close to forcing the company to make them full time. The 4 of us were all begging for more hours, but instead of ordering the department manager to spread the available hours between the existing employees more fairly, corporate ordered our co-manager to hire two additional employees for the department to make certain they wouldn't be able to get enough hours to force a change in status. (I know this because I literally had a hissy fit. Because one of the co-managers was a friend, they explained what had happened.)
That's how I am. On one hand, I'd be happy to be offered full time because the pay would be much better than fluctuating from 40 hours down to 16, I don't know if I could stand 40 hours every week considering they'd probably make me work evenings all the time.
