Just need to get stuff off my shoulder, please ignore if you don't like useless rants...
So, I've been at Kroger for a little over a year now, started out as a lowly courtesy/utility clerk making $7.25, became a cashier about six months in (though about half my days were still cleaning/utility, but that's a different matter), and was told I would be floor supervisor (red vest person) a few weeks ago (a complete surprise, I had neither asked for the job, nor did I feel I was particularly qualified for it). I had two days of training/shadowing, where they mainly discussed QueVision, told me how to direct traffic, assign breaks, all that good stuff. At the end of training, they asked if I was up for the real thing, I figured eh, what's the worst that could happen?
Today was that day, the first three hours went pretty smoothly, then the traffic really started to roll in, and to make matters worse, one of our cashiers had decided to come in sick. Guess who was throwing up half the time she was supposed to be on register (Bonus: It's contagious @_@). We got a dip, but not that bad a one, so I pulled together with the help of the lady who ran the office. Not a big deal, &!@# happens. Right?
Then the bombshell. The office lady asks me to cover her break. Wait, WHAT? I had *never* been told anything about working in the office, I barely know how the phone systems even work, let alone how to issue refunds, etc. And no one told me this was part of my tasks? Jebus, talk about a failure to communicate (I don't fault the office lady at all btw, she was apologetic, but what's the alternative, her going with no breaks/lunches? she sacrificed some of that time to help me even though she didn't have to, and coached me through *some* of the essentials. The front end manager though...). Meanwhile, traffic had gotten to absurd proportions, as half the town decided they totally needed to shop simultaneously. Oh by the way, you know how to run U-Scan right? Cover it for me please?
So I've got a U-Scan console in one hand, had given up on being caught up on breaks/lunches, and had to page the office supervisor every few minutes because I had no clue how to do anything useful in the office except look like a dummy and watch the QueVision report turn redder by the minute. Fun first day eh?
Oh and I still make $7.25.
-- Edited by Going 4011 on Saturday 11th of January 2014 09:43:00 PM
Get off the front end lol. Other departments may not pay more, but they are less stressful for sure. Just make sure you don't get called up front. Besides, if you want to stay front end, you're essentially stuck as supervisor. Say you work grocery, you can also work in dairy, frozens, or nutritional to get more hours. Front end? Don't expect more than 26 hours.
Get off the front end lol. Other departments may not pay more, but they are less stressful for sure. Just make sure you don't get called up front. Besides, if you want to stay front end, you're essentially stuck as supervisor. Say you work grocery, you can also work in dairy, frozens, or nutritional to get more hours. Front end? Don't expect more than 26 hours.
I'll definitely consider it, although I do get 40 hours/wk (full time), and am hesitant about walking away from that.
If you can get into as small a department as possible, you can get a lot of hours. Nutrition, dairy, frozen, etc. almost guarantee high hours since there's a small amount of staff in them. The drug/candy department is usually pretty high hour-ed as well.
Get off the front end lol. Other departments may not pay more, but they are less stressful for sure. Just make sure you don't get called up front. Besides, if you want to stay front end, you're essentially stuck as supervisor. Say you work grocery, you can also work in dairy, frozens, or nutritional to get more hours. Front end? Don't expect more than 26 hours.
I'll definitely consider it, although I do get 40 hours/wk (full time), and am hesitant about walking away from that.
If you are officially full time and not just full time for several weeks and then part time for a week or two, you can move to any department and retain your full time status, provided they have the hours to give you.
I wondered the same thing. And $7.25? When I was hired as a bagger with zero experience I got $7.30 to start. Became a cashier after a couple months and it went up to $7.45. @OP Now why in the world are you happy with this? I'd bring it up to the front end's respective co-manager or even the store manager. If you don't tell them how you feel, they will think that you're okay where you are. Working harder will be of no reward in such an environment.
Just need to get stuff off my shoulder, please ignore if you don't like useless rants...
So, I've been at Kroger for a little over a year now, started out as a lowly courtesy/utility clerk making $7.25, became a cashier about six months in (though about half my days were still cleaning/utility, but that's a different matter), and was told I would be floor supervisor (red vest person) a few weeks ago (a complete surprise, I had neither asked for the job, nor did I feel I was particularly qualified for it). I had two days of training/shadowing, where they mainly discussed QueVision, told me how to direct traffic, assign breaks, all that good stuff. At the end of training, they asked if I was up for the real thing, I figured eh, what's the worst that could happen?
Today was that day, the first three hours went pretty smoothly, then the traffic really started to roll in, and to make matters worse, one of our cashiers had decided to come in sick. Guess who was throwing up half the time she was supposed to be on register (Bonus: It's contagious @_@). We got a dip, but not that bad a one, so I pulled together with the help of the lady who ran the office. Not a big deal, &!@# happens. Right?
Then the bombshell. The office lady asks me to cover her break. Wait, WHAT? I had *never* been told anything about working in the office, I barely know how the phone systems even work, let alone how to issue refunds, etc. And no one told me this was part of my tasks? Jebus, talk about a failure to communicate (I don't fault the office lady at all btw, she was apologetic, but what's the alternative, her going with no breaks/lunches? she sacrificed some of that time to help me even though she didn't have to, and coached me through *some* of the essentials. The front end manager though...). Meanwhile, traffic had gotten to absurd proportions, as half the town decided they totally needed to shop simultaneously. Oh by the way, you know how to run U-Scan right? Cover it for me please?
So I've got a U-Scan console in one hand, had given up on being caught up on breaks/lunches, and had to page the office supervisor every few minutes because I had no clue how to do anything useful in the office except look like a dummy and watch the QueVision report turn redder by the minute. Fun first day eh?
Oh and I still make $7.25.
-- Edited by Going 4011 on Saturday 11th of January 2014 09:43:00 PM
Welcome to Kroger, get out while you can or deal with **** like the above
I started this past summer as a Cashier/bagger @$7.35. At my story baggers start out at $7.25 and cashiers at $7.35 and since I was technically both I got the $7.35. About one month after being hired they started training myself and a fellow employee hired around the same time how to run the fuel center. Then another month later we were both trained to run the office and "trained" to be a supervisor... by "trained" I mean we went to some meeting regarding Que Hole and then shoved out onto the floor to run the show that is the checkout process...
Our store has 4 robots "U scan" or as I like to call it "Me help U scan," and 3 Express lanes, one containing all the cigarettes, and 6 normal lanes for a total of 9 lanes besides U scan.
Somedays all lanes are open and we are still dipping... during the afterwork rush. So it can get pretty busy.
So I've worked for Kroger about 7.5 months and I've been supervising for the majority of those months.
I'd also like to mention that I hate closing the office... it sucks.. well just filling out those report and junk..
I mainly supervise, and the other guy that was "trained" along with me mainly closes the office.
I'm part time and average about 25 hours a week and the most has been 32.
A typically shift for me is 4-9pm sometimes 4-10pm (to give the U scan lady a 1 hour lunch from 9-10pm.)
3-7pm is usually the busy time of day for our store.
Usually we have a dip or two on a normal day, sometimes none. I quiet often have no dip while I'm there.
The days we have we have more than 3 dips, are the days that people either call in sick, or they just simply didn't schedule enough people to work that day, and then we strain other departments by having to call them upfront to help bag or check people out which some employees gripe and complain about..
If it gets busy I either have to open up a check lane and check myself, or call someone from another department. Then call 1+1 for a co manger to come supervise "direct traffic" while I check. But sometimes we get lucky and have a bagger that can hop in and check, and then I'll step in and take his spot bagging.
On the thing regarding breaks for the office person.
Yeah, at our store, the office person usually covers the supervisors break... "watches the front end" which is what they do anyway.. if they aren't busy with money orders, returns, etc. And then the supervisor will cover the office persons break. Which in our store's case, all the supervisors/office people are pretty much cross trained and can do whatever needs to be done, and if anything arises that is over our heads, then we can call a co-mgr. Our store has 3 co mgrs. Their are usually atleast two, sometimes all three there everyday. They help out a lot when things get really busy.
But I hate being a supervisor even though I'm decent at it. I mean I never asked to do anything thing but be a bagger, yet I can clean the bathrooms, take out the trash, get carts, check, bag, run U scan, run the office, supervise, stock shelves, do the out of stock scan, boss stupid high school kids around, and listen to crazy customer's complaints (the customer is always right, right?).. just to name a few tasks.
In the end it is more responsibility (stress) with no increase in pay.
Which if you think about it... it just makes me want to be a lowly bagger again. I don't even want to check anymore lol.
But I hate being a supervisor even though I'm decent at it. I mean I never asked to do anything thing but be a bagger, yet I can clean the bathrooms, take out the trash, get carts, check, bag, run U scan, run the office, supervise, stock shelves, do the out of stock scan, boss stupid high school kids around, and listen to crazy customer's complaints (the customer is always right, right?).. just to name a few tasks.
In the end it is more responsibility (stress) with no increase in pay.
Which if you think about it... it just makes me want to be a lowly bagger again. I don't even want to check anymore lol.
I feel ya completely on that one, it'd be one thing if we were fully trained, and got to dedicate ourselves to supervisory tasks 100% of the time (or at least most of it), but it seems it's more "Let's heap all the tasks other people don't want to do on the few people who care"
FU11307 wrote:
How is it that you never got a raise!? o_O
Baggers don't get raises, and when they finally reclassified me as cashier, the raise timer reset, so I've got a few more weeks before my first raise.
Baggers don't get raises, and when they finally reclassified me as cashier, the raise timer reset, so I've got a few more weeks before my first raise.
Wow. If I were you, I would have at least argued to keep my hire date time in correspondence with my position start time if there wasn't an increase in starting pay. At my store, when the baggers get promoted, they get anywhere from a 60c to a $1.60 raise. This is meant to encourage baggers to get into a promoted position, because the benefits would be extremely negligible otherwise. All I can say is, you must have terrible management who doesn't care about their employees at all.
I really don't feel like I get to supervise anything. Our dept is barely functional. I'm so busy putting out metaphorical fires I don't get to do coaching, ring tender is suffering right now, I have a co-manager bugging me about "small things" like appropriate colored shoes on cashiers and in our faces while customers are present. PLEASE!
Now the dept head has decided to add more work for the closing office people even though many nights we're short-handed, sometimes very badly.
Wow. At my store all of the floor supervisors are the best at the office work, that is why they got promoted to floor supervisors. I guess it works differently from store to store but it seems odd that you would not have basic training in the job of your subordinates so that you could help if they ran into trouble at the office (western union, money orders, check cashing, refunds, exchanges, ticket master, etc.) or the register for regular transactions.
I wondered the same thing. And $7.25? When I was hired as a bagger with zero experience I got $7.30 to start. Became a cashier after a couple months and it went up to $7.45. @OP Now why in the world are you happy with this? I'd bring it up to the front end's respective co-manager or even the store manager. If you don't tell them how you feel, they will think that you're okay where you are. Working harder will be of no reward in such an environment.
Do you still make $7.30? I've worked as a bagger then cashier and back to bagger for 10 months and make $8.10.
