With Kroger wanting to stretch out that dollar, cut hours, get rid of full time, and fire the top paid, and investing on useless costly programs and systems... Why don't they Invest on Electronic Shelf Tags? Remove the full time P.O.S/File Maintenance position, and have this all update with a push of a button when the new sales/week starts?
Well what about those who work that position, you may ask? Simple, there's other work out there to be done. I do believe they fall under grocery, lift some boxes up.
What about Customers believing it may be too easy to change prices up during Price checks, you may ask? Simple, have the system on lock up during business hours and unlock during a specific time, lets say 1am to 5 am.
You got these in gas stations, and some convenience stores already use this. I'm not advising for corporate to take jobs away, im just saying other positions in a store are suffering through these changes thats Key Retailing, and they leave out other positions completely. They should be smart about it when they decide to throw money out into these programs...
File clerks are actually front end. But don't ever tell them that because they think it makes their job seem less important. I've seen them run registers sometimes and they'll always tell customers, "Please don't get angry if I scan slower, I'm usually a file clerk." And the customer always has a reaction like, "Who cares?" What I think is silly is that these people work the crappiest hours, do the most mind-numbing work, and still pretend that they are the king of dick island or something.
I don't know how it is at all the other stores, but at mine, the file maintenance people are easily the laziest people we got working. I see them talking with people from every department rather than doing their job. They even make some of the lazy regular cashiers look like saints.
I don't know how it is at all the other stores, but at mine, the file maintenance people are easily the laziest people we got working. I see them talking with people from every department rather than doing their job. They even make some of the lazy regular cashiers look like saints.
Thank you! This is exactly what I see going on at my store. They will spend an hour chatting with the USCAN cashier or stirring up some gossip at floral. Then the people in grocery will get mad that tags are just plain missing from the shelf or a huge display. This really is one of the easiest jobs in the store right up there with DSD, yet they pretend like they are the ones short on hours. Unbelievable.
Same here... they go down aisles to chit chat with whomever. always claiming they have a lot of work when truly the one day is on for the new week. Some of them dont do front end service even with Que-vision out. Its ridiculous. The Company even invested in a custom tray to attach to a shopping cart??? Really.
I am sure when the cost of the installing them goes down, they will
the manual labor involved in file maint. is ridiculous. you need people to pull tags old tags, people to hang new tags, people to made signs, you need a scan coordinator who isn't lazy and actually follows up on scan discrepancy cards.
the great thing about new tags is they'll send stuff you don't even have in store. the waste is appalling and they just get trashed every week.
the electronic shelf tags are American technology but are largely ignored.
kroger's in the dark ages and looking for new ways to eliminate people at the same time they're pushing "fresh and friendly" ... self checkout systems aren't friendly for the customer or the attendant. spend a few thousand hours manning a self checkout and you'll see the common failings. some of the stuff we depend upon day-to-day is simply byzantine. it makes me just a little insane.
the biggest gripe i have still is training and access to correct information. i'll go to a district meeting and won't get a straight answer on what a best practice is. we wing it.
I haven't seen a scan coordinator yet who will come for relief help unless management pages by name. Even then they'll take their sweet time and hope the rush is over by the time they get up front. We can't even get our current scan coordinator to train as a cashier. We rarely need relief baggers these days, we desperately need relief cashiers! The latest excuse was alcohol classes are Saturday morning and scan has to be in at midnight Sunday and that would just be asking too much. Boo-hoo!
The flip signs introduced to eliminate xerox signage helped alot in eliminating paper waste, just in file maint. but at my store, every start of the new ad they render a box full of tag trimmings and wing stack and sideboard display signage waste, thats alot of paper consumed. and you still got to print out paperwork, bills per dept and sale recaps, and primetime reviews on the daily. Its pretty sad, I would like to know the actual number Company wide on how much paper is consumed.
This can even save space and time if they reduce it a little more.
We got 3 assistant managers that face stuff all day and run to the front all day to cashier...if that isnt wasted salary i dont know what is.
$45K (+ BONUS) a year to be a glorified floater sounds pretty appealing to me. Especially when you can blame the grocery manager for the holes you didn't fill.
