This has been happening frequently lately...my front end manager keeps scheduling me to be the only bagger to work the front end while one other bagger is doing lot. It's a serious pain in the ass to work all the checkstands by yourself without getting bitched at by everyone. This is usually during mid day into early evening and its busy everyday. Should I talk to my manager about this or go straight to the store director?
We have the same thing at our store some days, I've been told by the FE manager that it's because QueVision prioritizes cashiers over baggers, so all the other baggers get trained on register soon after starting, and because we just don't have the hours for both baggers AND cashiers, one has to go or the other. Blame the store manager on that one.
If I were you, I'd stick it out till you either get a better job, or see about getting promoted to cashier ASAP.
Always speak with your department head first before going to management. Certain issues can be resolved without it being necessary to get management involved. Depending on the department head, he or she may take offense to you skipping over him or her and going straight to management. Sometimes too, even when you talk to your department head first, and then speak with management, the department head can still get steamed at you for going over his or her head.
This though is likely something you'll get nowhere on no matter who you speak with. You'll likely be told there aren't any hours to put on additional baggers. Kroger is all about getting by with the least help possible. If the company truly adhered to its "Customer 1st" philosophy, every register would have a bagger the majority of the time so that customers would never have to bag their own groceries and cashiers could focus on scanning and keeping the lines moving without having to stop to bag sizable orders after finishing the transaction. Kroger doesn't care though and the company truly doesn't care if you find it to be serious annoyance to be the only bagger on the inside.
Just focus on one order at a time. Be quick, but careful, and polite. If a cashier complains to you, tell him or her that you're doing your best considering how there are multiple registers and only one bagger, and if the cashier still complains, ignore him or her and just focus on the customer. If the customer complains, apologize and invite the customer to take the survey on the bottom of the receipt and explain that the store manager reads every comment. Nothing will likely change, but it directs the anger of the customer away from you and toward those that are truly deserving of the criticism.
I concur though with the sentiment that either focus on getting promoted or find a better job elsewhere as being a bagger at Kroger is a job that demands a lot but pays so very little while having to put up with a great deal.
they want us to auto schedule so the computer model of your store's shopping patterns better be dead on accurate. plus we need people with availabilities to fill the hours. it's unpleasant.
eschedule is designed to keep the stores on a starvation diet of labor hours. but when stuff doesn't get done they never add hours.
Why isn't the floor supervisor calling others to the front for package help?
Because most likely, there's no one left to come up and help like in most stores. It comes down to dairy/grocery/produce being called down and depends on how many they scheduled for the day.
Over here, we have one grocery day stocker, two dairy people, and four in produce (out of which two prep food). With a choice of either getting their **** done or helping some piss-poor clerks up front, they'll pick to get their work done. Some even have explicit instructions from their department manager or even store manager to not go up and help.
Why isn't the floor supervisor calling others to the front for package help?
In our case, it's because one, the FE manager loathes calling people from other departments for help, and only does it when absolutely needed (like when we have a lot of call-outs). And two, we actually do really well on Que-Vision, 85-95% most weeks, it's not that the front end is suffering, it's that the bagger is.
Why isn't the floor supervisor calling others to the front for package help?
Because all of our back end help is just strictly for cashiering only. The managers don't give two ****s about the baggers and if they need help. In fact its actually considered an embarrassment for us if we need help bagging. Our que-vision sucks everyday because the cashiers usually refuse to bag groceries and are slow with the actual checking of the groceries.
man that sucks. You have to do lot duty AND bagging at the SAME TIME??? Something is gonna cave in. Oh and be sure to tell your FES not to let 4 cashiers go on break at the same time, because they should be helping you keep the customers from blowing up at management.
When I was a courtesy clerk, and we had no help up front, I took it upon myself to call for F/E help. After 6 call (front end assistance 1st call, front end assistance 2nd call and so forth), before ANY body came up. I caught 9 flavors of hell for it, but we needed the help. Badly.
