This is about store sweeps and being able to actually do them. We have to log them on the clock. The thing is. When I go in at 7 am in the morning I do the restroom first thing. Clock it for 15 minutes sometimes it takes longer. Then at 8 am I clock the sweep and most days I get to sweep. It is around 12 or the 2 PM sweep and sometimes when I am on evening shift I only get to clock the sweep. I usually get called to bag. Then I when it calms down I finish but sometimes it is a long time before it calms down. My question is if someone falls and they see I have only clocked and not really swept who will get into trouble? It is the supervisor and sometimes the manager tells me to bag. And some days I am only 7 am till 11 am. I try and get trash outside in the morning because it is so hot the afternoon utility clerk will not have to go out in the hot. So on those days I will do the restroom at 7 then clock for a sweep and get trash instead of sweep and most of the time the manager has told me to get trash because that is usually Saturday morning when trash is really bad. The thing about clocking and doing something else in the morning the floor guy that mops with the machine has just finished anyway and also the stockers still have pallets out and it is sometimes 10 am before the stockers finish. Is this a problem at any other store with the sweeps?
If you punch a sweep but don't do it, you could get in trouble because, technically speaking, that constitutes falsification of documents.
When you do sweeps, the sweep has priority over basically anything else. You get called to bag, or the restroom needs a cleanup, doesn't matter. Because if a sweep isn't done, and a customer slips and falls, the store can lose a lot of money. So monetarily speaking it's a much more valuable task than anything else you might be doing (especially bagging, honestly.) Consider yourself untouchable when on a sweep.
As for morning, it depends on your store in particular; here, the porters are still on til about 8:30, so if you see one of them about with a sweep technically you don't need to also sweep the floor as well. However you do still have to punch it and to make sure it is done. Same with other times when other clerks are doing a sweep but you're punching it - as long as it is done at the time logged into the system, it doesn't quite matter so much who is doing it.
The night crew being out til 10 or whatever doesn't really matter; sweeps need to get done anyway. Just go around the pallets and the cardboard and whatnot and as usual, watch for spills or broken glass and the like. And grapes. Grapes on the floor cause a ridiculous amount of slips, because customers just grab them out of the packages and, I guess, toss them on the floor because people are generally inconsiderate slobs.
A good general pattern is to start with the sweep, then do the restrooms as needed, and in the time before the next sweep you can do whatever else.
Of course if you're doing outside trash, that's going to take a while, so someone else should be on sweeps during that task. Usually supervisors in the front try to make sure of that, but often enough they can't because they're juggling way too many balls, so it helps if you can find another clerk to make sure to do the sweep when and if you're fairly certain you won't be able to do it i.e. because of a scheduled break or lunch or because you've got trash to take care of or the restrooms are a disaster or there's a major spill.
If you punch a sweep but don't do it, you could get in trouble because, technically speaking, that constitutes falsification of documents.
When you do sweeps, the sweep has priority over basically anything else. You get called to bag, or the restroom needs a cleanup, doesn't matter. Because if a sweep isn't done, and a customer slips and falls, the store can lose a lot of money. So monetarily speaking it's a much more valuable task than anything else you might be doing (especially bagging, honestly.) Consider yourself untouchable when on a sweep.
As for morning, it depends on your store in particular; here, the porters are still on til about 8:30, so if you see one of them about with a sweep technically you don't need to also sweep the floor as well. However you do still have to punch it and to make sure it is done. Same with other times when other clerks are doing a sweep but you're punching it - as long as it is done at the time logged into the system, it doesn't quite matter so much who is doing it.
The night crew being out til 10 or whatever doesn't really matter; sweeps need to get done anyway. Just go around the pallets and the cardboard and whatnot and as usual, watch for spills or broken glass and the like. And grapes. Grapes on the floor cause a ridiculous amount of slips, because customers just grab them out of the packages and, I guess, toss them on the floor because people are generally inconsiderate slobs.
A good general pattern is to start with the sweep, then do the restrooms as needed, and in the time before the next sweep you can do whatever else.
Of course if you're doing outside trash, that's going to take a while, so someone else should be on sweeps during that task. Usually supervisors in the front try to make sure of that, but often enough they can't because they're juggling way too many balls, so it helps if you can find another clerk to make sure to do the sweep when and if you're fairly certain you won't be able to do it i.e. because of a scheduled break or lunch or because you've got trash to take care of or the restrooms are a disaster or there's a major spill.
I will continue to do the restrooms first thing. I do the Women's first so I can get in there. Usually someone comes up I will have to go out. We have Utility Clerks that do go backs because we are a busy store. If one of the lady's are on for go backs I usually get them to clean the women and I do the men. The thing with making sweep 1st priority is the manager tells us customers come first and to come bag when called. And some days we just don't have the help. Sometimes it's 3 Utility clerks at 7 am then a bagger and not another bagger until 11 am.
IMO, sweeps come FIRST. ABOVE bagging, ABOVE carts, ABOVE EVERYTHING. SAFTEY FIRST. Then Custer service. IN THAT ORDER. NO EXCEPTIONS.
This is pretty much company policy as far as I know. It even makes sense within the "customer first" paradigm; you can't really give good customer service if the customer is sprawled on the floor of the liquor aisle in a puddle of vodka, broken glass and blood.
IMO, sweeps come FIRST. ABOVE bagging, ABOVE carts, ABOVE EVERYTHING. SAFTEY FIRST. Then Custer service. IN THAT ORDER. NO EXCEPTIONS.
This is pretty much company policy as far as I know. It even makes sense within the "customer first" paradigm; you can't really give good customer service if the customer is sprawled on the floor of the liquor aisle in a puddle of vodka, broken glass and blood.
Exactly. I had a store manager whine that a cc was on a sweep when we needed a bagger on a checklane. The manager, if they cared enough, could have bagged for the cc until she came back. But noooo. Manual labor and mgmt do not mix well. The sweep was clocked, yet incomplete, and in dairy a customer slid on a biscuit roll. Kroger lost $40,000 and a paying customer at the same time. How's that for mgmt greed?
Going to the time clock to clock out/in for bathroom cleaning? That's odd. And by "store sweep" do you mean actually sweeping the floors? That's never done during the day. We have someone come at night, while the store is closed to sweep, mop and buff the floors.
I imagine this is something that might vary from division to division and also vary depending on the management at a particular store. Where I'm at, yes, there's an option at the time clock for sweeps, yet nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever used it and neither management nor the CSM has instructed anybody to use it. We have an opening utility person from 7:00AM-3:00PM and a closing utility person from 3:00PM-10:00PM. Sweeps are done whenever the person gets around to it... which is sometimes never because the utility person is repeatedly called to the front to check (if trained), bag and get carts when we're out of carts. Sometimes the person is up there for a majority of his or her shift and occasionally this means the bathrooms go unchecked for hours straight, not all the trash is disposed of, Spill Magic bottles at spill response stations aren't filled and, as I said, floors aren't swept. Front end apparently takes priority over all this, and if the utility person were to tell the supervisor(s) on duty or the store manager/a co-manager that he or she has floors to sweep or trash to get or bathrooms to clean, it wouldn't be considered "as important" as checking and thus avoiding a potential dip, bagging or helping with a cart round-up.
You should just go by what management wants at your particular store, and then you'll be least likely to get in any sort of trouble, as long as your management team consists of decent individuals that know you're trying your best and are going by what they're telling you. If not, well... then I don't really know what to tell you as I do know there are some people in management out there that want it both ways and will blame an employee if it means avoiding the blame themselves.
Going to the time clock to clock out/in for bathroom cleaning? That's odd. And by "store sweep" do you mean actually sweeping the floors? That's never done during the day. We have someone come at night, while the store is closed to sweep, mop and buff the floors.
yes we mean sweep the floor of the entire store. in Atlanta division you hit the clock for thirty minutes when you do this. there's to be a sweep be done every two hours from 10am until about 9pm.
only management and CSM & ACSM can check Kronos and print off who clocked on sweeps so we are thinking they got done. we watched people pushing the broom around, but the next day see none were counted because they weren't clocked right... not at all, not long enough, too long, in but not out, out but not in. it's a frickin disaster and management gets yelled at in conference calls.
keep in mind management WILL NOT COOPERATE and print off the Kronos record so we can see if any need to be "made up" later so we get our six in. i've been told to physically take people to the clock and watch them clock in and out. well hells bells what about my customers? why won't management hold these courtesy clerks accountable for failing to do their jobs? oh look here every day this week johnny doe didn't clock right on his sweeps. consequences? none but let's right up the floor supervisors instead!
if you have two courtesy clerks, one on the lot and one doing a sweep, who is bagging? management, floor, service desk, people stolen from other depts.
I've worked at Kroger as a cashier for almost three years, night shift and day shift. I have NEVER seen ANYONE sweep the floor. As far as spills go, when we see them we page a courtesty clerk to clean it up. Our courtesy clerks to go backs, carts and bagging in that order. I have seen them vacuum the front about three or four times over the years.
Sometimes people clock for sweeps but are told by the supervisor not to do them, the supervisor is just told they need X sweeps done. once when I was working overnight as the uscan attendant, the leaving floor sup asked me to clock in for one and remember to clock out between 30 and 59 minutes later. (I forgot)
as a courtesy clerk, I did a floor sweep a few times, but we didn't have to clock for those
