You would think management at your store would be able to see how this is all coming together to negatively impact the bottom line. Management doesn't seem to want to take on the costs of properly staffing the departments or invest the time in ensuring that employees are being scheduled within their availabilities so that they can be there for their shifts, yet by doing neither, the customer shopping experience is being negatively impacted. Customers have a wide variety of shopping choices, from nationwide competitors like Walmart/Sam's Club, Target, Costco, Aldi, to the more regional based ones like Albertsons, Tom Thumb, H-E-B, Winco, Winn Dixie, not to mention online options like Amazon, and if they're kept waiting too long or are dissatisfied with the check out experience on the front end due to the front end not being staffed properly, or if they can't find what they need in grocery due to the department not having the man power to stock in-demand items, or if the wait/quality of service at the deli/bakery is too long or lacking, then the store will bleed customers.

Yes, it costs me to properly run a store. However, by trying to spend as little money as possible, it gets to a point where the customer may find the experience too frustrating to want to deal with and thus go elsewhere. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be a concept store management grasps well, and even when you have a competent and compassionate store management team, their hands are often tied by district/division coordinators and managers, as well as those even higher up in the company hierarchy, that set limits on what store management can do. Employees are left with just two options: either deal with the working conditions the best they can or search for another job in between shifts. There's nothing we can do about it because sadly, Kroger is a company that is controlled by greed, like a lot of other companies out there, and the big paychecks and bonuses that the corporate executives give themselves aren't going to end any time soon. Our hours will be cut and employees will be let go before the corporate executives take any sort of a pay cut.   

There was something in high school economics I learned that was called like the Laffer Curve. Basically there is a sweet spot for taxing businesses where the tax rate still gives the government revenue, but the businesses are not too irritated. There is a similar thing in employing people I would say. You don't want to have an absolute skeleton crew (which, for some reason, Kroger has always had), but as a business you obviously don't want to over-schedule because then you won't have much of a profit, if any at all. I mean, I just think it's silly that Kroger claims to be a customer first business, but they staff just as badly as Walmart. I don't know if another grocery company will be coming along or if everything will go big-box, or if online companies will dominate. I certainly don't think that people *like* going to any store, and if that dislike is compounded with their item(s) being out of stock or a slow checkout, you can bet your ass that they will start sending their shopping lists to Amazon.

Our problem is were making money, the deli is one of the few departments making more money than the same period last year.  But were not getting hours, the few baggers we do have get put on register because of understaffing, so the departments get called up more than they have in recent years.  Management doesn't care because the only choices in town are, Wal-Mart, which is more understaffed, and Food Lion. How Food Lion stays open I'll never know because they never seem to have a lot of traffic in them.