Yesterday a woman fell in the produce section. Everyone around came to her aid except management. They were in a meeting upstairs. They were paged over and over again and no one showed up. Finally, the guy who does all the safety inspections just happened to be in the store and he took care of it. This has happened before. All the managers go to an in-store meeting and none of them respond when a crisis comes up.
Yesterday a woman fell in the produce section. Everyone around came to her aid except management. They were in a meeting upstairs. They were paged over and over again and no one showed up. Finally, the guy who does all the safety inspections just happened to be in the store and he took care of it. This has happened before. All the managers go to an in-store meeting and none of them respond when a crisis comes up.
Geesh, just send someone up to the office and tell them a customer has been injured! Why keep paging over and over? Go up there!
I don't if you've ever been told this by your "management" team but in our division we are not allowed to touch or aid a person until a manager can assess thr situation. Is this true in all divisions, I mean have you ever been told this bs?
I don't if you've ever been told this by your "management" team but in our division we are not allowed to touch or aid a person until a manager can assess thr situation. Is this true in all divisions, I mean have you ever been told this bs?
My understanding is, employees are told not to touch or aid a person that has fallen/become injured in order to protect the employee(s)/company from liability/lawsuit in the event touching the person somehow contributes to greater injury. A member of management is expected to take into account the risks involved in touching/aiding a customer before giving instructions to the employees; in corporate's eyes, it's a member of management's place to make the call on how to proceed, not an hourly employee.
Anytime something like that happens in the store, I'm either on the phone paging a member of management to call me at the extension I'm at or I'm telling someone else to do it. I've pulled co-managers off of conference calls before and gotten them downstairs to be there to make a call on what to do and oversee the situation until its resolved. So, in the situation outlined in the main post, if no member of management returned my request to be called at the extension I was on, and I knew they were in a meeting upstairs, either I would have gone up there and told them a customer has fallen and that one of them needed to come downstairs or I would have sent someone upstairs to bring one of them down. Most, and I do believe most, members of management would consider that "good reason" to have their meeting interrupted.
If it's a serious incident and paging isn't working, one person needs to take the initiative and track down a member of management while others stay with the customer. That's just what it comes down to, sometimes.
I can tell you if for some reason I was injured at Kroger and everyone just stood around waiting for help me and my attorney would have a field day with that. What if they are bleeding? In need of CPR? I want those hourly employees to help me if I need it, not wait.
Why didn't anyone go up, interrupt the meeting and say a customer fell? The meeting can wait. If one of the managers fell you best well believe that they'd be right there.
When someone fell in my store about 4 months ago, it was the complete opposite. Within a minute of her falling, we had 2 managers, the people from the little clinic, and a few random employees around her, plus someone was on the phone with 911. You could tell that the managers were doing everything they could to make sure she wouldn't sue.
I agree with the other people here. If a manager is in the building and you know where they are, go up and physically get them.
Disagree with people saying you should have gone up to their meeting. No, the managers should be doing their ****ing jobs instead of sitting around talking. Why wasn't one of them on the floor and able to help? Who thought it was OK to have every single manager upstairs in a "meeting"?
Every once in awhile a manager might do something other than stand in a circle talking to other managers, but it's a RARE occasion. I'm not surprised by this story.
Disagree with people saying you should have gone up to their meeting. No, the managers should be doing their ****ing jobs instead of sitting around talking. Why wasn't one of them on the floor and able to help? Who thought it was OK to have every single manager upstairs in a "meeting"?
Every once in awhile a manager might do something other than stand in a circle talking to other managers, but it's a RARE occasion. I'm not surprised by this story.
So punish the person who was injured because there wasn't a manager on the floor? Don't interrupt their meeting for help? Horrible advice snailshell. Just because you think they shouldn't have all been in a meeting doesn't change anything, THEY WERE IN A MEETING. THEY WERE NOT ON THE FLOOR!
