I work in the Meat and Seafood department, and have been recently promoted to Seafood backup (although it wasn't really that much of a promotion, but oh well). I noticed that the Click List people REFUSE to get any of their orders in our department other than in lunch meat. The orders that are out of the service cases I understand, but there are not many of those at all, only a couple at most per order. But we do not have the time nor man power in our department to do this for the Click List people.
Each morning, there is me, sometimes also the Seafood lead, a butcher, and one person to work the truck. I am supposed to help get everything done on seafood side and then help work the meat truck. Mind you, we are a big store, very big, one of the biggest, if not the biggest near the Dallas area. Yeah, we are shorthanded, and have been for a long time.
But Click List? They literally hired 20 new people to do nothing but walk around and shop for customers. That is their only job. And they are forcing us to do their job. I told the lead Click List guy (not a manager) that I would do his morning orders today, but the afternoon ones he gave me would have to wait or he could do it because we had our own stuff to do, especially having to recover from a crappy close with a bunch of new people. The Click List lead guy got mad at me, and said "I need these now!" and I told him straight up we were too busy. Later, the co manager in charge that morning forced me to do the afternoon orders, while working the truck, packing seafood, and manning the service counters almost by myself. Didn't get to take my break, for the third time this week.
So to the managers, and whoever is in charge of Click List: Please make you Click List workers work the meat and seafood orders.
I noted this a lot when I was at another store - ClickList is a huge department that just walks around the store collecting groceries... Asking people in side departments like meat orbakery where things are, and huffing and puffing if you don't have a service item for them. I'm glad my store doesn't have this yet.
I actually work as clicklist backup and this is not something clicklist is coming up with, the higher ups in clicklist made this a "thing", just like how deli has been doing it. Trust me, we hate it at my store as much as meat dept people do simply because meat dept people always forget to do it and when they do, they complain- like this.
Never had any issues with deli not doing ours or complaining. At my store we have about 15 people in the entire dept...the early morning people are picking orders and that is priority.
This all came about because customers would call and complain because they received the wrong meats and such (at several stores, all the time) because the shoppers don't know their meats like a person working in the department would.
It's been a huge hassle at my store- I would just rather go back to the old way..
This is what concerns me, as I'm considering transferring to a store that has ClickList and working as a ClickList associate. I'm worried that I may not be fast enough when shopping for customers (I imagine you only have so much time per order) and if I'm struggling to find items for customers orders in a department, I feel like I'm going to be bothering other employees if I ask where something is or help in picking out certain items, especially in meat market. I know that pretty much every department is understaffed at pretty much every Kroger store, so one of the reasons I'm hesitant to apply for a position like this is because I'm afraid I'm going to end up bothering other employees and agitating them further when I know they're already frustrated over being behind as it is.
Does the ClickList position give a person any tools or resources to help a ClickList associate be independent or is the associate simply handed a printout of customers orders and told "go shop"? I like the idea of shopping for customers, but I'm concerned I won't be fast enough and that I'll be bothering other employees that are already in over their heads if I need help too often with finding something or if I'm unsure if the item I'm picking up matches what the customer ordered.
