Fairly self-explanatory, how is the staffing situation at your stores?
Examples of problem indicators would be management having to act as cashiers or stockmen, constant use of department clerks to back up front end, reliance on floating clerks who work several departments just to get hours.
If you have other indicators, please post them.
Not too helpful but all of the above occur at mine, and often to the degree that hiring for adequate staff does not happen and existing clerks can even lose hours.
-- Edited by Stranger on Tuesday 25th of October 2016 01:23:48 PM
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Actually using department people and salary managers to cashier is part of kroger's strategy, it might seem like they are understaffed but this is all regular to Kroger. Salary managers doing cashier work means they get more hours out of salary managers with the same pay. Your store is very normal.
Our store currently has no grocery manager or backup. The shelves are full of holes and the backroom looks worse and worse each day. I guess they're just coming in and working whatever shows up on the truck. I have no idea who's doing the ordering.
I'm working 6 days a week, 5 days in the store they promoted me at, and 1 day in my home store. My home store is so understaffed, they're sending out emails begging for help in produce and bakery but no one is able to send any help. They can't even get anyone to apply right now, it's that bad. My new store is so small that they only have like 60 or so employees and the poor deli manager there is running on 5 people right now. It's a small store but for it's size, they do pretty well in deli sales, it's insane.
Stores are opening slower.. there's your indication of how staffing is working out.
Yep. Kroger has postponed three or four new stores that were supposed to open by the end of next year in and around my area due to how difficult it has been in the past year and a half to staff the new stores it has opened.
It's not uncommon for departments at my store to have over a hundred hours unused on any given week due to a lack of manpower. It really shows, too. Hole counts exceeding three hundred on a regular basis, which leads to lots of angry, unsatisfied customers.
The Now Hiring sign and brochures never leaves the main entrance anymore. Hardly any customers seem to show interest in the hiring display - probably because if they shop their regularly, they see it's a place that they wouldn't want to work.
The Now Hiring sign and brochures never leaves the main entrance anymore. Hardly any customers seem to show interest in the hiring display - probably because if they shop their regularly, they see it's a place that they wouldn't want to work.
Maybe they should change the sign to. "Always Hiring".
Hours were cut so bad we lost three day stockers on the same day.
So they've been replaced with courtesy clerks who may or may not have been reclassified.
Same thing with maintenance.
It's now the SCO attendant's job to fill the grab and go coolers in the evening. That takes two hours since the whole time is spent walking back and forth to card customers or to read them the obvious written (and spoken) instructions on the machines. Lot's of stuff goes right out the door.
The front end is grossly underscheduled. Managers are always on the registers. A single cashier calling out creates a minor disaster. If more than one calls out, we might as well just close the store. There's never enough courtesy clerks, possibly since they may not have been reclassified in their new duties.
Departments have to choose between getting their work done, or getting chewed out for not coming up to cashier.
Customers frequently complain about empty shelves and a lack of sale items.
The back room is overflowing.
The holiday season will be very entertaining this year.
Hours were cut so bad we lost three day stockers on the same day.
So they've been replaced with courtesy clerks who may or may not have been reclassified.
Same thing with maintenance.
It's now the SCO attendant's job to fill the grab and go coolers in the evening. That takes two hours since the whole time is spent walking back and forth to card customers or to read them the obvious written (and spoken) instructions on the machines. Lot's of stuff goes right out the door.
The front end is grossly underscheduled. Managers are always on the registers. A single cashier calling out creates a minor disaster. If more than one calls out, we might as well just close the store. There's never enough courtesy clerks, possibly since they may not have been reclassified in their new duties.
Departments have to choose between getting their work done, or getting chewed out for not coming up to cashier.
Customers frequently complain about empty shelves and a lack of sale items.
The back room is overflowing.
The holiday season will be very entertaining this year.
i don't even care anymore. I used to bend over backwards for them even when others didn't. Now they need me much more than I need them. I can go find another ****ty job, but they won't be able to hire someone who knows everything I know and works whatever they need. The best they'll get is someone who has a ****ty work ethic that might or might not make it through the holidays. Who waits til right before the holidays to hire people anyway? I understand why they do it, because of need. But for a new hire coming into a new situation....at minimum wage, they'll see it and say "**** this, I'm out"
Night dry grocery stocking crew is currently two full time employees, including myself. An additional hours limited part-time employee. One employee transferred and the other two were fired.
Then they complain about the two full-time employees having overtime hours in an attempt to get shelves stocked.
We just had this problem get ugly at our store today. I won't go into details about that, but in general...
We never have enough cashiers. You can walk in almost any time of day and find someone who isn't a cashier behind the check-stand. It isn't uncommon for us to have more non-cashiers checking than cashiers.
I don't know a single cashier who has more than 26 hours a week. They won't even call them in when needed, preferring to make the courtesy clerks do the job for them.
We never have enough courtesy clerks, because we are always being called to cover cashiers, cover other gaps, or making up for the poor performance of others.
It isn't uncommon for our front end managers to be on self-checkout, watching the front, and covering service counter all at the same time.
All of the outer departments are understaffed by at least two people.
Our store manager receives the day-time loads as often as not.
Kroger's solution to "how do we make more money" is always "cut hours, cut employees, make the remainder work twice as hard and give them an extra quarter an hour for their trouble."
I really hate this problem. My store, we have almost 13 or 14 UCs now, but guess what? Half of them, underage. The other half, opening, morning, and afternoon shift. This makes it extremely fun at night when they are closing as I always, always get scheduled behind them to help keep pace and work up. Why? Because there are currently only 2 UCs besides me who get scheduled for night shift (although 1 is on LOA right now, due to an injury.) I have had a few times where I want to literally write up a task list for the younger ones to have finished by X time, and my CSRs wish it could be done. I will back up my CSRs and help keep Utility in some sort of order someway or another. But honestly it makes me work twice as hard when I literally have to ask the younger ones wtf they are doing rather than working. Some of them do understand that I partially when on nights help set the pace of work and am their senior, so they do understand that we have to get our jobs done. As such, a few will work with me and will work to my pace of work, mostly, and will do it the way I trained them to.
Others, leave the lobby in shambles with carts blocking the exits so custys can't get in or out, throw carts anywhere and everywhere causing custys to do the same, and if PD or FD walk in and they see it and approach a manager, better hope to God you're not the one being called to the office and being asked who was on carts last. And if it was you, explaining why the hell lobby looks like utter **** and what's going to happen to fix it right now so the Company does not get a fine. When I fill lobby, I want it looking clean, easy to get around in, and not a cluster-crap so management can worry about other things as they are expecting us to do the job right and will leave it in our hands, so I expect the younger ones to not abuse that and make management have to reconsider the way we do our jobs. I enjoy being semi autonomous because management and my supervisors know I will do the job right so they do not have to worry about it being done, so I am not about to let some young ones mess that up and cause chaos in the dept.
Paper and plastic refills, i always am the one who ends up keeping that corner of the warehouse looking clean because others just throw **** on the floor or don't condense / organize right, so it creates chaos and we have **** thrown everywhere / not opened or just torn because dumbasses don't know to remove the ****ing pallet wrap first. Coming from the Assembly and packaging side from a different job, I enjoy a clean warehouse. I do not like a dirty one as I know from experience how much of a pain in the ass it is to clean it.
I wish our dept ran a bit smoother, for when it doesn't, our performance suffers and in turn, management takes notice and then possibly bad things start happening. Wish the younger ones would stop making my life hell.
