Anyone ever have someone quit without any notice and completely screw over your department?
I had someone a couple days ago, quit on me with a half hour notice before she was due to come in. I tried to get her to put in a two weeks, or even a one week notice, or at the very least SHOW UP FOR HER SHIFT, but nope no can do on any of it. So now i don't have a closer for part of the week.
I tried to be nice, in fact, store managers say i was too nice and let these people take advantage of me. I try to pick up everyone's slack and i can't do it all by myself in 8 hours.
They should have fired her a long time ago when she was in probation but nope, they didn't listen.
With today's workforce do not expect any notice at all, I learned to always be planning for turnover. I used to be as nice as I could be, was personable, working side by side, took people home because they didn't have a ride. They will tell you to go to #$%& the next day/sentence if you do not allow them to do what they want, "they deserve" to be off (or whatever they are seeking). While I'm guessing your a Bakery Department Head, I would have told the Store Managers, thanks for also being in charge and not holding myself and her accountable. These Store Managers would have also most likely told you to "make it work", "coach your associates" if you really pushed the subject of getting her gone.
Yeah, they didn't want to get rid of her even though they knew she was calling off at least once a week, would be in the restroom half her shift, and wouldn't get her job done when she did work. I had conversations with management several times and they were supposed to write her up but i don't think she ever received it.
And part of the reason why i think is because she's pregnant. They were afraid to fire her.
Still, i was scheduling her and now it's worse because at least we had someone to schedule until closing, now i'm back down to 4 of us again and one of us is restricted, and the other new girl is unreliable as well.
I don't know how i feel about the whole new $11 pay rate. These people need to be worth $11 an hour first.
-- Edited by 4hourrush on Wednesday 21st of March 2018 07:23:09 PM
This is why nobody wants to be a department head or back-up anymore. Management hires pretty much anyone off the street, tosses them into departments, and these people become the departments' "problem". No support or back up from management when it comes to training, coaching, discipline or whatever. Department heads get screwed over, and on the off chance a department actually gets a decent person, management fails to provide the necessary training hours/support to give the new hire a decent shot at excelling at his/her job. Then when the department falls apart because the person quits... or just stops showing up, management is the first to gripe about how bad things look in the department/the OT.
I've lost track of how many department heads I've watched quit Kroger all together/step down over the years... in part, because of stuff like this.
AMEN, $11 an hour is going to help, but $11 isn't a WOW amount its just being competitive. People want to feel valued, feel they have control of something and want to have flexibility......all things associates will not experience since they are just told to "follow the program" and not to deviate from it. Also, for the amount of work for $11 is not equal to other employers, remember when people make more, less people work/get scheduled.
Anyone can get fired, even pregnant women, that is why there are department job descriptions. When an employee has a health concern, an employer just needs to make sure everyone is held to the same standard (which they should be already) and have document situations and have provided reasonable accommodations.
With today's workforce do not expect any notice at all, I learned to always be planning for turnover. I used to be as nice as I could be, was personable, working side by side, took people home because they didn't have a ride. They will tell you to go to #$%& the next day/sentence if you do not allow them to do what they want, "they deserve" to be off (or whatever they are seeking). While I'm guessing your a Bakery Department Head, I would have told the Store Managers, thanks for also being in charge and not holding myself and her accountable. These Store Managers would have also most likely told you to "make it work", "coach your associates" if you really pushed the subject of getting her gone.
One of our co managers was telling me this after I told him we needed to get rid of one the closers. He'd say it's not laziness, he can do the work, etc. "we" (department head/backup) just needed to work with him more. But we did, and he still didn't improve. Eventually we got a new co manager who was a little quicker on picking up people's personalities and such and got the guy moved to the front end where he is now a cashier. Something that should have been done 5 months ago. We replaced him with a full time guy and new part timer who only wants 8-16 hours a week which fits nicely.
Yeah. We lose courtesy clerks and cashiers all the time.
Any courtesy clerk with the slightest bit of ambition gets a better job the week they turn 18. A lot of them are treated poorly, so screwing over the front end is desirable. We're lucky they don't do worse.
A large number of new cashiers end up quitting pretty quickly. Retail sucks, of course, but scheduling is a massive problem. New cashiers have no seniority, so their schedules are random and inflexible leftovers. If their children place any limitations on their schedule, too bad. And that's it. My store would sooner fire them or let them quit and hire the next person to walk in the door rather than actually help an associate.
Also, new hires often don't get any hours. A lot of them get 12 hour weeks. Can't pay any bills with that, so they split. They probably can't afford to give two weeks notice with 12 hour weeks, so it's not unreasonable.
They've given me a really terrible time about my school schedule. To the point where I've failed classes. When I can get a real job lined up, as far as I'm concerned, Kroger doesn't deserve two weeks notice.
I have always said we should look at ELMS hours and see what staffing the store needs and just give fixed schedules. If you average 4 weeks of ELMS hours together, you will find your "normal" staffing level and then just assign a fixed week schedule depending on FT, PT, Seniority and Availability. Yes, you might have some issues with Vacations and differing events, but if everyone knows that going into it....they will most likely understand more then them getting randomness like now. If you ask your schedule writer, they will most likely tell you they manually schedule shift rather then auto scheduling. The only reason Auto Scheduling is nice is with EVERYONE having weird availability.
Anyone ever have someone quit without any notice and completely screw over your department?
I had someone a couple days ago, quit on me with a half hour notice before she was due to come in. I tried to get her to put in a two weeks, or even a one week notice, or at the very least SHOW UP FOR HER SHIFT, but nope no can do on any of it. So now i don't have a closer for part of the week.
I tried to be nice, in fact, store managers say i was too nice and let these people take advantage of me. I try to pick up everyone's slack and i can't do it all by myself in 8 hours.
They should have fired her a long time ago when she was in probation but nope, they didn't listen.
Yea, we had our one new chick in bakery quit a few weeks ago. But they should have saw that one coming as she had said from the get go she was only there temporarily while she finished school anyway. And then, all these peeps they keep hiring for baker/floor set definitely aren't even there barely a second before quitting.
We got another new person as well hired on though for the bakery. And it seems like they gave her a whole folder of new hire stuff she has to go through on the computer as well as helping with regular work too. But yea, shall see how long she may last as well.
We've lost one of the new peeps we had for deli(that wasn't really cleaning the slicers all that well from the get go anyway). And then another chick that came in with a second new person, has been no calling a lot lately as well. And our back up manager said she will eventually lose her job as well.
Honestly though, I just don't have any words any more for all the folks that leave. Just such a common occurrence these days. Wish more can be done about it though as you said. It can totally throw off a department for a time. But we manage to make do.
This is going to increase in occurance in all industries, and the blame falls on both the employees with no work ethic....and the employers who offer nothing but part time and/or no wages/benefits. It's a viscious cycle.
Where I work, it's gotten so bad we recently hired one new gal, had her name on the orientation schedue for a whole month----and she quit for another job before her first day! That's balls.
"This is going to increase in occurance in all industries, and the blame falls on both the employees with no work ethic....and the employers who offer nothing but part time and/or no wages/benefits. It's a viscious cycle. "
THAT IS SO TRUE!!!!!! A combination of two major things going on at once:
1) Employees with CL (Chronic Laziness); having that "sense of feeling entitled without doing anything to deserve it" mentality; a serious, almost debilitating smartphone addiction; unwillingness to be proactive and actually look for work that needs to be done in their department; gossiping about and back-biting their co-workers, etc.
2) The Kroger corporate system rewarding many of those (who really do very little actual work) with HUGE salaries......especially lots of the middle-tier office staff or "middle management". But at the same time, relatively stingy with pay for those who actually put in the hard, physical, demanding work in the actual stores.
Where I work, it's gotten so bad we recently hired one new gal, had her name on the orientation schedue for a whole month----and she quit for another job before her first day! That's balls.
We get that kind of stuff all the time. The hiring process is too slow. It might be a month between "You're hired!" and training, and maybe even a couple weeks after that before you're in the store. And that's faster than it used to be since now we don't have to wait for drug test results.
A lot of people can't wait a month or a month and a half without pay.
And that's plenty of time to find a job that doesn't start at minimum wage.
Yeah, I work in a large hospital with an excellerating turn over rate. People seriously seem not to want to work.
But the hospital compounds this staffing shortage by stubbornly insisting new hirees go through all this 2-3 wk long orientation process----meetings, classes, watching films, etc.---and it's lke, comon, how much prep time do you need to do your cna or janitor or kitchen job?? The help is needed NOW!
