Let's face it, Kroger has some morons making decisions, and most of their decisions are moronic.
They want personal shoppers to shop fast - so, 30+ to sub-30 seconds per item, but they do everything they can to make this difficult, if not impossible.
Kroger and the customer are your enemy. (They also set you and the customer against each other and want you to be friendly to them.) "They" have never tried to run a trolley through the store.
There are shippers down every aisle that are in everyone's way. Customers walking like molasses. Customers blocking right where you need to be - clueless or just apathetic, they stand there, taking their sweet time. I also realized that the glass doors installed in dairy cause more problems because now you can't just grab an item next to a customer, you have to wait until they move out of the way of the door you need. Even better is a customer can block at least 2 doors, and then block another 3 with their buggy, that's 5 doors you cannot access until this idiot moves along. They stand their forever deciding what they want. Then when they get their item, they stand there and pull out their grocery list, or their phone... "Oh, i'm sorry, was I in your way?" Yeah, moron, you are!
Now they have so many sales displays that you can't even fit two people/buggies walking side by side through the dairy department.
Basically they create insane, and insane amounts of, funnel spots where you can't even fit 2 people side by side.
Luckily I quit worrying so much about time, but you still have to get the stuff done in a timely manner, and Kroger isn't helping, in fact they are actively working against us. Morons.
But, as long as they get paid for those sales displays, that's what matters.
I often imagine that Kroger is doing this on purpose (but there's no way they are that smart) so that customers get so frustrated that they stop shopping in the store and maybe use Clicklist, instead. I try to help them along by increasing this frustration when I can.
It looks really difficult. Looks like new hires are getting some training before being set adrift in the list, but some days for them are just plain difficult. My department had to give up 15% of our team to Dick list today. Stepped out for some air for lunch and ran into an irate list victim who refused to enter the store with her "someone else's order".
Sundays have been kinda hellish for us lately, today we were about 30 orders over forecast, and we had 2 ncns's yet again. So of course that meant OT for the rest of us. My store does 30 orders an hour. So that made 350 orders today, but sure, we got this no problem right??
We made it, but barely. Idk how they expect our supervisor to do well...supervisor things, when she's usually in the backroom helping us stage like a clerk.
Sundays have been kinda hellish for us lately, today we were about 30 orders over forecast, and we had 2 ncns's yet again. So of course that meant OT for the rest of us. My store does 30 orders an hour. So that made 350 orders today, but sure, we got this no problem right??
We made it, but barely. Idk how they expect our supervisor to do well...supervisor things, when she's usually in the backroom helping us stage like a clerk.
You make it probably like every other by stealing help from other departments.
We actually try to avoid that whenever possible. I understand that other departments have their own jobs to do and hate asking for side help. Management came and helped so that we didn't have to steal anyone. We're lucky that we're a store that at least 2 of the comanagers know how to pick. One is a former ecommerce supervisor too.
Let's face it, Kroger has some morons making decisions, and most of their decisions are moronic.
They want personal shoppers to shop fast - so, 30+ to sub-30 seconds per item, but they do everything they can to make this difficult, if not impossible.
Kroger and the customer are your enemy. (They also set you and the customer against each other and want you to be friendly to them.) "They" have never tried to run a trolley through the store.
There are shippers down every aisle that are in everyone's way. Customers walking like molasses. Customers blocking right where you need to be - clueless or just apathetic, they stand there, taking their sweet time. I also realized that the glass doors installed in dairy cause more problems because now you can't just grab an item next to a customer, you have to wait until they move out of the way of the door you need. Even better is a customer can block at least 2 doors, and then block another 3 with their buggy, that's 5 doors you cannot access until this idiot moves along. They stand their forever deciding what they want. Then when they get their item, they stand there and pull out their grocery list, or their phone... "Oh, i'm sorry, was I in your way?" Yeah, moron, you are!
Now they have so many sales displays that you can't even fit two people/buggies walking side by side through the dairy department.
Basically they create insane, and insane amounts of, funnel spots where you can't even fit 2 people side by side.
Luckily I quit worrying so much about time, but you still have to get the stuff done in a timely manner, and Kroger isn't helping, in fact they are actively working against us. Morons.
But, as long as they get paid for those sales displays, that's what matters.
I often imagine that Kroger is doing this on purpose (but there's no way they are that smart) so that customers get so frustrated that they stop shopping in the store and maybe use Clicklist, instead. I try to help them along by increasing this frustration when I can.
I worked 2 different stints at Kroger 5 years each and at different points in my life. I just gets worse and worse. The first 5 years was better than the second. No matter what job you have in there, you have way more work expected to make numbers than what is physically possible to do. The high ups design it this way because they think a monkey can work at the store level and do a great job so they don't see any reason to staff the stores appropriately. Krogers are really to small in general for the business each store does. You go into a walmart and there is plenty of open space and you never feel crowded but not the case in Krogers. I wouldn't do your job for 20 bucks an hour and mainly because of those cars you push around the store.
