Our last lead was getting tired of the job before he got fired but it didn't seem like it was that hard. I was thinking about doing it when our current lead gets tired of it (which was his first week) because I'd like to see what it's like running a department
Take it from someone who's worked for Kroger for almost 35 years. If you don't have the hours or the help, you're not going to be able to run the department any better than all the people who have tried it before you. It's also a bad time of year to become frozen lead with the holidays coming up. Meat department and bakery will take up more space in the freezer. Meat department will of course have turkeys and bakery department will have pallets of Hawaiian rolls and pumpkin pies. You didn't say how long you've worked for Kroger. So I don't know if you've actually worked a holiday season. We usually get an empty truck with a freezer unit on it and use that to store excess product that isn't all going to be used immediately such as all the turkeys and the pumpkin pies and Hawaiian rolls. Last year they got a stand alone pod that sat outside. I didn't like that because you had to find somebody to unlock it for you every time you needed something.
From what I was told, a buddy of mine worked Frozen and even lead position. It was not easy. During holidays, yes Bakery and meat can and will take up space in frozen. And they DO NOT order light during holidays. However, if they have a decent crew, product will be out on the floor quickly provided they have extra people in their dept.
The bakery and meat can be short tempered if you complain about their product in the way.
You'll have to do frozen orders at times and put product in your area even though thetre is little to no room.
If frozen is packed, sometimes you'll have to "climb mount everest" to try and find a buried product only to discover that it is put of stock, or worse, smooshed under tons of product, or intact under tons of product.
I'm not too sure of other duties besides delegating tasks to your frozen crew and hoping they get the work done.
As for the product being smooshed, but still intact somehow, my buddy just says "we dont have it at this time." Because it takes too much effort and time to offstage an entire mound of product to get one item, plus there is no time or room to find a spot to move the other product to
From what I was told, a buddy of mine worked Frozen and even lead position. It was not easy. During holidays, yes Bakery and meat can and will take up space in frozen. And they DO NOT order light during holidays. However, if they have a decent crew, product will be out on the floor quickly provided they have extra people in their dept.
The bakery and meat can be short tempered if you complain about their product in the way.
I can't speak for meat department, but as far as bakery is concerned, all those Hawaiian rolls and about 75% of the pumpkin pies are not ordered by us. They're just sent out automatically. Last year it took us until almost Easter to get rid of all the extra Hawaiian rolls. The reason is because even though we had a ton of them already, they just kept sending more out. We were able to get the pumpkin pies under control by the middle of January. If they would just let us order the product we needed, it would be so much easier.
