The whole "relief cashier" concept is bull $hit. Two days this week really put me over the edge, I was up for at least 2.5 hours Monday ( I didn't even get back to my department before they called my up for a steady hour) and 3 hours the other day( someone called off and I was their "solution"). Both days where only 5 hr shifts. Its seriously pissing me off. I've told the fes/front office that I have a empty department to fill and they don't care, I've had new people to train in the department and they don't care. I don't know how to deal with this. Management is no help and I'm not seeing anything in our union contract.
But don't worry about any of that, because quevision isn't showing any dips at the expense of the floral, produce and grocery departments!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, sorry to say, but there isn't a whole lot you can do. If your management team doesn't care that you're spending significant portions of your shift up front on a register, then your only option is to go, because management is obviously more concerned about the lines than your department. You could try being a less efficient surge cashier in the hopes that the front end will be less likely to call you and more likely to call someone that scans faster, knows how to handle things like coupons and checks and other minor stuff that comes up at the register or you could literally do what corporate wants everyone to do and that is say "hello" to every single customer when you're being called to the front and hope one of the customer's requires assistance (you can always go the extra mile and ask, "can I help you with anything today?") and if you get lucky and one says yes, drag it out by doing all the things corporate wants you to do, (make "conversation", offer "suggestions", and so on) and if the front end/management gets on you for "not responding" then explain you had to stop and assist a customer. They can't get on you for doing that as it's a company-wide, corporate directive to acknowledge, assist and appreciate. Hopefully while you're assisting the customer, the front end will call someone else to surge check. Do this enough times and management/the front end may be less likely to page you to the front and instead call someone else first/more frequently.
Kroger is too greedy to properly staff its stores, and it's only gotten worse with e-Sked and the hiring shortage due to everybody - including retail competitors and fast foods- paying better than Kroger, so it's not going to get better, only worse, honestly. Kroger doesn't understand or care that by pulling people from other departments to bail out the front end that it results in those departments suffering. When employees are pulled from grocery, dairy, drug/GM, produce and floral to help the front, that results in lost time in those departments; time that could have been spent stocking, breaking down trucks or working to ensure freshness - supposedly a "big" part of the Fresh & Friendly initiative. Minutes turn into hours that end up being lost... almost always for good, because it's rare for management to come help a department catch up and NEVER does the front end ever return the favor by helping a department that's been repeatedly nagged to cashier/bag/get carts recover the time lost.
The less people scheduled on the front end, the less it costs the company, and the more money it adds up to at the end of the day for the corporate executives. These executives would rather you and others do the work of others on top of your own work so that they can stuff even more money into their pockets. That's just how it is with this company. It's not Customer 1st... Customer 1st would be adequately staffing the departments and taking care of the employees so the employees want to take care of the customers. That's not going to happen with the current "leadership".
These executives would rather you and others do the work of others on top of your own work so that they can stuff even more money into their pockets. That's just how it is with this company. It's not Customer 1st... Customer 1st would be adequately staffing the departments and taking care of the employees so the employees want to take care of the customers.
That's gospel and worth printing out and leaving lying around the store.
GenesisOne should've gone to Cincinnati last week to tell the hoo-rah dunderheads the truth.
I would think by now your store would have enough Que-vision and E-schedule data to know how many hours and people the front end needs without having to rely on surge help. They hardly ever call for help at my store. If they're doing it consistently at your store, it probably means that someone is shorting the front end on hours in order to save money. Perhaps it's an effort to make their bonus bigger.
I don't know about elsewhere, but we had record numbers through our doors this weekend. For instance yesterday, usually we aren't busy on the front end until 11 or 12 depending on if there's a game.
We were running hot with all registers open, all managers down running registers and still had lines. We had extra CC's outside bringing in buggies (4 instead of 2) and our bays were still empty. We weren't super understaffed, like we had 4 registers open plus the self-scan and a couple of first-day CC's that aren't on the official count. I feel bad for the other departments that had to come up front and help, but we were swarmed. Luckily we did have those 2 new CC's or it would have been worse. Bagging basics is pretty nah-duh stuff, with a couple of tips on how to deal with the dishes we sell from the kitchen area.
We were super lucky no one dropped anything like wine or pickles because we would have needed more people just to clean the mess while others work around.
I'm figuring it was a combonation of 1st Sat of the month, the hurricane (I'm in GA near a large city), and the various home games this weekend.
These executives would rather you and others do the work of others on top of your own work so that they can stuff even more money into their pockets. That's just how it is with this company. It's not Customer 1st... Customer 1st would be adequately staffing the departments and taking care of the employees so the employees want to take care of the customers.
That's gospel and worth printing out and leaving lying around the store.
GenesisOne should've gone to Cincinnati last week to tell the hoo-rah dunderheads the truth.
_____
They know the truth, though. They know that the stores aren't staffed properly and that the existing staff is unhappy. They know they're a bunch of hypocrites when it comes to the Customer 1st philosophy. When they come into stores and act "mad" when things aren't the way they should be and give lists of stuff that needs to be "fixed", it's all for show... pretending to be mad/disappointed/concerned on the outside, but smiling and as happy as can be on the inside, because they know that, number one, store-level management will continue to be worked to the bone, as will the existing employees, to keep the stores going and growing, and, number two, customers are too stupid/irrational/lazy to shop elsewhere (for example, "Walmart is the devil! That's why I shop at Kroger!" "Oh, look at how much I saved with my Plus Card!" - despite even the "sale" prices a lot of times being higher than competitors like Walmart or when compared to the off brands sold at Aldi).
Fact of the matter is, corporate doesn't care. They know the truth, but don't care. I, along with others I'm sure, tried to convey the over reliance of surge help/short staffing the stores/not having ability to truly deliver a Customer 1st shopping experience because of how things are in the stores in the Associate Insight Survey earlier in the year.
Not surprisingly, corporate didn't care one iota about our feedback.
-- Edited by GenesisOne on Sunday 4th of October 2015 06:03:10 PM
Kroger has this concept called the Pillars of the Front End which exist to support Quevision (the demonic yellow balls on the monitors).
There's nine pillars total. If any of them are broken, the front end will fail and fall into chaos. One of those is relief help and the goal is under 7 hrs per week (those are ring/tender hours, not hours signed on).
Basically relief help is required for a Front End to function. If it's not there to take up the slack we're screwed. It's designed to fail because relief help still need to do stuff in their depts too. Also if they don't stay on a register for fifteen minutes we don't get credit for those hours so we won't get extra hours to avoid needing relief help. It's a vicious cycle.
Why don't they just assign a department certain times to be on the register? I used to hate it when I was in the back room and was paged for surge help. As soon as I helped clear the lanes and got back to what I was doing, they would page me again. Back and forth and back and forth all day long. Just assign each department 30 minutes on the register during peak times, when that 30 minutes is up, next department sends someone up front to help.
