Hey, so I have my second interview coming up for...Krogers stocking/night shift thing. I was wondering if any of you guys out there have experience in this field. If so...can someone write me and tell me, in detail, what happens during the night...if it's easy or hard. I understand it will be physically demanding...but is it..something you can take. Thank you guys.
I'm not a stocker, but I've worked in the stores long enough to give you a general description. Someone else may want to fill in any info I miss. !st, if you're reasonably healthy you should have no trouble with the work. It is physical labor, but I wouldn't call it back-breaking. The job entails unloading pallets of groceries from 1 to 3 trucks per night (depending on store size and amount of business). The boxes from those pallets are then broken down and put on carts that are sorted by aisle the product is in. Generally each person is assigned 1 to 2 aisles to stock. You take the carts to the aisle, open the cases, and put the product in place on the shelf. That's my understanding of the job. As with any large company, it can vary from place to place, but I think that's a good general definition.
Watch for the festering boil known as "Key Retail". They seem to be making taking it out of the box and putting it in the shelf into some kinda rocketship building.
Kroger has this program and they've been pushing it on everyone the last 2 years. They make you fillout paper work on when you started stocking your isle, when you finished stocking,when you started blocking, when you went to break,when you came back from break,when you went to lunch, when you came back from lunch, how many empty holes on the isle. Just about everything you do now they want to know how many minutes it took. According to them you have to do 50 case a hour.
Next they'll want to know how many times you pee'd that night and what was the volume. If you crapped then how much it weighed and how long. They been working on this failing, money gobbling program in an effort to push employees to maximum productivity. In otherwords, the want you running around like a "freezer rat" so they don't have to hire anyone else, especially full timers as they cost more in vacations,hourly rate and benefits.
I work 3rd in my store and have never heard anything about writing down or filling out any paperwork like the last guy said.
The job is physically demanding and at many points can be back breaking, you will be understaffed, expected to do an unreasonable amount of work, I think they want something like 57 cases an hour, or 47, which isn't that bad, but you have to account for spotting out your product, getting it on the shelf (neatly to help when blocking) breaking down your boxes, and cleaning it all up, it takes a while and it can be physically demanding, not all nights are bad but some can be and you will have to push yourself above and beyond your limit. Managers do not want to hear a single excuse, so don't try any, night leaders are usually dicks who apparenly aren't supposed to stock at all, but only supervise the employees, which I think is bull**** because they are guaranteed 40 hours every week to do absolutely nothing, with our store our night leader clocks in 50 minutes early to 'pull the truck' which he hardly ever does, doesn;t break it down, then in the morning he acts like and starts running around like he has done a lot of work to impress management and the grocery manager who is his butt-buddy, and blames the lacking of work on us, even though with him supposedly supposed to be 'supervising us' doesn't even do that, oh, and when there are no hours to give out due to slow sales, and no overtime can go out, he still gets it, because the grocery manager makes the schedules, and they are butt-buddies in a little click with the rest of the department heads, he then clocks out very late, supposed to be at 7:30 but he leaves around maybe 8 or 8:40, he racks up about 30-40 hours of overtime some weeks easily. It's pathetic and corrupt of our management to not nail them on this or even see where all that money is going.
But uhh back to you, yeah it is tough, but if you keep quiet, don't complain, and do what you're told to do in a reasonable amount of time you should be ok man. Some stores are worse than others in a couple ways. 1. Management 2. Huge sales 3. No hours/odd schedules 4. Huge trucks/tore up shelves.
Thats one of things I've always been taught..A GOOD LEADER doesn't say " Go do this or that. What a Good Leader does is say "let us go do this and that".Good leaders don't dissapear to do "paper work for 2 hours" when the hard stuff has to be done. I see alot of that in Kroger. Good leaders jump in the sh#t with their men. They earn more espect that way.
Hell I complain, Its my nature.And Kroger nor anyone is gonna change it. As long as you tote your load. And have a solution to the problem. Some things I've complained about were actually improved upon. If you sit by and just ignore possible improvements things never get tweaked out. I like to share methods and ways I've learned from other retail grocers. It makes the job easier. Who the hell wants to take the long way around the barn everynight?
I know a co at another popular grocery chain and his philosophy is " if everybody does their fair share, nobody gets slammed and nobody should get slammed just working in a grocery store". And he's right, I've worked in other professions where people actually enjoyed their job. High morale= higher output and happier employees. Happier employees = low shrink or loss and that translates into higher profits for Kroger.
Some call it bitchin' but in todays polictical correctness, you can call it Verbally Blogging. All this trickles up....When the store looks and does good, the manager gets kudos, when the manager gets kudos the Zone Mgr gets a pat on the back or a juicy bonus. Its a win,win,win situation...
I am a third shift night lead and think that you have a legitimate concern if your night lead can't keep up with you. I'm 43 and I can out throw any one on my crew and have challenged my manager, the store manager and our regional manager to keep up with me. this said the purpose of the night lead is to be sure everyone stays on task and get the managers required 45 cases (key retail shift standard) an hour to the shelf. I do: baked goods and tomato/pasta/specialty, unload trucks, help break them down, perform shelf reviews, order big K,fill out the team stocking guides as well as manage peoples who's highest aspiration in life is to figure out how to put something on the shelf without sweating. The job is so simple and key retailing is making it simpler. As someone in the post string stated "idiot proof" is the goal. I went through a change of careers from business owner, college instructor and ASE Master mechanic to Kroger night lead and I'm looking forward to a future with healthy work,simple tasks and easy thoughts this job ranks high on both scales.
