Which department is the most difficult?

nicobug2 · Veteran Member

Which department is the most difficult?

Date: May 10, 2012

It really depends on what type of work you like or don't like to do. The front end is mainly customer service. Anyone who doesn't like dealing with people should avoid the front end. Other departments may require more physical labor. The one department that combines both customer service and physical labor to the greatest extent is the deli/bakery department.

BagBoy · Guru

deli > night stock > grocery > dairy > frozen

*Subject to change based on how large the department is and how resistant to cold you are.

barada · Guru

It varies on how badly or well run each dept is.

meat take the most skill, i think, if your a cutter, that is.

in my store, deli was the worse, because it was hated by our management, and therefore shat upon.

614joe · Newbie

Deli, hard? In my store's deli/bakery the workers just stand there and slice the meat, while bakery just stands around putting cookies in the oven. Not much physical labor or skill involved, besides lifting a slab of meat or tray of cookies. Produce and Grocery/Night stock are by far the hardest, physically. Produce you have to lift 50lb bags of potatoes, onions, apples..ect on an HOURLY basis. That is unless you are the 1 person that cuts fruit or does the green rack. Then in produce you too have to have great customer service because it is a high traffic area (in my store at least). Grocery is the same, even though they don't have to lift much, they have a lot of tasks to get done through out the day. Keeping the Bread in tip top shape is a killer, yes bread might be less than a pound, but in a stack of 20, stacked 20 high is pretty heavy.
Then the most physical labor and stress in my opinion would be Night stock. They have to receive the trucks, unload them, take pallets out the the flood and break them down to fill shelves, and working at night is a killer on sleep patterns. Thats why i've noticed most Night Stockers are douches and look like zombies.

Date: May 12, 2012

614joe wrote:
Deli, hard? In my store's deli/bakery the workers just stand there and slice the meat, while bakery just stands around putting cookies in the oven. Not much physical labor or skill involved, besides lifting a slab of meat or tray of cookies.

If only it were that easy. You obviously know nothing about what goes on in the bakery and deli departments. Deli and bakery people do all those things you mentioned. Well, we don't lift 50lb. bags of potatoes but we do lift 50 lb. boxes of bloody chicken and 35 lb. boxes of bread dough and 50lb. bags of chicken breading and 20lb buckets of icing and etc. We have 5 types of orders that we have to put up: fresh meat (chickens both whole and cut up), frozen items, icings and deli meats and cheeses, dry goods, and expense (containers). In addition to that, you also have to make product and get it out for sale. Unlike some departments where all they do is open the box and put the stuff on the shelf, we have to actually cook or bake things before we package and put them out. You also have to wait on customers and prepare special orders for cakes, bread, chicken, party trays etc. Even if someone does nothing but bake cookies, at my store we usually bake around 1500-2000 cookies at a time. I could go on but I think you get the idea.

Date: May 13, 2012

LOL Floral has the most skill!

flower child · Veteran Member

Anonymous wrote:
LOL Floral has the most skill!

Floral is one of the most difficult departments. People seem to think that we just put out the pretty flowers, or stand there with the water hose. We have to have skills, and we have to deal with very demanding customers. If your floral designer has no skill, you will not do any business. And just try to work floral during a holiday, like Mother's day. It is no joke.

4hourrush · Guru

Oh yea, Bakery is totally just putting cookies on a tray. Nevermind the fact that every night, you have to do breakout lugging around 30 pound boxes and always having to reorganize the half the boxes in the freezer because it's too small to share with the deli. Oh and then there's the trucks we have to unload.

I would agree that produce and grocery stock have it harder. But... bakery is much more than just making cookies -_-

Druthers · Veteran Member

With this company...everything sucks

thedude · Guru

i work the deli and i can tell you that having a floor-full of customers stare at you on a sunday afternoon waiting for their number to be called with no end in sight totally sucks but once i did some time in the produce dept for another company and i remember having to shove all this stuff in cold ice water and put on racks to crisp - that really sucked too

barada · Guru

God, carried around so many of them damn bloody chicken boxs in 13 years.

actually kept me in shape thou.

Indy1979 · Senior Member

3rd shift bagger! Just kidding guys! All Kroger departments can be tough. What makes it good or bad is the people that you work with.

Date: May 15, 2012

Here at the California KMA I believe that Dairy Deli is the hardest department in the store.

It always has been even before Kroger bought us. Good size loads no hours and must rotate! Can't just throw and go like on crew.

Then again with this BULL**** LABOR PROGRAM ELMS night crew is very very demanding.

Throw a 1000 piece load with 2 grocery clerks and 2 GM clerks and no ripper?

F that noise, workers comp here I come.

AnonymousCutter · Guru

its funny nobody mentions meat department. We have to lift some boxes in excess of 100 lb. I have a 12 foot meat case to setup along with 10 pages of a cutting tool to do. Our counter is also double of that than most Krogers in the area besides another store. I went to a smaller store to help and it was a breeze, but we run nearly $100,000 in meat sales each week.The sad thing is we need more people there and if we had the help we would run much more than what we do now.

Cathy · Guru

I think Deli, Bakery, and the Meat dept would be the most difficult depts to work in... followed closely by the floral dept. Customer service is probably next after that, and then cashier.

Date: May 18, 2012

file the tah=g person with the tags always needing to be done by a certain time. with no hours for anything

Lucio · Newbie

I just quit yesterday with a month into this crappy job, definately do not work as a closer in a bakery of a big new store. You will end up working all alone from about 3 to 10 pm. With no help from anyone and your manager will pile on all kinds of work. Stupid small stuff that starts to add up. The lady I worked for was a nice lady, but she had no clue on running the operation, she had three people working on a small tortilla machine that only requires one person, she has a **** load of cookie ladys and all kinds of cake people and others, they all were of a certain color and I of another, they didn't work at all as soon as she left they would leave too, they would go outside and talk and sit around and drink cokes. You would think they were invited to a party? They were also messy and would leave all of their mess behind and expect me to clean it. I quit on a day when the manager would be working alone in the evening, with her fave employees. Sayonara, mofos! I definately hate this store and thank God that there is no store near me that is owned by this company.

thedude · Guru

i never understood those tortilla machines. you toss in a small ball of dough then it goes up a conveyor into the machine where it gets pressed then somehow cooked i suppose. they also had potato chip machines. you shove a bunch of potatoes into this hole and it sliced it up and dropped it into a pool of oil and conveyored them thru. crazy ideas. we had a pizza oven in the old Kenwood store + burritos / tacos. man those were nasty JTM dogmeat crap. pizza was decent so were chips. anyways.....

scoutspromise1 · Member

Produce is pretty hard...

Date: May 26, 2012

It really depends on the store.
For my store it is night stocking.
I work at a smaller store that has some of the highest sales in the district.
We are expected to stock atleast 60 cases an hour and take care of our trash, scan our backstock, and put it up within that time.
We really don't have time to do it in less now that we are required to work backstock nightly.
The other night I had 20 different types of items go on to backstock on the one aisle I worked. The number of each item we had and allocation were correct. The item order forcasting decided we couldnt go one day without a grocery truck without having all these items on backstock. All of our backstock carts are between halfway and completely full with all the items condensed to the max.
We are also given less man hours because the team stocking guide times are partly based on how big an aisle is. But the fact is it takes more time. We are stacking the items in to smaller spaces which makes it more difficult. Many of our items have literally no space between the top of them and the next shelf. It makes conditioning even harder and with the rules on down stacking in key retailing the time is increased even more. For many items you have to either push in the items next to it or hold one item while you bring the second forward because you cant insert your hand.
Now I personally break down the trucks alone. We recieve 8 a week (3 KNP and 5 grocery) I break down 7 of them a week. The team stocking guide says that every night I have between 1100 and 1900 cases to break down. I am given 2 to 3 hours to do so not that I often make that time. Then I work an aisle.
While breaking down the truck I have to completely rebuild all the dog food pallets because they layer the bottoms with a decent amount of stock for other aisles. So thats roughly 100 cases waying from 16 pounds to 40. Not to mention stacking 100s of cases of cans on to carts which arent exactly light.
If you want to know what is probably the most stressful and physically strenuous job its probably night stocking.
But then again my store is screwed up. The size is my hypothesis but there are probably a number of reasons adding to the difficulty at my store. We've had employees help out and temp at other stores and they say its unbelieveably easy. Ive been in to stores where stockers take a case and put it on to two milkcrates with a wheeled trash can on the bottom and then push it to the location.
So really it depends on your store.

styles · Guru

60 cases an hour really isn't that hard especially at night (yes, i've done been on the night stock crew!), and it really is better to run backstock every night rather than let it pile up. sorry to hear you have to break down the trucks by yourself, now that there is a load of crap

8hourfreezefest · Senior Member

haha we don't have time to run backstock every night. We are lucky if we can even get the truck done by 7:00 a.m. We are so understaffed it's funny.

Allknowingeye · Newbie

Hardest is night crew grocery, produce wet rack (cold, wet, dirty heavy lifting), meat department (boxes of meat super heavy), tie between dairy and frozen, the deli chicken person, bakery is a ton of labor that generates small sales. That's my order of the hardest jobs in the store.

producepro99 · Senior Member

Working the wet rack in produce has got to be the hardest job in the store. I do it all the time, and my hands go numb because of how cold the water is. The job isn't the worst though.

ziggiparrot · Newbie

Deli, followed by produce.

produceprincess · Newbie

Everyone thinks their department is the hardest. So, I'm going to say produce. ^___^

Date: Jul 31, 2013

Dairys the hardest by far!!!

Date: Jul 31, 2013

Utility; You always gotta deal with crap.

Date: May 13, 2015

Floral

Date: May 19, 2016

At my store I break down the grocery truck and produce truck by myself and do the green rack all in an 8 hour shift. On average it takes my 2 hrs to break down a 1200 piece truck, then an hour to break down produce 300 piece truck. I have never once taken a break in my two years at Kroger, and they want the green rack set by 8 am not happening.

UC151 · Guru

Anonymous wrote:
Utility; You always gotta deal with crap.

Amen brother. And it pisses me the **** off to no end when I have to end up doing small time facing on the shelves while on shop backs, otherwise I get real OCD about the goddamn disorganization our store sometimes has. Sure, Oreos with Mac n cheese? Cookies with the bread? Bread in the cereal aisle (I looked at another stocker and i said "WTF is this ****" to which he simply sighed)? Soup in the candy aisle? I end up adding to my shopback cart because these ****ing items don't belong here, so I may as well save myself some hassle later and get em done now. It royally pisses me off. And the crap, ugh don't even get me started.

Ever been told to sweep out the front driveway? Yea that's alot of freaking fun (considering our store is a multi-strip mall setup) I thought to myself, "does the CSR just want to potentially kill me?" And the always fun, always awesome "may I see your ID please?" ****ing hell

Date: July 21st

In my store all deli and bakery pallets are received in dairy my department. Bakery and deli do nothing but prep. Lift almost nothing lol

Date: July 22nd

nicobug2 wrote:
Can anyone give me an unbiased opinion on what they think is the hardest department to work in? In terms of stress, workload, etc.. I work as a FE supervisor and I know i get stressed at times but I'm wondering how it is for other departments other then the front end. Thanks

It's really all depends on the department manager ALSO the customers. Overall, it's the Front End Department. You're stuck in that square space cashiering, no entry to exit and enter unless customers move their shopping cart. Risks are: being spit on, physical assault, being shot. Everyone wants to be ringed up quickly for much cheaper price than the tagged price. Lots of misbehaving customers from the acclaim secret shopper to bribed hostile shopper.

I was one of 4 cashiers and I was the fastest scanner...and I was told I'm still scanning slow.

Date: July 22nd

We just need a sticky thread titled best dept to work in

Admin · Veteran Member

Anonymous wrote:
We just need a sticky thread titled best dept to work in

Would you recommend we pin this thread?

Date: July 27th

YES YES YES.

Real estate has doubled in price.

While rent is only up one third.

Pay is up... a buck or two. Part time only. Random schedule. Part time only.

Unless the manager doesn't like you.

Date: July 27th

Anonymous wrote:
I was one of 4 cashiers and I was the fastest scanner...and I was told I'm still scanning slow.

If it were me, I'd go even slower. Tell them you're living down to their expectations.

Date: July 28th

Probably produce, you get to spend all day lifting heavy **** and sifting through disgusting rotting fruits and vegetables. And management is up your ass the whole time because produce is the lifeblood of Kroger

Date: July 28th

I would have to say the Fuel Center is heading in that direction. In the past several weeks, we have had customers jimmy the pumps rendering two pumps not working that we had to take offline. The other night I had a customer come up to the window that was SO intoxicated he could barely stand up. Had to warn him about his foul language otherwise I said to him that I would ask him to leave. A lot of people in the Local 1996 Atlanta GA area come up to my window high as a kite on marijuana. But our new store manager (I have worked with him before about 4 years ago) is getting tough on problem customers and has let us in the Fuel Center handle it on our own and for us to call only if the situation gets out of hand. Many times there are females working alone and closing at night and we have raised these issues many times before, and finally someone is listening.