I see this being a very long thread. My store has probably spent thousands of dollars "fixing" our pallet jacks when they could easily have purchased new ones for less. The lift mechanism went out on our newest jack (so it wouldn't raise up at all) so they "fixed" it with a brand new part......and it works most of the time, but half the time if just revs like it's raising but nothing happens.
the motor on our baler (which is probably 30+ years old) went out last year and they sent us a brand new one and guess what...it didn't even last a week! Good thing we still had a dumpster for all the cardboard. We were filling empty orchard bins with cardboard, you'd be surprised how quickly a salvage trailer will fill up!
Last Friday night during the snow storm, our bread truck was about two hours late. then just before midnight a guy shows up in a small delivery van. He had five trays of white bread for us. he was driving from the Indiana bakery all the way to Troy. Missouri and stopping at about ten different stores along the way. I told him no offense to you but this about the biggest waste of money I have seen in quite a while.
Last Friday night during the snow storm, our bread truck was about two hours late. then just before midnight a guy shows up in a small delivery van. He had five trays of white bread for us. he was driving from the Indiana bakery all the way to Troy. Missouri and stopping at about ten different stores along the way. I told him no offense to you but this about the biggest waste of money I have seen in quite a while.
Que Vision: How is it cost effective to have several higher paid or top wage employees running the registers for hours a day, when, in my case, they could have 2 or 3 minimum wage cashiers to do what I am doing (poorly). Not to mention on Sunday, when I make time and a half. Every relief person in our store is either a back up, a lead clerk, or at least making more than minimum wage.
-------------------------ELMS -- Keeps the store from being overstaffed all the time-----------------------
thats either a store manager or someone that is working in hr, or operations..
Elms gives time for many things but not customer service.... how do you tag a number to that are we to not help the customers
Elms gives time for stocking.. I did the math in grocery it is 56 cases an hour. I actually spent hours on my free time timing people I timed 200 people this took almost 1 and a half years.
average clerk only did 25-30 cases per hour.. though to make a note when asked how much they thought they did there perception was always way higher. average perception that the clerks I tested had ened up being around 45. another note highest clerk clocked at 90 cases an hour this guy was clearly damaging his health he would get more done in one day then I thought possible. lowest was 10 cases an hour he was recovering from a stroke, how many times does a store have someone in there 70's or 80's stocking or even someone with bad health.. Kroger has done no time studies these 60 cases an hour number comes from merely trying to match cost with other retailers like walmart for example.
So my point is no to this statement.... the TRUTH is merely greed elms is not to keep a store from being over staffed it is to keep a store understaffed to get the highest profit margin possible
well they came out with these horrid tee shirts just for the weekend only..... said it was for our entire division from our division president down to the baggers .. no telling how many shirts lol 200,000 maybe more way more lots of stores in mich.. then 1 month later they told us not to wear them.. all that money flushed down the toilet.. they waste tons of money on the Kroger private JET. for the senior vp's sometimes they have been known to use it for vacation traveling.. but its OK it costs thousand's just to fly it around.. dam with what these guys waste fire one of them you can hire 400 at minimum wage. what about the teams upon teams of middle managers.. all with assistants and some of their assistants have assistants sometimes. Does Kroger really need 8 people fighting over the same job and the same paper work emailing back and forth drinking coffee doing nothing but talking with no really world applications most of the time. spending company money on dinner parties and expenseing it so nothing comes out of pocket. Then there these Kroger pep rallies.. or ra ra meetings where they act out scene's for upincoming sales trends or ideas they are going to go with.. the amounts they spend on food and labor hours spent to have dept heads go.. when nothing is learned or even accomplished.. it is nothing but a publicity stunt an attempt to keep the department heads happy or in it to win it as one Kroger meeting was so themed. why not simply treat people better all the time and stop throwing away money on things that don't accomplish anything in the long run. oh wait if Kroger did that then they wouldn't be keeping up with walmart. Kroger will be a copy of walmart in 10 years with just a different name on the front of the building.
One problem with the company is that it is too large to be run by one set of standards. There are executive jobs that depend on key Retailing, Que Vision, ELMS and similar programs. There are too many "specialists" who require all stores in the division to display the same products regardless of the demographics of the store's customer base. Distributions are a joke and department heads are pressured to move product that simply does not sell. At my store, every new employee is hired at minimum wage with no consideration given for prior experience. The condition of the store has deteriorated and will continue to do so until mgmt realizes that they are getting what they pay for.
If things don't change, Kroger will be the new Big Lots.
One problem with the company is that it is too large to be run by one set of standards. There are executive jobs that depend on key Retailing, Que Vision, ELMS and similar programs. There are too many "specialists" who require all stores in the division to display the same products regardless of the demographics of the store's customer base. Distributions are a joke and department heads are pressured to move product that simply does not sell. At my store, every new employee is hired at minimum wage with no consideration given for prior experience. The condition of the store has deteriorated and will continue to do so until mgmt realizes that they are getting what they pay for.
If things don't change, Kroger will be the new Big Lots.
One problem with the company is that it is too large to be run by one set of standards. There are executive jobs that depend on key Retailing, Que Vision, ELMS and similar programs. There are too many "specialists" who require all stores in the division to display the same products regardless of the demographics of the store's customer base. Distributions are a joke and department heads are pressured to move product that simply does not sell. At my store, every new employee is hired at minimum wage with no consideration given for prior experience. The condition of the store has deteriorated and will continue to do so until mgmt realizes that they are getting what they pay for.
If things don't change, Kroger will be the new Big Lots.
well said my friend. A couple of examples that show this. Graeters icecream (it's like $12/quart) We don't sell this ****, yet we have to keep it on the shelf. I think we have 3 flavors so that's 3 spaces that could hold products that customer's regularly request that we either 1) don't carry or 2) aren't able to keep the shelf full because it sells so well. Eventually this icecream goes outdated and goes in the garbage (SHRINK!!!). IF they were lucky enough to be able to mark it down, it still doesn't sell because who the hell wants to spend ~$6 for a quart of icecream? Maybe other divisions do great with this product, but mine doesn't so why should we waste the space on it when we could have another product that would actually sell? I know what they're thinking by having this product in the store...."if we sell 1 quart, we can make like $4!" (I'm just using random numbers) Problem is that we are selling 0 quarts so we're losing money on that particular product. That's just 1 example out of several I could list in just my store alone. You know it's bad when it gets marked down and still doesn't move.
DIsplays: they require each dept to have certain displays even when the items sometimes don't sell worth a damn.. To try to be compliant, we'll order just enough to face it up and it never fails our zone manager comes in and wants to know why the display is so low... she'll force us to order more then a week later when the sale ends, we have to either leave the item on temporary (in store special) or put it on a pallet and shove it up in the steel rack (dead stock). stupid stupid stupid.
One more example: apparently the set # of facings for products is predetermined and doesn't factor in how well a product actually sells in a particular store. Example at my store is Kroger deluxe shells and cheddar vs kroger macaroni and cheese (green label vs orange label). We sell far more of the green label, yet guess which one gets 2 facings and which only gets 1? That's right, orange gets 2, green gets 1. It's for this reason that the green box always runs out on the shelf. Even though it probably sells 10:1 on the orange kind, we aren't allowed to switch the number of facings to the logical way: green: 2, orange: 1 (I know this because I've done that and got in trouble). Their logic just doesn't make sense and heaven forbid you try to explain your logic (even showing movement doesn't work on them).
The hot french bread is probably just as bad as that ice cream.
If any store actually makes the amount of bread they want (which is like 8 loaves every hour for 3 hours, plus at least 4 garlic breads), imagine how much bread is being thrown away?
We started making only 8 a day and even those don't sell. But I'm sure if the deli/bakery coordinator knew she'd have a fit.
