I've noticed my local Kroger doesn't call for surge help anymore. Lines are long, one lane open. They took down all the "fastest checkout" signs and most days the Q Vision TV's are turned off. Every time I shop there now (which is as little as possible), there's yet another new floor supervisor/cashier/courtesy clerk/manager.
I worked my butt off as a cashier and providing surge help when I was in Drug/GM and floral when I was employed at Kroger. It sucks that I have to wait forever to checkout now.
I guess the high turnover is good news though, employees are learning quickly it's not a good company to work for!
Kroger killed Que-Vision, that's why. It failed because Kroger refused to schedule the proper amount of help required to make Que-Vision a success. Too much strain was being placed on the other departments, which are already understaffed and overworked, and the hole numbers were increasing as a result because surge help had to keep coming up front to bail out the front end over and over again. It was the cheaper option to kill Que-Vision than properly staff the front end. Problem is, because Kroger insists on NOT giving employees a raise and setting the pay rate to at least be competitive with SOME of the competition in retail, Kroger couldn't even hire enough help to staff its departments even if the greedy corporate executives wanted to.
I know that supervisors are being told to "not worry about 1+1 compliance any more" and that they will no longer suffer penalties for customer wait time exceeding what was once considered acceptable, so expect long lines more frequently now. They've turned off the Que-Vision screens at my store and I'm hoping soon that they too will discontinue the use of surge help at my store like they have at yours, and others, I'm sure. Discontinuing surge help is the only way to stores are going to start looking fuller and fresher, until Kroger, against its will and while kicking and screaming like a three year old, is forced to raise the pay due to the competition stealing both its customers and employees.
ugh, i hope that **** goes down at my store too. Our manager just had a store meeting about "everyone coming up to help when they get called" and had all our department people up front for more than 2 hours checking out customers. The customers were complaining his head off about nothing being on the shelves.
It was funny how he tried to explain them away. Soon he had to let the meat shop guy off register to go cut some stuff only to come back to the front for another half hour to go back and do it again. We were backed up into the aisles all that day.
His precious dips were still super high even with everyone up front. Some people just learn the hard way, I guess.
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Would you like fries with th... I mean, your milk in a bag?
Our manager just had a store meeting about "everyone coming up to help when they get called" and had all our department people up front for more than 2 hours checking out customers. The customers were complaining his head off about nothing being on the shelves.
It was funny how he tried to explain them away. Soon he had to let the meat shop guy off register to go cut some stuff only to come back to the front for another half hour to go back and do it again. We were backed up into the aisles all that day.
His precious dips were still super high even with everyone up front. Some people just learn the hard way, I guess.
Let's hope he doesn't try something radical and out-of-the-box, such as, you know, scheduling adequate front-end help.
If you stay in this business long enough (sadly) everything goes around in a circle; as d!p**** office people come and go you will see the same things tried over and over again.
You see it at store level when you get a new manager and they have great "new" ideas that didn't work 2 managers ago. It's because they think they are smarter than everyone else and they still try anyway when you tell them that it didn't work last time. All you can do is SYFH.
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"Resistance is futile...you will be assimilated" - The Krog
Kroger killed Que-Vision, that's why. It failed because Kroger refused to schedule the proper amount of help required to make Que-Vision a success. Too much strain was being placed on the other departments, which are already understaffed and overworked, and the hole numbers were increasing as a result because surge help had to keep coming up front to bail out the front end over and over again. It was the cheaper option to kill Que-Vision than properly staff the front end. Problem is, because Kroger insists on NOT giving employees a raise and setting the pay rate to at least be competitive with SOME of the competition in retail, Kroger couldn't even hire enough help to staff its departments even if the greedy corporate executives wanted to.
I know that supervisors are being told to "not worry about 1+1 compliance any more" and that they will no longer suffer penalties for customer wait time exceeding what was once considered acceptable, so expect long lines more frequently now. They've turned off the Que-Vision screens at my store and I'm hoping soon that they too will discontinue the use of surge help at my store like they have at yours, and others, I'm sure. Discontinuing surge help is the only way to stores are going to start looking fuller and fresher, until Kroger, against its will and while kicking and screaming like a three year old, is forced to raise the pay due to the competition stealing both its customers and employees.
When did this happen? We are still using it at my store and one manager is insisting more clerks be cross-trained to be relief help.
In out district we have select stores not on quevision, I don't know why. They're not in renovation so I'm puzzled.
In my store we're bombarded with green half hour edicts. No one has been able to solve the green half hour issue in that store without overscheduling no matter how high ring tender or how good SCO utilitization is. Quevision is useless as a predictor. By the time it catches up to the rush it's too late to call for help because it won't arrive in time even if it's coming from the nearby accounting office. They'll just keep shuffling through the same nonsense and worthless ideas about relief help.
Relief help is a "pillar of the front end" and it must be used for quevision to give us the green half hours we want. That's an intentional design by Kroger... designed to fail if you can't call people from other depts constantly. In a smaller store, if I need a relief cashier I'm not gonna need that one that's two minutes away back in dairy, I'll need someone that is on the perimeter of the front end like a floral or produce clerk.
Kroger killed Que-Vision, that's why. It failed because Kroger refused to schedule the proper amount of help required to make Que-Vision a success. Too much strain was being placed on the other departments, which are already understaffed and overworked, and the hole numbers were increasing as a result because surge help had to keep coming up front to bail out the front end over and over again. It was the cheaper option to kill Que-Vision than properly staff the front end. Problem is, because Kroger insists on NOT giving employees a raise and setting the pay rate to at least be competitive with SOME of the competition in retail, Kroger couldn't even hire enough help to staff its departments even if the greedy corporate executives wanted to.
I know that supervisors are being told to "not worry about 1+1 compliance any more" and that they will no longer suffer penalties for customer wait time exceeding what was once considered acceptable, so expect long lines more frequently now. They've turned off the Que-Vision screens at my store and I'm hoping soon that they too will discontinue the use of surge help at my store like they have at yours, and others, I'm sure. Discontinuing surge help is the only way to stores are going to start looking fuller and fresher, until Kroger, against its will and while kicking and screaming like a three year old, is forced to raise the pay due to the competition stealing both its customers and employees.
When did this happen? We are still using it at my store and one manager is insisting more clerks be cross-trained to be relief help.
Back in early September is when I started hearing it from a couple of ACSMs at different stores and not long after that I heard a co-manager telling our CSM that it was no longer necessary to call for surge help if you have one or two people extra in line in addition to having two already. Not everybody is on the same page though. I know some co-managers don't call for help/push floor supervisors to still practice 1+1 while I know others that do the opposite. Basically, it's going to come down to your store management team/CSM/floor supervisors whether or not 1+1 is still practiced and whether or not surge help is still relied on.
Kroger killed Que-Vision, that's why. It failed because Kroger refused to schedule the proper amount of help required to make Que-Vision a success. Too much strain was being placed on the other departments, which are already understaffed and overworked, and the hole numbers were increasing as a result because surge help had to keep coming up front to bail out the front end over and over again. It was the cheaper option to kill Que-Vision than properly staff the front end. Problem is, because Kroger insists on NOT giving employees a raise and setting the pay rate to at least be competitive with SOME of the competition in retail, Kroger couldn't even hire enough help to staff its departments even if the greedy corporate executives wanted to.
I know that supervisors are being told to "not worry about 1+1 compliance any more" and that they will no longer suffer penalties for customer wait time exceeding what was once considered acceptable, so expect long lines more frequently now. They've turned off the Que-Vision screens at my store and I'm hoping soon that they too will discontinue the use of surge help at my store like they have at yours, and others, I'm sure. Discontinuing surge help is the only way to stores are going to start looking fuller and fresher, until Kroger, against its will and while kicking and screaming like a three year old, is forced to raise the pay due to the competition stealing both its customers and employees.
When did this happen? We are still using it at my store and one manager is insisting more clerks be cross-trained to be relief help.
Back in early September is when I started hearing it from a couple of ACSMs at different stores and not long after that I heard a co-manager telling our CSM that it was no longer necessary to call for surge help if you have one or two people extra in line in addition to having two already. Not everybody is on the same page though. I know some co-managers don't call for help/push floor supervisors to still practice 1+1 while I know others that do the opposite. Basically, it's going to come down to your store management team/CSM/floor supervisors whether or not 1+1 is still practiced and whether or not surge help is still relied on.
Well I hope we throw it out soon because its driving me crazy.
It is still as bad as ever at my store. Relief help is used for hours at a time, and there are only a few associates cross-trained for relief help. Is que-vision going away in Atlanta division? I have repeated said that this is the most disruptive program Kroger has ever come up with.
