New CO manager need help

Date: Nov 4, 2015

New CO manager need help

Date: Nov 4, 2015

You might transfer to a store that's even worse than the one you are in. I would give it some time. Sounds like you are going to just have to make it up as you go along.

nocturnia · Guru

You should go to the menu at top of this page, click on search user and from there use the bottom menu to search, page by page, for a member here named management drone. He is a former Kroger co manager, and you could leave him a private message re your questions. Best to you.

Date: Nov 4, 2015

They are testing you...you won't get a good store until your prove your can make some difference in a crappy store. To get to a good store you must show you can teach other new Co's so they can go to the crappy stores. Circle of life at Kroger.

Date: Nov 4, 2015

Anonymous wrote:
They are testing you...you won't get a good store until your prove your can make some difference in a crappy store. To get to a good store you must show you can teach other new Co's so they can go to the crappy stores. Circle of life at Kroger.

That's an unfortunate reality at kroger lol.

Turd Ferguson · Guru

You are seeing the disconnect between corporate and the store level. Everything was all roses in training, and now you're being faced with reality.

It's pretty common that the managers right out of the training program get sent to the less desirable stores. Many times, the main store manager that has been around for a while may have been sent there as "punishment", or as a last chance for redemption... so you never know what you'll get, there.

You gotta pay your dues, so to speak. Good luck to you.

Date: Nov 8, 2015

It's me drone, although I don't have a way to really prove it, other than my response. Either lost my account info or something and I can't get back in. But here goes (wall 'o text incoming!):

This is the exact same experience I had, to a t. My training store was awesome from top to bottom. I had a SM and DM's that wanted me to be awesome. But the first store I was assigned in was a holy terror. Learned a lot about how to not manage people from that guy, and it was the same thing - spent a lot of time in the office, was a terror on the floor, had insane demands and never communicated them to you before you did something.

Case in point: Drug GM never set the promo aisle in this store. EVER. It was always the job of the co over Grocery/Drug to set and decorate. So I slave away one day on setting Halloween candy, and I **** you not he tells me to turn around and stripe the candy by color. 50 something feet of candy I have to pull back out and reset. And he never respected any extra work you put in on anything that went above and beyond (even when it was extraordinary).

But to your question about transferring: don't do it. It's a trap! Seriously, stick it out. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that noise. Your district team will immediately blackball you for that, and word gets around quick. Don't be known as the one who can't hack it. As for who to confide in? Be very, very careful with this. Kroger is about as bad as high school, and there are people on all levels who won't think twice to turn around and bury a knife in your back with info you've told them. I've seen it happen to others and have had it happen to me. Threat is real.

The best advice I can give is to do everything by the book. Make sure your i's are dotted and t's are crossed on everything. Don't give them a reason to pin anything against you. Start talking to your store manager as much as possible, but don't be confrontational and keep notes on every meeting - dates, times, items discussed. This gives you both something to cover your @ss and ammo for yourself if needed. Start reaching out to people in other stores and in the division office with smart questions on issues you have. By that I mean research it a bit and show that you've been trying to solve something on your own. Plant that seed in their mind of your name and that you are trying to excel, and it will turn around to help you. Keep documentation/diaries of what happens in your store: issues/resolutions, visits, things that you excelled at all with dates, times, who/what/where. This can help for your review period and also as a general CYA.

Most of all, there is hope. I've been in stores as short as 4 months, and as long as 2 years. I've had stores that I hated more than anything, and stores that I genuinely hated leaving. You'll have store managers you'd consider murdering, and store managers you'd take a bullet for. Change is the name of the game here. Learn from them all good and bad.

As for moving up in the company? I can't give any advice there. The only thing I could ever figure out that would have worked from my time there was that you had to kiss a ton of @ss to get anywhere, and I'm not about that at all. I simply refuse to be motivated to kiss @ss to get promoted, and I've worked for two companies since where that won't get you anywhere. When I left Kroger, a month before I had been told my job was in jeopardy and my managerial skills were basically ****. In a year and a half, I was getting groomed for a store manager position at my new company something fierce, and this was a very successful national chain. So I know my skills aren't ****. And after two years in my current job, I'm well on my way back into a managerial position with very low effort. It's taken a bit longer since it's a change in industries, but it's still pretty damn easy, and this is with a Global 500 company.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted to make sure you got something to go off of. Keep up the good fight, and cover your @ss. But also keep your resume up to date and don't be afraid to jump ship. Kroger isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Anonymouse1 · Guru

Anonymous wrote:
It's me drone, although I don't have a way to really prove it, other than my response. Either lost my account info or something and I can't get back in. But here goes (wall 'o text incoming!):

I believe you. No one else could write a wall of text as well as you can. :)

I am kind of curious how co managers have been thrown under the bus by coworkers. If you can give a general example, that would be great.

I have one co manager that is mostly cool but she is trying to be all tough and demanding about time. I haven't figured out if she is trained to be demanding or she just doesn't understand everything takes time. Time expectation looks good on paper but isn't working in reality.

DeltaGrocery · Guru

We had a co-manager request a transfer out of our store last year. Claimed that working with our store manager was just too much. One of the reasons she cited was that he was always on vacation. He's been with the company for around 35 years or something and has I don't know how many weeks, but it does seem like he's hardly there. I guess it helped her cause that the store manager has had a bit of heat on him for some time now, it probably wasn't a huge deal and didn't trigger too much.

Everything I've heard is that it's really important to show that you're a go-getter and can tackle all problems thrown your way. That you're going out of your way to excel and stand above. So the advice would be the same as drone, make it known what you are doing to do that, add some sprinkles on top when necessary.

Date: Nov 9, 2015

Anonymouse1 wrote:
I believe you. No one else could write a wall of text as well as you can. :)
I am kind of curious how co managers have been thrown under the bus by coworkers. If you can give a general example, that would be great.
I have one co manager that is mostly cool but she is trying to be all tough and demanding about time. I haven't figured out if she is trained to be demanding or she just doesn't understand everything takes time. Time expectation looks good on paper but isn't working in reality.

I don't know if I should be proud or offended!

Kroger is like high school, in terms of gossip. Word of missteps and blunders that are normally minor and should be kept in store get circulated about. I've seen that more times than I can count, where a well placed call or text to a coordinator sets things in motion. Say you get a store where they ran short of flour in the bakery, and you go and borrow some from another store. You arrange that through the FSM at the other store, but the co-manager there finds out about it, and let's things slip to a deli co-ordinator because that co-manger knows that the deli co-ordinator has it in for the co-manager at the store that needed the flour. Next thing you know, you get co-oridnators all over your store looking for issues. That is a true story that I watched unfold over a weekend. They can be a bunch of catty, backstabbing b!tches. Especially if they think it can advance their own career

As for your specific co-mamanger, it could be a number of things. I always referred to new managers and being "mountain movers." They come out of training, all rip-rearing to go, and think they can move mountains all by themselves. Take a few getting dropped on them to find out that's not the case. Give them time and they'll figure out what the priories should be. Or turn into demon spawn from he!l.

Date: Nov 10, 2015

Thank you the info. Well written with great ideas and info. Thanks again.

Date: Nov 27, 2015

You are the new Guy/Gal, depending how your DM likes you is how you get placed. Welcome to the big time.