You had it today? I guess then it's not what I was thinking of when I read your topic title. I thought you might be referring to what's known as the "Holiday Open House" that stores in my area, and I assume elsewhere as well, hold on a Saturday a couple of weeks ahead of Thanksgiving, and being the big event that it is, requires a massive amount of cleaning and making the store look nice since it typically attracts a large crowd that day and officially kicks off holiday selling at Kroger. If you had an open house today though, then I don't know what it could have been for.

Do you do a Holiday Open House at your store? The purpose of it is to introduce customers to the flavors of the holiday season. Every department is expected to set up a sampling station or multiple sampling stations and have samples for customers to try of foods that are popular around Thanksgiving/Christmas. So in the deli, for example, a certain kind of popular holiday ham may be part of the sampling event, and that ham will also be on sale to entice customers to make a purchase after sampling it. Another example is the bakery may have certain pies or cakes for sampling that tend to be big hits at the holiday dinner table, and they too will be on sale in order to encourage purchases that day and down the line. In addition to samples, there may be recipe pamphlets and stuff around the sampling stations, and some stores do more on top of all this, like one day 4x gift card promotions and stuff. Employees can dress up in nice shirts and wear Santa caps as it's encouraged, but different stores have different policies on what, if any, special clothing can be worn for the Holiday Open House.

That's what sprang to mind when you mentioned open house as that's the only kind of open house that stores in my area do.

What is it?

The corporate equivalent of an unfunded mandate: the demand to perform X while withholding the means to accomplish the task.

 

 

You described it.  A glorified show and tell.  Luckily I was off, but I had to take my dad grocery shopping that evening and by then they only had 2 registers open.  But they had every register open and plenty of bagging help while all the big wigs were in the store.  

Yep.. It was Fresh and Friendly. The strange ritual of fixing up the store to grand opening specs to further perpetuate the delusion that it's possible to keep a store in that condition with the labor hours and staff given.

It's good you were off that day. It's a pain in the ass. We just had one this week, as well.


Open House is a different ballgame. That's a holiday preview where all the departments sample different fare to customers... deli party trays, and/or items from the pre-cooked holiday meals for example. We did that yesterday.

It's exactly what the name states open house. Your store must of gone through a remodel or is new. Corporate came through our store yesterday for their annual walk and they danced and pranced like @$$ holes. Stating I'm better than you deal with it. We don't care that you're not earning livable paychecks and your store moral is at an all time low.