So I don't know if it's a new policy that's being enforced all over or if it's just in my area (I know it's not just my store), but yeah, front end supervisors are no longer allowed to check. If it gets busy, they are required to call other departments to come up and surge check rather than get on themselves. Seriously? The front end continues to become an even bigger burden on the other departments because now, rather than just addressing small rushes by having the supervisor hop on and check out the two or three customers that are causing the other lanes to back up, someone from another department has to stop what he/she is doing to come up and get on a register while the floor supervisor just stands there, on the floor. What. The. Hell. Fine, let the out of stocks continue to grow in number because a person that's working his or her department has to stop what he or she is doing to come up front to do what the front end supervisor should be handling himself/herself. Let produce be less fresh and full because instead of culling/stocking the department, the produce clerks are up front because Kroger now deems front end supervisors should solely exist to direct traffic/address cashier/customer issues. Let the rest of the store fall even further behind. Maybe the customers will finally start to wise up as they see holes and more holes on the shelves and poor quality product and front end supervisors standing around not pulling orders they could easily check out themselves and reduce customer wait time, and go shop elsewhere. I'd love to see that happen, if it didn't mean employees would suffer the most from it due to an even greater reduction in hours as a result of the lost sales.
It's unreal how this company continues to make worse and worse decisions, but it's even more unreal that customers continue to shop at a place that is so poorly run. Thankfully for Kroger, there are enough customers out there that are easily fooled into thinking its the best grocery store option when it's really not, otherwise all these idiotic decisions made by clueless people in charge would've sent this company to its grave some time ago.
-- Edited by GenesisOne on Friday 6th of November 2015 07:03:13 PM
When I first started working at Kroger 4 years ago, floor supervisors were never on the register. Then they changed it. OMG you should have heard them complain. We weren't calling for surge help from other departments then. Floor supervisors used to just hang around in front of the registers talking, texting on their phones, ignoring everyone and everything. I think I would ignore them if they paged my name. I don't think Kroger will ever figure out there IS NO FRONT END without the other departments. This really angers me and I'm not even in your area I don't think.
Kroger doesn't care about out of the stocks, they stopped caring about that a while back ago, they don't even DO a pre-primetime scan anymore to know the controllable OOS's. Watch us turn into walmart where you can see holes on a shelf for 2 weeks or more at a time.
Kroger doesn't care about out of the stocks, they stopped caring about that a while back ago, they don't even DO a pre-primetime scan anymore to know the controllable OOS's. Watch us turn into walmart where you can see holes on a shelf for 2 weeks or more at a time.
I think turning into Walmart would be an improvement at this point. The Walmart Supercenter I go to seems to have its act together better than Kroger does. Not nearly as many holes and I can actually find an employee if I need help... and contrary to Kroger propaganda, the folks that work at Walmart, or at least the Walmart I go to, are helpful. If I could get the same availability approved at Walmart that I get from Kroger (and health insurance), I'd go there in a heart beat. The only other advantage working for Kroger is you can't be terminated on the spot like you can at Walmart.
Anonymous wrote:
When I first started working at Kroger 4 years ago, floor supervisors were never on the register. Then they changed it. OMG you should have heard them complain. We weren't calling for surge help from other departments then. Floor supervisors used to just hang around in front of the registers talking, texting on their phones, ignoring everyone and everything. I think I would ignore them if they paged my name. I don't think Kroger will ever figure out there IS NO FRONT END without the other departments. This really angers me and I'm not even in your area I don't think.
Typical Kroger... let those that don't want to work get away with doing little to nothing while on the clock and push those that do work all that much harder to pick up the slack. Just make everyone carry their fair share! Floor supervisors should be the first ones on a register before surge help is called. It's BS the reasoning being, "well, they have to be on the floor to guide traffic and can't be tied down to a register," well, get your frigging front end in order so your cashiers are playing an active role in guiding traffic themselves. Have them red line when they don't have customers. Big registers need to send small orders to express, if express doesn't have a line and the big registers do. Self scan needs to be pulling small orders when not assisting customers. If the front end just gets a little backed up, all the floor supervisor needs to do is block himself/herself off after pulling a customer so he/she can easily get back on the floor after doing the order. The other BS reasoning is, "well, a cashier may need help, so the supervisor needs to be available to assist," uh, there are phones on every register, plus Customer Care can help handle that, if there's two people behind the desk (plus they have phones too), and heck, even self scan, if not busy, can help an express cashier if he/she is having trouble. I see too many front end supervisors/self scan and customer service people standing around doing nothing at times... they need to get their acts together before calling surge help!
This is just really, really frustrating. Other people seem to have the right idea... if you have no plans on trying to become a department head or enter the MD1 training program, you might as well only work as hard as you have to and no harder. What's the point? Raises aren't based on quality of work and there are no consequences for working slow or incentive to working fast. Might as well just take it as easy as you can and just do enough to get by. That's the type of person this company turns people into because that's the message it sends.
-- Edited by GenesisOne on Friday 6th of November 2015 11:03:46 PM
Oh god what. Our front end supes always do this when it gets busy, they're the ones with an eye on QueVision, and (the good ones at least) can easily tell when they need to get on and when they need to leave. Calling for surge help is a terrible idea, it takes minutes when you need seconds to avoid a dip. Granted, the ideal situation would be for the store to receive enough hours where both of those cases would be minimized to near zero, but there's Important People bonuses at stake there, so no.
This week was horrible! Between the first of the month and the mega sale, we were swamped and to top things off management was complaining about not having enough help. They sang a different tune last week before schedules went out, " the front end is over, cut, cut, cut!" Morons!
Oh god what. Our front end supes always do this when it gets busy, they're the ones with an eye on QueVision, and (the good ones at least) can easily tell when they need to get on and when they need to leave. Calling for surge help is a terrible idea, it takes minutes when you need seconds to avoid a dip. Granted, the ideal situation would be for the store to receive enough hours where both of those cases would be minimized to near zero, but there's Important People bonuses at stake there, so no.
I hope those greedy, arrogant empty-suits collecting those bonuses end up losing a portion of them should sales drop off some because of this, and maybe sales will, if customers wise up and realize it's stupid that a supervisor just stands next to a cashier calling for help rather than jumping on himself/herself. Look, this is only making surge help even LESS likely to come up front when the surge help sees the front end supervisor not on a register. It's one thing if the supervisor is on a register and has to call for help because it's too much for him/her and the other cashiers to handle... but it's a totally different situation if the supervisor isn't even allowed to check. If the supervisor was allowed to get on a register, like before, then that would mean LESS calls for surge help. That means MORE time to get product out for customers to buy. Our management team keeps whining that the number one complaint on OSAT is out of stocks. Gee... I wonder why that is!? Customers are leaving comments on the survey and marking down Highly Dissatisfied on them due to us being out of what they came to buy. So we're getting chewed out because too many out of stocks on top of being complained to over our acknowledgment score that we're not saying hello enough, as well as departments looking like crap... and now, corporate/management wants to put even more strain and frustration on the departments by pushing them to surge check more often due to some idiotic idea from some corporate nitwit that is totally out of touch with how things work and how things are in the stores themselves believing that it makes MORE sense to have a front end supervisor NOT jump on a register when the situation calls for it? So these red vests get to stand up there all day, doing very LITTLE work while the rest of us (well, the ones that actually try to get stuff done anyway) bust our a****!?
I don't think so. That's why during the huddles, management gets nothing but expressionless faces from us. No enthusiasm, and no "yes we can" BS when management asks us, "can we do that?" in relation to getting our scores up, getting the store looking better, etc... because we all know management is freaking useless and doesn't care one iota about us, so we're just returning the favor. Just like we don't care when surge help gets called.
So I don't know if it's a new policy that's being enforced all over or if it's just in my area (I know it's not just my store), but yeah, front end supervisors are no longer allowed to check. If it gets busy, they are required to call other departments to come up and surge check rather than get on themselves. Seriously? The front end continues to become an even bigger burden on the other departments because now, rather than just addressing small rushes by having the supervisor hop on and check out the two or three customers that are causing the other lanes to back up, someone from another department has to stop what he/she is doing to come up and get on a register while the floor supervisor just stands there, on the floor. What. The. Hell. Fine, let the out of stocks continue to grow in number because a person that's working his or her department has to stop what he or she is doing to come up front to do what the front end supervisor should be handling himself/herself. Let produce be less fresh and full because instead of culling/stocking the department, the produce clerks are up front because Kroger now deems front end supervisors should solely exist to direct traffic/address cashier/customer issues. Let the rest of the store fall even further behind. Maybe the customers will finally start to wise up as they see holes and more holes on the shelves and poor quality product and front end supervisors standing around not pulling orders they could easily check out themselves and reduce customer wait time, and go shop elsewhere. I'd love to see that happen, if it didn't mean employees would suffer the most from it due to an even greater reduction in hours as a result of the lost sales.
It's unreal how this company continues to make worse and worse decisions, but it's even more unreal that customers continue to shop at a place that is so poorly run. Thankfully for Kroger, there are enough customers out there that are easily fooled into thinking its the best grocery store option when it's really not, otherwise all these idiotic decisions made by clueless people in charge would've sent this company to its grave some time ago.
-- Edited by GenesisOne on Friday 6th of November 2015 07:03:13 PM
We had to tell a manager that was yelling at us that the whole department was up on register, and that's why it wasn't "fresh" enough. She still didn't understand.
^ There really is zero point in attempting to explain anything to the typical Kroger manager. They either just don't get it or do get it, but won't admit it because they have no way of fixing what's wrong due to corporate's out of touch and backwards standards and procedures. I've gotten to the point where I just tune them out.
