Anyone out there seen or affected by the new floral program that basically cuts floral hours while claiming to provide a better experience for customers and associates? The whole thing is garbage. Smaller stores have a schedule of 12-4. Largest volume stores have coverage from 8-8 with a huge cut in hours, which means there is never more than one associate in the department, if the stores follow the guidelines. 8-8, with trucks sometimes coming in at 3pm. There is a "work flow" checklist, which is nothing different from the tasks we were already doing with more hours. But now we have to initial and give a reason if the task was not completed. No regard to customer service whatsoever. If you are not aware of this bull****, just find a copy of the program for some fantasy reading. All this is going to do is drag floral down further in stores where it may already be struggling. Oh, and GO will order all our ad items. Hopefully not like they have been doing lately. Gross overordering. Inaccurate information about what's coming in and when. In my particular location, my manager stands behind floral, and refuses to allow this to lower our sales and ability to run a successful department, like I always do.
Anyone out there seen or affected by the new floral program that basically cuts floral hours while claiming to provide a better experience for customers and associates? The whole thing is garbage. Smaller stores have a schedule of 12-4. Largest volume stores have coverage from 8-8 with a huge cut in hours, which means there is never more than one associate in the department, if the stores follow the guidelines. 8-8, with trucks sometimes coming in at 3pm. There is a "work flow" checklist, which is nothing different from the tasks we were already doing with more hours. But now we have to initial and give a reason if the task was not completed. No regard to customer service whatsoever. If you are not aware of this bull****, just find a copy of the program for some fantasy reading. All this is going to do is drag floral down further in stores where it may already be struggling. Oh, and GO will order all our ad items. Hopefully not like they have been doing lately. Gross overordering. Inaccurate information about what's coming in and when. In my particular location, my manager stands behind floral, and refuses to allow this to lower our sales and ability to run a successful department, like I always do.
Sounds like the total insanity that Kroger has forced on other departments (all the idiotic, useless, time wasting paperwork that accomplishes virtually NOTHING) is now moving to the Floral dept! Nice. It would be GREAT, if EVERY SINGLE STORE MANAGER rose up in unison and " put their foot down" , so to speak, and said THIS WILL NOT WORK!!!!, ARE YOU ALL FRIGGIN' CRAZY???????????? If enough managers made some REAL Push-back on stupid ideas, maybe it would do some good.
I certainly hope so. Of course, most managers are wimps, and don't have enough nerve to say much of anything, since they are afraid they might lose their jobs if they are too vocal about Kroger Corporate Stupidity. Hey, if any upper Corporate people are reading this forum, give us one SOLID reason why these new Floral dept procedures are a positive idea. You would be better off finding out exactly who came up with this idea, and purging them from Kroger, as fast as possible. They need to be fired for their idiotic ideas.
That's exactly right. What this program would do (or will do if it's enforced) is cut my hours by 28 hours per week. My sales average over 10,000 per week, without factoring in the numerous holidays we have, which Kroger gives us no extra hours for besides Valentine's day and Mother's day. It would schedule only one associate in the department. Coverage from 8-8. We are not that busy with customers after 6, but we currently man the department until 7. My gross profit is always good. Very little if any shrink. I put money on the bottom line. We have an excellent customer base, and are about to get remodeled, doubling our floor space. Whoever came up with this, and many other programs that are being rolled out, needs to be terminated.
Kroger is basically not funding the floral department. I asked about it. They were phasing it out all together. This department is one kroger decided to no longer provide during covid and decided to basically stop providing merchandise in that area. They were loosing a but load of money on it. They'll give enough hours for like 1.5 employees. Just enough to put one load a week out and that's about it. There use to be 3.5 of us in floral but that twice a week graduated shift was no longer guaranteed when covid started. I fill in when floral manager wants some extra time off but that's about it. I'm still happy to get out of my main department even if it's once every three months. It also gives me real world experience which can cross over to any flower design job.
So who did you ask about this? I've been around a long time- probably the third most senior person in my store. That has been in the back of my mind- that they were doing away with floral. My department, however, is being expanded in this remodel, and my walk in cooler just about doubled in size. I did see in this new program that the company says we are not turning a profit as a whole. So the quickest way to trim costs is wages and hours. We weren't getting any product at first due to covid, but then GO was ordering for us and we went through Mother's day, where most stores sold out of product. So if you don't mind saying, where did the info come from about phasing out floral?
