I transferred from Nutrition to Pickup. It was running great! They'd pick the orders, check in the back to prevent subs (or out of stocks), call customers to fix problems before they showed up, and check all price adjustments to prevent overcharging. We had two, desk people plus a manager who could do that on top of orders. We had delivery people, too. The combo would get everything delivered. We'd put back all returns, esp perishable, in a timely fashion. We got done by afternoon, often letting customers pick up early. We charged about $5 per order for such convenience. A District Manager said our team in OB was his best. Our customers, many we knew on first-name basis, loved us enough to tell him that themselves. Win, win, and win for everyone involved... like it should be!
Starting over a year ago, Kroger figured they could boost their Pickup
sales by accepting more orders than we could pick and deliver. They'd be mostly late, some cancelled. With
order already in, Kroger created a form of vendor lock-in
since it's extremely inconvient for customers to switch stores after
putting in their whole order. Kroger's systems know how many pickers are
scheduled vs
orders already in. Ensuring we can pick new orders takes just comparing
two numbers: picker hours vs orders (hours of picking). Existing system
can both cut off incoming orders and throttle them across delivery
hours for smoother experience. After flooding us with orders,
headquarters started saying no cut-offs or throttling with no excuses.
Each day, they lied to 50-200 customers telling them their order would
be ready by a certain time, had nobody to pick it, and forced us to
stay over sprinting to pick it all. Realistically, every hour they
messed up would cascade into the next like falling dominos.
Extra note on their motivation. They started "burning down Pickup" a year or two ago. Our Annual Report mentioned three bonuses that might explain it: a sales bonus on orders they might fulfill, hopeful on a profit bonus for skeleton crews with no staff increases, and one on the number of Pickup orders they took in. I don't know current, bonus structure. Probably sales and labor.
Our responses were in order:
1. We called every customer from morning or early afternoon onward to
push back their orders by about two hours. Then, asked people to stay
over to pick and deliver them. The 8pm closers had to stay till 10-11pm
to do that on some nights. Some customers showed up early anyway or
demanded to be put ahead of others. Phones rang non-stop all day with
confused and/or angry customers until some workers broke down crying
or, in one case, passed out on a vehicle. We'd give discounts (or
credits) to people who waited in parking lot based on how long they
waited. "Please review" items, like multiple substitutions, often were
not discounted since there was no time. Late, then overcharged. (Always
check for this!) We did this almost every Fri-Mon with us cleaning the
mess up on the first, slow day we'd get. We still had those at that
point. We lost many Pickup personnel and customers when Kroger's
corporate office refused to stop doing this. At least, our response got
people their orders same day and compensated all involved. Then,
corporate made a rule against staying over for deliveries. Anyone over
past 8pm on the dot could get written up. We'd still try to get people
their groceries, though.
(Note: Between 1 and 2, the CEO of Kroger, Rodney McMullen, came to
audit us. He came on Thanksgiving of 2019. I risked getting fired to
give him a proposal with all of Pickup's problems listed, multiple ways
to prove it all, and solutions to it all. Worst case: I figured he'd
reject it before doing his own solution. He read it all, laughed,
threw it in the garbage, and didn't change anything. I was fine with
being the official, court jester of Kroger's king. What actually
bothered me was that the CEO of Kroger thought hundreds of thousands of
people's suffering was funny and not worth acting on. That's on top of
unnecessary, financial losses to shareholders which he's supposed to
prevent as the CEO.)
(Note 2: The Chairman of the Board is supposed to hold the CEO
accountable. I'd have gone to them next. Rodney McMullen was both the
CEO and Chairman of the Board. Anyone on a board reading should never do
that. It's like letting the fox guard the henhouse. This one devoured
many hens, enjoyed scrambled eggs on the side, and stays tearing up the
building.)
2. Next strategy. We'd stay over to pick the orders, do most deliveries
that day, and do the later hours' deliveries the next day. First, that
means anyone coming near 8pm didn't get their order. That going over
equaled write-ups made employes cut off the lights and just pretend
they didn't know customers were there. One or two mercifully delivered
off the clock. Second, the customer experience the next day was trashed
since we had pickups from previous day, the new day's orders, and no
extra staff over what's scheduled for that day's orders. We have to
subtract from new orders' picking and delivery times to do previous
day's deliveries. After blaming our performance (not staffing),
Corporate made a new rule saying we couldn't have overtime or had
severely limited overtime to pick orders. Some days, they'd give us
20+hrs of extra picking but only 30 minutes of picker overtime.
3. Next strategy. We'd have to borrow stockers and cashiers who could
pick. That immediately added to overstocks and long lines. Also, few
knew how, they refused to train more (takes labor), we had to use
people without training, and we had to train our "help" to pick and
deliver while doing that ourselves. Now, orders were often pushed to
the next day for picking, too. We'd have to pick orders from two days
with staff allocated for one. A few hours in, we'd start calling
customers of the next day telling them their orders would be late.
After more in-store cuts, we didn't have picking help or were only
allowed to borrow people for short times. The customers would show up
in mass without their orders picked after multiple promises were made.
Corporate also changed our credit policy to give no discounts or
credits for their problems. The local managers probably hated that the
most given the angriest people go looking for them.
4. One lead noted we often picked everything up to the 4pm's. Then,
they'd max out orders for 5p-7p with 1-2 pickers in the store. We'd
either never pick them (super-angry customers) or the next day was all
late orders (less-angry customers w/ bad metrics). Also, the odds of
corporate taking disciplinary action go up with number of bad metrics.
What followed was an attempt to survive, to boost numbers, and not work
13-18 hours. That lead started cancelling every order from 5p-7p or
just over what they let us pick. Then, we did deliveries,
reshop/returns, and cleanup before next meltdown. Instead of just
firing him, corporate made a new rule we couldn't cancel orders without
customers' permission. We started mentioning "or you can cancel" to
reduce customers' headaches. Management made another rule to just say
"pick up next day" to minimize cancellations of orders we couldn't
pick. I ignored that to give customers an accurate picture so they
could do their own cost-benefit analysis.
Brief interlude: People came and went, volume went up and down,
overtime rules went back and forth... there were moments that orders
weren't late. There were times we got picking done early. Things kept
going well for a while with excess pickers just stocking the store or
helping up front. Everyone was happier. Then, they cut over a hundred
hours more staff. Back to harsh reality.
5. Our store manager (Sharon Mister) and last Pickup manager told us
not to call customers to tell them the orders would be late. They used
a combination of making deliveries take ridiculously long times (one
person in room), getting in-store help, and delaying or blocking
employees' lunches to do this. The orders were usually late anyway. So,
now up to 20 customers per hour might show up with no order and no
warning. Their anger was justified. I started telling them we were
told to do that with the store manager trying to get me for it. It
seems the combo of customers chewing out those managers and our
internal resistance fixed this on most days. They call people now. Some
days and hours, though, they still didn't call people. On top of angry
customers, employees facing days worth of individuals chewing them out
on the phone decided the job wasn't worth it. One worker was surrounded
by a whole mob of angry customers, physically unable to leave its
center, who made him feel his life was threatened. Keeping his name
anonymous, I'll just say we lost one of our customers' all-time,
favorite, delivery people who also picked fast.
6. Let's look at this week. We've had more orders than pickers or
delivery people every day. We also have a new system that doesn't show
pickers' progress in real time (old one did). We can't reliably
estimate how late they'll be. We have to call when ready but have
nobody to call many of them. If we did call, we often did it by making
people wait longer outside to make those calls. The orders are piled so
high and heavy people keep getting injured, esp their backs. We had
multiple, 5ft-6ft stacks of product that needed to go back, including
refrigerated items like fresh meat and dairy, that were in there for a
week. Our pickers climb around and/or on top of non-refrigerated stacks
to get bags. Our store manager, Mrs. Mister, keeps claiming we have
plenty of people, unreliable workers explains everything, and there's
no excuses. She berates everyone involved regularly. Nobody is allowed
to transfer. Many people recently quit, including our manager and a lead. Other lead stepped down. Many pickers
are no-showing or accepting less overtime. There's rumors of more staff
cuts.