Produce was my favorite department. It felt a bit more meaningful given
I was putting out healthy stuff, had first dibs on markdown bags, and
could get to know customers better while working due to layout. We
stocked, conditioned, and quality checked everything regularly. The
green rack person "pre-conditioned" (or prepped) all our leafy products
by trimming them, cleaning them, and keeping it looking beautiful. The
team was tight-knit like a family. They were always joking, singing,
and even hanging out after work. I was the oddball, new person earning
respect. I initially just did lots of the grunt work nobody wanted to
do like in every other place I worked. Eventually, they had made me
good at the job with customers loving both our department and our team.
Two guys in particular were named on almost every survey for
friendliness. I pessimistically warned them to retire soon since Kroger
was about to lay waste to the department. They couldn't conceive it
given its metrics were so high.
After Getwell re-opened, Kroger moved hundreds of hours from our store
to theirs. IIRC, Produce lost enough for 3-4 people. That just
reinforces how our hours aren't really tied to how much work we're
doing. Everything immediately got worse: more stuff empty, more rotting
produce, and more load in the back. Customers told us they were
confused at why Getwell looked so much better. We still had lots of
product to get out with less people to do it. Time to make tough
tradeoffs again like in Dairy. Their choice was to just stock more
stuff to sell at a profit, esp fast-movers customers wanted. If only it
was that simple.
Kroger corporate office kept auditing us. Like in Oakland, the company
that couldn't afford a minute of time for clerks sent in piles of
corporate people to point at everything we were doing wrong. They
grilled us constantly. The "coordinators" came to micromanage us, stock
shelves for us, and take pictures of results to "prove" they fixed
something. When they weren't stocking, they blamed us for the poor
performance I guess implying it would be different had they been there
managing us. Their standards only went up over time with our closing
sheet having more stuff on it as they kept cutting staff.
Front-to-Back was first, big goof. They told us they believed the
customers were most satisfied when they saw perfection on each table as
they walked in a straight line between them from front to back. We'll
ignore that it was a rectangular department full of two-sided tables,
two walls in an L shape, and entry and exit that weren't line up.
Anyway, they required, regardless of how empty they were, that we stock
items in order from front to back. We had to inspect each item, clean
the entire table, put a specific allocation of new ones out, and put
old ones back on top. If fast-movers were empty but frontward items
half-full, leave fast-movers empty to perfect everything in front of it
first. I was ordered multiple times to take back dollies of fast-movers
like strawberries, bell peppers, and greens to make non-selling,
nearly-full stuff more full. Every corporate visitor, except the guy
who took pictures of his visits, told us to do this. Then, they blamed
us for everything that was empty, the negative comments by customers,
etc. We lost fortunes before they stopped enforcing Front-To-Back.
Like in Dairy, they increased side jobs. They made us put more stuff on
the displays. Sometimes, it was other departments' stuff we'd have to
notify them about if it ran low. They told us specific number of items
to put on carts, what extra items would be on there, and had both
managers and corporate visitors constantly check them. We had a minimum
number of markdown bags to do, prioritizing selling at a loss over
profitable sales. Bananas had to be uncapped by a specific time even
when it wasn't necessary. They made the grapes 99 cents a few
times with the same results as the milk in Dairy. We lost piles of
money on all
sorts of items that ran empty as we refilled grapes every 20-30 minutes.
Their cuts to Fresh Kitchen (pre-made berries and melons) had leads
ignoring shelves to do more of that. For a while, we had to trim and
package corn for hours every day since they thought we were a
manufacturing facility instead of a grocery store. I can't remember
most of it at this point except that stocking shelves was Kroger's
lowest priority. A punishable one given they could write us up for
insubordination!
One of my favorite moments was President Victor Smith showing up. Either he or
people under him mandated the highest standards for Produce we had ever
seen. We had even lower staff, too. The customers themselves mostly
avoid damaged or bad product, not imperfect product. If someone wants
perfection, some other people will buy the good, but imperfect-looking,
options at full price. Some even buy bad-looking, but good inside,
produce specifically to curb waste. When Smith took over, they started
telling us to toss anything that didn't meet specific standards: bell
peppers needed specific color, shape, and size; apples 100% same color;
arbitrary stuff. The produce buyers went so cheap that Kroger mostly
brought in produce that didn't meet its own standards. I'd have to bag
up 80-100% of almost everything on some tables. If we didn't, we failed
audits for "poor quality." If we did, we failed audits for empty
shelves. We couldn't comprehend why they were so unwilling to sell
customers product they were willing to pay full price for. Then again, they were doing more of that across the store.
They moved people around a lot to try to "fix" the problems "we"
caused. A lot of people had quit by that time. We got new people. My
boss started moving us around. I was moved to what was left of
Nutrition department.