what part of our job causes you the most stress and how do you deal with it.

for me it is co-workers laying out on a Fri or Sat with a 10 dollar co-pay medical slip from some fast Med Clinic

As you can see I haven't learn to deal with it yet

mmmmmmmm Larry I do believe this question hit a nerve LOL

 

mine is just about all of the above, Plus store managers given a two to four week " Meat Class " that makes them think their a 20 year veteran in the meat business. An the dumb ass's some companies make  " Meat Gods " that have never cut meat before. Ingles being one of them off the top of my head. Some of their Meat DM's never cut a piece of meat before being made a DM

yup all of the above...... and SHRINK hate shrink. this causes me the most stress. So bad decisions, over cutting, staff complaining about issues that are beyond our control or complaining without suggesting any ideas to fix the situation that they are complaining about. and of course unrealistic expectations from store managers who know nothing about the meat department.

Burgermeister keep preaching we are all here saying "Amen to that" I am totally with you on all that at Giant they would give us a new schematic chart every other month for a 60 foot long 4 deck case. That was getting rediculous. . what a nightmare I don't even want to remember it. I love where I am now. I got almost complete control on the set up. The boss might question a thing or two but usually doesn't.

Burgermeister wrote:

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Lady Filet Mignon wrote:

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what part of our job causes you the most stress and how do you deal with it.

for me it is co-workers laying out on a Fri or Sat with a 10 dollar co-pay medical slip from some fast Med Clinic

As you can see I haven't learn to deal with it yet

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Here's a few, a small amount (I have more), that kind of combine as one answer. The one thing is stupid unreasonable rules.

Not an issue where I work. I'm very lucky. But in at least 90% of the retail meat jobs, the answer has to be the stress caused by stupid rules and policies. Can't have a knife on the table, can't have food or drink in the meat dept. You must wear a glove, you must wear a hair net. You must keep the guard on the band saw down when not in use. Temperature checks. Documenting the grinds. Documenting floor sweeps, documenting all clean up jobs. having to sign safety papers that you don't really have time to read. having to sign a huge book of rules that the next day you'll be ordered do disobey. Secret shoppers. Not enough help. Hypocritical managers and supervisors. Being put in a situation where you have to stay 6 minutes after your shift is over and then two weeks later you're in trouble for clocking out 6 minutes late on that day. STUPID rules about they way you have to greet a customer. STUPID rules about having to make serving suggestions. STUPID rules about having to greet a customer who's within (15?) feet of you, but doesn't reallly want you to talk to them.

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 Gosh Burgermeister that's brutal man! How depressing. Sounds like safeway that's why I left. So many places are comming out with a new rule damn near everyday! Guess I feel fortunate I don't have to put up with all that! The more I read on this site the more I feel I need to find something else to do! Guess I'll finish out my time at mom & pop's. Not the greatest pay & bennies but you can go in, kick in the turbo get the job done and go home without all the headaches. God bless and good luck.

I hear you there too. Again at "GIANT" (it seems to be the big chains doesn't it?) we had this trash compactor with a pad lock on it. We are supposed to get the key from the Recieving manager. Well half the time the recieving manager is busy RECIEVING STUFF. He doesn't have time to go to his office to get the damn key for us. So we have 2 options: Stand there and wait (it could be a long wait) or just leave the trash piles in front of the compactor door maybe the next person will have better luck getting the key and will be kind enough to take care of it for us. More likely than not though the next person will just throw their trash away and ignore ours. Eventually the store manager will notice it and raise hell.

Then there is the matter of the recieving manager being off on saturday and sunday. You then are required to go to the customer service desk and get the key from the cashier manager where you will first be required to sign your name and the time you took the key so they don't lose track of who had the key last if it doesn't get returned. The problem with that is most of the people needing the key would just reach around the counter and take it and not sign anything so when they forget to return it the last person who signed the paper is the one who gets chewed out.

My understanding is this was made into policy because they are worried that someone may crawl up the dumpster chute and hide in the store and rob us after hours. I understand that concern but I really think there are better ways of handling it.

Now for the cardboard bailers. I never had a problem with them being locked. My biggest complaint with them is they never get emptied when they should be emptied. There are always one guy in the store and one of his jobs is to monitor the bailer and empty it when neccessary. He rarely does this in a timely fashion. I believe because he simply doesn't feel like it. So when we have an abundance of boxes and we can't fit them in the bailer we don't really have any choice but to leave them in a pile on the floor. Again when the store manager notices this he raises hell and chews out the person who left them in the pile and not the person who should had been monitoring the bailer.

Stop it! You gize iz Killin me! lmao! I will NEVER....EVER ..... repeat... EVER ...complain about walking through muck and mud puddles to get to the damn dumpster again!!!

wow, now I understand why they lock the garbage shoot. What a terrible thing to happen.

Today I embraced my trip out to the dumpster across the pot holed gravel with my flat top cart I journeyed to the open and awaiting trash bin. It was nice.

1) Not enough hours in the department. I was cut from 500 hours a week down to 218 and still expected to do 10% sales increases over same week previous year. somewhere along the way I coined "Henry's Law - the business volume will always come down to the level where the help  can handle it." (and it did).

BTW the reason for these cuts was not some fantastic labor saving invention. It was because the company borrowed $1.8 BILLION from Merril Lynch and then all of a sudden realized they had to pay it back.

 

2) "Salted Loads".  If you don't know what that is, it is when the company buries a tiny 5 lb. box of calf brains  or similar that you never ordered in the middle of a pallet of meat on your delivery. Security follows up and if you don't report the overage you are suspended or fired. Now my dept would receive anywhere from 6 to 25 pallets of meat in any given day six days a week so you can imagine what a PITA that was. Still, I was never burned because I followed policy cand we checked every item piece by piece. 

BTW I agree with some of the other rules I read here that folks object to like hats, guards, logging grinds, etc.

As to sick pay I am surprised you guys get it.  We were hourly. At one point my company was trying to increase the number and quality of folks who wanted to be meat managers by offering 6 days sick pay to meat managers only. After 2 years they discontinued it because we ACTUALLY USED IT!

 

Burgermeister wrote:

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apcowboy wrote:

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mmmmmmmm Larry I do believe this question hit a nerve LOL

 

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Ha ha. You noticed?

Another thing that is real small but can be big when combined with all the other crap is locking the cardboard bailer and the door that goes to the garbage dumpster.

Some bailers have a key for them and you can't use it without the key. (I posted about this before). I understand they want to cut down on injuries. Some genius figured out that if you lock the bailer, no one will get injured using it.

1: I never knew anyone who got hurt using a bailer

2: Using that same logic, why don't they just lock the front doors and not let anyone in. Then there will be zero injuries.

It's really frustrating when you have cardboard to bail and you can't use the machine.

 

The garbage: They lock the door going to the compacter and you can't use it. They have a pre set time when you may use it. Say it's 6 PM. Well, sometimes you have a customer at 6 PM and you miss your chance.

I want this door unlocked during my entire shift always. I like to throw away garbage as needed. Not at 6 PM. I like to combine trips. Maybe the bailer is on the way to the bathroom. If I need to use the restroom, I'll take some boxes with me and crush them on my way there. In some stores you can even do garbage, boxes and restroom on the same trip. BUT not if they use locks.

There as so many simple little things that really make your job hard sometimes.

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 Wow that must be getting to be everywhere in corporate stores that thing about the trash the last place I worked did that it was insane, and our trash at the end of the night cant wait leaking bloody bags dont fare well sittin in the cutting room waiting for the trash to get unlocked! Im at a small Save a lot now and I love it not alot of rules and crap.

for me its have to stay on top of my guys all the time to git somethin done. i wish i could git some good help but its hard to find these days. aleast it is for me