i know of key retailing, elms and quevision......... leaving the second and third term aside, key retailing was designed to streamline work procedures to enhance customer service. problem is that some parts of the system is more effective than others. if i am not mistaken , the designer of this program was a affiliated with Walmart in some manner. but, to getting to the point it is designed as a one size fits all program , that prohibits individual store identity for customer service. as vauge as it sounds that is all i can really get into right now without the fear of the gestapo sniffing me out.
p.s. wait until you se/hear about the "Winning with meat " concept.
-- Edited by kbraker510 on Sunday 20th of May 2012 12:03:59 AM
anyone here tell me what the three words in red mean ?? never heard of them before. Seems like this dude was a little ill with Kroger lol
I have worked for Kroger for over 30 years, and I can tell ya, it will NEVER be the company that it's suppose to be. EVER!! Management is so f**king stupid. All they care about are numbers, key retailing, ELMS, Que vision, and kissing a** to see how far they can work themselves up the chain.
New to Kroger? Forget it. Find something better. The way the 4 year contracts are now, you don't stand a chance. Why? Cause they don't really want to train you. It cost too much. They'll spend millions of dollars for technology crap that they pretend to understand. Millions of dollars building new stores that are inferior designed, and destined to be upgraded just a few years later... but...they don't care about their customers, you, or even their fellow associates.
In the 60s and 70s, everyone was lining up to be a part of the GREAT company. Now, it's a slow sinking Titanic.
It's only a matter of time before I retire. And I'll tell ya this.
The day I do, I'll tear up that Kroger Plus (loyalty card), and NEVER set foot in one of their stores again. I'll pay more money to go somewhere else.
hmmmm don't know what this one is so miffed about. I never worked for a Kroger but i shop in one often and I'll tell you this out of all the chain stores I am familiar with the krogers I shop in don't seem to be showing any signs of downsizing their meat depts. Alll their meat was cut in the store and it always looks good to me. but thats just this area.
As fars as those 3 phrases. That sounds sounds like some management bull crap. Probably paper work expected to be submitted on a daily basis.
I was curious what que vision meant to so I looked on a Kroger Bulliten Board .
This is what it said.
They are rolling it out in different zones. I work in the Mid-Atlantic zone and we haven't received it yet. Columbus however has already implemented it.
Basically the way I have understood it through our managers explanation, everyone in the store, including department heads who haven't ran a register in 30 years, will be trained to run register. The focus is to create more "one on one time" to engage the customer more. Heat sensors are placed throughout the store to track movement of customers toward the checkout lanes and tells you how many registers you need to have open.
The other thing I heard for the first time a couple days ago is that departments are going to be paged depending on the hour. Example: Produce from 10-11, Meat from 11-12, Grocery from 12-1, Non Foods 1-2. This sounds like a disaster in the making because using meat as an example, it is a service department. If you have all three meat cutters running register and whole sirloin tips are on sale, who is going to be back there to cut it?
It doesn't matter. Kroger is focused on creating "Service with a Hug" (Watch the Mega-lo-Mart episode of King of the Hill) because they believe they can't compete with Wal-Mart. I believe customer service is important, but if the products the customers want are not on the shelves, they will walk out the door and go to Wal-Mart for that product before they get to see how wonderful the customer service is.
This phenomenon seems to be world wide. Most of these places are run by bean counters that have no idea of customer service, product knowledge etc etc, the list goes on. Older experienced department people in these stores get replaced by young managers without any knowledge of the retail trade, products or what-so-ever. Most of them feel so superior with their pinhead brains, it makes me laugh every time I meet one. I even caught one out not being able to write correct english, I mentioned it to the General Manager, he didn't give a sh-t either. Everything is now dependent on figures, phrases and othert crap and quality and good relations to attract return custom is going down the gurgler. Regards, Jan. Brisbane.
Never heard of that junk. Sounds like BS to me. ELMS? I googled it. Is it Event Log Management Software???
I'm so happy at my current store. I hope to retire there. 90% of the grocery jobs suck right now. I mean for a career. Maybe OK fo temporary job for a student or a little extra income for spouse of someone with a genuine good job.
Coming out of management in this type of structure i can just tell you that these are all components of tracking and accountability systems that help the stores figure out what is productive/marketable/profitable. This is what has replaced simply asking your management and teams to give feedback-because this takes time and can be biased. It is an endless frustration to the dept. manager and the crew because it is more paperwork that you are accountable for and more people expecting your paperwork and listening to you less. You can do all the movement and accountability reports you want and I could give you the exact same info in two min. time plus what the newest trends will be for the next month. But, that doesn't matter because we are functioning on a global system of charts and records. I totally understand this guys gripe but let's face it-if you work corporate you have to comply
worked at kroger in illinois for 5 years. they were turning away from customer service when i left them for a non union job with more pay in 2002. my sis in law still works there is asst meat manager and has not ever been taught to cut meat. training is out at krogers. it's like wal mart now just bodies looking busy,and if you can be seen all over the store the impression is you know the whole store. glad i'm not a part of it anymore
I'm on both sides of the fence with this one- you get to a point where it's analysis paralysis-chasing your tail in circles to appease managements' new inventions - with customer service- to me customer service is common sense, you kiss the ass of the customer, they ultimately are signing your paycheck-you also ask every customer you can if you can help them find something with a smile
on the other hand, as we have all witnessed with new employees/attitudes we think to ourselves "where the hell do they get these people" and if management is making bad hiring decisions in the store-then they also reflect us- if they are turning away customers- If the work pool is getting shallow -they have to come up with different initiatives
Also, keep this in mind- wal-mart may be the ultimate big box store, but thru research most customers throw big chain supermarkets into that "big box" description (huge parking lots, big stores, etc) so the chains are doing everything they can to differentiate between them and wal-marts- and customer service is at the top of the list.
I was recently on a facebook page of the largest supermarket chain in the area (a cousin to food-lion, owned by the same company) one of the replies on the facebook page was "local neighborhood grocery store" to which I found comical, because they are owned by a company in Belgium-but they are making an effort for a small town feel-even tho they are huge box stores
where is this coming from??? I believe the independent grocery store is making a comeback- all the things customers like about independents-smaller size, helping local economy, one on one service-the big chain stores are desperately trying to emulate these areas 20 yrs ago, it was "one stop shopping" come to us-we are huge! so huge our prices must be the best now, they know big and huge doesnt mean warm and friendly
I work at Kroger in the Mid=Atlantic region, and we DO have Que Vision. (whoever came up with that name is an idiot because I believe it should be the British "Queue" meaning roughly -a line of people-)
It's supposed to be a program to to get customers through the checkout and out of the store faster, but I think it's 1: To cut down on new hires on the front end and utilizing associates in other depts. to save on payroll expense, and, 2: To get the customer through the checkouts quicker, but just so they don't have time while waiting to change their minds about their purchases and put back stuff. (my opinion). But what good does it do to page someone from the Meat dept. to leave the service counter and go help bag groceries leaving customers not being able to get their meat to take to the checkout where the meat clerk is bagging groceries away from the service counter where the customer is waiting...etc. etc....? (see what I did there?)
ELMS: I don't know what that is.
Key Retailing: Paperwork; Grind logs, temp logs, cutting tools, movement scans, "like week" movement scans, markdown effectiveness. etc. These take up about an hour and a half of my eight hour work-day, and always puts me behind on other tasks to the point of having to really bust ass to get everything I need to do in the day.
By the way, I never understood having to scan the movement from a bar code on a piece of paper to write the readout down on the field on said piece of paper. They use the company database to print the form with the barcode, the information is in the database already because that is what comes up when you scan the barcode.....THEN.... you have to write the result on the form...???????.....(usually in information technology they take what's on paper and put it in a database.....this entire ordeal is backwards, putting what is in the system already onto paper.)
Our entire meat department was threatened a write up one time because we didn't pass the key retailing inspection once.
I had to ask a lot of questions and TRAIN MYSELF on this stuff. Every once in a while we have huddles, and the manager throws in a new abbreviated term or acronym that we are "magically" or "telepathically" supposed to know what the hell they mean and stand for....no explanation; no training. (Lazy managers)
Also, we have a guy retiring next week, and management has yet to hire someone to replace him, or me if I move on to cut in his place. But when they do, guess who will be expected to train him/her.....this guy. (further putting me behind in my own duties)
To me this is a bunch of bull**** made possible by a bunch of pencil pushers at corporate that have never worked a day in a store in their lives. We all have skills here and know our trade, but this computer stuff is just plain ridiculous! What happened to the days of fresh, full, and on plan. Now we have to do extra paperwork that not only wastes time and money (on all the paper and someone that gets paid to come and check it) but its mandatory! I used to come in and do orders and cut all day, now i have to rely on someone that has been barely trained making ten bucks an hour to do the at for me while i walk around doing paperwork and stand in front of a computer, and thats if I have the staff to do it. Thats ELMS for ya though. The bottom line is with all this streamlining...who is paying for it? Yes thats right THE CUSTOMER! My bosses don't give a damned how my cases look.....but as long as my paperwork is done everything is perfect. Ask yourselves whats wrong with this pic? How are we to "embrace" this concept when we can't fully service the customers properly?
One older guy in the Seafood side told me that this is Kroger's agenda to replace all the older people who are coming up on retirement with people who will come in and work their way....meaning; not having to THINK about anything..just do what the paperwork tells you to do.
Jet, I think there's an interesting split between the Mgt in store and those higher up. For instance where I work, often times we'll cut to fill the case, then throw numbers on the sheet. When they come back and see it almost always get a "I know what youre doing, and I appreciate it. Just throw some numbers on it before you go."
They know that WE know the needs of our case, and that we can fill it 2x as fast just writing a list and going. The only time that we're expected to fill it out as designed is when we get the occasional floater as we always seem to have issues with them overcutting. As long as me and the boss have reasonable numbers on it we're fine.
I think that shift is there in mgt too. Older guys are getting passed up constantly for jobs by these young college graduates that have never worked in a store EVER. It's painful to work for em, cause they have no clue what our job is all about. I've always been ok with getting into a "heated discussion" in the cooler with an older manager, but this new blood is painful. "elms budgets all the time you need. No OT" Give me a freakin break.
Truth be told. Elms does not fully give all the hours needed for everything that key retailing and winning with meat requires. Next scheduke that is written ask to see the hours breakdown. You maybe surprised as to what isnt included, I was.
i have worked for kroger going on four years now. at first i was the same way about key keyretaling and and elms and all the other paper work. but now that i have ran a few stores i see now it realy helps. i was at a shop doin 80K a week and then i got asked to run a store closer to my house doin round 45K a week and i took it. i had to change everything in this shop and the paperwork helped me out. i was trained but an "old timer" that has been cuttin meat for 40 years and i am glad he trained me because like some of you said they dont give time for traing much anymore but if your market manger aint lazy you find the time. my old boss did for me and i do for my guys. i found if you git in to a routine to balance the paper work and your shop it can run good. Kroger is listen'n about all the complants about paper work and are comming up with ways around it. some paper work that i learned to do when i started at kroger is already gone now and more of it is headed out the door. i love my job and workin for kroger is one of the best things i ever did and i was at publix before i went to kroger. if you run a good shop they take care of you atleast they do round here.
-- Edited by RIBEYE1877 on Monday 4th of June 2012 11:28:37 AM
Jim, " Henry's Law " reminds me of a time when I was a cutting room manager for Ingles, my market manager had got fired for not passing a drug test. I was ask to take the position but I didn't want it but told them I would run it till they got someone, we were doing 15,000 at the time he got fired. Me, a full time wraper and part time clean up boy took it to 19,000 in 5 weeks. it took them 7 weeks to find their new market manager, which was one that had been fired from the company about 5 years before for short Inv. but he was our " Meat Gods " friend. after he was there for 4 weeks and we were hitting 23,500 he call me into the back and told me we were doing to much business and needed to bring it back down to about 15,000, we were working to hard. Needless to say we had aPersonalityConflict behind this. the PersonalityConflict got so bad that I was sent to another store to run that cutting room after we got into it one day and I threatened to cut his worthless ass head off. He tried to get me fired but the store manager we had step in and told them I had been with the company for 4 years with no problems, they just needed to transfer me. I heard that it took him 5 weeks to bring it back down to 15,000. Four months later they fired him for washing pork off with bleach.
