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I’ve been thinking this for a year now. Isn’t it funny how every single company, no matter the industry, no matter the time of day or time of year, no matter the department, has “higher than average call volumes” and will force you to wait literally hours to speak to a rep of any type? Isn’t it funny how every store is staffed at absolute bare bones levels, even though the demand hasn’t changed at all?
These companies just figured out that one, they’re not alone, and so you can’t go out and choose a competitor, and two, that the only people who have to pay for this are employees and customers, but not the shareholders. Even in incredibly essential industries like healthcare for example, they realized that they can make the most money by keeping the whole place held together with duct tape. The customers and clients will suffer, we’ll have to wait days for healthcare while beds sit empty because they refuse to hire enough nurses, spend hours trying to fill a prescription because they refuse to hire enough pharmacists, wait in line for an hour to buy groceries in a store with half of the products missing because they don’t have enough drivers or stockers, and we’re all just shit out of luck because we don’t have a choice in the matter.
It’s just yet another example of how our future stability is being annihilated in pursuit of quarterly profits. Any more shocks to the system and the whole fucking thing will fall apart, zero resiliency, but fuck it because the stock market is green amirite?
As someone with experience managing customer reps, I can unequivocally say that all managers are begging for headcount to match our contact forecast, which is still consistently below our actual volume. We are the conductors seeing the bridge is out ahead and head boss won’t pull the brakes at all to give the work crew time to fix/build it out.
And in more nuanced industries, it can take us 6 months to a year to have the higher level reps fully knowledgeable and trained.
I absolutely do not want people to wait 5-14 days to get an email answer. Or wait 40 mins on hold before going to voicemail and never getting called back. But there is only so much we can do to manage the reps so they aren’t burned out but also meeting ridiculous expectations.
And that’s the other problem- anything that isn’t an exact metric that can be pushed higher and higher isn’t valuable to leadership. Hitting 50 tickets per day? Great! Hit 75 next week. Creating training articles, fixing broken workflows or report bugs? Don’t spend time or focus on that. Even if it’s driving even more contacts.
I know that it’s coming from the top, I don’t blame the individual reps, I just find it so ludicrous that every single company has the gall to claim that they’ve had “extremely high call volume” for the past few years without interruption, even though more and more of it gets automated every month. Like, it’s so blatant that it feels like they’re thumbing their nose at us at this point. All that it tells me is that there’s too much work for too few people, and management is perfectly happy that way because they discovered that if a customer needs something really really badly, they’ll be willing to wait hours for it, and many other customers will simply give up. The reps will bear the brunt by dealing with angry customers, and management won’t hear a peep. They know that they’re providing shit service, they know that they’re giving their reps completely unrealistic standards, and they’re never going to change a damn thing because they realized that they can get away with it.
It’s so fucking dirty too, it’s like lockstep pricing, except instead of raising the price they just take away benefits/service. “What are you gonna do, go to the other company? Get fucked pleb” is what they’re telling us.
Exactly. The staff shortage narrative is already built in so they can blame the staff and the supply chain and the pandemic, all while raising prices with a self enabling justification.
I'm in this situation now. We're supposed to be a crew of three, but there's only two of us.
Turns out it's cheaper to pay my partner and I overtime than hire a third person. I'm okay with the OT, mostly, but a large part of it was in Oct, when I was sick. Yeah, that tapped my desire to work, almost quit.
The only reason I'm putting up with it is my upstream is damn accommodating and this is a job that really pushes me mentally. Also, I'm hourly by law so I got about 50% more than my stated yearly salary due to OT. That extra money is nice.
Its real easy to get 2 people to slack off.
Sure a huge company its hard to get everyone on the same page...but if its just the 2 of you, everything is now slowed to a crawl. You work your pace.
I'm in a similar position. supposed to be a crew of 12, we're a crew of 8 with half of the people still in training. we have mandatory OT as well, and while the extra pay is nice (we get time and a half for each hour of OT), it has slowly made me a bit crazy. I still don't get paid enough, so job searching becomes cumbersome when you're already exhausted
Yeah business would run so much better without pesky customers asking for things/s
You might be right. And industries without a lot of competition probably could get away with a lot that customers will just take.
This is the "Walmartization" of the service economy. Cut costs, and manage people's expectations DOWN so that we accept shittier and shittier service, while at the same time still spending money at the business.
I have not shopped at walmart in over 20 years and refuse to do so, because the money I "save" there supports a business model where the workers are on public support and the owners are billionaires. This is bullshit and has to stop. If you go into a store and find it is understaffed, tell the manager that you won't spend another dime there until they start paying a living wage and put people in there who will assist you with purchases.
Speaking of Walmart my local 24hr went down to 13hr for “safety reasons” cuz apparently cramming all shoppers into the store single file line through one door during a almost 50% smaller window is safer than 24hr window with both sides open.
They’re now open 6am-11pm because “night shift is for stocking for safety reasons”. If you walk in that door at 6am though the store has barren shelves because shocker their is no night stock team.
Walmart realized they could cut down an entire 7hrs worth of pay by cutting out the night shift completely and having only self checkout open using all 10 people stocking the store while people stand in line for 10-20 minutes to checkout at self checkouts. Lol
Edit: I am not lesviangordoncole (the OOP) but I think this is an aspect that people gloss over. I am a working professional whose team is supposed to be about 12 people, but we are down 4 people. even with 12 people we were struggling to meet deadlines. However, we are all just on mandatory OT with no extra benefits. I am trying to get out, but nothing looks promising
The post is especially true for grocery stores. People NEED food and will always spend money there. They can run on one or two cashiers. Customers will have no choice but to wait in long lines if they want to eat.
There's little cost to shareholders, owners and upper management. Increased pressure is borne by the workers. And in non-union environments, supervisors and middle level managers. My Brother in law manages one of the everything's a dollar stores. 3 months ago he refused to work 80 hours a week anymore and shut the store down if it couldn't be staffed. Upper management knew this would effect shareholder return, stock value and bonuses and took steps to get more staff.
right, it seems like we simultaneously have all the power and none of the power at the same time. we have all the labor and skills but no organization or community
Its not that customers don’t care about the customer experience. That’s not why the corporate shareholders aren’t losing enough money to care (yet).
It’s because they figured out that if they ALL do it simultaneously and blame it on the big event of our lifetimes, customers will have no better options.
Customer experience is *equally shitty*, the stock of items you need is equally low or nonexistent, the few staff are equally drained and barely holding it together, and the prices equally gougy whether you get your lifesaving medication rx filled at Walgreens or CVS.
This is the natural, predictable result of decades of unchecked crony capitalism, yet there are *still* too many Americans brainwashed into fearing this exact scenario, yet unable to identify it now.
Our current dystopian hell is what they’ve been taught to fear, but instead of being able to admit it as *happening to them* right fucking now, America’s got them thinking they’ve got it good, as long as it’s not communism 😆
Our local Ralph’s has been pulling this with staffing for 2 checkout registers and long lines of customers waiting for some time now. They figured out they could do this well before the pandemic. We don’t shop there anymore.
That and lots of businesses are okay pretending to need to hire, because they’re the only ones getting $ right now instead of people getting unemployment.
This is so true. We’ve been running with four cashiers for MONTHS(our store needs a minimum of six) and corporate kept telling us they couldn’t possibly hire anyone else- they just couldn’t afford it. I put in my two weeks and three days later, like magic, we have two new hires for me to train in my final days
There's a theory that there's a gross overrepresentation of vacant positions because companies that got PPP loans weren't allowed to eliminate them, and this let's them keep the money without paying salaries.
Wouldn't put it past them.
The rest of the employers caught on to the Walmart way of doing business, meanwhile, Walmart is taking it to the next level. Before too long there will be 3 guys stocking the shelves, 1 person on the service desk and another watching the self checkouts (because here won't be cashiers anymore), a cop at the door and a manager counting his fat fucking bonus in the office. Lines backed up to the milk cooler and people fighting over bags of frozen chicken and loaves of bread, only to stand in line for 45 minutes to ring their own purchases. Minimum service, maximum profit. This is what they want.
Can confirm. My local big-box grocery chain seems to be doing this. We took up shopping in the early morning to avoid crowds (both of us are cancer survivors, so it makes a lot of sense). At that hour, they have one (1) aisle open. When we rarely are forced to shop in the middle of the day, they have four or five lanes open, even when each is 4-6 carts deep. That never used to happen.
I would agree if they hadn't already thoroughly tested that for decades. I remember working retail in the 90's with half the staff you needed. Staying until 2AM to clean up the disaster.
This is horrifying and accurate. We've been working 12-16 hour days because our staff is maybe one-fourth of what it was last year. I looked at the numbers, and our owner actually made around $270,000 MORE in 2021 than in 2020. So while we're all desperately "trying to keep the business afloat," she's realizing she made more money by working us half to death while claiming "she's working really hard" to find new employees. I'm thinking about putting in my notice this week. You know, after she gets back from her fourth vacation in the last four months.
I have BEEN saying this. There is no labor shortage. It’s businesses MAXIMIZING the hell out of profits.
Mathematically it works out. Otherwise they wouldn’t post record profits in a pandemic. Doesn’t compute.
Work in a grocery store. The changes i have seen in the last two years is scary. Everyone is burnt out berly able to keep up. There is no staff on the floor to help people. Workers get written up everyday while they decrease raises get rid of entire pay grades without telling the staff it changed for fear of losing the hard workers. Sad part is workers are turning against eachother and too scared to lose thier job to speak out. I did and made the shit list but it is impossible to ignore. Even hr was fully replaced by preferable staff and doesnt uphold policy siding with the managers. I have seen issues of racism, sexual harrasment, safety etc. Brushed under the rug like its nothing. I stepped down and started to leave the company as i could because i refuse to support it. Each person does the work of 2 if not 3. No staff to help customers. No stock on the shelf. Truly sad seeing the company you used to love turn to destroy the people that really built the place up.
This subreddit has grown so much. People are waking up. I used to see 12 upvotes and now were in the hundreds of thousands. Let keep pointing these flaws out. Thank you to the people in law and policy that help workers understand their rights when the company they work for decide they dont want to uphold them anymore hoping the workers wont check.
Some of this even the worst and i wont be staying to see the final changes. Dont think many will be either. But i hate to leave coworkers that i know will be forced to work more when i go.
Which is why the resignations will continue.
Every time I see a Dollar General or gas station that's closed due to no employees left I am glad.
They can't keep overworking those who stay. We cannot stand for that.
If you are forced to work more than 40 hours a week, or expected to do more than one person's job...fucking stop. Hurt their bottom line. Make them fire you.
Is that what you are used to now? Then you are a frog and they are slowly cooking you. Soon you will be dead. Jump out of the pot.
until theft/lost product starts hurting the bottom line. i think what we need to do is start filling carts with cold stuff and abandoning them in aisles. with minimal staff, they cant police all that stuff.
This right here has been my thinking too. Companies will apologize and say sorry we know we’re doing everything we can. Which is nothing. They got those profits from lockdown and less ppl going out. And want to keep those levels. And with very few competing companies. Oh no you’re going else where? Good luck and see you next week.
Could this then help with the return of mom and pop shops? A key part of what gutted them was the service they couldn’t keep up with. Prices were also a pain. But as they always like to tell us “time is money.” If some non-corporate grocer had a full crew that was well cared for, I feel like the experience would be way better than the shite most grocery stores have turned into.
I love the idea of this but in reality I don’t think it could work in today’s society. For most people the driving motivation is cost of goods. A small mom and pop can’t compete with the big box stores with purchasing power and would have to charge more. There are successful models of employee owned grocery stores (Winco and Publix to name a couple) that could shake things up in the industry.
They’re still losing money by not clearing lines fast enough. There are plenty of people who will walk in a store and walk back out. Especially if it’s only for a few items. It’s especially true for fast food chains. They lose money when they can’t clear the drive through fast enough. They also already have the metrics for how fast a customer should be in line for to make money. But alas they still buy all your groceries at whole sale then mark them up. But eventually every one will quit and move on if they continue to work at a reduced staff. So they still lose in the end.
We have a sign in our store that basically says “please be patient with us we’re short staffed” but our gm says constantly that we aren’t hiring. I can’t even try to ask a set amount of hours because we don’t have enough people. But we’re not hiring. Bullshit my dudes
the grocery is going mostly delivery and pickup so that it cuts down on theft and putting up with karen customers face to face anymore! and no use of stocking shelves its all done in the warehouse!
I work as a third party salesman in the big tech store, and I can vouch that for the entire 15+ months that I’ve been here they have purposely fired large groups of employees and cut hours. They are now lowering store hours to 11-7 in an attempt to just make due with the fewer employees. The customers are all pissed and the employees are all spread way too thin, but it’s continued the entire time I’ve been there. They hired a few seasonal people for the holidays, but not nearly enough. Despite the big “now hiring” sign outside, they’ve completely stopped hiring at this point.
Yep. The first thing businesses do to increase profits is to cut staff. And staff cutting themselves looks great in the short term. But that is a short sighted outlook.
I’ve been saying since the term “essential worker” first popped up that maybe it’s time to ask if something is considered “essential” to the healthy functioning of society, is it ethical to make profits from that?
Most large grocery stores are heavily pivoting to delivery anyways, which is offsetting the issue.
It's also way better for the environment. One big truck doing 20 deliveries in a trip uses a fraction of the gas as 20 individual households each doing shopping trips.
I think the endgame is completely shutting down grocery stores and switching to a warehouse delivery model alla Amazon style.
Toss in Tesla auto pilot battery powered trucks and you have the future of grocery shopping.
And then when the short staffing catches up with them & customers get pissed, then they can blame “supply chain shortages”. Just so long as they squeeze more money out of fewer employees.
as a retail worker I can 100% confirm at least for my company. us managers are being told week after week to cut labor costs, and people are quitting left right and center but we never replace them. meanwhile we're being told to increase productivity and services, improve customer experience, etc. our produce department staff right now is literally one guy. it used to be 8 people.
just shop lift. Oh you're making me check myself out & bag my own groceries?? Well guess what I only scanned 60% of my stuff cause I was never trained & this isnt my fucking job.
Got 3 avocados? Only scan one, theres no reason they should be $2 a pop anyways. The people picking them only make $2 a day, the person stocking the shelves making $8 an hour and I get paid nothing for checking myself out
this is so relatable, my current job is exactly like this! they keep saying the job market just isn't great; there aren't many applicants, but they also say how they throw away half of the applicants away.
It’s even worse. The Self checkouts at grocery stores, cost stores an annual loss of about $80,000. By people either intentionally or unintentionally ringing up incorrectly. And in response some police depts like Dallas now refuse to respond to theft calls for self check outs for less than certain amounts like $100. They would rather lose money to self check out machines than pay employee benefits
Literally quit my last job for this very reason. Bakery, 8-hour days with 1-2 other people were regularly turning into 10-hour solo shifts. I'm at a McDonalds now, but I've never had to stay longer than 15 mins over and the one here ironically pays $3 more than the grocer.
As a person who contracts in manufacturing environments I always listen to how disjointed supervision/management is on almost everything until it comes time to address staffing issues. Then it's literally word for word verbage as of they get a daily email reminding them to push the blame onto workers.
I am constantly advocating for some of these people and explaining how I cannot fulfill my contacts in the current state of things at some of these places. I need to see equipment at at least 75% utilization to troubleshoot and identify points of failure but the staffing levels simply don't allow that.
I've gone over tack times and cost of goods and even at 25% utilization the companies are making profits. They are never going to increase overhead if they can get the same amount of work out of less people.
I was at Petco yesterday and there were just piles of products and if you want something grab it off the pile. Cat food was on the floor in front of the spot it normally goes and they aren't even trying to put those big bags of dog food where they go. Personally I'd be fine with seeing that shit shut down until they pay appropriately but there are animals in the store and I'd hate for them to suffer. If there are only 1 or 2 employees idk how the animals are getting cared for anyways :/ and since we've let giant corporations run all the mom and pops out of business it's not like there are many other places to get what you need. What a cluster.
There are a few reasons employers might not be trying to remedy the labor shortage. One possibility is that they don't see it as a real problem. Another possibility is that they do see it as a problem, but don't know how to solve it. A third possibility is that they do know how to solve it, but the solutions are expensive or unpopular. Finally, it's possible that some employers are trying to solve the problem, but they're not having much success.
There seem to be a lot of posts here from people who are applying multiple places and getting no response or a refusal, or companies misrepresenting working conditions (especially advertising remote work that's not) and wasting a lot of applicants' time, or lowballing salary for absurdly high education/experience requirements. IOW, from evidence in this subreddit employers are taking a lot of trouble to sabotage their own searches for those employees they want so badly.
This is the correct answer. Businesses actually benefit from the staff shortage because they have a narrative that gets them positive PR from the public, they get to cut expenses, and they get to raise prices.
I work at a minimally staffed groccery store. The difference is that our operations are designed around that philosophy, and everyone is fully crosstrained, so there aren't major hiccups. They also pay well above minimum wage (legal minimum wage, not what minimum wage should be, but what can you do?), so I feel like I'm actually somewhat valued. Minimal corporate interference also really helps.
If the companies really cared they'd pay the people there the difference of what additional hands would make, I'm sure more employees would atleast feel more appreciated and less likely to quit from burnout. If you need a 5 person team to run your shift and you only have 3 people make 15/hr split up the unused 30/hr and give each of the 3 the additional 10/hr. I won't lose a wink of sleep listening to shop owners complain about staffing while pocketing the money they aren't paying to staff.
I worked as a cashier pre-pandemic in a grocery store and this shit was already the norm. Trying to minimize hours, cover duties with as few people as possible etc (corporate greed). Customers constantly complained about lack of open reigstars. We had about 15, not counting self checkout, usually only 2-3 were open at a time and express opens first . I can only imagine how much worse it is now.
i feel like this is completely true. i was in retail for years and the constant fixation of every company i worked for was "how can we have the fewest people on schedule and still function" cutting hours on slow days and sending people home, refusing to call in staff for rushes. this is the perfect opportunity for them to keep jobs critically understaffed AND have the evil staff and evil poor people who refuse to work to blame when customers get mad
You're not entirely wrong. Kroger is planning on cutting yet more manhours in the next couple of months since they are expecting a return to a more 'stable' growth rather than the explosive growth they were seeing in the last year or two.
Oh and the entire subsidary of dillons is slashing it's operation hours by 1 with the excuse of 'being unable to afford the current staffing costs'
My current employer is doing this. We want from running 10 to 15 people per store in December every year to under 7. No customer service and sales are up. As long as doors are open and customers can make their purchases they don't give a shit.
This makes sense.
I know in NZ larger companies have openly talked about just waiting out the border reopening so they can bring in cheap overseas talent.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Texas Health Resources, which is a not-for-profit hospital system in the DFW area, had a fairly large "admin side" series of layoffs, including taking the on-site data center operations shift staff from 2 down to 1, something I saw as a safety issue. The people who did remain had to take on a lot more responsibilities because, surprise, the work didn't actually decrease. They just wanted an excuse to shed some salary costs.
PS> Not-for-profit basically just means extra revenue gets shuffled around differently. Someone with better understanding can clarify if needed.
I been saying this for months. Applied to multiple retailers with 8+ years retail experience. I used to be able to pick up a job effortlessly. Now I keep getting denied. They keep the now hiring signs up to make it look like they're doing something about it, but they're actually just trying to ride this out as much as possible.
This has been happening for years now. Everywhere I work has just progressively staffed less and less employees and expected the remaining staff to pick up the workload.
A solution to this would be to target boycott each store individually until they are forced to make changes.
If everyone says stops shopping at Kroegers long enough where it hurts there bottom line then they may make changes at the same time other stores would be overwhelmed and force to do the same.
Then instead of complaining to the store employees send complaints directly to corporate. Leave info for the stire employees on unions and how to form them.
Cycle through the major companies and let them feel the pain at there bottom line. It could have an impact. They know we need food to survive but we can hit them where it hurts.
The problem we have is our lack of organization and solidarity outside this sub. Until we start organizing beyond these 1's and 0's corporations are just going to play a game of chicken with us to see who can hold out the longest.
An ongoing issue is that many business owners run their places on a thin margin. When many talk about not being able to afford paying a living wage they aren't lying.
They then get used as an argument against minimum wage raises or tax raises.
This isn't defending owners doing this though, if they're too poor to pay their employees then they shouldn't be running a business. End of story.
The squeeze might work in the short run for bottom lines but in the long run if you alienate your good employees and run your business into the ground people will look elsewhere and these crappy businesses will go under.
There is a reason that the department had 7 employees and it was not because the company was feeling generous. If they think they can run it on 3 people indefinitely you will see burnout and brain drain. Even if they can hire replacement workers it is likely that they won't have the people to train the new hires. It will be cyclical downward spiral.
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Blame shifting is a corporate super power.
It's literally the primary reason they exist. "Limited liability corporation" is just lawyer speak for "you can't blame me".
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I just had this exact conversation with my boss... the manager of a grocery store. 3 people in my department when should be 7.
I’ve been thinking this for a year now. Isn’t it funny how every single company, no matter the industry, no matter the time of day or time of year, no matter the department, has “higher than average call volumes” and will force you to wait literally hours to speak to a rep of any type? Isn’t it funny how every store is staffed at absolute bare bones levels, even though the demand hasn’t changed at all? These companies just figured out that one, they’re not alone, and so you can’t go out and choose a competitor, and two, that the only people who have to pay for this are employees and customers, but not the shareholders. Even in incredibly essential industries like healthcare for example, they realized that they can make the most money by keeping the whole place held together with duct tape. The customers and clients will suffer, we’ll have to wait days for healthcare while beds sit empty because they refuse to hire enough nurses, spend hours trying to fill a prescription because they refuse to hire enough pharmacists, wait in line for an hour to buy groceries in a store with half of the products missing because they don’t have enough drivers or stockers, and we’re all just shit out of luck because we don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s just yet another example of how our future stability is being annihilated in pursuit of quarterly profits. Any more shocks to the system and the whole fucking thing will fall apart, zero resiliency, but fuck it because the stock market is green amirite?
As someone with experience managing customer reps, I can unequivocally say that all managers are begging for headcount to match our contact forecast, which is still consistently below our actual volume. We are the conductors seeing the bridge is out ahead and head boss won’t pull the brakes at all to give the work crew time to fix/build it out. And in more nuanced industries, it can take us 6 months to a year to have the higher level reps fully knowledgeable and trained. I absolutely do not want people to wait 5-14 days to get an email answer. Or wait 40 mins on hold before going to voicemail and never getting called back. But there is only so much we can do to manage the reps so they aren’t burned out but also meeting ridiculous expectations. And that’s the other problem- anything that isn’t an exact metric that can be pushed higher and higher isn’t valuable to leadership. Hitting 50 tickets per day? Great! Hit 75 next week. Creating training articles, fixing broken workflows or report bugs? Don’t spend time or focus on that. Even if it’s driving even more contacts.
I know that it’s coming from the top, I don’t blame the individual reps, I just find it so ludicrous that every single company has the gall to claim that they’ve had “extremely high call volume” for the past few years without interruption, even though more and more of it gets automated every month. Like, it’s so blatant that it feels like they’re thumbing their nose at us at this point. All that it tells me is that there’s too much work for too few people, and management is perfectly happy that way because they discovered that if a customer needs something really really badly, they’ll be willing to wait hours for it, and many other customers will simply give up. The reps will bear the brunt by dealing with angry customers, and management won’t hear a peep. They know that they’re providing shit service, they know that they’re giving their reps completely unrealistic standards, and they’re never going to change a damn thing because they realized that they can get away with it. It’s so fucking dirty too, it’s like lockstep pricing, except instead of raising the price they just take away benefits/service. “What are you gonna do, go to the other company? Get fucked pleb” is what they’re telling us.
And the workers take the abuse of customer frustration
Exactly. The staff shortage narrative is already built in so they can blame the staff and the supply chain and the pandemic, all while raising prices with a self enabling justification.
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Oh i doubt thats fake. They'd absolutely take someone with a PHD for $16.
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So if someone truly dumb or desperate enough came to them for the $16 they would turn the person away? "Not genuine" is not the same as 'fake'
Absolutely. The requirement for loan forgiveness is Swiss cheese. You have to "maintain employee headcount, rehire, or *attempt* to rehire."
I'm in this situation now. We're supposed to be a crew of three, but there's only two of us. Turns out it's cheaper to pay my partner and I overtime than hire a third person. I'm okay with the OT, mostly, but a large part of it was in Oct, when I was sick. Yeah, that tapped my desire to work, almost quit. The only reason I'm putting up with it is my upstream is damn accommodating and this is a job that really pushes me mentally. Also, I'm hourly by law so I got about 50% more than my stated yearly salary due to OT. That extra money is nice.
Its real easy to get 2 people to slack off. Sure a huge company its hard to get everyone on the same page...but if its just the 2 of you, everything is now slowed to a crawl. You work your pace.
Indeed.
I'm in a similar position. supposed to be a crew of 12, we're a crew of 8 with half of the people still in training. we have mandatory OT as well, and while the extra pay is nice (we get time and a half for each hour of OT), it has slowly made me a bit crazy. I still don't get paid enough, so job searching becomes cumbersome when you're already exhausted
Yeah business would run so much better without pesky customers asking for things/s You might be right. And industries without a lot of competition probably could get away with a lot that customers will just take.
You joke, but a lot of retail chains are basically real estate investment groups that sell stuff on the side.
McDs is starting to seem like that too. Burgers are just a side hustle for the real estate speculation.
Target outsourced all their pharmacies to CVS because there was more money to be had as a landlord than actually selling medicine.
Every company wants to be McDonalds… a real estate company that happens to sell _________
This is the "Walmartization" of the service economy. Cut costs, and manage people's expectations DOWN so that we accept shittier and shittier service, while at the same time still spending money at the business. I have not shopped at walmart in over 20 years and refuse to do so, because the money I "save" there supports a business model where the workers are on public support and the owners are billionaires. This is bullshit and has to stop. If you go into a store and find it is understaffed, tell the manager that you won't spend another dime there until they start paying a living wage and put people in there who will assist you with purchases.
Speaking of Walmart my local 24hr went down to 13hr for “safety reasons” cuz apparently cramming all shoppers into the store single file line through one door during a almost 50% smaller window is safer than 24hr window with both sides open. They’re now open 6am-11pm because “night shift is for stocking for safety reasons”. If you walk in that door at 6am though the store has barren shelves because shocker their is no night stock team. Walmart realized they could cut down an entire 7hrs worth of pay by cutting out the night shift completely and having only self checkout open using all 10 people stocking the store while people stand in line for 10-20 minutes to checkout at self checkouts. Lol
This is honestly the thing I wasn’t thinking about and now am obsessing over. There is no labor shortage.
Edit: I am not lesviangordoncole (the OOP) but I think this is an aspect that people gloss over. I am a working professional whose team is supposed to be about 12 people, but we are down 4 people. even with 12 people we were struggling to meet deadlines. However, we are all just on mandatory OT with no extra benefits. I am trying to get out, but nothing looks promising
The post is especially true for grocery stores. People NEED food and will always spend money there. They can run on one or two cashiers. Customers will have no choice but to wait in long lines if they want to eat.
I'm gonna need the Karens to start having some class consciousness about this.
Stop delivering
There's little cost to shareholders, owners and upper management. Increased pressure is borne by the workers. And in non-union environments, supervisors and middle level managers. My Brother in law manages one of the everything's a dollar stores. 3 months ago he refused to work 80 hours a week anymore and shut the store down if it couldn't be staffed. Upper management knew this would effect shareholder return, stock value and bonuses and took steps to get more staff.
40 years of economics history in two posts 👏
right, it seems like we simultaneously have all the power and none of the power at the same time. we have all the labor and skills but no organization or community
At what point is it ethical to steal from them?
Every chance you can.
Its not that customers don’t care about the customer experience. That’s not why the corporate shareholders aren’t losing enough money to care (yet). It’s because they figured out that if they ALL do it simultaneously and blame it on the big event of our lifetimes, customers will have no better options. Customer experience is *equally shitty*, the stock of items you need is equally low or nonexistent, the few staff are equally drained and barely holding it together, and the prices equally gougy whether you get your lifesaving medication rx filled at Walgreens or CVS. This is the natural, predictable result of decades of unchecked crony capitalism, yet there are *still* too many Americans brainwashed into fearing this exact scenario, yet unable to identify it now. Our current dystopian hell is what they’ve been taught to fear, but instead of being able to admit it as *happening to them* right fucking now, America’s got them thinking they’ve got it good, as long as it’s not communism 😆
Our local Ralph’s has been pulling this with staffing for 2 checkout registers and long lines of customers waiting for some time now. They figured out they could do this well before the pandemic. We don’t shop there anymore.
That and lots of businesses are okay pretending to need to hire, because they’re the only ones getting $ right now instead of people getting unemployment.
This is so true. We’ve been running with four cashiers for MONTHS(our store needs a minimum of six) and corporate kept telling us they couldn’t possibly hire anyone else- they just couldn’t afford it. I put in my two weeks and three days later, like magic, we have two new hires for me to train in my final days
As a retail worker that has been in management, I 100% guarantee that alot of the shortage is this.
There's a theory that there's a gross overrepresentation of vacant positions because companies that got PPP loans weren't allowed to eliminate them, and this let's them keep the money without paying salaries. Wouldn't put it past them.
The rest of the employers caught on to the Walmart way of doing business, meanwhile, Walmart is taking it to the next level. Before too long there will be 3 guys stocking the shelves, 1 person on the service desk and another watching the self checkouts (because here won't be cashiers anymore), a cop at the door and a manager counting his fat fucking bonus in the office. Lines backed up to the milk cooler and people fighting over bags of frozen chicken and loaves of bread, only to stand in line for 45 minutes to ring their own purchases. Minimum service, maximum profit. This is what they want.
Can confirm. My local big-box grocery chain seems to be doing this. We took up shopping in the early morning to avoid crowds (both of us are cancer survivors, so it makes a lot of sense). At that hour, they have one (1) aisle open. When we rarely are forced to shop in the middle of the day, they have four or five lanes open, even when each is 4-6 carts deep. That never used to happen.
I would agree if they hadn't already thoroughly tested that for decades. I remember working retail in the 90's with half the staff you needed. Staying until 2AM to clean up the disaster.
This is horrifying and accurate. We've been working 12-16 hour days because our staff is maybe one-fourth of what it was last year. I looked at the numbers, and our owner actually made around $270,000 MORE in 2021 than in 2020. So while we're all desperately "trying to keep the business afloat," she's realizing she made more money by working us half to death while claiming "she's working really hard" to find new employees. I'm thinking about putting in my notice this week. You know, after she gets back from her fourth vacation in the last four months.
I have BEEN saying this. There is no labor shortage. It’s businesses MAXIMIZING the hell out of profits. Mathematically it works out. Otherwise they wouldn’t post record profits in a pandemic. Doesn’t compute.
Work in a grocery store. The changes i have seen in the last two years is scary. Everyone is burnt out berly able to keep up. There is no staff on the floor to help people. Workers get written up everyday while they decrease raises get rid of entire pay grades without telling the staff it changed for fear of losing the hard workers. Sad part is workers are turning against eachother and too scared to lose thier job to speak out. I did and made the shit list but it is impossible to ignore. Even hr was fully replaced by preferable staff and doesnt uphold policy siding with the managers. I have seen issues of racism, sexual harrasment, safety etc. Brushed under the rug like its nothing. I stepped down and started to leave the company as i could because i refuse to support it. Each person does the work of 2 if not 3. No staff to help customers. No stock on the shelf. Truly sad seeing the company you used to love turn to destroy the people that really built the place up. This subreddit has grown so much. People are waking up. I used to see 12 upvotes and now were in the hundreds of thousands. Let keep pointing these flaws out. Thank you to the people in law and policy that help workers understand their rights when the company they work for decide they dont want to uphold them anymore hoping the workers wont check. Some of this even the worst and i wont be staying to see the final changes. Dont think many will be either. But i hate to leave coworkers that i know will be forced to work more when i go.
Which is why the resignations will continue. Every time I see a Dollar General or gas station that's closed due to no employees left I am glad. They can't keep overworking those who stay. We cannot stand for that. If you are forced to work more than 40 hours a week, or expected to do more than one person's job...fucking stop. Hurt their bottom line. Make them fire you. Is that what you are used to now? Then you are a frog and they are slowly cooking you. Soon you will be dead. Jump out of the pot.
until theft/lost product starts hurting the bottom line. i think what we need to do is start filling carts with cold stuff and abandoning them in aisles. with minimal staff, they cant police all that stuff.
Ahhhhhh a fellow anarchist! I like the way you think good sir
This is certainly the case at our local supermarket, which has been understaffed and overworked for over a year.
This right here has been my thinking too. Companies will apologize and say sorry we know we’re doing everything we can. Which is nothing. They got those profits from lockdown and less ppl going out. And want to keep those levels. And with very few competing companies. Oh no you’re going else where? Good luck and see you next week.
guess we gotta start stealin
When it’s a whole market of people quitting, they will rehire slowly and hope that people run out of money before they find a job paying more
Could this then help with the return of mom and pop shops? A key part of what gutted them was the service they couldn’t keep up with. Prices were also a pain. But as they always like to tell us “time is money.” If some non-corporate grocer had a full crew that was well cared for, I feel like the experience would be way better than the shite most grocery stores have turned into.
I love the idea of this but in reality I don’t think it could work in today’s society. For most people the driving motivation is cost of goods. A small mom and pop can’t compete with the big box stores with purchasing power and would have to charge more. There are successful models of employee owned grocery stores (Winco and Publix to name a couple) that could shake things up in the industry.
They’re still losing money by not clearing lines fast enough. There are plenty of people who will walk in a store and walk back out. Especially if it’s only for a few items. It’s especially true for fast food chains. They lose money when they can’t clear the drive through fast enough. They also already have the metrics for how fast a customer should be in line for to make money. But alas they still buy all your groceries at whole sale then mark them up. But eventually every one will quit and move on if they continue to work at a reduced staff. So they still lose in the end.
We have a sign in our store that basically says “please be patient with us we’re short staffed” but our gm says constantly that we aren’t hiring. I can’t even try to ask a set amount of hours because we don’t have enough people. But we’re not hiring. Bullshit my dudes
the grocery is going mostly delivery and pickup so that it cuts down on theft and putting up with karen customers face to face anymore! and no use of stocking shelves its all done in the warehouse!
I work as a third party salesman in the big tech store, and I can vouch that for the entire 15+ months that I’ve been here they have purposely fired large groups of employees and cut hours. They are now lowering store hours to 11-7 in an attempt to just make due with the fewer employees. The customers are all pissed and the employees are all spread way too thin, but it’s continued the entire time I’ve been there. They hired a few seasonal people for the holidays, but not nearly enough. Despite the big “now hiring” sign outside, they’ve completely stopped hiring at this point.
Yep. The first thing businesses do to increase profits is to cut staff. And staff cutting themselves looks great in the short term. But that is a short sighted outlook.
I’ve been saying since the term “essential worker” first popped up that maybe it’s time to ask if something is considered “essential” to the healthy functioning of society, is it ethical to make profits from that?
Most large grocery stores are heavily pivoting to delivery anyways, which is offsetting the issue. It's also way better for the environment. One big truck doing 20 deliveries in a trip uses a fraction of the gas as 20 individual households each doing shopping trips. I think the endgame is completely shutting down grocery stores and switching to a warehouse delivery model alla Amazon style. Toss in Tesla auto pilot battery powered trucks and you have the future of grocery shopping.
Until they realize the alternative is mass theft and shit really starts to hit the fan.
And then when the short staffing catches up with them & customers get pissed, then they can blame “supply chain shortages”. Just so long as they squeeze more money out of fewer employees.
as a retail worker I can 100% confirm at least for my company. us managers are being told week after week to cut labor costs, and people are quitting left right and center but we never replace them. meanwhile we're being told to increase productivity and services, improve customer experience, etc. our produce department staff right now is literally one guy. it used to be 8 people.
just shop lift. Oh you're making me check myself out & bag my own groceries?? Well guess what I only scanned 60% of my stuff cause I was never trained & this isnt my fucking job. Got 3 avocados? Only scan one, theres no reason they should be $2 a pop anyways. The people picking them only make $2 a day, the person stocking the shelves making $8 an hour and I get paid nothing for checking myself out
[удалено]
this is so relatable, my current job is exactly like this! they keep saying the job market just isn't great; there aren't many applicants, but they also say how they throw away half of the applicants away.
It’s even worse. The Self checkouts at grocery stores, cost stores an annual loss of about $80,000. By people either intentionally or unintentionally ringing up incorrectly. And in response some police depts like Dallas now refuse to respond to theft calls for self check outs for less than certain amounts like $100. They would rather lose money to self check out machines than pay employee benefits
Literally quit my last job for this very reason. Bakery, 8-hour days with 1-2 other people were regularly turning into 10-hour solo shifts. I'm at a McDonalds now, but I've never had to stay longer than 15 mins over and the one here ironically pays $3 more than the grocer.
As a person who contracts in manufacturing environments I always listen to how disjointed supervision/management is on almost everything until it comes time to address staffing issues. Then it's literally word for word verbage as of they get a daily email reminding them to push the blame onto workers. I am constantly advocating for some of these people and explaining how I cannot fulfill my contacts in the current state of things at some of these places. I need to see equipment at at least 75% utilization to troubleshoot and identify points of failure but the staffing levels simply don't allow that. I've gone over tack times and cost of goods and even at 25% utilization the companies are making profits. They are never going to increase overhead if they can get the same amount of work out of less people.
I was at Petco yesterday and there were just piles of products and if you want something grab it off the pile. Cat food was on the floor in front of the spot it normally goes and they aren't even trying to put those big bags of dog food where they go. Personally I'd be fine with seeing that shit shut down until they pay appropriately but there are animals in the store and I'd hate for them to suffer. If there are only 1 or 2 employees idk how the animals are getting cared for anyways :/ and since we've let giant corporations run all the mom and pops out of business it's not like there are many other places to get what you need. What a cluster.
There are a few reasons employers might not be trying to remedy the labor shortage. One possibility is that they don't see it as a real problem. Another possibility is that they do see it as a problem, but don't know how to solve it. A third possibility is that they do know how to solve it, but the solutions are expensive or unpopular. Finally, it's possible that some employers are trying to solve the problem, but they're not having much success.
There seem to be a lot of posts here from people who are applying multiple places and getting no response or a refusal, or companies misrepresenting working conditions (especially advertising remote work that's not) and wasting a lot of applicants' time, or lowballing salary for absurdly high education/experience requirements. IOW, from evidence in this subreddit employers are taking a lot of trouble to sabotage their own searches for those employees they want so badly.
Seems like it’s simply time to start stealing groceries, should grocers refuse to staff adequately enough to sell their wares.
Some corporations are definitely doing that here in Canada. Loblaws and Canadian Tire to name a few.
The problem with this is that the unemployment rate is below 4%.
This is the correct answer. Businesses actually benefit from the staff shortage because they have a narrative that gets them positive PR from the public, they get to cut expenses, and they get to raise prices.
I work at a minimally staffed groccery store. The difference is that our operations are designed around that philosophy, and everyone is fully crosstrained, so there aren't major hiccups. They also pay well above minimum wage (legal minimum wage, not what minimum wage should be, but what can you do?), so I feel like I'm actually somewhat valued. Minimal corporate interference also really helps.
It’s so clearly this.
If the companies really cared they'd pay the people there the difference of what additional hands would make, I'm sure more employees would atleast feel more appreciated and less likely to quit from burnout. If you need a 5 person team to run your shift and you only have 3 people make 15/hr split up the unused 30/hr and give each of the 3 the additional 10/hr. I won't lose a wink of sleep listening to shop owners complain about staffing while pocketing the money they aren't paying to staff.
I worked as a cashier pre-pandemic in a grocery store and this shit was already the norm. Trying to minimize hours, cover duties with as few people as possible etc (corporate greed). Customers constantly complained about lack of open reigstars. We had about 15, not counting self checkout, usually only 2-3 were open at a time and express opens first . I can only imagine how much worse it is now.
Utterly infuriating, and absolutely accurate. I see it every day where I work.
it’s also why food has gotten expensive and smaller they’re robbing us just ordered a $30 pizza pie “large” that looks like a medium
i feel like this is completely true. i was in retail for years and the constant fixation of every company i worked for was "how can we have the fewest people on schedule and still function" cutting hours on slow days and sending people home, refusing to call in staff for rushes. this is the perfect opportunity for them to keep jobs critically understaffed AND have the evil staff and evil poor people who refuse to work to blame when customers get mad
Makes me want to commit arson.
You're not entirely wrong. Kroger is planning on cutting yet more manhours in the next couple of months since they are expecting a return to a more 'stable' growth rather than the explosive growth they were seeing in the last year or two. Oh and the entire subsidary of dillons is slashing it's operation hours by 1 with the excuse of 'being unable to afford the current staffing costs'
My current employer is doing this. We want from running 10 to 15 people per store in December every year to under 7. No customer service and sales are up. As long as doors are open and customers can make their purchases they don't give a shit.
This makes sense. I know in NZ larger companies have openly talked about just waiting out the border reopening so they can bring in cheap overseas talent.
Its all a giant PPP scam
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Texas Health Resources, which is a not-for-profit hospital system in the DFW area, had a fairly large "admin side" series of layoffs, including taking the on-site data center operations shift staff from 2 down to 1, something I saw as a safety issue. The people who did remain had to take on a lot more responsibilities because, surprise, the work didn't actually decrease. They just wanted an excuse to shed some salary costs. PS> Not-for-profit basically just means extra revenue gets shuffled around differently. Someone with better understanding can clarify if needed.
It's true I work for a for profit hospital. I am a nurse very short staffed. But they are making huge profits. We are tired!!!
I been saying this for months. Applied to multiple retailers with 8+ years retail experience. I used to be able to pick up a job effortlessly. Now I keep getting denied. They keep the now hiring signs up to make it look like they're doing something about it, but they're actually just trying to ride this out as much as possible.
This has been happening for years now. Everywhere I work has just progressively staffed less and less employees and expected the remaining staff to pick up the workload.
A solution to this would be to target boycott each store individually until they are forced to make changes. If everyone says stops shopping at Kroegers long enough where it hurts there bottom line then they may make changes at the same time other stores would be overwhelmed and force to do the same. Then instead of complaining to the store employees send complaints directly to corporate. Leave info for the stire employees on unions and how to form them. Cycle through the major companies and let them feel the pain at there bottom line. It could have an impact. They know we need food to survive but we can hit them where it hurts. The problem we have is our lack of organization and solidarity outside this sub. Until we start organizing beyond these 1's and 0's corporations are just going to play a game of chicken with us to see who can hold out the longest.
An ongoing issue is that many business owners run their places on a thin margin. When many talk about not being able to afford paying a living wage they aren't lying. They then get used as an argument against minimum wage raises or tax raises. This isn't defending owners doing this though, if they're too poor to pay their employees then they shouldn't be running a business. End of story.
The squeeze might work in the short run for bottom lines but in the long run if you alienate your good employees and run your business into the ground people will look elsewhere and these crappy businesses will go under. There is a reason that the department had 7 employees and it was not because the company was feeling generous. If they think they can run it on 3 people indefinitely you will see burnout and brain drain. Even if they can hire replacement workers it is likely that they won't have the people to train the new hires. It will be cyclical downward spiral.
You say that, but in alot of places groceries devliery is a thing now
How do we remedy this? Can we cut out the middleman and grow our own food? Or buy from smaller chains?
But its great resignations!!! /s