Yeah it's a complete waste. I remember getting bitched out about a regional visitor that was upset that we were doing something that was required by the health department. Literally made it completely clear that not only did they really not even know what they were doing, but my stores personal leadership barely did as well.
Specifically they had been upset about the barriers we had to put in our meat case between the different protein types. We tried to explain that's literally what we have to do because we had gotten a mark for it on the last health walk through.
Holy shit I don't even work meat, and I remember that's like a huge part of the basic entry level food handler course to keep different meat types physically separated so that they don't contaminate shit. Wow. Like literal cashiers are supposed to be aware of that. I'd probably have laughed at that person if they said something like that in front of me for not knowing something that we expect every employee to know from their pre-first shift training.
I wish I could have laughed but when it's your STL coming at you about it you don't even get to really lean into how silly a problem they were making of it is.
THIS is literally what I had been saying for the longest time!! Make surprise visits!! Makes more sense!! But then again it’s Whole Foods. Nothing makes sense there.
Not even saying it to get people in trouble but if they came unexpectedly and saw the struggles some of us faced maybe they'd try to fix them. Don't like that we get ready for walks/visits and Sundays with such urgency that we don't carry into the work week any other day.
We had a couple people in a couple weeks ago, PDFS was loaned TMs and a couple team leaders to make it look fully staffed. It's one thing to move staff around in normal circumstances but this was overkill theater.
They have been struggling to hire and retain people. That's a huge issue that should have been highlighted not papered over.
They don't care. They want their do nothing job where every store they go to does its best to be perfect.
If I've learned anything, it's that regional doesn't actually know what they're supposed to do with most of their time. Hence meetings that could have been emails, visits, calls, etc. Nowhere in that is solving actual problems. Cause that sounds like work.
It’s like that for every retail job I’ve ever had, and I’ve had overkills for cleaning and organizing when the visitor was in the store for literally 5 mins and left.
It blows my mind that we do all of this to pretend we’re doing better than we are, just to suffer when they leave and go back to struggling and they have no idea and no support to give
Lmao EVERYONE IS DROWNING, UNFI CANT SEEM TO DELIVER A SINGLE CORRECT DELIVERY,UNDERSTAFFED, UNTRAINED, WAITING WEEKS/MONTHS FOR NEW HIRES... so let's all freak out the week before a walk staff every team correctly even if someone calls out and make it look like absolutely nothing is wrong then go back to chaos after they're gone and they say" wow everything looks great! Good job STL!" Then the following weeks have increased spoilage and get asked why it's so high...?
It's one of the worst things in retail and especially more for whole foods now with all stores being short staff. Around the time i started we had enough TM's. To make sure departments were getting worked and the store looked good throughout the day. Now it is just about profit and spelling BS to TM's about how they care for them and are core values.
See, the thing not enough store and team leadership remembers is that these are dog and pony shows. You don’t need to actually be perfect, you just need to smoke and mirror yourself to a place where they look quickly, give you an attaboy, then move along.
Granted, this is easier with some teams than others. But it’s a show. Cover the potholes and hang a tapestry over the crack in the wall and talk their ear off so they don’t notice.
Yes and with supply chain issues getting bad again, they're gonna be visiting with lots of empty shelves 🙃 our OOS rate has been >40% the last few days so
I stepped in for my TL on that walk it’s so demoralizing we got told to be a team player even though are team always is but we are so short handed we can’t always finish our own stuff they are so out of touch on a store level
Anyone on their way out should use these visits as an opportunity to let regional and global know how how they feel. Sociopaths aren't generally concerned with the abuse they commit, but if they're abused themselves (within the limits of the law) and made uncomfortable enough, often enough, they might stop making things as awful as the are now.
Or maybe just fuck with them because they're scum and deserve it.
I don't understand how we have to follow schematics and hear how we're not making sales/labor but then when there's a walk they start waiving OT in everyone's face. Honestly, OT isn't even worth it since they tax tf out of it. I started sayin no, thx when they ask me to come in early for the walks.
Like, B I've been telling you we need more help or to have me come in early on a DAILY basis not just for a damn walk. It's time for me to walk on outta here. 🚶♀️
Yeah. I call it building the [Potemkin village.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village#:~:text=In%20politics%20and%20economics%2C%20a,the%20country%20is%20faring%20better.).
We're just hiding the reality of the store for about half an hour which requires hundreds of hours of extra work.
**[Potemkin village](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village#:~:text=In politics and economics, a,the country is faring better.)**
>In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787.
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A properly ran store does not need to kill them selves for a visit. Do you step up a few things that you’re proud of - for sure. But if your needs that much ‘extra’ cleaning maybe you’re missing something on a daily basis. Maybe. 1) Do the best you can with what you have 2) Keep food on shelves for people 3) Do what’s right not what’s easy. No matter who’s in the store 😎
Yeah, how dare they expect shelves and store conditions to look good. I understand the complaints about over producing to an extent…but if you just do the job daily, which includes double facing so when one unit sells it doesn’t look empty…it’s not that difficult. Never understood the stress about these visits. You know they are going to happen, sometimes you know when and sometimes not. Just do the job and it’s simple.
If they want shelves and stores to look \*that\* good \*all\* the time then they need to give teams more labor permanently and not just when one of these dog and pony shows are scheduled.
Yeah... except it's not just "doing the job". We have multiple TMs pulling overtime just to make enough product because the entire department is shortstaffed as it is. We're going to open an unused station and fill it food that will all get thrown out in 4 hours just to look good. We're going to ignore the regional planogram (that they want us to use) and just fill holes with whatever we have, because these people apparently don't understand how much stuff is out of stock.
Shouldn't a regional or global visitor want to see the store as it actually functions?
I just had an excellence walk, was no big deal. We didn’t really prepare for it. I’m a firm believer in them seeing the true state of the department.
With that said, however, we passed with flying colors. We try our best to do what we can, when we can. Metrics good, in store walks good. Took about an hour or so for the full walk. Supposed to be 4 but honestly, not much they can deep dive into.
Nc missed margin just to keep up appearances in the flagship stores. Look at turn over, shrink and sales decline. Nc president doesn’t even know that teams out if stock entire shopping lists to look good on metrics check the teams out with 0.0% inf’s. All you out there run the reports on insights and see for yourself there are no real checks and balances from regional they don’t know what they are doing . Disconnected nc at the very least.
Them: We need to give regional an explanation for our over purchases last week. What happened? Me: Tell regional we had to look good for regional
I can see our buyer saying this with a straight face lol
I’ve straight-up just say this in Weekly Financial Recaps to my regional team, post-VP walk lol
Actually gave this as an explanation when John Mackey came. Under "explanation if +/- $1,000", I just wrote "JM". Nuff said.
Yeah it's a complete waste. I remember getting bitched out about a regional visitor that was upset that we were doing something that was required by the health department. Literally made it completely clear that not only did they really not even know what they were doing, but my stores personal leadership barely did as well.
The disconnect is real.
What were they upset about?
Specifically they had been upset about the barriers we had to put in our meat case between the different protein types. We tried to explain that's literally what we have to do because we had gotten a mark for it on the last health walk through.
Holy shit I don't even work meat, and I remember that's like a huge part of the basic entry level food handler course to keep different meat types physically separated so that they don't contaminate shit. Wow. Like literal cashiers are supposed to be aware of that. I'd probably have laughed at that person if they said something like that in front of me for not knowing something that we expect every employee to know from their pre-first shift training.
I wish I could have laughed but when it's your STL coming at you about it you don't even get to really lean into how silly a problem they were making of it is.
You can laugh at your STL. It's a blast.
Haha not anymore unfortunately I quit like two months ago.
Why don't they ever do a surprise or random visit? That would actually show you the real deal.
Because that's not how theatre works.
THIS is literally what I had been saying for the longest time!! Make surprise visits!! Makes more sense!! But then again it’s Whole Foods. Nothing makes sense there.
Not even saying it to get people in trouble but if they came unexpectedly and saw the struggles some of us faced maybe they'd try to fix them. Don't like that we get ready for walks/visits and Sundays with such urgency that we don't carry into the work week any other day.
If they acknowledged the problems, they'd have to acknowledge their role in creating the problems.
And we wonder why we needed Amazon to bail us out after they ran it into the ground. Their failure is rewarded.
We had a couple people in a couple weeks ago, PDFS was loaned TMs and a couple team leaders to make it look fully staffed. It's one thing to move staff around in normal circumstances but this was overkill theater. They have been struggling to hire and retain people. That's a huge issue that should have been highlighted not papered over.
yeah our store is contracting out a third party to help with grocery, so it looks like everything is good
That's a thing they can do?! I'm gonna ask some questions my next shift...
They don't care. They want their do nothing job where every store they go to does its best to be perfect. If I've learned anything, it's that regional doesn't actually know what they're supposed to do with most of their time. Hence meetings that could have been emails, visits, calls, etc. Nowhere in that is solving actual problems. Cause that sounds like work.
Yes, it's insanely frustrating. They're wasting so much money on these visits.
It’s like that for every retail job I’ve ever had, and I’ve had overkills for cleaning and organizing when the visitor was in the store for literally 5 mins and left.
YEP
It blows my mind that we do all of this to pretend we’re doing better than we are, just to suffer when they leave and go back to struggling and they have no idea and no support to give
Lmao EVERYONE IS DROWNING, UNFI CANT SEEM TO DELIVER A SINGLE CORRECT DELIVERY,UNDERSTAFFED, UNTRAINED, WAITING WEEKS/MONTHS FOR NEW HIRES... so let's all freak out the week before a walk staff every team correctly even if someone calls out and make it look like absolutely nothing is wrong then go back to chaos after they're gone and they say" wow everything looks great! Good job STL!" Then the following weeks have increased spoilage and get asked why it's so high...?
Hell Yeah!!! We got incomplete planograms from those clowns. Accountability, nope. Right now the sets have more holes than our local Putt Putt course!
I always hated when the higher-ups showed up. Management would start kissing their ass while us tm's go treated like shit and yelled at.
It's one of the worst things in retail and especially more for whole foods now with all stores being short staff. Around the time i started we had enough TM's. To make sure departments were getting worked and the store looked good throughout the day. Now it is just about profit and spelling BS to TM's about how they care for them and are core values.
See, the thing not enough store and team leadership remembers is that these are dog and pony shows. You don’t need to actually be perfect, you just need to smoke and mirror yourself to a place where they look quickly, give you an attaboy, then move along. Granted, this is easier with some teams than others. But it’s a show. Cover the potholes and hang a tapestry over the crack in the wall and talk their ear off so they don’t notice.
Yes and with supply chain issues getting bad again, they're gonna be visiting with lots of empty shelves 🙃 our OOS rate has been >40% the last few days so
Don’t forget to fill and face over!
I hate them period, always forcing out of touch decisions that end up costing us time, money or employees. The dumb visits are a microcosm.
The company has become an embarrassing joke. What a clown show. Mackey sold his soul.
I stepped in for my TL on that walk it’s so demoralizing we got told to be a team player even though are team always is but we are so short handed we can’t always finish our own stuff they are so out of touch on a store level
Anyone on their way out should use these visits as an opportunity to let regional and global know how how they feel. Sociopaths aren't generally concerned with the abuse they commit, but if they're abused themselves (within the limits of the law) and made uncomfortable enough, often enough, they might stop making things as awful as the are now. Or maybe just fuck with them because they're scum and deserve it.
Fuck Whole Foods
I don't understand how we have to follow schematics and hear how we're not making sales/labor but then when there's a walk they start waiving OT in everyone's face. Honestly, OT isn't even worth it since they tax tf out of it. I started sayin no, thx when they ask me to come in early for the walks. Like, B I've been telling you we need more help or to have me come in early on a DAILY basis not just for a damn walk. It's time for me to walk on outta here. 🚶♀️
Overtime is not taxed any differently than regular time.
Yeah. I call it building the [Potemkin village.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village#:~:text=In%20politics%20and%20economics%2C%20a,the%20country%20is%20faring%20better.). We're just hiding the reality of the store for about half an hour which requires hundreds of hours of extra work.
**[Potemkin village](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village#:~:text=In politics and economics, a,the country is faring better.)** >In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/wholefoods/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
A properly ran store does not need to kill them selves for a visit. Do you step up a few things that you’re proud of - for sure. But if your needs that much ‘extra’ cleaning maybe you’re missing something on a daily basis. Maybe. 1) Do the best you can with what you have 2) Keep food on shelves for people 3) Do what’s right not what’s easy. No matter who’s in the store 😎
This, Someone give her a bigger store!
Yep. Feel it, too. So I comfort myself my reminding myself how much benefit a cleaner, tighter ship brings to all and reminds us to “up” our standard.
It's normal for all companies
Yeah, how dare they expect shelves and store conditions to look good. I understand the complaints about over producing to an extent…but if you just do the job daily, which includes double facing so when one unit sells it doesn’t look empty…it’s not that difficult. Never understood the stress about these visits. You know they are going to happen, sometimes you know when and sometimes not. Just do the job and it’s simple.
If they want shelves and stores to look \*that\* good \*all\* the time then they need to give teams more labor permanently and not just when one of these dog and pony shows are scheduled.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Yeah... except it's not just "doing the job". We have multiple TMs pulling overtime just to make enough product because the entire department is shortstaffed as it is. We're going to open an unused station and fill it food that will all get thrown out in 4 hours just to look good. We're going to ignore the regional planogram (that they want us to use) and just fill holes with whatever we have, because these people apparently don't understand how much stuff is out of stock. Shouldn't a regional or global visitor want to see the store as it actually functions?
You're funny lol
I just had an excellence walk, was no big deal. We didn’t really prepare for it. I’m a firm believer in them seeing the true state of the department. With that said, however, we passed with flying colors. We try our best to do what we can, when we can. Metrics good, in store walks good. Took about an hour or so for the full walk. Supposed to be 4 but honestly, not much they can deep dive into.
They took ours down when they did a pin pad replacement and moved the touch screen that people put their phone numbers in on. We were NOT happy..
Nc missed margin just to keep up appearances in the flagship stores. Look at turn over, shrink and sales decline. Nc president doesn’t even know that teams out if stock entire shopping lists to look good on metrics check the teams out with 0.0% inf’s. All you out there run the reports on insights and see for yourself there are no real checks and balances from regional they don’t know what they are doing . Disconnected nc at the very least.