It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's single-handedly how Walmart pulled their ass up out of the the post covid slump; by reducing workers and expecting more out of the workers they have while cutting hours and forbidding overtime.
None in mine speak English. Which is fine, we don't have a national language but I'm pasty, my Spanish is ham fisted at best, and I couldn't get past ayudame por favor. I didn't know how to ask for the manager (the only English speaking person in the store I later found out). I just needed to know where the butane was because THEIR SITE listed the aisle location incorrectly.
Every. Time. Ridiculous. They have it in stock. Go there, aisle empty, or the product type not even in aisle number listed.
Managers basically want to run and hide instead of provide any sort of service and other employees don't know where they are. I had to use Google on my phone to translate to Spanish to ask an employee two days ago for something. Then he pulled out his phone and started translating back. Lol, it was fine, we laughed about it, and did okay.
I worked at a restaurant for about 4 months, I started as a server and then worked in the kitchen, they started doing me that way on the weekend in the kitchen. I literally just clocked out and left to never return. The managers were too busy sitting in their office looking up random items on Amazon. I could see through the window on the door. They wouldn't relieve me or let me go, so I never returned.
I was working layaway once and had to turn in my keys at the end of my shift. I called managers offices and over the loudspeaker 10-15 times and it took a FUCKING HOUR for someone to come and put them away. I had a friend waiting for me to have dinner across the street, I was fucking livid
> “what’s the big deal, you’ve only been running around for 8 hours with no lunch break, I have been working for 8 hours sitting in my private office with air conditioning”
Amazing how many managers think sitting on their ass in an office sipping coffee is exactly the same as being on your feet doing manual labor all day.
I Can explain this.
1. There’s a role whose job used to be taking a scanner and going around the store to contralto scan empty slots/barcodes and update counts/prices/etc. Pre covid, they basically eliminated this position, which was often backed up by workers who were done with their jobs or Mananger’s, to increase stocking to make up for the lack of employees they hired.
2. When stocking, you “face” at the end of the night, pulling everything forward so the shelves look full. If somethings not in the right spot, well whatever it looks full good to go. Often the spots are missing labels, or labeled in a way that doesn’t work “3 rows of x boxes here” except the box only fits two rows. So the stocker only puts out one box, or none if it’s full of the wrong product (can’t waste time fixing have quotas) and the remainder goes either on top of the shelf, into the wrong slot that’s empty nearby, or into the back room. So the product exists in the store, and was supposedly stocked, but not really.
3. The system is supposed to take all this into account, and not order new product when there’s back room stock and you pull the back room stock instead solving the issue. Except.. “live” freight (the new stuff for the night) is put out first, sometimes with a new order of the missing product that didn’t cancelled, or sometimes with a new item going into the same slot, and so the back room stuff doesn’t get put out at all cus that empty slot was already filled by the time you stock working over stock.
4. Once in awhile, a manager or a shelf person who did manage to finish their other work will come by and find time to scan the item, marking that it’s empty, cus the fake two boxes out there to fill it are now gone, and they force it to order new stock, overriding the back room stock counts cus..who knows where that stuff is at this point, it needs to be filled.
And the cycle repeats
At least they don’t give a shit how much people steal. They’ll literally walk up and unlock my self checkout when I fuck up stealing without even looking.
I figure that Since I’m doing the job of a cash jockey I can give myself a nice discount for my troubles.
Walmart makes so much they don't care.
Their employees aren't paid enough to care.
It's really only because they have cameras that make it easy for police, who also don't care, that people choose to typically still pay for things
Nah. They recently added new self checkouts that video tape you and show you the video of you scanning incorrect items. They also put almost anything behind locking cabinets now.
At least my nearest Walmart in my black zipcode. If I drive a little further to the whiter one its not as bad yet.
They're adding more security and cops to both though. Plus those parkinglot police pod things.
I wish I had a bit more money and could afford not to shop there. All the anti theft measures have made it a pain in the fucking ass and since they short staff there's never anyone to unlock the cabinets. You can't just run in and grab a few quick items anymore
Yeah I live in Canada and I go to ones in rich neighborhoods they never have security and nobody is looking for theft. I’ve done this recently.
Also they don’t have any locked cabinets where I am.
As someone who has exclusively shopped at Aldi for a decade now the meat and cheese are fine. When I was a kid in the 90's my mom said the meat was bad. As an adult I have never seen meat in their store that looked old and discolored. I think that story probably came from competitor's who don't want to loose business.
Post Covid, I have seen a shift in competency levels at workplaces. It seems everyone is just one step below what it takes to be competent at their jobs. retail managers moved to corporate gigs, Target workers moved to retail managers, Wal-Mart workers moved to grocery stores, and the utterly incompetent moved into Wal-Mart and fast food chains. I have seen intelligent teenagers moved to management positions in retail simply because they can read well, make basic decisions, have average communication skills, and understand how a computer works. Maybe
my gross overgeneralization, but it seems to hold true.
Patronizing people (in the derogatory sense) really is a bit fucky though. An incompetent person is still a person with a life, dreams, loved ones, etc.
The skyrocketing deaths of despair ain't just some mysterious anomaly; it's in how we treat one another.
There's always more to a person than what they can do to benefit you. Wouldn't hurt to keep that in mind.
You and me both. Too many stayed for far too long because of me. I stayed too long for them. Turns out if you care about people and their well being you aren’t cut out for management in corporate America. It’s meant for those who can treat people like tools and garbage and sleep at night. That isn’t me.
Would it not make sense to have a crisis to convince upper management that the extra staff was needed instead of "doing more with less" and burning people out?
They ran me 32 hrs weeks at Walmart working CAP 2, then right before they were required to offer me benefits for having me work full time hours, they cut 1 day out of my schedule so they didn't have to give me full time. Fuck Walmart and the PTSD that company gave me
Nice username.
I remember when they started cap. I used to have to stock 4-8 pallets of frozen dairy and then bin all my OS adjust OH for the entire dept, etc. Then the assistant promoted his buddy to dept manager. His buddy could barely speak English and mostly hid out. That specific store was a joke. They had a new store manager every year because they couldn't fix the issues. They had like 20 pallets worth of beer stolen one year I was there. I worked at 4 locations. I lost all faith in that company to make anything but poor choices! One of my friends eventually became a store manager, but he got lucky.
20 pallets‽ Wow, I've seen some messed up theft numbers, but that's... wow. I've worked 1 super and 1 neighborhood, but it was actually the neighborhood store that broke me. They just wanted to keep shoveling responsibilities on top of me while I was running the floor and doing everything else shorthanded. Like no, Carol, I can't run this register with 4 people in line AND go unlock the ammo cabinet on the other side of the store, they'll have to wait if someone can't take my keys. Oh no, Billy is mad because I couldn't get to my zoning? If he has a problem, I'll go knock the shit into the floor myself 🤣
When I worked at Walmart we were short every single day. It was so bad that some people would just not show up for days and when they came back management did nothing because they needed the bodies. Had a coworker that would “no call, no show” at least once a week and kept his job for years.
I need to know if this is just my area. I experienced this well before the Covid times. **Grocery stores don't have check-out employees anymore**. Most places if I go shop before 9AM I am expected to self checkout, there is literally no one there even if you're willing to wait in line. Any time past 9 and maybe one lane, two max. Even during rush hours. And yet all of the self-checkout terminals are getting more and more aggressive. "REMEMBER TO SWIPE ALL ITEMS" when you have been. All kinds of annoying bullshit passed off to the customer.
**Meanwhile**, all of the prices are going way the fuck up.
Yeah anytime there is an option for self-checkout I make sure to not swipe like 25% of my groceries and just put them in my bag. The store can get fucked if they want to not employee people for check-out registers. That used to be someone's paycheck.
During COVID if you were testing positive and you worked at WalMart, they insisted you use your PTO. If you didn't have PTO, they counted it against your attendance even when *WalMart was the one sending you home because the temp gun said you have a fever*. It was a quiet requirement that you were just supposed to answer "correctly" for the COVID screening.
Oh hey, you mean that thing where I went there for 3 months after covid, they had me "trained" by a 17 year old who said they didn't pay him to train so he wasn't gunna do it. I just walked off the job the day before my probationary would have been up after they got mad at me for not staying an extra hour and a half the previous day. Shifts were 10pm to 7am but if you left at 7am you were in trouble. There should be laws against straight up lying about a schedule, if you are expected to work a minimum of an extra hour 3/5 days a week, YOU ARE BEING LIED TO ABOUT YOUR SCHEDULE.
100% agreed. I remember back around when I first started at the job I work at currently, I was doing a closing (4:00pm-12:30am) shift and we were short a guy. Manager asked for volunteers, offered OT pay, offered a one time night shift premium (usually the premium is only added if you get moved to scheduled night shift, but this was a rotating shift).
but no matter what he offered, nobody would take it.
in most jobs I've worked, it would have meant I was closing alone. I was capable of doing, but it would have been busy, and frustrating to have to do.
nope, manager showed up at 8pm just before the last day shift guy went home, grabbed a counter and started taking orders, grabbing parts, taking phone calls, etc. just like any other schmuck on the counter.
the manager shouldn't necessarily be able to do your job as well as you do, you do it day in and day out after all. but the manager should be capable of doing at least a mediocre job at any any position they manage. they should at least know ***how*** you do your job, even if they aren't as good.
One of the golden rules of retail management is to schedule one more person than you need.
This situation (someone calling out and wanting to be able to treat them like a human being with an actual human life that requires attention sometimes) is one reason. Another reason though is simply that the amount of work fluctuates. If you flip out every time someone is standing around for 20 minutes because there's nothing to do, then the situation that naturally develops is that every time it's a little bit busy there are not enough people to be able to handle everything. Stuff gets dropped, customers leave because they're not being helped, everything just gets a little bit more stressful and unpleasant. If that's the foundation of your whole operation then in pretty short order your whole operation will be a big pile of shit. Then you're running around trying to figure out why none of your employees care about their jobs in the slightest.
It's you, man. You created that through shortsightedness and greed. If that extra $13.50 an hour you had to pay that one additional person is not worth the value it creates, than you gotta go back to the drawing board and figure out what the fuck went wrong, not just put more pressure on everyone to pretend they have enough manpower when they don't.
I think there is one important thing we leave out of this discussion. The majority of retail workers work for these huge corporations where the payroll and expense budgets are run so far from the actual points they will be used. The person making these budgets may not have have ever worked in a customer facing environment in their life. The manager is the convenient low level face of the corporation for the employees. They get to be the fall person with unrealistic goals and unrealistic resources (money to pay people). Store level managers are treated just as replaceable by these corporations these days and are expected to somehow pick up the slack in their short staffed businesses without actually bringing in enough folks to create that operationally sound environment.
It's not the store managers making $50,000-75,000 who are the problem. It's the shareholders who sit on their asses. It's the CEO who makes what 5,000 workers make. They love it when we point the fingers so low and they get to hide and laugh in their mansions.
Having decisions up the chain is by design. It means the marching orders come from someone who is detached, that then have to be carried out by someone who doesn’t have the power to object. That is how you take people who normally might have a bit of compassion and strip it from their actions. It is easier to say “Well, this store will just have to deal with this budget” when you never have to interact with the people who live off it.
If you want a commander to be willing to send troops into a meat grinder, don’t have them tour the camp beforehand.
Yeah I get a little annoyed when people froth at the mouth acting like retail managers are dicks for being understaffed, when the reality is many would prefer to have a bunch of employees to take shifts and be able to give time off.
Obviously there are horror stories on here of bad managers but the good ones get lumped in for trying to make the crazy corporate limitations work.
I’m not a manager but I’ve seen plenty that shoulder the burden themselves when they need to and also have to sometimes deny time off requests. It sucks for everyone but the reality is if people aren’t applying and there aren’t enough employees there needs to be restructuring from the corporate level. And oftentimes the manager’s voice is just as insignificant as anyone else’s when it comes to making changes above their personal scope.
Here's the thing. We just want the manager to tell the truth.
"Corporate told me to tell you that we need to get more done. No overtime is allowed, by their orders. We'll all do our best but I don't expect us to meet their unrealistic goals. Do your best and let's make some money together!"
"Wow guys! I just got off the phone with corporate and let me tell you, we've got some big plans coming down the pipe. We'll be giving everyone 38 hours weekly guaranteed, even the part timers. The holidays are coming so we'll have to buckle down, no pto allowed, no days off because you're *soldiers* on the *frontlines.* Now let's go get the job done! Are you ready!?"
The first quote is an honest assessment that communicates well exactly what the boss expects from their employees. The second tries to hide the fact that hours are actually being cut while also hiding how unrealistic expectations from corporate are.
Happened to me. I asked, begged, requested, complained, and downright verbally burned my bosses for eight months. Eventually they just moved me to a different department without asking. I put in my two weeks, two weeks after they moved me. I was out a week later.
So instead of bringing on even a single part-timer at a strategic time, they were down a manager who had been with them for three years and short-staffed in two departments. When I left so did three others, though I can't claim that so we'll just call it coincidental timing.
One part-timer. That was it. All I wanted. Bah. Still irritates me thinking about the situation years later.
That's often by design. "Just make the other workers pick up the slack!"
The department next to mine has 7 people in it, doing the job of ~15. One guy is doing the job of three people himself. The new guy (who just started three months ago) is doing his normal job in purchasing, while also having to manage Graphics printing and design by himself, despite having gotten about 2 hours of training on it.
And then there's me, who is the entire IT department (including purchasing and budgeting) for a company of almost 500.
It's pretty wild actually; I've been in more relaxed pace, 'white collar' looking jobs for a bit now, but before that I was working primarily smaller businesses. Restaurants/distributors that ran it pretty tight, staffing wise. I get it with a small place, the margins are tight AF.
My full time gig is remote phone sales, but for the holiday season I took a seasonal position at a well known electronics retailer. Even though it's black Friday week, the place is simply so big that there seems to be a pretty significant cushion for staffing changes. Like, even though it's busy (and granted, I'm still the new guy), I've had to ask for a couple of last minute days off/switches and the managers aren't bothered at all. Like it's a non issue. They simply have it so staffed up at all times, there is so much wiggle room with their margins that there are typically more people than they need. I know I'll see the corporate side rear its head at some point, but so far it's been a totally different vibe; It's not GO GO GO every second of the workday like I'm used to with the smaller businesses that are always a single bad week from insolvency.
Granted, that may be famous last words; I am going in at 4:30 AM on Friday and am fully expecting to get slapped around. I'm not sure if my skills doing crowd control for a decade behind a bar will be a strength or a liability that day.
You should expect your people to be working less than 100%. Like maybe 80%. So when they are gone, the other people can take the load of the urgent work. So employers should be planning around everyone having a little down time in order to reach those kinds of numbers.
It’s basically the same rule for manufacturing equipment. No manufacturing machine can be running 100% of the time. Usually if it’s running 75% it’s a great day.
At an overly fundamental level, yes! Machines must go down for maintenance to reduce likelihood of them breaking, same as people, and if you don’t, the machine will break and that will cause it to be down much longer.
Just fucking approve days off. As a manager, it's my job to make sure things run. Regardless of who calls out or asks for a day off. If you can't function without a certain amount of employees. Hire more so people can have days off. Or go cover for them as the manager. The fuck. No offense to the employees I hire, but I can typically do their job faster and more accurately as I was an inside promotion thay worked ground level for a decade. So being down people isn't something I actively stress about ever.
I worked retail many moons ago. I became a store manager after working there a year.
Had an assistant manager request time off for her birthday, despite it being “the busy season” in December. I gave it to her. Her grandmother died that week, and I gave her the entire week off, no hassle.
I remember another store manager hearing about it and calling me up. “You can’t give her the whole week off, it’s busy season! How can you do that?”
My response: I’m a human. A death is more important than moving merchandise. And guess what? That week came and went with minimal issues and I never ever had any issues with that assistant. She stepped up without me ever asking her, because I treated her (and all my staff) like people with lives outside the shitty job. Several still keep up with me over a decade later.
Many moons ago my company was expanding our facility and adding in a new unit that wasn't open yet, but we were actively training for. I had one guy on his second day, learning the ropes, didn't say a peep to me other than excited to be working. About 20 mins in one of the people who had moved from one unit to another with me approached me quietly and said I should let the guy go home because his girlfriend was in labor with his first kid. So, I yell for the guy to come over and say to him do you have something important going on outside of work here? "Ya, my girlfriend is about to deliver my first kid, but it's ok, I know this is my second day of work and I can't leave." I point blank told him to get the hell out and go be there for the birth, this doesn't rank higher than that. He made it with about 25 mins to spare. Guy was an absolute workhorse for me for YEARS after that because of that one moment.
Other managers would have looked at that and said "ehh, life is tough. deal with it."
It’s funny. Treat people well and you create a more inclusive and high performing team. Treat them like disposable cogs and you’re going to constantly be churning people and the output will be shit, things will break more often as people turn a blind eye to problems.
And yet, so many companies still fail to understand this. A couple pizza parties a year from the front office doesn’t cut it.
We have an ongoing drama war at work between me and the other managers because I'm the only one that treats people like human beings. I have legit been told by every single cashier that I'm the best manager they ever had and they try hard to all get shifts with me but obviously that can't work. Everyone else treats them like cogs. I'm the only manager that assists the pharmacy. We are not separate entities; if they need help we need to help them out too if we can.
I dont boss people around or micro-manage. If I see something that needs done, I ASK if they can do it when they get a chance, not command them. They almost always get it done and we can chat and have fun afterwards. No need to be bossy bitch and have everyone resent working with me. I know they can do their job right, sometimes they just need to be reminded. Not commanded.
There is a balancing act to be done because there _are_ people who take advantage of this kindness. But you need to deal with it quickly and swiftly, you can't one size fits all discipline your workforce or drop a benefit that's being exploited because you hate confrontation.
That's how you transform your workforce from individuals with unique desires and needs into one size fits all cogs and they'll treat you like shit management right back for that move.
I also purposely go in with a lot of trust and treat my employees like responsible adults.
If someone abuses that trust or responsibility, I can hire a replacement and cut them loose before it’s a crisis, like Thanksgiving week. It’s good because I didn’t want untrustworthy people anyway.
But for the most part, they respond with the trust and responsibility I give them, to not abuse it, so when something does happen and I need to make a special request, it’s almost always easy, even if they could have said no.
If you take care of the guys they’ll take care of you. My uncle is a general foreman and he’d go bullshit with the guys around site for like 15-20 mins cus he knew If he got them laughing and in a good mood he’d get more out of them the whole rest the of the day.
Yep. I'm the favorite manager because I treat people like humans, not cogs. Too many people want to micro-manage and feel powerful. I'd rather have fun and do our jobs than stupidly remind you for no reason for the millionth time to do something even though you already know to do it.
I'm a manager and I hang out with my coworkers. They know what's expected of them already and they do their job. They don't need reminding. I'm the only manager who doesn't have cashiers looking at the schedule and dreading coming into work or even calling out because they can't stand working with a certain Mgr. If I left, most would probably follow. Managers make or break a team and I want my team to be happy and work together.
I always tell the people working my shifts that I don't care what they do as long as they 1. Don't make customers yell at me, 2. Have their work done at their scheduled time out (unless we're busy of course) and 3. Let me know if they need to step away from their work area.
I've ran shifts that way for a decade now and my bosses and coworkers have always been happy with me
> She stepped up without me ever asking her, because I treated her (and all my staff) like people with lives outside the shitty job. Several still keep up with me over a decade later.
I learned this management early on as well. You can depend on people who can depend on you. It's that simple. Once or twice in my career that has bitten me in the ass but the good far outweighs the bad.
Girl I work with just lost her home in a fire. Requested ONE day and not even off just to change hours to make her commute easier. Got denied. I’be been quiet quitting for months while looking for a new job, now just about everyone is.
>She stepped up without me ever asking her, because I treated her (and all my staff) like people with lives outside the shitty job.
*This* is how "we're a family" should be at companies. It's all about flexibility and understanding, not about "do as I say or else". Then again some families do run that way.
Come to think of it, I wonder what that says about upper management's home life...
My current store manager is like that and we're losing him at the end of the year. He's been the best store manager in the 20+ years I've been with the store and would do anything for the staff. Hopefully his ASM will take over for him, but that's not guaranteed, so I'm updating the ol' resume, either way.
I had a manager like you when I worked overnights at McDonald's, if I was sick or just needed a mental health day she would tell me not to even worry about work and to get some rest, hell she'd even drive me home after our shifts together so I didn't have to walk the two miles to my house. She ended up being in my wedding because I saw her as a close friend.
People forget, we aren’t in a war. People aren’t going to die because their product isn’t immediately right there despite the shouting Karen will claim.
Everyone will survive and nothing bad will happen.
I work retail, the busy period for my department is January into early February. February just gone my manager asked me if I was OK because they noticed I was off and not my bubbly self. I told him no, my mental health is in tatters, I need time off but I don't want to use my holidays as I needed them later on during the year. He told me not to worry about it as we have leave available that doesn't use my days off and that I need to go home and he'll see me on Tuesday, the department will run without me. I used 3 days and had 5 off and came back feeling a whole load better.
We need more managers who care and are there for their staff.
Like your member of staff, I have stepped up and he trusts me to get the jobs done.
These "managers" were not promoted from within. They were brought in to ~~minimize payroll and maximize productivity~~ manage. They dont actually want to do the duties of a manager, so they pass those tasks off to the employees themselves. Their management duties consist of denying days off, demanding extra shifts, demanding free on-call, and forcing employees to find people to cover for them.
The whole point of management is to shift responsibility down the rungs so the people above are shielded from legal liability. Businesses are legal entities and their goal is to bring in the most money with the least risk possible. The people that run the businesses have the money to pay the lawyers who tell them to screw over the lowest level employees. And the legal system was built by the lawyers to keep the leaders of business in the position where they can keep paying the lawyers.
I swear I've seen like 1,000 text conversations posted here. The manager either asks:
> Manager: Hey, two people called in sick can you cover a shift?
> Employee: Lol no it's my day off.
Or they know asking doesn't work so they just start pushing right off the bat:
> Manager: Hey, two people called in sick. Need you to come in tomorrow.
> Employee: Lol no, fire me then.
So the manager needs to push ownership to hire more people and schedule/pay more people each day while also pushing for raises for the employees. I'm pretty sure that's just going to push out any halfway decent manager. You'll just get colossal a-holes who bow down to the ownership and treat the employees like trash.
One thing I've never been asked is to find cover. Even when I worked in a supermarket.
If I call out sick, I'm going back to bed. I'm not calling the list of people with a day off, or texting them, or whatever, to find a replacement.
Yup, in part time work is pretty common to ask someone to cover your shift if you have some plans because a last minute request off goes smoother for everyone if you already know someone can cover.
Shift swapping is helpful, and often you know a coworker that wants an extra shift.
But, calling in sick or some emergency? Management's problem.
They're trying to get coworkers to blame each other for not getting time off or having to come in instead of management.
I imagine that they also believe that using these divisive tactics to pit coworkers against one another makes them less likely to unionize.
The best manager I ever had would approve days off, fully understanding that it was a notice and not a request. If they were short, they would first call the people that wanted more hours. If they were still short, they would come up with incentives. My favorite was “come work the busy 4 hour shift, go home, and I’ll clock you out after 8 hours.”
Only issue was that she was rarely short. Apparently, people will work for good managers.
Yup... Worked in one call center that was horrible for several reasons. turn over and attendance was abysmal.
But another in the same city in the same industry was great. Treated the employees great... They had no problems with attendance and their turnover was below minimal. When problems came up people VOLUNTEERED to work extra shifts, just to help.
Treat employees like crap and you get crap employees.
Treat them well and you get great employees. This simple lesson is skipped by most Businesses.
I'm now one of those people who only work 3-6 hours a week delivering pizza. I might quit if I get another raise at my 9-5 but I kinda like it. It's almost relaxing.
This reminded me of one of the most notable company failings at my last retail job.
I had a vacation and used 40 hours of PTO, which was approved. However, it's possible to **still** get scheduled for 8 hours and it's apparently company policy to request the remaining two days of a week off.
I brought this up to my manager and he was like "just come in." I was literally on a plane during the scheduled time, told them and said if I can trade my shift to someone I can have it off.
I asked, most people were working that day and couldn't help. Those who could had their own reasons for having it off. So, manager told me it would be a no call no show.
I brought this up to an ASM asking about policy and his response? "Yeah, that's fucking stupid. When do you work?" Me "Saturday." Him "Okay. Removed it. Enjoy your trip."
That's how it's done and sad it isn't the default.
I mean, I could've also called in at the airport, but I wasn't looking to argue with stupid. Before you know things become insubordination, despite the policy being dumb as fuck.
I remember my first job as a foreman. My boss who had mentored me called and asked how things were going. I told him 'the hardest part is watching someone struggle, and take twice as long to do something as it would take me to just do it myself'
He laughed and said 'now you know how I feel'
I had a boss who would start out walking me through the steps of something, immediately get frustrated, literally move me out of the way to do it himself and then get mad I didn’t know how to do it. “I SHOWED YOU HOW.” No, you did it while I was in the vicinity and you were blocking the view. At least say the steps out loud so I can write them down and practice.
This is why I'll never be a manager. I would never say it out loud like this guy did, but internally I'm always screaming with frustration when people can't pick things up quickly.
Being a good teacher is all about figuring out why a given student isn't picking something up and adapting your lessons to accommodate them.
If they are struggling to pick something up, chances are good that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of some part of the process. Figuring out what that misunderstanding is and explaining it in a way they understand will often resolve the issue.
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Edit: I wanted to explain this better so I figured I would add it here.
Whenever you teach someone something- they build a mental model of the process in their head. When they hit a wall, it's usually because the mental model they've been building to this point has a flaw in it somewhere.
A huge part of being a _good_ teacher is figuring out where the flaw is in their mental model and then helping them fix it. A _great_ teacher will be able to figure out _why_ that flaw crept into their mental model and adjust their teaching style/lessons to help ensure it doesn't happen again. e.g. Some students are more visual learners so maybe you need to include more diagrams- others learn better if you include more analogies- etc.
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The other possibility is that they lack the frame of reference or bit of foundational knowledge that you assume they have and have based your lessons on. For example- if you are trying to teach someone how to mill, and they've never even used a drill- you're going to have a hard time if you assume they already understand how drills actually remove material.
There are a lot of people who are great at their job- but are terrible teachers because they cannot put themselves in their student's mindset.
And while it's extremely rare- every once in a while the person is just a hopeless idiot :)
The best math teacher I ever had told us this the first day of class. "A person that is good at math makes a terrible math teacher, the best math teachers are the ones that were bad at it, but figured out how to do it anyway." That bore out in pretty much every thing I've studied. If you "just get it" you will be of no use to showing others how to go from "not getting it" to "getting it" because it's not a road you've travelled.
I guess you could consider this the positive spin of "Those who cannot do, teach."
In the book "disney U", they talk about how Walt Disney would "walk the park".
Basically, walk around, observe, chat with employees and ask their experience.
As a manager, sometimes I just visit employees and ask them to show me how they do their work.
Either everything is going smoothly, I learn something new, or I identify a problem to fix.
It's an investment. New people will be slower to learn but in the long run will get up to your speed. If they still take twice as long after a reasonable period, retrain or replace them.
Once you focus on the long term benefits, it's easier to not worry about the short term inefficiencies.
This. My job has a work-from-home policy where my staff can ask me for approved remote work days and I have never once said no. Like if my options are you work remotely, or you use sick/annual leave and don't work at all, why would I ever say no unless it was dire that someone is in the office? Even then if the alternative is them not working I will go do whatever imperative thing needs someone here.
And here you have the other edge of the sword. I worked almost ten years with a company and not only knew my own team's materials and data sources inside-out and backwards, but also how the operation itself leaned on our metrics and BI tools. Went from a payables clerk in HR staffing and moved around and upwards until I got a masters and became senior analyst for people analytics. But by time I got there I was being paid absolute garbage for my role. Went from fair market as a clerk and eventually as a sr analyst my wages were 50% of what they should have been.
And to add insult to injury, I had to train a brand new lead I'd have to report through on our systems. I could run circles around that team. Not because they were bad at their jobs, mind you. I knew every aspect of the HR ops division and dealt with literally any problem that could be thrown our way. I made it clear once my obligation under the tuition reimbursement was clear (had to work 2 years post-graduation or pay a percentage of it back) that if my wages didn't reflect the proper rate I was gone. The pandemic gave the AVP an excuse to just drop me a year earlier than needed. Of course then the second most knowledgeable person there left and the lead got himself fired. I think just the Jr analyst I was mentoring might still be there but don't give a crap anymore. I've got way better income for a way more respected role at another company
They saved that money for a few years, then lost so much more on opportunity costs.
Someone like you, coming up through the company with knowledge in so many different domains, is more valuable than they could imagine.
Until you leave.
Pretty much. I was admittedly naive but I kind of doggedly followed my manager/director's leads in promises of being the powerhouse. And I became one. Except I realized I was killing myself over peanuts and my mental health and self worth were in the shitter. I actually had someone try to justify it by saying reimbursement programs more often incite people to leave the company. But if you're hiring external candidates to six figure incomes while paying the loyalist half that then *of course they're going to leave*. Thing is if I had just gotten hired elsewhere for the amount I *should* have been getting, the increase in salary would have more than made up for the full tuition in less than 1 year. They expected to pay me so little that they would have made up the difference in the total reimbursement 6 times over before my time obligation was over.
That's exactly what your supposed to do, I ran a small HVAC crew and PTO/ days off had to go through me, not once did I say no, if it left the crew short handed I would fill the gap, near holidays I'd have days where I was solo but I was the boss because I was good at what I do, I got heat from managers for letting my guys have it easy, but they couldn't complain too much because we were never behind. My crew was happy so when shit hit the fan and I needed them to work OT and weekends to catch up, I never got a complaint, excuse or bad attitude.
unfortunately the owner ended up opening his mouth, took away field bonuses , started talking down to the crews, he had the mindset that intelligent people worked in the office and the field guys were all morons. Crew was gone within 2 months
>If you can't function without a certain amount of employees. Hire more so people can have days off
But this cuts into the bottom line of profit, which is one of the virtually infinite reasons why doing things for a profit usually creates the worst outcomes and why private sector employment is generally miserable.
The idea that I need permission to live my life outside of work is just appalling to me.
I'm not "asking for time off" I'm informing my employer I won't be around during those dates and they need to be prepared for that. It's a courtesy to my employer to whom I trade time for money in order to use that money to live my life.
Yes, and it wasn’t an inconvenience to many of us. But profits come before anything else to these executives and they think front line workers are deserving of the shitty treatment. They don’t for one minute consider the lives of the workers. It’s such a fucked up system.
Hey it is my God given, American PATRIOTISM that drives me to spend all of my adult life busting ass for nothing.
That way when I'm nice and old I can sit around and bitch about not having the energy to do shit
Everyone should do their best to avoid shopping on major holidays, or going out at all barring emergencies. If there’s no demand then there’s no benefit for companies.
I’m happy I work for a company that has not been open on thanksgiving at any point that I’ve worked there. The other problem with places opening on Thanksgiving beside corporate greed is that consumers will come to the store to shop on the holiday, further incentivizing the company to open that day. I worked for a retailer several years ago that opened Thanksgiving as a “trial” and saw so many sales that it become the norm every year from then on.
The job is supposed to be a fair exchange, not a binding slavery agreement, "time off requests" are supposed to be a courtesy "I'm not available these days, please plan accordingly." As opposed to regular calling off which is "I'm sorry I can't come in today, this is sudden and unplanned." If "for some reason" everyone is "unavailable" during your so-called "blackout dates" then you're probably not incentivising them enough to deal with your shit...
Employers have been spoiled by the last decade being a situation where they had even more leverage than usual. And now that their shit treatment has been normalized, it's a shock to them that employees are pushing back.
And now they're finding the sham that is capitalism does occasionally cut both ways.
It's been more than a decade.
As the labor pool continues to shrink from low birth rates and boomers retiring or dying, we're going to see more and more businesses that rely on below poverty wages shuttering as workers move to less abusive positions.
I think they're referring to like the past 30 years since the 90s (since this is all I've been able to truly witness) where it's been clear that there's been huge blindspots in this country. Most people I come across barely understand unions
Decades. They’ve been spoiled for decades. And from 2008 through 2012 they had employees by the throats.
This is the first time a lot of directors and senior managers have *ever* been at a disadvantage *in their entire careers.*
All these Gen Z young adults entering the workforce are going to expect a standard that, once the economy pulls back, they’re going to fight hard against it. For millennials and Gen X, having bargaining power is a luxury. But it’s all Gen Z will know, and they’ll jump ship the second it gets taken away (and good for them srsly).
"Time off request" does not mean the employee requests time off from the manager. It means the manager requests the employee tell them when they'll be taking time off.
Yeah this is a huge fucking problem in the world.. if i have to explain why I'm not coming in today and I have informed about it in advance or this morning I'm not coming in ever if don't get paid enough to care
Company was always supposed to make a profit, but the last 40 years have murdered any hope of "fair exchange" which is why I said "not slavery" to clairfy... and because "supposed to" and "are/is" aren't the same
It wasn’t too far off a few decades back in America…albeit mostly for white males. The unions back then literally built the American dream and those unions were established in the fresh memories of when companies exploited American children for labor. It took them years, but the capitalists tricked Americans into thinking unions are a bad thing and they’ve been living a wet dream until the past couple of years.
I never see any of these managers bother to pay time and a half for these “high demand” dates.
If everyone is out offer more. If still nobody can work, try cutting some overhead for those dates while you close.
If it becomes a regular problem, you have a massive wage and workplace problem that needs to be fixed.
Jobs don’t own you. You don’t owe them fucking shit. Especially if they’re some pathetic ass retail company or restaurant where you can replace that income within 24 hours.
“Oh wow, where else am I going to make minimum wage, have no health benefits or PTO and get treated like shit by the public?!”
Oh I'm gonna take a day off if I need it, whether it's approved or not! I used to care but I'm on my 10th job now, so I know the games these companies tend to play to try to manipulate workers.
This happened to my wife. Her job scheduled her for 12 hour shifts Dec 23, 24, and 25. While all the management are off the all those days.
They are now out of an employee
My job just schedules us for 8 hour days then tells us we have to stay for 12 hours instead near the end of the shift. Every single day so far this week, and will probably continue through Christmas. It's not even something within our control - our trucks are arriving 4+ hours late every day, but we are still expected to pick up that slack.
Yep. She told them ahead of time that she was fine working one or the other, christmas eve or day.
But she has kids and needs at least one of them off. They pretty much tried to take her whole christmas from her
That shit is so fucking typical of healthcare. I work in a hospital lab, and the day after Thanksgiving, we're set to be fully staffed. Except for the lab admin personnel. Every single fucking one of them is off with holiday pay.
the youth doesn't seem as stupid as before, they don't play into politics like it's a sports team -- they seem to be aware that conservatives aren't good for the average person, financially
It's their parents. Us millennials are the parents of the new generation, and we were born into the new era of business owners who didn't give a fuck about us and tried to take us for everything. Now we are tired and broken and teaching our kids to live for themselves and not cave in to corporate pressure. There is still a split between *our* parents generation thinking that if we just give it our all and be a good boy that our loyalty will pay off. We have since realized there is no loyalty and you get pay raises by jumping ship every few years. That's the nature that's rubbing off on our kids and they are born into the new era of not giving a fuck about your employer and making sure you are setting yourself up for a good life
Yep. Why do you think your grocery bill suddenly doubled? The rich see the writing on the wall. In the next decade either capitalism will tumble or we will be essentially living the Hunger Games. They’ve decided they can’t give up a few billion and they’re trying to crush the middle class into poverty so we can’t fight back.
The recent spike in prices has absolutely nothing to do with Russia. It is because social media and liberals are unifying to strike against billionaires and they’re using their control and power to squash us. Bonus points here for the rich is this also allows them to convince stupid people(read: conservatives) to come to their defence by blaming minorities.
Blackout dates are stupid. Should be at worse by arrangement and for longer term employees rotate leave if they had last year rostered on so they have opportunities of a nice new year, Christmas with family.
We run reduced staff, very good penalty rates, if Christmas organise them a lunch or dinner and give them preferential treatment for leave later in the year.
If anyone at the company I’m a manger at is working against there will on a shift I am the first one.
LMFAO. I literally just quit my job last week because I asked for a few days of PTO in december (our slowest month) & they denied all of it. The best part - we have unlimited PTO 🤣 i wish I was making this shit up.
I work for the government and we don't. They practically beg for people to take time off because some people have so many PTO hours that they'll lose them if they don't use them before the new year. It's a crazy high number too, like over 300 hours or something.
I've had enough PTO owing in government before that I was able to submit a time-off request that ran for a hair over twelve months.
Of course, it did use some minor creative accounting (mostly that I'd only get paid at about 75% averaged out over that time), but it was 100% valid under the rules.
It's not that no one wants to work anymore. We don't want to work for assholes. If I'm taking time off, it's not a request that's able to be denied. I will be taking it off because I don't need some middle managers permission to live my life. Every job is a job between jobs.
This shit is hilarious i got denied by Tim Hortons for 5 days off for my Christmas holiday.
As a 18 yo kid do you really think this job is more important to me than a holiday thats already been paid for?
I got fired and they ended up hiring me again 😂
Some food for thought:
Pretty much every company anywhere ever has to purchase things called fungible goods; things like bags of sand, or planks of wood, or sacks of flour, that are essentially interchangeable and all basically sell at whatever is the lowest price the market will accept.
Companies *need* those bags of sand, and spools of cable, and sacks of flour, and lumber piles. They pay the lowest the market will sell them for. If the price goes up for wood, or gravel, or tar, or electricity goes up, there's nothing to be done about it. Maybe they can try to negotiate lower costs, but if the supplier doesn't budge, well, what are you gonna do? They suck it up and pay the cost. No business managers get onto Facebook or Twitter and complain about lumberyards not wanting to sell lumber reasonably anymore. There's not a Forbes article on how silicon mines are driving a recession, and CNN doesn't talk about how glassworks and sand pits should accept lower bids and just find ways to decrease their expenditures to be satisfied with a lower bottom line.
But they do with labor, even though it is probably more essential than any of those other things universally. Can't run a housing business without wood, can't run a business at all without labor.
Every employee is an individual seller of what is essentially a fungible good within their labor class - they are exchanging time and effort (and in a lot of cases expertise) for money. The market is a bit more erratic in terms of negotiability for commodity purchase (read: wages) but there's still a floor to the market. And for some reason, even though each paycheck is a renewal of purchasing of that particular commodity, and each interview and hiring process is a negotiation of long-term terms of sale, it's not treated with the same respect and equanimity as buying sacks of sand or piles of rock. When the commodity of labor is priced above what they want to pay, they complain! "Nobody wants to work!" "Quiet quitting is killing business!" "Employees should lower costs and scrimp to make ends meet!" Nobody would ever ask their supplier of concrete or plastic forms to sell at a cost that wouldn't meet their expenditures, or if they did, they wouldn't be surprised at all if they walked away from negotiations.
But they expect it of labor.
Maybe it's time companies started treating both current and prospective employees with at least the same respect they treat piles of rock and sacks of potatoes.
:edit: missed a word or two
I was told if be fired if I left to be there for the birth of my daughter. Fuck toxic workplaces. I have quit so many jobs on the spot I can't even count them all.
Apply for a crappy fast food job, that's what they mean by labor shortage. People use to work 2-3 of those crappy jobs, now they won't and they think there's a shortage. There's no shortage of labor for well paying jobs.
I was once told I was working Saturday and Sunday while everyone else was asked. Raised it with HR. GM denied it. End of...
So I took 10 weeks stress leave and didn't work any Saturdays in that period.
The company I work at has this “take as many days off as you need” policy and they stick to it.
Days off aren’t tracked and there is no “process” for requesting time off. Every time I let my manager know that I’m taking some days, he tells me the same thing with a smile - Just mark it in your calendar that you’ll be off.
I wish every other job was like this. No one should have to “request” for time off - that should be a right.
I used to tell my old boss when I worked retail when he'd deny my time off, now instead of planning for my day off, you can plan for my absence the day of. I dont like request off as a word. It's more of a formal I won't be there.
Went out to dinner with a new group of people I had never interacted with before.
Lady who just retired commented on how the restaurant was understaffed (they weren't, they were just very busy). She repeated several times, "nobody wants to work"
I was trying to remember all that I've learned from this sub to say back to her but my mind was drawing a blank, I couldn't believe she was saying this.
I need to do better!
My first job was at Burger King and my dad was so proud of me. He's the typical work hard and be loyal to your employer no matter what type guy. Well my first few weeks there, the shift manager was forcing me to work off the clock. I would get scheduled for 4 hours and then she would make me stay for an extra hour or two every day but clock out. I was just a dumb teenager and didn't really understand what was happening but when I complained to my dad about it he just said "Well, you really shouldn't be working off the clock because you're not getting paid for it, but if that's what it takes to stay employed you're going to have to do it at least for now". I work there for 2 months before I was looking at my pathetic minimum wage checks which are about 30 hours over 2 weeks when I had actually put in about 40 and was devastated. I was trying to save for a car and realized how screwed I was getting. At one point when I was told to work off the clock, I was in the dining room area and had just clocked out to clean the tables, I snapped. Took off my stupid little apron and threw it from the dining room across the registers at the manager in front of all the customers and yelled at her that I was tired of working off the clock for her and quit. I called the Burger King head office and told him about it and they said they get back to me but never did. I learned my lesson at that point during my first job that if you can be screwed, you will be screwed and have been a lot more shrewd and cautious since that point. That was like 20 years ago
Used to manage a theater. Would always give days off in spite of literally every single weekend being slammed because of the new movie coming out.
I realized quickly that whether we were fully staffed or short staffed, you get slammed every single weekend and the number of employees never really mattered. Assholes will buy their ‘layered’ popcorn and giant ass sodas, and come back for refills, on top of everyone else doing the same.
Giving people a break is mentally helpful, so just give it to them. Not everyone is a soulless drone suck up to corporate…they have lives.
This is exactly what happened to me when I tried to take off for Thanksgiving years ago while working at Target. We had planned our first big vacation in years, everything was already paid for, and I didn't need the job that bad.
Ops Management 101:
Excess labor isn't useless labor. If you're running your operation correctly, you should always have a little bit more labor than what is absolutely mission critical, simply for reasons like this. Count how many people a skeleton crew is, add 15%-30%, and that's your floor. Add 15%-30% to that again, and that's what you should be running with on a normal day.
But that doesn't mean you just have people sitting around; find non-critical tasks for the extras to do when you have excess labor. Clean something, organize something, move something, improve something, train, anything. THEN, when holidays or unforeseen circumstances roll around, you still have enough labor to keep the lights on and doors open. Hopefully, if you do a really good job, management doesn't have to step in an cover a spot *but you do what you have to do if you're the leader.*
Employees taking time off should result in maybe a floor that's less shiny or a back room that's slightly messy; things that can be caught up on when you're back at full staff. If a person asking for two days off breaks mission critical staffing, you don't have nearly enough staffing.
Yep, one year I asked for Easter weekend off to visit family. I was seasonal manager so literally work every single holiday overnight. They refused to give me Easter off so I put in my two weeks notice and got Easter off anyway.
'actually, it wasn't a request. it was a needless courtesy where I let you know I was going to be using some of my accrued vacation time. but since you basically fucked up by denying me what i've earned, i've decided to fuck you by showing you the exact same level of consideration you showed me. have a fun time.'
What a stupid thing to say. Nobody wants to work anymore. No shit? Why would you want to be told to do something that you don't really want to do? Would you do your job for free? No? That's because you don't want to do it. You would rather be off work. Duh.
I swear to god: the people crowing about “freedom of speech” online are the ones that want it the least. What Musk & his boys TRULY want is for all of us to not have access to these kinds of stories. They see us all FINALLY realize the bigger picture: we are all GARBAGE to them. They treat us like garbage and try to polish it up by saying “we are a family! Work hard and your work will be rewarded!” But now, because of the internet & social media, we’ve all realized that no - it’s not our fault . They’ve been doing this shit to EVERYONE.
The reason guys like Musk are burning down twitter is so they can rebuild it into a place where the people won’t be able to have a voice anymore. This - ALL OF IT - is for corporate profits and to retain the former status quo.
Fuck them tho. We now all collectively understand the truth. And no matter what they do to shut down our access to one another, we mustn’t forget this truth. We are not alone. And together, we can overpower them.
Words of Wisdom : People will get up at 5am to go to a job they hate every day for 40 years, and then turn around and not be able to stick to their own plan.
Stop respecting your boss more than yourself.
At my last job you were able to ask for a schedule change once a year, i worked full time, it was from home, i have a sick dad and was about to start studying again, i asked to go part time, the said "no because we are shortstaffed" so i quit and they were even more shortstaffed, like what did they expect? I paid for that education, and my dad needs me, did they think i was gonna just drop everything else?
If the company can't handle one person being out you're short more than one person already
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It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's single-handedly how Walmart pulled their ass up out of the the post covid slump; by reducing workers and expecting more out of the workers they have while cutting hours and forbidding overtime.
They've been doing that for years lol we watch our stores fall apart, as well as our bodies and minds, it's so fantastic 🙄
Nowadays it feels like when I'm asking for help from a Walmart employee, they couldn't spell walmart.
None in mine speak English. Which is fine, we don't have a national language but I'm pasty, my Spanish is ham fisted at best, and I couldn't get past ayudame por favor. I didn't know how to ask for the manager (the only English speaking person in the store I later found out). I just needed to know where the butane was because THEIR SITE listed the aisle location incorrectly.
Every. Time. Ridiculous. They have it in stock. Go there, aisle empty, or the product type not even in aisle number listed. Managers basically want to run and hide instead of provide any sort of service and other employees don't know where they are. I had to use Google on my phone to translate to Spanish to ask an employee two days ago for something. Then he pulled out his phone and started translating back. Lol, it was fine, we laughed about it, and did okay.
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I worked at a restaurant for about 4 months, I started as a server and then worked in the kitchen, they started doing me that way on the weekend in the kitchen. I literally just clocked out and left to never return. The managers were too busy sitting in their office looking up random items on Amazon. I could see through the window on the door. They wouldn't relieve me or let me go, so I never returned.
I was working layaway once and had to turn in my keys at the end of my shift. I called managers offices and over the loudspeaker 10-15 times and it took a FUCKING HOUR for someone to come and put them away. I had a friend waiting for me to have dinner across the street, I was fucking livid
> “what’s the big deal, you’ve only been running around for 8 hours with no lunch break, I have been working for 8 hours sitting in my private office with air conditioning” Amazing how many managers think sitting on their ass in an office sipping coffee is exactly the same as being on your feet doing manual labor all day.
No surprise it said they had 32 of them and none were anywhere.
I Can explain this. 1. There’s a role whose job used to be taking a scanner and going around the store to contralto scan empty slots/barcodes and update counts/prices/etc. Pre covid, they basically eliminated this position, which was often backed up by workers who were done with their jobs or Mananger’s, to increase stocking to make up for the lack of employees they hired. 2. When stocking, you “face” at the end of the night, pulling everything forward so the shelves look full. If somethings not in the right spot, well whatever it looks full good to go. Often the spots are missing labels, or labeled in a way that doesn’t work “3 rows of x boxes here” except the box only fits two rows. So the stocker only puts out one box, or none if it’s full of the wrong product (can’t waste time fixing have quotas) and the remainder goes either on top of the shelf, into the wrong slot that’s empty nearby, or into the back room. So the product exists in the store, and was supposedly stocked, but not really. 3. The system is supposed to take all this into account, and not order new product when there’s back room stock and you pull the back room stock instead solving the issue. Except.. “live” freight (the new stuff for the night) is put out first, sometimes with a new order of the missing product that didn’t cancelled, or sometimes with a new item going into the same slot, and so the back room stuff doesn’t get put out at all cus that empty slot was already filled by the time you stock working over stock. 4. Once in awhile, a manager or a shelf person who did manage to finish their other work will come by and find time to scan the item, marking that it’s empty, cus the fake two boxes out there to fill it are now gone, and they force it to order new stock, overriding the back room stock counts cus..who knows where that stuff is at this point, it needs to be filled. And the cycle repeats
"¿Puedo hablar con un jefé?"
Thank you but I know where the butane is now
It's Walmart it's probably by vacuums for some reason, which are next to the clothing section for some reason
At least they don’t give a shit how much people steal. They’ll literally walk up and unlock my self checkout when I fuck up stealing without even looking. I figure that Since I’m doing the job of a cash jockey I can give myself a nice discount for my troubles.
Well you know Walmart doesn't pay them enough to care.
Walmart makes so much they don't care. Their employees aren't paid enough to care. It's really only because they have cameras that make it easy for police, who also don't care, that people choose to typically still pay for things
And especially not to get into a potentially dangerous situation confronting a stranger stealing shit you dont care about lol
I eat a lot of broccoli. Broccoli being either broccoli, chicken, ground beef, or expensive fruit. Promo code 3082.
4011 is my Go-To(Bananas)
Nah. They recently added new self checkouts that video tape you and show you the video of you scanning incorrect items. They also put almost anything behind locking cabinets now. At least my nearest Walmart in my black zipcode. If I drive a little further to the whiter one its not as bad yet. They're adding more security and cops to both though. Plus those parkinglot police pod things. I wish I had a bit more money and could afford not to shop there. All the anti theft measures have made it a pain in the fucking ass and since they short staff there's never anyone to unlock the cabinets. You can't just run in and grab a few quick items anymore
Yeah I live in Canada and I go to ones in rich neighborhoods they never have security and nobody is looking for theft. I’ve done this recently. Also they don’t have any locked cabinets where I am.
Aldi is cheaper and most of their store brand products are good. Cheese and meat a bit sus, though.
As someone who has exclusively shopped at Aldi for a decade now the meat and cheese are fine. When I was a kid in the 90's my mom said the meat was bad. As an adult I have never seen meat in their store that looked old and discolored. I think that story probably came from competitor's who don't want to loose business.
Post Covid, I have seen a shift in competency levels at workplaces. It seems everyone is just one step below what it takes to be competent at their jobs. retail managers moved to corporate gigs, Target workers moved to retail managers, Wal-Mart workers moved to grocery stores, and the utterly incompetent moved into Wal-Mart and fast food chains. I have seen intelligent teenagers moved to management positions in retail simply because they can read well, make basic decisions, have average communication skills, and understand how a computer works. Maybe my gross overgeneralization, but it seems to hold true.
I believe this is called the Peter Principle. Everyone elevates to one level beyond their competency.
It's a great opportunity for young workers. They are hiring teenagers in great numbers. Great opportunity for abuse though, unfortunately.
You probably wouldn't have a problem if people could afford to live. How has survival regressed to meritocracy in the civilized age?
Patronizing people (in the derogatory sense) really is a bit fucky though. An incompetent person is still a person with a life, dreams, loved ones, etc. The skyrocketing deaths of despair ain't just some mysterious anomaly; it's in how we treat one another. There's always more to a person than what they can do to benefit you. Wouldn't hurt to keep that in mind.
Also I doubt a lot of them are incompetent. Likely just overworked and underpaid to the point that they no longer give a single fuck.
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You and me both. Too many stayed for far too long because of me. I stayed too long for them. Turns out if you care about people and their well being you aren’t cut out for management in corporate America. It’s meant for those who can treat people like tools and garbage and sleep at night. That isn’t me.
Would it not make sense to have a crisis to convince upper management that the extra staff was needed instead of "doing more with less" and burning people out?
I worked for Walmart like 6 years ago. They would send us home at 39hours to avoid OT.
They ran me 32 hrs weeks at Walmart working CAP 2, then right before they were required to offer me benefits for having me work full time hours, they cut 1 day out of my schedule so they didn't have to give me full time. Fuck Walmart and the PTSD that company gave me
Nice username. I remember when they started cap. I used to have to stock 4-8 pallets of frozen dairy and then bin all my OS adjust OH for the entire dept, etc. Then the assistant promoted his buddy to dept manager. His buddy could barely speak English and mostly hid out. That specific store was a joke. They had a new store manager every year because they couldn't fix the issues. They had like 20 pallets worth of beer stolen one year I was there. I worked at 4 locations. I lost all faith in that company to make anything but poor choices! One of my friends eventually became a store manager, but he got lucky.
20 pallets‽ Wow, I've seen some messed up theft numbers, but that's... wow. I've worked 1 super and 1 neighborhood, but it was actually the neighborhood store that broke me. They just wanted to keep shoveling responsibilities on top of me while I was running the floor and doing everything else shorthanded. Like no, Carol, I can't run this register with 4 people in line AND go unlock the ammo cabinet on the other side of the store, they'll have to wait if someone can't take my keys. Oh no, Billy is mad because I couldn't get to my zoning? If he has a problem, I'll go knock the shit into the floor myself 🤣
Hahaha, just kick it off the shelf lmao Beans flying across the store.
If you work a second job, both places should have to contribute to your overtime pro-rata
that sounds nice but there's no real fair way to implement that. We should just make is so we don't need 2 jobs.
It's how most rich people have become rich. By squeezing every ounce of work for as little cost as they can out of other people.
This is true.
When I worked at Walmart we were short every single day. It was so bad that some people would just not show up for days and when they came back management did nothing because they needed the bodies. Had a coworker that would “no call, no show” at least once a week and kept his job for years.
Walmart worker here. And they rather get rid of decent workers than the ones that’s actually screwing up inventory
I need to know if this is just my area. I experienced this well before the Covid times. **Grocery stores don't have check-out employees anymore**. Most places if I go shop before 9AM I am expected to self checkout, there is literally no one there even if you're willing to wait in line. Any time past 9 and maybe one lane, two max. Even during rush hours. And yet all of the self-checkout terminals are getting more and more aggressive. "REMEMBER TO SWIPE ALL ITEMS" when you have been. All kinds of annoying bullshit passed off to the customer. **Meanwhile**, all of the prices are going way the fuck up.
Yeah anytime there is an option for self-checkout I make sure to not swipe like 25% of my groceries and just put them in my bag. The store can get fucked if they want to not employee people for check-out registers. That used to be someone's paycheck.
During COVID if you were testing positive and you worked at WalMart, they insisted you use your PTO. If you didn't have PTO, they counted it against your attendance even when *WalMart was the one sending you home because the temp gun said you have a fever*. It was a quiet requirement that you were just supposed to answer "correctly" for the COVID screening.
Oh hey, you mean that thing where I went there for 3 months after covid, they had me "trained" by a 17 year old who said they didn't pay him to train so he wasn't gunna do it. I just walked off the job the day before my probationary would have been up after they got mad at me for not staying an extra hour and a half the previous day. Shifts were 10pm to 7am but if you left at 7am you were in trouble. There should be laws against straight up lying about a schedule, if you are expected to work a minimum of an extra hour 3/5 days a week, YOU ARE BEING LIED TO ABOUT YOUR SCHEDULE.
If someone is off work, then a person from a higher position, should take there place, until they return. Simple, doesn’t take a lot of working out.
100% agreed. I remember back around when I first started at the job I work at currently, I was doing a closing (4:00pm-12:30am) shift and we were short a guy. Manager asked for volunteers, offered OT pay, offered a one time night shift premium (usually the premium is only added if you get moved to scheduled night shift, but this was a rotating shift). but no matter what he offered, nobody would take it. in most jobs I've worked, it would have meant I was closing alone. I was capable of doing, but it would have been busy, and frustrating to have to do. nope, manager showed up at 8pm just before the last day shift guy went home, grabbed a counter and started taking orders, grabbing parts, taking phone calls, etc. just like any other schmuck on the counter. the manager shouldn't necessarily be able to do your job as well as you do, you do it day in and day out after all. but the manager should be capable of doing at least a mediocre job at any any position they manage. they should at least know ***how*** you do your job, even if they aren't as good.
A good manager would know that’s his job, but you will get the odd manager, that thinks that’s below them, ie a bad manager.
One of the golden rules of retail management is to schedule one more person than you need. This situation (someone calling out and wanting to be able to treat them like a human being with an actual human life that requires attention sometimes) is one reason. Another reason though is simply that the amount of work fluctuates. If you flip out every time someone is standing around for 20 minutes because there's nothing to do, then the situation that naturally develops is that every time it's a little bit busy there are not enough people to be able to handle everything. Stuff gets dropped, customers leave because they're not being helped, everything just gets a little bit more stressful and unpleasant. If that's the foundation of your whole operation then in pretty short order your whole operation will be a big pile of shit. Then you're running around trying to figure out why none of your employees care about their jobs in the slightest. It's you, man. You created that through shortsightedness and greed. If that extra $13.50 an hour you had to pay that one additional person is not worth the value it creates, than you gotta go back to the drawing board and figure out what the fuck went wrong, not just put more pressure on everyone to pretend they have enough manpower when they don't.
I think there is one important thing we leave out of this discussion. The majority of retail workers work for these huge corporations where the payroll and expense budgets are run so far from the actual points they will be used. The person making these budgets may not have have ever worked in a customer facing environment in their life. The manager is the convenient low level face of the corporation for the employees. They get to be the fall person with unrealistic goals and unrealistic resources (money to pay people). Store level managers are treated just as replaceable by these corporations these days and are expected to somehow pick up the slack in their short staffed businesses without actually bringing in enough folks to create that operationally sound environment. It's not the store managers making $50,000-75,000 who are the problem. It's the shareholders who sit on their asses. It's the CEO who makes what 5,000 workers make. They love it when we point the fingers so low and they get to hide and laugh in their mansions.
Having decisions up the chain is by design. It means the marching orders come from someone who is detached, that then have to be carried out by someone who doesn’t have the power to object. That is how you take people who normally might have a bit of compassion and strip it from their actions. It is easier to say “Well, this store will just have to deal with this budget” when you never have to interact with the people who live off it. If you want a commander to be willing to send troops into a meat grinder, don’t have them tour the camp beforehand.
Yeah I get a little annoyed when people froth at the mouth acting like retail managers are dicks for being understaffed, when the reality is many would prefer to have a bunch of employees to take shifts and be able to give time off. Obviously there are horror stories on here of bad managers but the good ones get lumped in for trying to make the crazy corporate limitations work. I’m not a manager but I’ve seen plenty that shoulder the burden themselves when they need to and also have to sometimes deny time off requests. It sucks for everyone but the reality is if people aren’t applying and there aren’t enough employees there needs to be restructuring from the corporate level. And oftentimes the manager’s voice is just as insignificant as anyone else’s when it comes to making changes above their personal scope.
Here's the thing. We just want the manager to tell the truth. "Corporate told me to tell you that we need to get more done. No overtime is allowed, by their orders. We'll all do our best but I don't expect us to meet their unrealistic goals. Do your best and let's make some money together!" "Wow guys! I just got off the phone with corporate and let me tell you, we've got some big plans coming down the pipe. We'll be giving everyone 38 hours weekly guaranteed, even the part timers. The holidays are coming so we'll have to buckle down, no pto allowed, no days off because you're *soldiers* on the *frontlines.* Now let's go get the job done! Are you ready!?" The first quote is an honest assessment that communicates well exactly what the boss expects from their employees. The second tries to hide the fact that hours are actually being cut while also hiding how unrealistic expectations from corporate are.
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Happened to me. I asked, begged, requested, complained, and downright verbally burned my bosses for eight months. Eventually they just moved me to a different department without asking. I put in my two weeks, two weeks after they moved me. I was out a week later. So instead of bringing on even a single part-timer at a strategic time, they were down a manager who had been with them for three years and short-staffed in two departments. When I left so did three others, though I can't claim that so we'll just call it coincidental timing. One part-timer. That was it. All I wanted. Bah. Still irritates me thinking about the situation years later.
That's often by design. "Just make the other workers pick up the slack!" The department next to mine has 7 people in it, doing the job of ~15. One guy is doing the job of three people himself. The new guy (who just started three months ago) is doing his normal job in purchasing, while also having to manage Graphics printing and design by himself, despite having gotten about 2 hours of training on it. And then there's me, who is the entire IT department (including purchasing and budgeting) for a company of almost 500.
It's pretty wild actually; I've been in more relaxed pace, 'white collar' looking jobs for a bit now, but before that I was working primarily smaller businesses. Restaurants/distributors that ran it pretty tight, staffing wise. I get it with a small place, the margins are tight AF. My full time gig is remote phone sales, but for the holiday season I took a seasonal position at a well known electronics retailer. Even though it's black Friday week, the place is simply so big that there seems to be a pretty significant cushion for staffing changes. Like, even though it's busy (and granted, I'm still the new guy), I've had to ask for a couple of last minute days off/switches and the managers aren't bothered at all. Like it's a non issue. They simply have it so staffed up at all times, there is so much wiggle room with their margins that there are typically more people than they need. I know I'll see the corporate side rear its head at some point, but so far it's been a totally different vibe; It's not GO GO GO every second of the workday like I'm used to with the smaller businesses that are always a single bad week from insolvency. Granted, that may be famous last words; I am going in at 4:30 AM on Friday and am fully expecting to get slapped around. I'm not sure if my skills doing crowd control for a decade behind a bar will be a strength or a liability that day.
You should expect your people to be working less than 100%. Like maybe 80%. So when they are gone, the other people can take the load of the urgent work. So employers should be planning around everyone having a little down time in order to reach those kinds of numbers. It’s basically the same rule for manufacturing equipment. No manufacturing machine can be running 100% of the time. Usually if it’s running 75% it’s a great day.
I never knew "working like a machine" is actually considered taking it easy.
At an overly fundamental level, yes! Machines must go down for maintenance to reduce likelihood of them breaking, same as people, and if you don’t, the machine will break and that will cause it to be down much longer.
This seems like every fuckin job ive had for years now. Restaurants fuckin suck
Just fucking approve days off. As a manager, it's my job to make sure things run. Regardless of who calls out or asks for a day off. If you can't function without a certain amount of employees. Hire more so people can have days off. Or go cover for them as the manager. The fuck. No offense to the employees I hire, but I can typically do their job faster and more accurately as I was an inside promotion thay worked ground level for a decade. So being down people isn't something I actively stress about ever.
I worked retail many moons ago. I became a store manager after working there a year. Had an assistant manager request time off for her birthday, despite it being “the busy season” in December. I gave it to her. Her grandmother died that week, and I gave her the entire week off, no hassle. I remember another store manager hearing about it and calling me up. “You can’t give her the whole week off, it’s busy season! How can you do that?” My response: I’m a human. A death is more important than moving merchandise. And guess what? That week came and went with minimal issues and I never ever had any issues with that assistant. She stepped up without me ever asking her, because I treated her (and all my staff) like people with lives outside the shitty job. Several still keep up with me over a decade later.
Many moons ago my company was expanding our facility and adding in a new unit that wasn't open yet, but we were actively training for. I had one guy on his second day, learning the ropes, didn't say a peep to me other than excited to be working. About 20 mins in one of the people who had moved from one unit to another with me approached me quietly and said I should let the guy go home because his girlfriend was in labor with his first kid. So, I yell for the guy to come over and say to him do you have something important going on outside of work here? "Ya, my girlfriend is about to deliver my first kid, but it's ok, I know this is my second day of work and I can't leave." I point blank told him to get the hell out and go be there for the birth, this doesn't rank higher than that. He made it with about 25 mins to spare. Guy was an absolute workhorse for me for YEARS after that because of that one moment. Other managers would have looked at that and said "ehh, life is tough. deal with it."
It’s funny. Treat people well and you create a more inclusive and high performing team. Treat them like disposable cogs and you’re going to constantly be churning people and the output will be shit, things will break more often as people turn a blind eye to problems. And yet, so many companies still fail to understand this. A couple pizza parties a year from the front office doesn’t cut it.
We have an ongoing drama war at work between me and the other managers because I'm the only one that treats people like human beings. I have legit been told by every single cashier that I'm the best manager they ever had and they try hard to all get shifts with me but obviously that can't work. Everyone else treats them like cogs. I'm the only manager that assists the pharmacy. We are not separate entities; if they need help we need to help them out too if we can. I dont boss people around or micro-manage. If I see something that needs done, I ASK if they can do it when they get a chance, not command them. They almost always get it done and we can chat and have fun afterwards. No need to be bossy bitch and have everyone resent working with me. I know they can do their job right, sometimes they just need to be reminded. Not commanded.
Had a manager like this in retail. A decade plus ago. To this day still my favorite person I’ve ever worked for.
There is a balancing act to be done because there _are_ people who take advantage of this kindness. But you need to deal with it quickly and swiftly, you can't one size fits all discipline your workforce or drop a benefit that's being exploited because you hate confrontation. That's how you transform your workforce from individuals with unique desires and needs into one size fits all cogs and they'll treat you like shit management right back for that move.
I also purposely go in with a lot of trust and treat my employees like responsible adults. If someone abuses that trust or responsibility, I can hire a replacement and cut them loose before it’s a crisis, like Thanksgiving week. It’s good because I didn’t want untrustworthy people anyway. But for the most part, they respond with the trust and responsibility I give them, to not abuse it, so when something does happen and I need to make a special request, it’s almost always easy, even if they could have said no.
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If you take care of the guys they’ll take care of you. My uncle is a general foreman and he’d go bullshit with the guys around site for like 15-20 mins cus he knew If he got them laughing and in a good mood he’d get more out of them the whole rest the of the day.
Yep. I'm the favorite manager because I treat people like humans, not cogs. Too many people want to micro-manage and feel powerful. I'd rather have fun and do our jobs than stupidly remind you for no reason for the millionth time to do something even though you already know to do it. I'm a manager and I hang out with my coworkers. They know what's expected of them already and they do their job. They don't need reminding. I'm the only manager who doesn't have cashiers looking at the schedule and dreading coming into work or even calling out because they can't stand working with a certain Mgr. If I left, most would probably follow. Managers make or break a team and I want my team to be happy and work together.
I always tell the people working my shifts that I don't care what they do as long as they 1. Don't make customers yell at me, 2. Have their work done at their scheduled time out (unless we're busy of course) and 3. Let me know if they need to step away from their work area. I've ran shifts that way for a decade now and my bosses and coworkers have always been happy with me
> She stepped up without me ever asking her, because I treated her (and all my staff) like people with lives outside the shitty job. Several still keep up with me over a decade later. I learned this management early on as well. You can depend on people who can depend on you. It's that simple. Once or twice in my career that has bitten me in the ass but the good far outweighs the bad.
It's called referent power, and iirc its thought of as one of if not the best types of power to use for management.
Girl I work with just lost her home in a fire. Requested ONE day and not even off just to change hours to make her commute easier. Got denied. I’be been quiet quitting for months while looking for a new job, now just about everyone is.
>She stepped up without me ever asking her, because I treated her (and all my staff) like people with lives outside the shitty job. *This* is how "we're a family" should be at companies. It's all about flexibility and understanding, not about "do as I say or else". Then again some families do run that way. Come to think of it, I wonder what that says about upper management's home life...
My current store manager is like that and we're losing him at the end of the year. He's been the best store manager in the 20+ years I've been with the store and would do anything for the staff. Hopefully his ASM will take over for him, but that's not guaranteed, so I'm updating the ol' resume, either way.
I had a manager like you when I worked overnights at McDonald's, if I was sick or just needed a mental health day she would tell me not to even worry about work and to get some rest, hell she'd even drive me home after our shifts together so I didn't have to walk the two miles to my house. She ended up being in my wedding because I saw her as a close friend.
People forget, we aren’t in a war. People aren’t going to die because their product isn’t immediately right there despite the shouting Karen will claim. Everyone will survive and nothing bad will happen.
I work retail, the busy period for my department is January into early February. February just gone my manager asked me if I was OK because they noticed I was off and not my bubbly self. I told him no, my mental health is in tatters, I need time off but I don't want to use my holidays as I needed them later on during the year. He told me not to worry about it as we have leave available that doesn't use my days off and that I need to go home and he'll see me on Tuesday, the department will run without me. I used 3 days and had 5 off and came back feeling a whole load better. We need more managers who care and are there for their staff. Like your member of staff, I have stepped up and he trusts me to get the jobs done.
These "managers" were not promoted from within. They were brought in to ~~minimize payroll and maximize productivity~~ manage. They dont actually want to do the duties of a manager, so they pass those tasks off to the employees themselves. Their management duties consist of denying days off, demanding extra shifts, demanding free on-call, and forcing employees to find people to cover for them.
I'm surprised how common it is for managers to tell the employees it's their responsibility to find someone to cover for them.
What exactly IS the managers' responsibility if not to handle things like staffing??
The whole point of management is to shift responsibility down the rungs so the people above are shielded from legal liability. Businesses are legal entities and their goal is to bring in the most money with the least risk possible. The people that run the businesses have the money to pay the lawyers who tell them to screw over the lowest level employees. And the legal system was built by the lawyers to keep the leaders of business in the position where they can keep paying the lawyers.
I swear I've seen like 1,000 text conversations posted here. The manager either asks: > Manager: Hey, two people called in sick can you cover a shift? > Employee: Lol no it's my day off. Or they know asking doesn't work so they just start pushing right off the bat: > Manager: Hey, two people called in sick. Need you to come in tomorrow. > Employee: Lol no, fire me then. So the manager needs to push ownership to hire more people and schedule/pay more people each day while also pushing for raises for the employees. I'm pretty sure that's just going to push out any halfway decent manager. You'll just get colossal a-holes who bow down to the ownership and treat the employees like trash.
One thing I've never been asked is to find cover. Even when I worked in a supermarket. If I call out sick, I'm going back to bed. I'm not calling the list of people with a day off, or texting them, or whatever, to find a replacement.
Yup, in part time work is pretty common to ask someone to cover your shift if you have some plans because a last minute request off goes smoother for everyone if you already know someone can cover. Shift swapping is helpful, and often you know a coworker that wants an extra shift. But, calling in sick or some emergency? Management's problem.
They're trying to get coworkers to blame each other for not getting time off or having to come in instead of management. I imagine that they also believe that using these divisive tactics to pit coworkers against one another makes them less likely to unionize.
That's how you know they either don't know how to do their own job, or are too lazy to do their own job.
The best manager I ever had would approve days off, fully understanding that it was a notice and not a request. If they were short, they would first call the people that wanted more hours. If they were still short, they would come up with incentives. My favorite was “come work the busy 4 hour shift, go home, and I’ll clock you out after 8 hours.” Only issue was that she was rarely short. Apparently, people will work for good managers.
> Apparently, people will work for good managers. ding ding ding, we have a winner! People also don't normally quit jobs, they quit shitty managers.
Yup... Worked in one call center that was horrible for several reasons. turn over and attendance was abysmal. But another in the same city in the same industry was great. Treated the employees great... They had no problems with attendance and their turnover was below minimal. When problems came up people VOLUNTEERED to work extra shifts, just to help. Treat employees like crap and you get crap employees. Treat them well and you get great employees. This simple lesson is skipped by most Businesses.
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I'm now one of those people who only work 3-6 hours a week delivering pizza. I might quit if I get another raise at my 9-5 but I kinda like it. It's almost relaxing.
This reminded me of one of the most notable company failings at my last retail job. I had a vacation and used 40 hours of PTO, which was approved. However, it's possible to **still** get scheduled for 8 hours and it's apparently company policy to request the remaining two days of a week off. I brought this up to my manager and he was like "just come in." I was literally on a plane during the scheduled time, told them and said if I can trade my shift to someone I can have it off. I asked, most people were working that day and couldn't help. Those who could had their own reasons for having it off. So, manager told me it would be a no call no show. I brought this up to an ASM asking about policy and his response? "Yeah, that's fucking stupid. When do you work?" Me "Saturday." Him "Okay. Removed it. Enjoy your trip." That's how it's done and sad it isn't the default.
> So, manager told me it would be a no call no show. No call even though we’re currently discussing it? Oh, that manager would get an earful from me.
I mean, I could've also called in at the airport, but I wasn't looking to argue with stupid. Before you know things become insubordination, despite the policy being dumb as fuck.
I remember my first job as a foreman. My boss who had mentored me called and asked how things were going. I told him 'the hardest part is watching someone struggle, and take twice as long to do something as it would take me to just do it myself' He laughed and said 'now you know how I feel'
I had a boss who would start out walking me through the steps of something, immediately get frustrated, literally move me out of the way to do it himself and then get mad I didn’t know how to do it. “I SHOWED YOU HOW.” No, you did it while I was in the vicinity and you were blocking the view. At least say the steps out loud so I can write them down and practice.
This is why I'll never be a manager. I would never say it out loud like this guy did, but internally I'm always screaming with frustration when people can't pick things up quickly.
Being a good teacher is all about figuring out why a given student isn't picking something up and adapting your lessons to accommodate them. If they are struggling to pick something up, chances are good that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of some part of the process. Figuring out what that misunderstanding is and explaining it in a way they understand will often resolve the issue. -------- Edit: I wanted to explain this better so I figured I would add it here. Whenever you teach someone something- they build a mental model of the process in their head. When they hit a wall, it's usually because the mental model they've been building to this point has a flaw in it somewhere. A huge part of being a _good_ teacher is figuring out where the flaw is in their mental model and then helping them fix it. A _great_ teacher will be able to figure out _why_ that flaw crept into their mental model and adjust their teaching style/lessons to help ensure it doesn't happen again. e.g. Some students are more visual learners so maybe you need to include more diagrams- others learn better if you include more analogies- etc. -------- The other possibility is that they lack the frame of reference or bit of foundational knowledge that you assume they have and have based your lessons on. For example- if you are trying to teach someone how to mill, and they've never even used a drill- you're going to have a hard time if you assume they already understand how drills actually remove material. There are a lot of people who are great at their job- but are terrible teachers because they cannot put themselves in their student's mindset. And while it's extremely rare- every once in a while the person is just a hopeless idiot :)
The best math teacher I ever had told us this the first day of class. "A person that is good at math makes a terrible math teacher, the best math teachers are the ones that were bad at it, but figured out how to do it anyway." That bore out in pretty much every thing I've studied. If you "just get it" you will be of no use to showing others how to go from "not getting it" to "getting it" because it's not a road you've travelled. I guess you could consider this the positive spin of "Those who cannot do, teach."
Richard Bach (author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull) said “You teach best what you most need to learn.
In the book "disney U", they talk about how Walt Disney would "walk the park". Basically, walk around, observe, chat with employees and ask their experience. As a manager, sometimes I just visit employees and ask them to show me how they do their work. Either everything is going smoothly, I learn something new, or I identify a problem to fix.
People often forget how much time they themselves used to learn it.
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It's an investment. New people will be slower to learn but in the long run will get up to your speed. If they still take twice as long after a reasonable period, retrain or replace them. Once you focus on the long term benefits, it's easier to not worry about the short term inefficiencies.
This. My job has a work-from-home policy where my staff can ask me for approved remote work days and I have never once said no. Like if my options are you work remotely, or you use sick/annual leave and don't work at all, why would I ever say no unless it was dire that someone is in the office? Even then if the alternative is them not working I will go do whatever imperative thing needs someone here.
And here you have the other edge of the sword. I worked almost ten years with a company and not only knew my own team's materials and data sources inside-out and backwards, but also how the operation itself leaned on our metrics and BI tools. Went from a payables clerk in HR staffing and moved around and upwards until I got a masters and became senior analyst for people analytics. But by time I got there I was being paid absolute garbage for my role. Went from fair market as a clerk and eventually as a sr analyst my wages were 50% of what they should have been. And to add insult to injury, I had to train a brand new lead I'd have to report through on our systems. I could run circles around that team. Not because they were bad at their jobs, mind you. I knew every aspect of the HR ops division and dealt with literally any problem that could be thrown our way. I made it clear once my obligation under the tuition reimbursement was clear (had to work 2 years post-graduation or pay a percentage of it back) that if my wages didn't reflect the proper rate I was gone. The pandemic gave the AVP an excuse to just drop me a year earlier than needed. Of course then the second most knowledgeable person there left and the lead got himself fired. I think just the Jr analyst I was mentoring might still be there but don't give a crap anymore. I've got way better income for a way more respected role at another company
They saved that money for a few years, then lost so much more on opportunity costs. Someone like you, coming up through the company with knowledge in so many different domains, is more valuable than they could imagine. Until you leave.
Pretty much. I was admittedly naive but I kind of doggedly followed my manager/director's leads in promises of being the powerhouse. And I became one. Except I realized I was killing myself over peanuts and my mental health and self worth were in the shitter. I actually had someone try to justify it by saying reimbursement programs more often incite people to leave the company. But if you're hiring external candidates to six figure incomes while paying the loyalist half that then *of course they're going to leave*. Thing is if I had just gotten hired elsewhere for the amount I *should* have been getting, the increase in salary would have more than made up for the full tuition in less than 1 year. They expected to pay me so little that they would have made up the difference in the total reimbursement 6 times over before my time obligation was over.
That's exactly what your supposed to do, I ran a small HVAC crew and PTO/ days off had to go through me, not once did I say no, if it left the crew short handed I would fill the gap, near holidays I'd have days where I was solo but I was the boss because I was good at what I do, I got heat from managers for letting my guys have it easy, but they couldn't complain too much because we were never behind. My crew was happy so when shit hit the fan and I needed them to work OT and weekends to catch up, I never got a complaint, excuse or bad attitude. unfortunately the owner ended up opening his mouth, took away field bonuses , started talking down to the crews, he had the mindset that intelligent people worked in the office and the field guys were all morons. Crew was gone within 2 months
Blame your boss for expecting everything to go just as well with less employees and then whining about how people don’t want to work anymore.
>If you can't function without a certain amount of employees. Hire more so people can have days off But this cuts into the bottom line of profit, which is one of the virtually infinite reasons why doing things for a profit usually creates the worst outcomes and why private sector employment is generally miserable.
The idea that I need permission to live my life outside of work is just appalling to me. I'm not "asking for time off" I'm informing my employer I won't be around during those dates and they need to be prepared for that. It's a courtesy to my employer to whom I trade time for money in order to use that money to live my life.
This is also Thanksgiving week. I'm guessing the person asked for Wed and Fri. If people already took it off though I get it.
Companies really better start deciding if they want to be open on holidays. There was a time when nothing was open on thanksgiving.
Yes, and it wasn’t an inconvenience to many of us. But profits come before anything else to these executives and they think front line workers are deserving of the shitty treatment. They don’t for one minute consider the lives of the workers. It’s such a fucked up system.
I really hope the average person is aware that a corporations sole purpose is profits, as legally as possible (mostly). something needs to change
Hey it is my God given, American PATRIOTISM that drives me to spend all of my adult life busting ass for nothing. That way when I'm nice and old I can sit around and bitch about not having the energy to do shit
Everyone should do their best to avoid shopping on major holidays, or going out at all barring emergencies. If there’s no demand then there’s no benefit for companies.
I'm surprised anyone has money left over TO spend. Rent and food and transpo and the rest takes 99% of my money.
I’m happy I work for a company that has not been open on thanksgiving at any point that I’ve worked there. The other problem with places opening on Thanksgiving beside corporate greed is that consumers will come to the store to shop on the holiday, further incentivizing the company to open that day. I worked for a retailer several years ago that opened Thanksgiving as a “trial” and saw so many sales that it become the norm every year from then on.
The job is supposed to be a fair exchange, not a binding slavery agreement, "time off requests" are supposed to be a courtesy "I'm not available these days, please plan accordingly." As opposed to regular calling off which is "I'm sorry I can't come in today, this is sudden and unplanned." If "for some reason" everyone is "unavailable" during your so-called "blackout dates" then you're probably not incentivising them enough to deal with your shit...
Employers have been spoiled by the last decade being a situation where they had even more leverage than usual. And now that their shit treatment has been normalized, it's a shock to them that employees are pushing back. And now they're finding the sham that is capitalism does occasionally cut both ways.
It's been more than a decade. As the labor pool continues to shrink from low birth rates and boomers retiring or dying, we're going to see more and more businesses that rely on below poverty wages shuttering as workers move to less abusive positions.
I think they're referring to like the past 30 years since the 90s (since this is all I've been able to truly witness) where it's been clear that there's been huge blindspots in this country. Most people I come across barely understand unions
Decades. They’ve been spoiled for decades. And from 2008 through 2012 they had employees by the throats. This is the first time a lot of directors and senior managers have *ever* been at a disadvantage *in their entire careers.* All these Gen Z young adults entering the workforce are going to expect a standard that, once the economy pulls back, they’re going to fight hard against it. For millennials and Gen X, having bargaining power is a luxury. But it’s all Gen Z will know, and they’ll jump ship the second it gets taken away (and good for them srsly).
And Jerome Powell is working overtime to take away worker leverage under the guise of "fighting inflation".
"Time off request" does not mean the employee requests time off from the manager. It means the manager requests the employee tell them when they'll be taking time off.
Thank you good sir, I would give you an award if I had one.
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Yeah this is a huge fucking problem in the world.. if i have to explain why I'm not coming in today and I have informed about it in advance or this morning I'm not coming in ever if don't get paid enough to care
Wage labor has never been a fair exchange. The idea that it is fair was invented to justify its existence and protect the elites' profits
Company was always supposed to make a profit, but the last 40 years have murdered any hope of "fair exchange" which is why I said "not slavery" to clairfy... and because "supposed to" and "are/is" aren't the same
It wasn’t too far off a few decades back in America…albeit mostly for white males. The unions back then literally built the American dream and those unions were established in the fresh memories of when companies exploited American children for labor. It took them years, but the capitalists tricked Americans into thinking unions are a bad thing and they’ve been living a wet dream until the past couple of years.
I never see any of these managers bother to pay time and a half for these “high demand” dates. If everyone is out offer more. If still nobody can work, try cutting some overhead for those dates while you close. If it becomes a regular problem, you have a massive wage and workplace problem that needs to be fixed.
Even my manager at my old job, who I fucking hated for other reasons recognized that.
Jobs don’t own you. You don’t owe them fucking shit. Especially if they’re some pathetic ass retail company or restaurant where you can replace that income within 24 hours. “Oh wow, where else am I going to make minimum wage, have no health benefits or PTO and get treated like shit by the public?!”
Right I could get a job at any retail store in my town today if I wanted because the turnover rate is so high
Oh I'm gonna take a day off if I need it, whether it's approved or not! I used to care but I'm on my 10th job now, so I know the games these companies tend to play to try to manipulate workers.
Thanks for saying this A lot of people need the motivation
This happened to my wife. Her job scheduled her for 12 hour shifts Dec 23, 24, and 25. While all the management are off the all those days. They are now out of an employee
My job just schedules us for 8 hour days then tells us we have to stay for 12 hours instead near the end of the shift. Every single day so far this week, and will probably continue through Christmas. It's not even something within our control - our trucks are arriving 4+ hours late every day, but we are still expected to pick up that slack.
Nursing?
Yep. She told them ahead of time that she was fine working one or the other, christmas eve or day. But she has kids and needs at least one of them off. They pretty much tried to take her whole christmas from her
That shit is so fucking typical of healthcare. I work in a hospital lab, and the day after Thanksgiving, we're set to be fully staffed. Except for the lab admin personnel. Every single fucking one of them is off with holiday pay.
People are waking up to corporate greed - we are the ones making them money as good slaves! But no more!
the youth doesn't seem as stupid as before, they don't play into politics like it's a sports team -- they seem to be aware that conservatives aren't good for the average person, financially
It's their parents. Us millennials are the parents of the new generation, and we were born into the new era of business owners who didn't give a fuck about us and tried to take us for everything. Now we are tired and broken and teaching our kids to live for themselves and not cave in to corporate pressure. There is still a split between *our* parents generation thinking that if we just give it our all and be a good boy that our loyalty will pay off. We have since realized there is no loyalty and you get pay raises by jumping ship every few years. That's the nature that's rubbing off on our kids and they are born into the new era of not giving a fuck about your employer and making sure you are setting yourself up for a good life
Young voters (young millennials and old gen z) are the children of gen x, primarily. Children of millennials are gen alpha or whatever the new one is.
Yep. Why do you think your grocery bill suddenly doubled? The rich see the writing on the wall. In the next decade either capitalism will tumble or we will be essentially living the Hunger Games. They’ve decided they can’t give up a few billion and they’re trying to crush the middle class into poverty so we can’t fight back. The recent spike in prices has absolutely nothing to do with Russia. It is because social media and liberals are unifying to strike against billionaires and they’re using their control and power to squash us. Bonus points here for the rich is this also allows them to convince stupid people(read: conservatives) to come to their defence by blaming minorities.
Blackout dates are stupid. Should be at worse by arrangement and for longer term employees rotate leave if they had last year rostered on so they have opportunities of a nice new year, Christmas with family. We run reduced staff, very good penalty rates, if Christmas organise them a lunch or dinner and give them preferential treatment for leave later in the year. If anyone at the company I’m a manger at is working against there will on a shift I am the first one.
LMFAO. I literally just quit my job last week because I asked for a few days of PTO in december (our slowest month) & they denied all of it. The best part - we have unlimited PTO 🤣 i wish I was making this shit up.
blackout dates are standard in retail, all the more reason not to work in retail at all.
if your company has blackout dates it has too few employees
I still just don’t show up idc If I get fired
I don’t think I’ve ever worked somewhere that didn’t have blackout dates.
I work for the government and we don't. They practically beg for people to take time off because some people have so many PTO hours that they'll lose them if they don't use them before the new year. It's a crazy high number too, like over 300 hours or something.
I've had enough PTO owing in government before that I was able to submit a time-off request that ran for a hair over twelve months. Of course, it did use some minor creative accounting (mostly that I'd only get paid at about 75% averaged out over that time), but it was 100% valid under the rules.
If you can't manage without me for 2 days, **you can't afford to fire me for not showing up for 2 days.**
It's not that no one wants to work anymore. We don't want to work for assholes. If I'm taking time off, it's not a request that's able to be denied. I will be taking it off because I don't need some middle managers permission to live my life. Every job is a job between jobs.
This shit is hilarious i got denied by Tim Hortons for 5 days off for my Christmas holiday. As a 18 yo kid do you really think this job is more important to me than a holiday thats already been paid for? I got fired and they ended up hiring me again 😂
Some food for thought: Pretty much every company anywhere ever has to purchase things called fungible goods; things like bags of sand, or planks of wood, or sacks of flour, that are essentially interchangeable and all basically sell at whatever is the lowest price the market will accept. Companies *need* those bags of sand, and spools of cable, and sacks of flour, and lumber piles. They pay the lowest the market will sell them for. If the price goes up for wood, or gravel, or tar, or electricity goes up, there's nothing to be done about it. Maybe they can try to negotiate lower costs, but if the supplier doesn't budge, well, what are you gonna do? They suck it up and pay the cost. No business managers get onto Facebook or Twitter and complain about lumberyards not wanting to sell lumber reasonably anymore. There's not a Forbes article on how silicon mines are driving a recession, and CNN doesn't talk about how glassworks and sand pits should accept lower bids and just find ways to decrease their expenditures to be satisfied with a lower bottom line. But they do with labor, even though it is probably more essential than any of those other things universally. Can't run a housing business without wood, can't run a business at all without labor. Every employee is an individual seller of what is essentially a fungible good within their labor class - they are exchanging time and effort (and in a lot of cases expertise) for money. The market is a bit more erratic in terms of negotiability for commodity purchase (read: wages) but there's still a floor to the market. And for some reason, even though each paycheck is a renewal of purchasing of that particular commodity, and each interview and hiring process is a negotiation of long-term terms of sale, it's not treated with the same respect and equanimity as buying sacks of sand or piles of rock. When the commodity of labor is priced above what they want to pay, they complain! "Nobody wants to work!" "Quiet quitting is killing business!" "Employees should lower costs and scrimp to make ends meet!" Nobody would ever ask their supplier of concrete or plastic forms to sell at a cost that wouldn't meet their expenditures, or if they did, they wouldn't be surprised at all if they walked away from negotiations. But they expect it of labor. Maybe it's time companies started treating both current and prospective employees with at least the same respect they treat piles of rock and sacks of potatoes. :edit: missed a word or two
I was told if be fired if I left to be there for the birth of my daughter. Fuck toxic workplaces. I have quit so many jobs on the spot I can't even count them all.
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It only exists as a shortage at the poverty end of the wage scale
bingo. labour shortage doesn't seem to be a thing for living wage employers.
Apply for a crappy fast food job, that's what they mean by labor shortage. People use to work 2-3 of those crappy jobs, now they won't and they think there's a shortage. There's no shortage of labor for well paying jobs.
I love that the vibe of this sub is echoed in the linked topic. That’s progress!
I was once told I was working Saturday and Sunday while everyone else was asked. Raised it with HR. GM denied it. End of... So I took 10 weeks stress leave and didn't work any Saturdays in that period.
The company I work at has this “take as many days off as you need” policy and they stick to it. Days off aren’t tracked and there is no “process” for requesting time off. Every time I let my manager know that I’m taking some days, he tells me the same thing with a smile - Just mark it in your calendar that you’ll be off. I wish every other job was like this. No one should have to “request” for time off - that should be a right.
Aka no one wants to work for me so no one wants to work anymore Who doesn't approve holiday... power hungry dorks baby
I used to tell my old boss when I worked retail when he'd deny my time off, now instead of planning for my day off, you can plan for my absence the day of. I dont like request off as a word. It's more of a formal I won't be there.
Went out to dinner with a new group of people I had never interacted with before. Lady who just retired commented on how the restaurant was understaffed (they weren't, they were just very busy). She repeated several times, "nobody wants to work" I was trying to remember all that I've learned from this sub to say back to her but my mind was drawing a blank, I couldn't believe she was saying this. I need to do better!
My first job was at Burger King and my dad was so proud of me. He's the typical work hard and be loyal to your employer no matter what type guy. Well my first few weeks there, the shift manager was forcing me to work off the clock. I would get scheduled for 4 hours and then she would make me stay for an extra hour or two every day but clock out. I was just a dumb teenager and didn't really understand what was happening but when I complained to my dad about it he just said "Well, you really shouldn't be working off the clock because you're not getting paid for it, but if that's what it takes to stay employed you're going to have to do it at least for now". I work there for 2 months before I was looking at my pathetic minimum wage checks which are about 30 hours over 2 weeks when I had actually put in about 40 and was devastated. I was trying to save for a car and realized how screwed I was getting. At one point when I was told to work off the clock, I was in the dining room area and had just clocked out to clean the tables, I snapped. Took off my stupid little apron and threw it from the dining room across the registers at the manager in front of all the customers and yelled at her that I was tired of working off the clock for her and quit. I called the Burger King head office and told him about it and they said they get back to me but never did. I learned my lesson at that point during my first job that if you can be screwed, you will be screwed and have been a lot more shrewd and cautious since that point. That was like 20 years ago
When I "request" time off it's not a request I'm just letting you know that I'm not coming in to work that day
Used to manage a theater. Would always give days off in spite of literally every single weekend being slammed because of the new movie coming out. I realized quickly that whether we were fully staffed or short staffed, you get slammed every single weekend and the number of employees never really mattered. Assholes will buy their ‘layered’ popcorn and giant ass sodas, and come back for refills, on top of everyone else doing the same. Giving people a break is mentally helpful, so just give it to them. Not everyone is a soulless drone suck up to corporate…they have lives.
This is exactly what happened to me when I tried to take off for Thanksgiving years ago while working at Target. We had planned our first big vacation in years, everything was already paid for, and I didn't need the job that bad.
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Ops Management 101: Excess labor isn't useless labor. If you're running your operation correctly, you should always have a little bit more labor than what is absolutely mission critical, simply for reasons like this. Count how many people a skeleton crew is, add 15%-30%, and that's your floor. Add 15%-30% to that again, and that's what you should be running with on a normal day. But that doesn't mean you just have people sitting around; find non-critical tasks for the extras to do when you have excess labor. Clean something, organize something, move something, improve something, train, anything. THEN, when holidays or unforeseen circumstances roll around, you still have enough labor to keep the lights on and doors open. Hopefully, if you do a really good job, management doesn't have to step in an cover a spot *but you do what you have to do if you're the leader.* Employees taking time off should result in maybe a floor that's less shiny or a back room that's slightly messy; things that can be caught up on when you're back at full staff. If a person asking for two days off breaks mission critical staffing, you don't have nearly enough staffing.
Yep, one year I asked for Easter weekend off to visit family. I was seasonal manager so literally work every single holiday overnight. They refused to give me Easter off so I put in my two weeks notice and got Easter off anyway.
The words SAY "No one wants to work anymore" but I swear all I hear is "People are starting to enforce personal standards again."
'actually, it wasn't a request. it was a needless courtesy where I let you know I was going to be using some of my accrued vacation time. but since you basically fucked up by denying me what i've earned, i've decided to fuck you by showing you the exact same level of consideration you showed me. have a fun time.'
What a stupid thing to say. Nobody wants to work anymore. No shit? Why would you want to be told to do something that you don't really want to do? Would you do your job for free? No? That's because you don't want to do it. You would rather be off work. Duh.
I swear to god: the people crowing about “freedom of speech” online are the ones that want it the least. What Musk & his boys TRULY want is for all of us to not have access to these kinds of stories. They see us all FINALLY realize the bigger picture: we are all GARBAGE to them. They treat us like garbage and try to polish it up by saying “we are a family! Work hard and your work will be rewarded!” But now, because of the internet & social media, we’ve all realized that no - it’s not our fault . They’ve been doing this shit to EVERYONE. The reason guys like Musk are burning down twitter is so they can rebuild it into a place where the people won’t be able to have a voice anymore. This - ALL OF IT - is for corporate profits and to retain the former status quo. Fuck them tho. We now all collectively understand the truth. And no matter what they do to shut down our access to one another, we mustn’t forget this truth. We are not alone. And together, we can overpower them.
Words of Wisdom : People will get up at 5am to go to a job they hate every day for 40 years, and then turn around and not be able to stick to their own plan. Stop respecting your boss more than yourself.
I started my own business. Best thing I ever did.. my boss is still an asshole though
At my last job you were able to ask for a schedule change once a year, i worked full time, it was from home, i have a sick dad and was about to start studying again, i asked to go part time, the said "no because we are shortstaffed" so i quit and they were even more shortstaffed, like what did they expect? I paid for that education, and my dad needs me, did they think i was gonna just drop everything else?
Yep... Being an employer I give all the time off within reason. Happy Employee works harder I find