Micro Management
The problem with Kroger in general is that management is heavily incentivized to "meet metrics" and they are heavily criticized for "missing metrics".
The plot has been lost. We are in business to make money, not get a green checkmark on a report.
When things like counts and wall to wall scans are pencil whipped or "faked" it makes things so much harder on everyone who actually cares, since Kroger is operating from the assumption that everyone is doing these processes correctly, not just faking them to get it done and get higher ups off their back. Because Kroger operates under that assumption, hours are limited. In theory, if everyone is doing these things 100% correctly, the trucks are right sized for the hours and sales, backstock is low and easy to be worked in the hours allotted, controllable OOS is low.
I have worked here for almost a decade and I am a lead in a high volume department. With the high expectations for instock and the new 3rd party Wall to Wall, Visual on Shelf program I have seen so many things done to cheat the system that result in more controllable OOS and less satisfied customers, as well as an increased workload for associates.
Let me elaborate and give some examples of what I have seen over the years
Lack of training is always the number one issue:
When the new Wall to Wall process originally started, before the addition of the 3rd party scan, I looked up a job aide on the FEED to inform myself about it. I learned that if the balance is 3 or under, or if an item with a high balance is scanned multiple times in a short period of time and has no movement, it will automatically zero it out. If you look in the Wall-to-Wall screen, it has a category labeled "zeroed BOH" these are sometimes known as phantom BOH changes and almost always I check that section every day and almost always it is something that actually is on the shelf, has 1-3 things and is zeroed out, which I then end up fixing because some of these items, a difference of 1-3 means a full case fitting or not and I don't want extraneous backstock.
My own store manager was just scanning the same items over and over again, every day and because they were slow moving items (same 4 foot section every day) it eventually zeroed these items out. They also admitted they were scanning things with 1-3 on the shelf on purpose because "we are supposed to scan LOWS and holes on the wall-to-wall scan".
The purpose of the wall-to-wall scan is to scan outs which generates a replenishment report of things to stock, because we need to fill outs. Not to scan things that are not outs, or random things that are totally full just to "get it done". The purpose of My Daily Count and the Backroom Count is to scan all outs, but also all LOWS. That is when we correct low balances. Or you can fix them on the fly in the Replenishment list screen. You do not scan things that are LOW on the wall-to-wall scan.
It is literally exhausting to work somewhere that you have to explain things to salaried management and even when you can pull up the information on the FEED and show them how they are wrong, they treat you like a moron and make a hostile environment for you when you are trying to do what Kroger wants you to do and make money for this company. At this point I don't even know why, because I have been treated like garbage at every turn, despite being told I'm "the best".
Guys, do not pay attention when management tells you you're "the best! You're the best in the district! You do so much work!! You're such a hard worker!!" these are manipulation techniques because they know nobody wants to do these jobs and they don't want to have to try and fill them. When I left my last store, they went through 6 people in my position within 3 months. It is not easy to fill and keep associates, so I don't understand why this hostile awful management is allowed to exist in this company.
Now that we have the 3rd party scan, there is a new metric to meet and that is "Visual on Shelf" again, I looked up the job aide for this on the FEED. There is a certain number of outs that have a balance on hand that are allowed in your department, it's based on how many SKUs are in your department, let's just use the example of 6.
The 3rd party comes in and scans randomly anytime between 9am and 4pm. You are allowed to have 6 outs in your department that have a balance or it will ding the VOS metric. What management has been doing is first thing when they come in the morning, they will scan all the outs and zero them out. It doesn't matter what is going on, it doesn't matter if it's on backstock or you have live freight unworked from the truck, it's getting zeroed out.
For high volume departments like mine, if I can't get through all my backstock every single day, there might be an out even later on the same day. I have had things I have filled in the morning and they are empty when I come in the next day and they are on backstock, but it ran out after I left and no one filled it.
Now it's zeroed out by management and it is my day off, with no coverage so no one will fix it and it will order it unless I catch it in time and remove it so usually what happens is... here's some backstock. Here's another case of something we didn't need right now. Here is another thing to count. Here's another thing taking up space on a backstock cart.
They zero things out when they are on backstock and it is a double whammy as far as workload, because the way we get more hours is to get more sales. If it is sitting on a backstock cart and out on the shelf, we are missing sales. Someone wants to buy it and it's not there so we are losing an opportunity to gain hours for the department. I know you need thousands of dollars to make an appreciable difference, but we are definitely never getting there if we can't even sell the things we already have in the building to people who want to buy them.
Now you also have more work, despite losing those sales, because this is another piece of backstock you have to count. This is something taking up real estate. You should have never even expended the energy it took to move this item off the pallet onto the backstock cart, but you had to because some salaried management wanted to look good to higher ups.
Pickup also will zero things out that are on backstock, and I really don't understand that. I understand if you are doing what you are supposed to and asking someone to find it and they say we don't have it, so someone zeroes it out that is the fault of whoever was trying to help you find it, but I have had things that would have been very easy for anyone to find like 4 cases of something that was really obvious right on top of a cart that had been zeroed out. So it's clear no one is looking for these things when I am not here. They are just zeroing it out to keep their percentages high.
I get it. I'm not blaming Pickup, I don't understand why they are accountable for things being instock, because the people who need to be held accountable are the associates in the departments and salaried management who either aren't looking for things, which if the excuse is going to be "we don't know where to look", familiarize yourself with the department you work in. Salaried managers, familiarize yourself with the backstock and how it is organized in the departments. This way we can sell things to people who want to buy them.
The backroom and daily counts are another thing I have had to explain to salaried management who continue to insist I am "doing it wrong" because I am the only department in the store with an accuracy over 50%. They insist I should be counting only the backstock from that day's truck. No. I count all the backstock for the area I am doing, then do the sales floor count. I fix the balances on backstock from the truck in replenishment while I am running the truck. My accuracy usually hovers around 86% but if I worked more overtime I could probably get it higher.
Management themselves will "fake" counts by saying no backstock and then they aren't even smart enough to use two zebras and not screw up balances, they'll just count what is on the shelf and that's the new balance. This is why a couple of other departments who can't get their counts done have such bad problems.
It is a death spiral when you are behind so your truck isn't done, you shouldn't do a count because you have live freight to work but management wants it done for that green checkmark so they just fake it by saying no backstock and counting only what it directs on the shelf, then does free scans and scans a bunch of outs that are on your pallet or backstock you hadn't gotten to stock yet and then you end up with a big mess, a lot of wrong balances and a lot of backstock you don't need.
And now because you have a mess, it's even more labor intensive to deal with. Now you really can't get it under control and Kroger doesn't know that. As far as Kroger knows, everything is going great because you have these green checkmarks and everything is getting done on paper.
And now, because you have a mess, management wants to mark down a bunch of your backstock to "get it under control". The problem with that is, the balances are all wrong and lower than what they should be due to these faked processes being done, so when you mark things down, it removes them from the balance and they end up negative and now you have even more backstock.
I don't know why Kroger promotes these people into management positions. It seems like they don't want to actually make money, the amount of micro-managing is insane to me, because they aren't even micro-managing the right things.
Micro-manage these people who are costing you money by not looking for things to sell and making more labor in the form of larger trucks and more markdowns. Micro manage these people who are walking around all day creating a hostile environment that is costing you money on both ends, because people end up quitting due to it, which costs you money hiring and training and you're losing experience and they aren't even doing the job you are paying them to do. Do you pay them to look good on paper? Do you pay them to have people come in early to condition the store before a walk so they can put lipstick on a pig and ignore the serious operational deficits going on at a lot of these stores? Or do you pay them to get results and make money for the shareholders?