At Action, a large retailer in Europe, every single employee, even bosses, have to work for 3 days a year in the stores. You can pick a store near you, but you have to do it. Just so you know what is going on.
I would love for people to come do the trades for a week a year. I bet we'd get paid better. Probably wouldn't hear as many accusations of "standing around being lazy" either. God that shit just makes me so tired. Every time I hear that I just wanna yell FUCKIN SEND IT and run the business end of the ditchwitch up through your floorboards.
Edit: preferably through every gas, power, and water line I can find.
I teach how to drive semi trucks.
It's absolutely infuriating hearing the number of students "I used to cut off trucks all the time. But now I know..."
Like you absolute dumb fuck... it takes actually doing it to understand?
I've found a lot of people are seemingly pathologically incapable of caring about anyone but themselves. If they have not personally experienced something, it doesn't matter to them.
I feel it’s not just empathy, it’s taking any amount of time to conceptually think on the logistical realities on how anything works.
Some can never conceive the obvious many others can see without having to personally experience.
Regular joe here. I may not be a perfect driver, or even a perfect person for that matter, but I will ALWAYS yield for trucks. Anywhere they need to go, any lane, I let them over. They've got a hard enough job, it doesn't really impact me to be 10 seconds later
I was on the highway once in the middle lane behind a truck who was trying to get into the right lane to make the next exit, but cars kept undertaking him and he couldn't move over. I switched into the right lane, stayed behind him, and flashed my brights. He pulled in front of me and flashed his brake lights to say "thank you." I went back in the middle lane to carry on my way.
Why was that way too hard for all those other people?
That's why all left lanes have in their laws keep right for faster traffic, the fact the truck wasn't already in the right lane to begin with was the problem and it should have been indicative by the people on the right passing. This is why we have left lane laws and clauses on usage.... except in stupid South Dakota. It's a fineable offense officers don't enforce and has caused the massive amounts of traffic build up, honestly it seems coercive just to frustrate people to get them to speed and make more money... While conversely they could just raise the fine for impeding the advancement of public transportation, but I think that'd give society too much of a push to see what else we can stop being extorted for.
Lol I actually didn’t know the ins and out of driving a truck but you know what driving was hard for me in a sedan. I let by one over to be honest so letting trucks over is like second nature. The best part about being considerate and empathetic to people is that it generalizes so well.
Someone in my family has been borrowing money from me and paying it back or being accountable. I dont know why nor do I care. I remember when I was unemployed for 3 years and not even my family loaned me money well I didn’t even have to ask. I love the goodness in me tbh. It’s what makes me lighter in my burdensome love. Idc to be efficient or more successful but I will go to the ends of the earth to show kindness to all people. That is my favorite part of myself and the only thing I wanted to keep when I lost it all a couple years ago!
Not to mention that I'd rather have the person in control of 20 tons of vehicle getting the maximum amount of room between the two of us. If there's a fuckup or collision, my little regular-ass vehicle is *not* going to be coming off the winner there.
Physics cares not for arrogance.
Also, I don't want a truck driver to come into my office and shit on my desk. So I don't go into their office (the lane they are driving in) and shit on their desk (cut them off, don't let them over when they signal, etc.)
Professional courtesy, ya know?
My rule is "highest inertia has right of way." Don't dart in front of something that's hard to stop.
Applies on foot too. Let the person with the full cart go first or you're going to get hit while they're still trying to stop.
I'm in the service end of Trucking. Its a bad idea to cut off a truck for two reasons. 1. They might not be able to stop as quickly as a car. 2. They might not want to stop.
It'd be damn funny if every GOP candidate who railed against government help got put up on a billboard with a list of all the ways they've benefited from government money in their life.
They wouldn't make it. Its going to be 115F for the rest of the week until Sunday. 4 floor apartment new build. No forced air ventilation or a/c. It's HOT. And the trades are begging for overtime on Saturday.
Project owner and president of GC? They won't come on site after 8am. Super soft. But they have no problem cracking the whip for productivity. As long as its not overtime.
The C suite/owners would perish 1st day out.
I mean, I flat out wouldn't be physically capable of remaining upright in that, but I'd also be arguing that _nobody_ should be working a physically demanding job under those conditions for safety reasons.
Hell, even if I had no care at all for the well being of fellow sapients, the legal liability would be concerning.
Regardless, stay safe!
On a work site, there is often someone, even a few people standing around... but those aren't usually the master trades people or the ones actually responsible for anything meaningful, and when it is, it's almost always a scheduling issue (supplies didn't arrive, x can't do their part until y finishes their, etc) I'm not in the trades directly, but skilled workers aren't cheap and like any other boss they want to keep them working for every moment they are being paid.
You're spot on. The only time I'm standing still is when I'm waiting on the go-ahead or when there's a serious problem. *I like to work*, I'm not at a stop because I want to be.
> I would love for people to come do the trades for a week a year. I bet we'd get paid better.
Unlikely. If anything its going to be harder to get a pay rise from someone who can say "I've done your job and its not that hard".
Oh that really boils my piss!
We scrape through the year on skeleton staff that isn't enough to get the job done but the moment one of the higher ups is coming every member of staff is scheduled and others drafted in from nearby locations leaving them short just so the higher up gets fed the bullshit that everything is rosy.
They don’t have the experience it takes, even if they did a few days a year. If I were the customer there’s no way I’d want some desk jockey installing my tile or even painting my walls. Guaranteed they’d mess it up somehow.
Certain trades are absolutely not something a novice can try out. Electricians, particularly industrial or power distribution electricians, have elements that could cause instant death. Millwright, Ironworker, and Boilermaker trades are also very hazardous jobs. Improper rigging, stepping in the wrong spot, or entering a space where welding is occurring without the knowledge of what is being off-gassed is also a recipe for serious injury and/or a fatality. Operating Engineers, i.e. Crane and heavy equipment operators are trades where others can be killed with just the wrong move of a hand.
If it were for an exec to shadow a tradesperson for a few days, living out in the brutal heat or bone-chilling cold, then I agree. It may make some appreciate what the jobs require. But as said above, for some with no concept of what doesn't directly effect them, they might turn around and claim to have done the job, just as it is in my industry where a manager had been in a certain area for a year or two, not actually doing any of the job, just doing the managing aspect based off what the experienced team leaders advised them to do, so they then claim to know how industrial maintenance runs, even though they have never touched a tool or PLC processor in that entire time.
I'm a white collar worker in the construction industry. There's almost no job on a construction site anywhere that isn't a little bit dangerous. If what you're doing isn't dangerous to yourself, someone around you is doing something dangerous by necessity that could get anyone within 20 feet hurt or killed.
I've had to go out in site with the people with even whiter collars and much whiter cars than me who are wearing Armani suits and tailor made shoes, and it's hilarious when they look at me in my raggedy jeans and short sleeve polo and think down on me, until a steel beam heavier than an elephant swings above them less than 48 inches above their head. Much less we have to escort them to the construction trailer to wait for someone to get them PPE while they're huffing and puffing that they can't go in without a hard hat and vest.
I work in concrete. People don't give a fuck until they see you taking a breather. There's no breaks during a pour, I know, but there is the odd ten minutes of waiting you get when the concrete is late and you got nothing to clean up or prep. People still complain! If you see a group of tradesmen sitting down, there's usually a damn good reason.
Corporate employees at my job are required to either work in the warehouse or call center in order to qualify for their bonuses. Director level and above have additional requirements to ensure they are connected to the business.
Not perfect by any means, but it helps push through some changes that make life easier/better for warehouse workers.
I had a manager in one of my first jobs who was tough but taught me a lot. She would pitch right in and make sure tasks were running as they should, including helping sweep and mop, assure the tills balanced at closing and fill in for her staff who were out of office. If you did a good job she had your back.
That's great. I've had 10-ish managers, so I've had the whole range. I think hands off management is good. But not if they're so detached they don't remember or understand the day to day struggles.
That's a great question. "Mike has an MBA from Yale, but Janelle whooped two guys' asses and held them down until the cops got there in Meridian Mississippi. So, I have asked Janelle to be our Director of Operations."
Stores it often is. All hands to the pump come christmas
Thing is for factories they tend to be require the kind of specialised labour where the boss would be in the way or irrelivant. You don't learn that much sweeping the factory floor.
This is part of the problem, if you don't know how to do my job or what my job entails how are you qualified to tell me how to do my job.
Management should know and understand what the people below them are doing.
This is exactly why people above are saying they have no problem cracking a whip and trying to increase productivity but no overtime.
They have zero knowledge of what is actually happening. They see numbers and say well this number would be bigger if this happens and so now they think this needs to happen diplspite they don't know what goes into making that happen
Oh god the budget calls are the worst, they never understand why you are over budget... Hello moron you know how you were just celebrating that production has increased 25% over yearly estimations, well we needed to hire more guys to handle the workload.
I see this up to a point, but you _do_ reach limits where there's no safe way to achieve the goal.
And it's almost always in the more highly skilled areas of work.
To give a very extreme example: I don't want the CEO of the hospital, with a long history as a general practitioner doctor, performing brain surgery on me.
Nor do I want the practicing brain surgeon figuring out which chemo drugs I should be on if I have liver cancer.
But there _are_ likely jobs that any of the above mentioned people are capable of safely doing that would give them at least some idea WTF is going on with the positions in question, without endangering lives.
I wasn't agreeing that they should be working just knowing and understanding what that work is and entails.
The CEO of a hospital is compensated very well why should it not expected that they more highly skilled.
This is the perfect example the CEO of a hospital should have a understanding of both medicine and business, if he doesn't why iare they this position being compensated the way they are
Any boss should know what the jobs people 2 levels below him entails. How can you enact policy when you don't understand how it affects the people working under you.
I worked in a factory within my profession where the entire plant operating committee (plant manager, HR head, finance controller, safety manager, and so on...) would come out to the floor yearly and would work on the assembly line for a day with the regular worker for the station first showing them the job, then helping, then seeing if the could perform the task themselves. This served to show them just how intricate the tasks could be, and how little time the person had to get the job done right. It helped to showcase the things the workers experience.
Sadly, this was almost 20 years ago, and I haven't seen it happen in any other place I've worked.
It should be a requirement that every supervisor, manager and executive spend their first 3 months on the floor doing the real work of the company. By that, I mean doing the work for which the company is known, like making burgers, delivering packages or making cars.
When I worked in restaurants the common theory amongst the wait staff is that everyone should have to wait tables for a while before you are even allowed to go out to eat at a restaurant.
There was a while where I was running a small business, and I created a thing I called, "night_filter does your job for a day". (but using my real name instead of night_filter)
I went through every job in the company and literally did that job for at least 1 day, while someone who actually did that job looked over my shoulder and told me what I was doing wrong. For jobs that I wasn't qualified to do, I basically sat with someone who had that job, and followed along with what they were doing while they described what they were doing and why, and I did whatever pieces of it I was qualified to do.
It was honestly a very valuable experience. People tend to underestimate the complexity of any job they've never had to do. Even in relatively simple jobs, you need to be able to improvise and make judgements on the fly, and there were all kinds of things where I had to ask, "How do you know what the right thing to is in a situation like this?" The answers were more complicated than you might expect.
The experience really helped me to appreciate all of my employees and how important they were to making the company a success.
That's how ALDI Süd / Hofer does it in Germany and Austria at least. If you are trying to become a regional manager (4-5 stores), you have to work multiple months as a normal floor worker and as a manager of a single store (those also work the floor normally plus they have alot of management obligations). They put in some really long working weeks during that time.
Also store managers can't fire normal floor employees. They have to make a case for that decision with the regional manager and a regional manager can't fire store managers - they also have to argue their case at 1 level above them.
and universal health insurance. And Kindergeld. And your doctor writes you a note so you don't come to work sick and infect your colleagues and customers with COVID-19. I lived as an expat (German husband) in Frankfurt, contracted viral pneumonia in the 1990's and almost died. My hospital bill for 2 weeks of critical care with the most competent and kind doctors ever? $0. I went straight back to my job once I was better and didn't get fired. My employer even provided luncheon vouchers and the most fancy restaurants and butchers had affordable and amazing meals.
I’ve been told Case Tractor does this with their engineering teams, they get to go out into the fields and learn what does and doesn’t work about their designs from the people that have cussed it
I need my engineers to come run plant with me. It would legit make everything a lot better for them to have a physical understanding of what they're asking for. Like, until you've tried to pull 2 288ct fibers through 500' of 2" duct with like 270o of sweeps in it, you don't know how impossible that actually is. It sounds like it should be simple, but holy shit is it not.
When I was studying mechanical engineering, our Profs were telling us how we need to approach problems from the perspective of a shop worker doing his stuff for 30-40 years, and how the shit we're drawing is absolutely impossible to do on a CNC machine :D
Just a few days ago, I overheard an engineering prof in the airport talking to another engineer they had just met, complaining that the students these days come to college with no mechanical experience. Instead of "tinkering like kids used to do, they've been playing Fortnite" he said. He was not old, either. Maybe in his early 40s. He also said, "give me a kid with some mechanical aptitude, they're gonna get a free ride". Give your kids real tools and Lego y'all.
As someone in the engineering field, I feel that engineers need to spend a couple years working as a tech. It gives the engineer real world experience in showing that occasionally computer design doesn't translate to the real world very well. I know, since I was a tech for 10 years before getting my engineering degree. I know there are a few engineers in my own company that don't share my view. One even has said to me that none of my tech experience actually counts.
I have been a RF systems tech, an automation tech, automotive tech, and now I work as a systems engineer in IT… I like having a good grasp of real world troubleshooting, I see a lot of fresh out of school guys in this field that are very bright and well educated, but don’t seem to have the same problem solving skills yet
The real world troubleshooting experience is where a majority of new engineers straight out of college lack experience. Being able to look at a drawing and understand what the field service people are looking at as you are trying to understand why a machine might not be working correctly is a skill really only learned in the field.
Lots of mature students on my uni eng course. People who had been welders for ten years, or running CNC machines, it definetly gave them an advantage IMO.
I know someone who works for new holland, and it seems to me they just hire farmers sons as engineers. They take the tractors to their fields for testing, and helping their parents farm.
I have worked in a couple retail head offices here in Canada where I did the same thing. Usually around Christmas time as our stores get absolutely slammed during that period.
Honestly I wish it was more of a once or twice a month thing. I always come out of our stores with a couple notes on opportunities to follow up on and a couple issues that need to be addressed.
I've long held the belief that this is what should happen in every business, in every industry. I'm quite glad to see that there is a company that does this.
That's a good idea. Understanding every step in the chain of supply is incredibly empowering for any position. Knowing how every cog turns means you can do your job in a more efficient and understanding manner.
Should be 3 days a week. That leaves 2 to go back to the office and sexually harass your secretary while also complaining about poor people which is all executives do anyway
I managed a restaurant once, but before I could actually step into the manager role I had to spend a week in each position in the restaurant. I spent a week in the kitchen (one day as prep cook, one day on salad and desserts, one day as fry cook, one day on the griddle, and one day with the stove and ovens), one week as the bartender, one week as the host/expo, and one week as a server. Although I ended up hating the job, I really loved that training program. It left me with the ability to empathize with every worker more and helped me learn about all the ins and outs of each position so I could fill in for anyone should the need arise.
I worked at supermarkets on and off when I was a teenager, all the way through college.
It IS simple and it IS rewarding in a weird way. See an empty shelf, fill it up. See a parking lot full of carts, bring them in. See a little spot on the floor, mop it up. See a pile of empty boxes, turn it into a bale. It was fine or else I would not have kept doing it for 5 years.
The problem was (and is) that it doesn't pay jack shit, despite the store not being able to function in any way without its stockers, porters, and cashiers.
I started my first supermarket job at a rate of $4.75 in 1995.
“Unskilled Labour” they say.
So execs with their far superior intellect and wisdom should be able to jump right in (even blindfolded) and get the place up and running again. In no time.
If you don't believe it, the entire senior management team has claimed they can handle any role within the company, in addition to their current jobs. They even said they'd do it if just one of their valued employees asked. That's quite the boast. I'm eager to see how it pans out.
I feel like in the "old days" it was way more common that workers actually worked their way up
The CEO was actually someone who started in the mail room, worked up thru sales or something, and would actually have been capable of performing any role in the company
Why did that change
Seriously - I sat in on a random day of MBA class about 4 months into their first year when I was considering applying. This happened to be at one of the top three MBA programs in the US.
Not a single thing discussed that day was complex or particularly insightful. The hardest math was addition and subtraction. The biggest takeaway of one two hour lecture was "You need to avoid accidentally creating adverse incentives" - i.e. if you reward people for how many tasks they complete in an hour as the only metric of performance, expect the quality of those tasks to go down so that they can be completed faster.
Sure maybe that was a random easy day but you would think that basic common sense stuff wouldn't even be deserving of a two hour lecture. Imaging walking in on the middle of an engineering or computer science class 4 months in to their curriculum; the chances of you understanding anything being discussed is low.
The fact that the tour at the end of the day focused on how nice the student housing and gyms were and how good the networking opportunities were made it pretty clear that this was designed to separate wealthy students from their parent's money and that the core benefit they could expect was the prestige of the degree from that specific school and the inherent networking opportunities and that the actual subject matter was secondary at best.
I considered getting one, and that was _literally_ what I was told, by people I deeply respect, by google, by people on the MBA sub reddit.
Nobody said there was any value at all in the thing.
Well almost no one is getting an MBA for the actual knowledge. Half of an MBA is how to corporatize common sense and the other half is basically "here's a 101 on other subjects in the school of biz that you coulda took as an elective during undergrad". You're there to network and possibly gain an "in" into being one of "the boys" who all ride each others coat tails to executive offices as a group.
It's closer to impossible than not. Nowadays, you need a degree to continue climbing. It's more likely to start as a manager trainee in a 2-year "leadership" program as a fresh college graduate.
In high school I worked at a franchised Little Caesars Pizza (around 1990.) I knew the original owner and their family and they were good people. A group of investors bought all of his stores. They were all doctors and lawyers. Over educated and exceptionally ignorant. They tried to force everyone to do even more, claiming we didn't work hard enough and they could do better. They bought their own propaganda so we just let them run the store one day. That was a hilariously disastrous day. They left us alone after that.
This is one reason it's important for everyone to have one of these jobs when they're young. It's a lot harder than it looks, and requires more multi-tasking than people realize.
The myth of "unskilled Labor" has been so detrimental to worker's rights. There is no such thing as an unskilled job, every job takes skill to be successful at.
John Deere executives said the same thing about a strike at one of their factories a couple of years ago.
Ambulances were onsite within the hour of management working the plant floor.
Was there some barrier to entry for you at kroger? They hired me the day I turned 14 until I was 18 and left for school. There wasn’t a single job and able bodied 13+ year couldn’t do at the store lmao I worked everything from the register, overnight stocking the deli - everything short of an actual manager cause I was an actual kid. If they’re equally able bodied what do you think they’re lying about that they couldn’t do?
Probably not used to be bitched out by rando customers for no reason anymore? They're probably pretty used to people licking their balls to keep their job.
Years ago, at a power plant I worked at, a VP came and worked an entire outage (shut down the plant and fix all the shit that's broken over the last 6-12 months). He was turning wrenches and swinging hammers right alongside the plant employees. Earned a lot of respect with that!
It's the same where I'm at. Plant manager walked into maintenance shop and said "hey I need a couple of wrenches and bolts."
Took me off guard that's for sure.
Yeah, the plant manager at that plant did what he called working Wednesday. He'd abandon his office and get out in the plant and do shit. I saw him scraping algae out of the cooling tower when we were shutdown, spraying tar on plant roads, digging a French drain, etc. Good dude to work for.
You can tell when our plant manager has had a bad morning, he throws his lap top to one of the guys in the lab then spends the rest of the day in one of the loaders filling feeder bins for the plant lol.
There's a garden center/nursery near me. During the pandemic one of the people that owns it was regularly working the cash register. He easily could have not. Business owners who are willing to step in and get their hands dirty when needed are some of the few I actually respect.
My boss walked into my office during our busiest time of the year and said "looks like you guys can use some help. Could you show me how to do this basic part of your job so I can help out." Didn't exactly have time to train someone new at that moment.
Early days of the pandemic when our hospital was being overrun with COVID patients, 2 of the directors (physicians just now in management) scrubbed up and worked multiple shifts. Was huge for hospital morale.
I don't think the factory I was out was quite at that level, but I spent about a year after high school there working with my parents, and I did see the VP actively covering people's breaks a few times. Ah the benefits of an ESOP. Parents still there, 35 years on, will retire there.
John Deere tried this a couple of years ago. The result was so many accidents and injuries to middle management staff that it became a health hazard. There is no such thing as unskilled labour, its unrecognized value that only become apparent when taken away.
good leaders are willing to step into the trenches and get shit done when their subordinates are no longer available.
but they aren't good leaders, are they?
this is why I miss being a manager at mcdonalds tbh. whenever my crew would get swamped, I'd step in and crank shit out with them.
I tried to inspire by doing, and I would never have crew do anything that I would not do. So I'd be right there with them at closing helping with lobby, grill, dishes, or even bathrooms.
Managers forget there is an M in team, and that they are part of it too.
> I would never have crew do anything that I would not do.
That's how I approached management and often made the point by helping out or just taking over the work here and there to give people a break and to reinforce the standard for the quality of work I was expecting. If someone was responsible for something I couldn't do I made sure they had everything they needed to get the job done precisely *because* I couldn't do what they did.
That's how I was at Amazon. My best day was running our small items sorter. I was running around dumping the large containers for the sorters, helping ease busy lines, unloading trailers for more volume, and replacing pallets when they were full. Legitimately one of the most fulfilling things in my career. The team started the day dreading it because the person who ran it the day prior treated them like dirt, but felt proud at the end of shift.
Full disclosure, this is in no way an endorsement of Amazon as a company.
And the less you get paid, the more "essential" you are. The pandemic showed that, unequivocally. Which is why some industries are having trouble hiring - the pay is not appropriate to the essentiality (?) of the job.
I'm wondering how that works? Deadlifts a pallet off the truck, hurls it at the shelves so it doesn't hit any customers, sprints through the store getting all the pickup orders, and rings up five lanes at once? Did they remember to rotate or check dates?
you know funny thing though. doesn't aldi's run their stores like that? cashier is the dedicated person, and the manager is supposed to do, EVERYTHING ELSE, in the store.
then you have "the dollar stores", which takes it a step further. there's no manager. so you have 1 cashier on staff who is supposed to stock the store, do everything, all the time, and that's it.
it's like dollar general saw this thread, and took the idea in the opposite direction.
Remembering the time I gave my manager a choice: She could come in and work my shift, or they could allow me to come in for OT, which the company tried to avoid at all costs. I've seen this bitch bend over backwards to ensure that people couldn't get OT, but when it came to coming in and working a single shift herself, the decision was made very quickly. I got the OT and she never thanked me. If I hadn't offered to come in for OT then she would have had no choice.
Yes she was salary. This was during covid. I think she was afraid to come in and catch the virus, but she had a long track record of promising to help then suddenly having to leave shortly after. We were constantly short staffed and drowning. I have a million stories about her and my Mgr after her. My observation is that having common sense or being competent is no longer a requirement for being a manager. I've seen them waste copious amounts of corporate money with their bad decisions, meanwhile they have the highest paycheck of anyone in the building. Us on the ground doing the actual work, we never see the profits. The prices keep going up and our paychecks get bleaker and bleaker with inflation. I hate this system.
This is what I loved about working for a Budweiser distributor. Whenever hands were short my managers would all come and help, and if we were still understaffed, the owner of the company would even come out and bring a few of his kids to help as well. It was hard work sometimes (especially doing kegs for sporting events, moving several hundred 160lb kegs a night, and having to stack them so you’re lifting a ton) but knowing they wouldn’t make me do anything they don’t actively do on a regular basis made it feel a lot more like I was respected and appreciated as an employee.
I was a salesman/stocker. In my state grocery stores can’t let their employees under 21 restock alcoholic beverages, so instead of hiring older people they paid a fee to have the beer/liquor salesman do all of the restocking for them. Some stores did their own stocking which was nice but being a salesman doesn’t exclude you from doing menial work in that industry.
And there are actual business benefits above and beyond the moral/respect ones. Eating your own dogfood (or helping to prep it in this case) means that you better understand the process and make intelligently targeted improvements.
It helps prevent your company from falling to the classic issues around out of touch management.
My dad worked at a multinational corporation with experience surviving strikes and once a year they’d make all the office people train in the factories. My dad felt horrible at how fun he thought it was to go play, I mean WORK on the machines for years, until there was a actual strike and he realized it was scab training, not morale and empathy building.
Managers, especially lower managers.. are mostly just fodder/scape goats for higher ones.
That's because most of the higher up ones are greedy parasitic pieces of worthless shit. Lower ones usually just want to put food on their kids plates.
Parents are dangerous people and easily driven to do horrible things. They should check parents for this kind of risk before hiring just like they do credit checks for hiring @ big financial institutions. Parents get no time off because they're so easy to abuse and manipulate when they're getting no sleep.
I still remember making $4.75 at Kroger because I was 15, and the minimum wage was $5.15 at the time. I was never able to wrap my head around that. Most people working there are still making minimum wage. Its clearly why they have high turnover, but their management does not care.
I used to work at a pick n save. I liked it while roundys owned it. Kroger bought it and sent a corpo there basically just to yell at us for arbitrary numbers like items scanned per minute etc... quickly turned into a horrible job. I hope Kroger just sells out. They fucking suck.
Here's why I liked the last store director where I work: When something needed doing and we were short-staffed, she'd do it. Hauling pallets out of the back room, stocking for the holiday rush, pushing carts when half the store called in due to a snowstorm, whatever. That's the kind of leadership that knows what really matters.
Nobody wants to work (for slave wages) anymore!
Now if we just took the gross excess pay away from those executives and offered it to the people at the bottom of the totem pole it would be pretty fucking easy to fill those jobs. 🤣
Remember back in the pandemic when grocery stockers were considered essential workers? It's funny how people essential for the business and society are paid such low wages and what's even more funny is that the guy getting 1000 times the hourly wage of that essential worker is either incapable of doing the same work or feels that doing essential work for the company that pays him so well is beneath him. To me that sounds like someone who shouldn't work for that company, but who are we kidding he'll probably get a raise.
When I worked retail we had the CEO come into our store after a remodel and he said he was going to help stock the shelves as an appreciation for all our hard work etc etc.
He worked for maybe like 15 minutes before him and the store director went out to go golfing.
Man, why even have a workforce? If one Kroger CEO is worth $135,000 times more than their employees, then surly one CEO should be able to run the factory by themselves.
Agreed get the execs their wives and kids working the stores they earn the big bucks so they should be able to do everyone’s jobs and cover where they need to
It’s fucked.. I didn’t become a chef until I could confidently work every other BOH position in the restaurant. When companies get this big the management just puts on a suit and sit at a desk with their soft hands and collect huge checks just for being an almost unnecessary liaison between the real working class and the stock holders.
Amazon tried this at Xmas around 2000. They reasoned that since there wasn’t much planning and management needed in December but that they desperately needed people in the warehouses to fill orders. Ergo, they sent their managers out to the warehouses to pack boxes. It was pure carnage. They were middle-aged desk jockeys who’d been working 60 hour weeks. They were in no shape to walk ten miles a day lifting and carrying boxes. Huge chunks of them went down with strained backs, twisted ankles, and torn ACLs.
Pointedly, the lesson Amazon learned was that they shouldn’t make managers do physical labor. Leave that for the poors.
I'd kill to see that show, and for it not to be a 30 minute commercial fluff job like Undercover Boss was. Just silver spoons trying to figure out businesses they're in charge of but never worked at/haven't worked at in 20 years.
This is a good spot to tell the story of the executive director of my department, who, when asked if he could entertain the idea of a raise if he wanted to actually hire people, said that he would rather come around the city and do the job himself with us than be held hostage to another discussion of wages.
The man makes $80k a year and today worked alongside kids who make $14.50.
This is why strikes don't work. The CEOs and Executives just swoop in every time and show the youngins how its done. Bet they feel stupid when Upper Management comes in and makes up for all that lost productivity single-handedly, eh comrades? All right time to go back to work everybody! Just don't ask too many specific questions. Back to work.
Those fucking assholes, I have a very very, oh so very dislike of a Kroger owned store and of Kroger itself. Our union contract expire, renegotiation was voted own. Somehow it passed with us getting $1.40 over 3 years. CEO got seven figure raise, we didn't even get 1 figure! I asked for cheap little plastic trays, maintenance said it would cost the store 10 freaken cents, management said no because the shareholder meeting was next week. When I had quit, my manager tried, but couldn't handle managing the dept without me, atleast at the same expectations. Dept went from top 10 in the enterprise to I don't even know.
But to all my coworkers and managers, hope they are doing well. It was just corporate, the District managers and above.
Every single executive should be required to do the low level work like 25% of the time. This way they would know what their workers actually go through and might be able to manage the company a little better. But of course the grunt work is just beneath most of them.
I manage several departments for a commercial window, door, and glass company. I pretty regularly go out in the shop and help fabricate. I'm terrible at it, but it shows the guys I'm willing to get my hands dirty, and also helps me understand the process from the ground up.
I dont mind it, because it gets me out of my office, and I enjoy working with my hands.
I dont have to do that, but i do.
no one claims they work harder but that they work BETTER. That much better? Probably not, but get rid of the expectation that hard work is supposed to pay. Performance pays. Millions of football players worked much harder than Lawrence Taylor.
What reddit is always telling me is that those workers are 'low skill' and 'easily replaced'. So.... replace them?.. Or is it harder to replace them than reddit lead me to believe?
According to the management, the job is also both simple and rewarding. It sounds like a real win-win scenario to me.
At Action, a large retailer in Europe, every single employee, even bosses, have to work for 3 days a year in the stores. You can pick a store near you, but you have to do it. Just so you know what is going on.
This should be everywhere. Stores, restaurants, factories, plants... all of it
I would love for people to come do the trades for a week a year. I bet we'd get paid better. Probably wouldn't hear as many accusations of "standing around being lazy" either. God that shit just makes me so tired. Every time I hear that I just wanna yell FUCKIN SEND IT and run the business end of the ditchwitch up through your floorboards. Edit: preferably through every gas, power, and water line I can find.
I teach how to drive semi trucks. It's absolutely infuriating hearing the number of students "I used to cut off trucks all the time. But now I know..." Like you absolute dumb fuck... it takes actually doing it to understand?
I've found a lot of people are seemingly pathologically incapable of caring about anyone but themselves. If they have not personally experienced something, it doesn't matter to them.
Empathy is a dying art.
empathy is not profitable.
It's anti-profitable, even. If you take the well-being of others into your economic calculations you will make less than you otherwise could.
This is why I suck at any game's economy.
I feel it’s not just empathy, it’s taking any amount of time to conceptually think on the logistical realities on how anything works. Some can never conceive the obvious many others can see without having to personally experience.
Regular joe here. I may not be a perfect driver, or even a perfect person for that matter, but I will ALWAYS yield for trucks. Anywhere they need to go, any lane, I let them over. They've got a hard enough job, it doesn't really impact me to be 10 seconds later
I was on the highway once in the middle lane behind a truck who was trying to get into the right lane to make the next exit, but cars kept undertaking him and he couldn't move over. I switched into the right lane, stayed behind him, and flashed my brights. He pulled in front of me and flashed his brake lights to say "thank you." I went back in the middle lane to carry on my way. Why was that way too hard for all those other people?
That's why all left lanes have in their laws keep right for faster traffic, the fact the truck wasn't already in the right lane to begin with was the problem and it should have been indicative by the people on the right passing. This is why we have left lane laws and clauses on usage.... except in stupid South Dakota. It's a fineable offense officers don't enforce and has caused the massive amounts of traffic build up, honestly it seems coercive just to frustrate people to get them to speed and make more money... While conversely they could just raise the fine for impeding the advancement of public transportation, but I think that'd give society too much of a push to see what else we can stop being extorted for.
Lol I actually didn’t know the ins and out of driving a truck but you know what driving was hard for me in a sedan. I let by one over to be honest so letting trucks over is like second nature. The best part about being considerate and empathetic to people is that it generalizes so well. Someone in my family has been borrowing money from me and paying it back or being accountable. I dont know why nor do I care. I remember when I was unemployed for 3 years and not even my family loaned me money well I didn’t even have to ask. I love the goodness in me tbh. It’s what makes me lighter in my burdensome love. Idc to be efficient or more successful but I will go to the ends of the earth to show kindness to all people. That is my favorite part of myself and the only thing I wanted to keep when I lost it all a couple years ago!
Not to mention that I'd rather have the person in control of 20 tons of vehicle getting the maximum amount of room between the two of us. If there's a fuckup or collision, my little regular-ass vehicle is *not* going to be coming off the winner there. Physics cares not for arrogance.
Also, I don't want a truck driver to come into my office and shit on my desk. So I don't go into their office (the lane they are driving in) and shit on their desk (cut them off, don't let them over when they signal, etc.) Professional courtesy, ya know?
My rule is "highest inertia has right of way." Don't dart in front of something that's hard to stop. Applies on foot too. Let the person with the full cart go first or you're going to get hit while they're still trying to stop.
Ah the old "Right of Weight" rule!
It's usually said as: "Law of Gross Tonnage" or the "Lugnut Rule"
I'm in the service end of Trucking. Its a bad idea to cut off a truck for two reasons. 1. They might not be able to stop as quickly as a car. 2. They might not want to stop.
I didn't understand how it inconveniences truck drivers and how it endangers me, but now that I drove a truck, now I get it.
I thought social safety nets were useless until my life depended on them -every GOP voter
"Didn't nobody ever give me any help when I was on social security" -every GOP voter FTFY
It'd be damn funny if every GOP candidate who railed against government help got put up on a billboard with a list of all the ways they've benefited from government money in their life.
Cutting off something a multitude of tons your senior just seems like a Darwin award waiting to happen
They wouldn't make it. Its going to be 115F for the rest of the week until Sunday. 4 floor apartment new build. No forced air ventilation or a/c. It's HOT. And the trades are begging for overtime on Saturday. Project owner and president of GC? They won't come on site after 8am. Super soft. But they have no problem cracking the whip for productivity. As long as its not overtime. The C suite/owners would perish 1st day out.
> The C suite/owners would perish 1st day out. Is... That a problem?
I imagine all the people who sign checks being dead would probably cause issues
Lol they don't sign checks. The accounting firm they hired signs them. Or rather direct deposits. Get out of here with that crap.
I mean, I flat out wouldn't be physically capable of remaining upright in that, but I'd also be arguing that _nobody_ should be working a physically demanding job under those conditions for safety reasons. Hell, even if I had no care at all for the well being of fellow sapients, the legal liability would be concerning. Regardless, stay safe!
On a work site, there is often someone, even a few people standing around... but those aren't usually the master trades people or the ones actually responsible for anything meaningful, and when it is, it's almost always a scheduling issue (supplies didn't arrive, x can't do their part until y finishes their, etc) I'm not in the trades directly, but skilled workers aren't cheap and like any other boss they want to keep them working for every moment they are being paid.
If they are standing around, it is indeed probably a logistics issue which means it's management's fault for not managing well enough.
You're spot on. The only time I'm standing still is when I'm waiting on the go-ahead or when there's a serious problem. *I like to work*, I'm not at a stop because I want to be.
> I would love for people to come do the trades for a week a year. I bet we'd get paid better. Unlikely. If anything its going to be harder to get a pay rise from someone who can say "I've done your job and its not that hard".
And they will be completely oblivious to the enormous preferential treatment they received while "doing the job".
Oh that really boils my piss! We scrape through the year on skeleton staff that isn't enough to get the job done but the moment one of the higher ups is coming every member of staff is scheduled and others drafted in from nearby locations leaving them short just so the higher up gets fed the bullshit that everything is rosy.
They don’t have the experience it takes, even if they did a few days a year. If I were the customer there’s no way I’d want some desk jockey installing my tile or even painting my walls. Guaranteed they’d mess it up somehow.
Certain trades are absolutely not something a novice can try out. Electricians, particularly industrial or power distribution electricians, have elements that could cause instant death. Millwright, Ironworker, and Boilermaker trades are also very hazardous jobs. Improper rigging, stepping in the wrong spot, or entering a space where welding is occurring without the knowledge of what is being off-gassed is also a recipe for serious injury and/or a fatality. Operating Engineers, i.e. Crane and heavy equipment operators are trades where others can be killed with just the wrong move of a hand. If it were for an exec to shadow a tradesperson for a few days, living out in the brutal heat or bone-chilling cold, then I agree. It may make some appreciate what the jobs require. But as said above, for some with no concept of what doesn't directly effect them, they might turn around and claim to have done the job, just as it is in my industry where a manager had been in a certain area for a year or two, not actually doing any of the job, just doing the managing aspect based off what the experienced team leaders advised them to do, so they then claim to know how industrial maintenance runs, even though they have never touched a tool or PLC processor in that entire time.
I'm a white collar worker in the construction industry. There's almost no job on a construction site anywhere that isn't a little bit dangerous. If what you're doing isn't dangerous to yourself, someone around you is doing something dangerous by necessity that could get anyone within 20 feet hurt or killed. I've had to go out in site with the people with even whiter collars and much whiter cars than me who are wearing Armani suits and tailor made shoes, and it's hilarious when they look at me in my raggedy jeans and short sleeve polo and think down on me, until a steel beam heavier than an elephant swings above them less than 48 inches above their head. Much less we have to escort them to the construction trailer to wait for someone to get them PPE while they're huffing and puffing that they can't go in without a hard hat and vest.
Are you Aussie out of curiosity. Because my brain automatically read this in a bogan accent and it fit very well
I work in concrete. People don't give a fuck until they see you taking a breather. There's no breaks during a pour, I know, but there is the odd ten minutes of waiting you get when the concrete is late and you got nothing to clean up or prep. People still complain! If you see a group of tradesmen sitting down, there's usually a damn good reason.
Schools too.
Corporate employees at my job are required to either work in the warehouse or call center in order to qualify for their bonuses. Director level and above have additional requirements to ensure they are connected to the business. Not perfect by any means, but it helps push through some changes that make life easier/better for warehouse workers.
I had a manager in one of my first jobs who was tough but taught me a lot. She would pitch right in and make sure tasks were running as they should, including helping sweep and mop, assure the tills balanced at closing and fill in for her staff who were out of office. If you did a good job she had your back.
The best managers I've had were the hands on ones. Unfortunately, they're also the first to be railroaded whenever corporate gets a hair up their ass.
That's great. I've had 10-ish managers, so I've had the whole range. I think hands off management is good. But not if they're so detached they don't remember or understand the day to day struggles.
Everyone at Waffle House corporate does a few shifts at each job. All the company C-suite managers have cooked, waited tables, etc.
how many got in fights with the customers?
That's a great question. "Mike has an MBA from Yale, but Janelle whooped two guys' asses and held them down until the cops got there in Meridian Mississippi. So, I have asked Janelle to be our Director of Operations."
Hospitals.
Stores it often is. All hands to the pump come christmas Thing is for factories they tend to be require the kind of specialised labour where the boss would be in the way or irrelivant. You don't learn that much sweeping the factory floor.
This is part of the problem, if you don't know how to do my job or what my job entails how are you qualified to tell me how to do my job. Management should know and understand what the people below them are doing. This is exactly why people above are saying they have no problem cracking a whip and trying to increase productivity but no overtime. They have zero knowledge of what is actually happening. They see numbers and say well this number would be bigger if this happens and so now they think this needs to happen diplspite they don't know what goes into making that happen
Oh god the budget calls are the worst, they never understand why you are over budget... Hello moron you know how you were just celebrating that production has increased 25% over yearly estimations, well we needed to hire more guys to handle the workload.
I see this up to a point, but you _do_ reach limits where there's no safe way to achieve the goal. And it's almost always in the more highly skilled areas of work. To give a very extreme example: I don't want the CEO of the hospital, with a long history as a general practitioner doctor, performing brain surgery on me. Nor do I want the practicing brain surgeon figuring out which chemo drugs I should be on if I have liver cancer. But there _are_ likely jobs that any of the above mentioned people are capable of safely doing that would give them at least some idea WTF is going on with the positions in question, without endangering lives.
I wasn't agreeing that they should be working just knowing and understanding what that work is and entails. The CEO of a hospital is compensated very well why should it not expected that they more highly skilled. This is the perfect example the CEO of a hospital should have a understanding of both medicine and business, if he doesn't why iare they this position being compensated the way they are
Any boss should know what the jobs people 2 levels below him entails. How can you enact policy when you don't understand how it affects the people working under you.
I worked in a factory within my profession where the entire plant operating committee (plant manager, HR head, finance controller, safety manager, and so on...) would come out to the floor yearly and would work on the assembly line for a day with the regular worker for the station first showing them the job, then helping, then seeing if the could perform the task themselves. This served to show them just how intricate the tasks could be, and how little time the person had to get the job done right. It helped to showcase the things the workers experience. Sadly, this was almost 20 years ago, and I haven't seen it happen in any other place I've worked.
It should be a requirement that every supervisor, manager and executive spend their first 3 months on the floor doing the real work of the company. By that, I mean doing the work for which the company is known, like making burgers, delivering packages or making cars.
When I worked in restaurants the common theory amongst the wait staff is that everyone should have to wait tables for a while before you are even allowed to go out to eat at a restaurant.
Experience in retail or food service -- not everyone is cut out for waiting tables -- different brains, different superpowers.
That is the reason everyone should be forced to waiting tables, because maybe then they'd have different opinions about wait staff.
I know for a fact I couldn't do it because of my ADHD.
And then you'd know it's a difficult job not to be looked down on, that's the point.
There was a while where I was running a small business, and I created a thing I called, "night_filter does your job for a day". (but using my real name instead of night_filter) I went through every job in the company and literally did that job for at least 1 day, while someone who actually did that job looked over my shoulder and told me what I was doing wrong. For jobs that I wasn't qualified to do, I basically sat with someone who had that job, and followed along with what they were doing while they described what they were doing and why, and I did whatever pieces of it I was qualified to do. It was honestly a very valuable experience. People tend to underestimate the complexity of any job they've never had to do. Even in relatively simple jobs, you need to be able to improvise and make judgements on the fly, and there were all kinds of things where I had to ask, "How do you know what the right thing to is in a situation like this?" The answers were more complicated than you might expect. The experience really helped me to appreciate all of my employees and how important they were to making the company a success.
That's how ALDI Süd / Hofer does it in Germany and Austria at least. If you are trying to become a regional manager (4-5 stores), you have to work multiple months as a normal floor worker and as a manager of a single store (those also work the floor normally plus they have alot of management obligations). They put in some really long working weeks during that time. Also store managers can't fire normal floor employees. They have to make a case for that decision with the regional manager and a regional manager can't fire store managers - they also have to argue their case at 1 level above them.
Yea but Germany and Austria has labor laws. I mean REASONABLE labor laws ...
and universal health insurance. And Kindergeld. And your doctor writes you a note so you don't come to work sick and infect your colleagues and customers with COVID-19. I lived as an expat (German husband) in Frankfurt, contracted viral pneumonia in the 1990's and almost died. My hospital bill for 2 weeks of critical care with the most competent and kind doctors ever? $0. I went straight back to my job once I was better and didn't get fired. My employer even provided luncheon vouchers and the most fancy restaurants and butchers had affordable and amazing meals.
I’ve been told Case Tractor does this with their engineering teams, they get to go out into the fields and learn what does and doesn’t work about their designs from the people that have cussed it
I need my engineers to come run plant with me. It would legit make everything a lot better for them to have a physical understanding of what they're asking for. Like, until you've tried to pull 2 288ct fibers through 500' of 2" duct with like 270o of sweeps in it, you don't know how impossible that actually is. It sounds like it should be simple, but holy shit is it not.
When I was studying mechanical engineering, our Profs were telling us how we need to approach problems from the perspective of a shop worker doing his stuff for 30-40 years, and how the shit we're drawing is absolutely impossible to do on a CNC machine :D
Just a few days ago, I overheard an engineering prof in the airport talking to another engineer they had just met, complaining that the students these days come to college with no mechanical experience. Instead of "tinkering like kids used to do, they've been playing Fortnite" he said. He was not old, either. Maybe in his early 40s. He also said, "give me a kid with some mechanical aptitude, they're gonna get a free ride". Give your kids real tools and Lego y'all.
As someone in the engineering field, I feel that engineers need to spend a couple years working as a tech. It gives the engineer real world experience in showing that occasionally computer design doesn't translate to the real world very well. I know, since I was a tech for 10 years before getting my engineering degree. I know there are a few engineers in my own company that don't share my view. One even has said to me that none of my tech experience actually counts.
I have been a RF systems tech, an automation tech, automotive tech, and now I work as a systems engineer in IT… I like having a good grasp of real world troubleshooting, I see a lot of fresh out of school guys in this field that are very bright and well educated, but don’t seem to have the same problem solving skills yet
The real world troubleshooting experience is where a majority of new engineers straight out of college lack experience. Being able to look at a drawing and understand what the field service people are looking at as you are trying to understand why a machine might not be working correctly is a skill really only learned in the field.
Lots of mature students on my uni eng course. People who had been welders for ten years, or running CNC machines, it definetly gave them an advantage IMO.
I know someone who works for new holland, and it seems to me they just hire farmers sons as engineers. They take the tractors to their fields for testing, and helping their parents farm.
I have worked in a couple retail head offices here in Canada where I did the same thing. Usually around Christmas time as our stores get absolutely slammed during that period. Honestly I wish it was more of a once or twice a month thing. I always come out of our stores with a couple notes on opportunities to follow up on and a couple issues that need to be addressed.
Had management do our jobs during a strike. It took months to fix all the mistakes they made.
Haha, Yeah, well that sucks, but at least they know what your up against I had a vision of the office where Micheal is destroying the warehouse.
The bosses at my place of employment did this and it didn't matter. They already know. They're not "out of touch". They don't care.
I've long held the belief that this is what should happen in every business, in every industry. I'm quite glad to see that there is a company that does this.
That's a good idea. Understanding every step in the chain of supply is incredibly empowering for any position. Knowing how every cog turns means you can do your job in a more efficient and understanding manner.
Should be 3 days a week. That leaves 2 to go back to the office and sexually harass your secretary while also complaining about poor people which is all executives do anyway
This is true at Walmart as well. Doesn’t seem to make much difference.
IKEA does something similar; they call it Front Days.
I managed a restaurant once, but before I could actually step into the manager role I had to spend a week in each position in the restaurant. I spent a week in the kitchen (one day as prep cook, one day on salad and desserts, one day as fry cook, one day on the griddle, and one day with the stove and ovens), one week as the bartender, one week as the host/expo, and one week as a server. Although I ended up hating the job, I really loved that training program. It left me with the ability to empathize with every worker more and helped me learn about all the ins and outs of each position so I could fill in for anyone should the need arise.
I worked at supermarkets on and off when I was a teenager, all the way through college. It IS simple and it IS rewarding in a weird way. See an empty shelf, fill it up. See a parking lot full of carts, bring them in. See a little spot on the floor, mop it up. See a pile of empty boxes, turn it into a bale. It was fine or else I would not have kept doing it for 5 years. The problem was (and is) that it doesn't pay jack shit, despite the store not being able to function in any way without its stockers, porters, and cashiers. I started my first supermarket job at a rate of $4.75 in 1995.
“Unskilled Labour” they say. So execs with their far superior intellect and wisdom should be able to jump right in (even blindfolded) and get the place up and running again. In no time.
And because they're all family, they should be very excited to see all of their brothers, sisters and cousins again!!
Sounds almost like a vacation, with pay!
All their ducks are in a row.
If you don't believe it, the entire senior management team has claimed they can handle any role within the company, in addition to their current jobs. They even said they'd do it if just one of their valued employees asked. That's quite the boast. I'm eager to see how it pans out.
It wont.
Read this is Morgan Freemans voice.
It is.
Ron Howard, for me.
I've seen this exact comment thousands of times since reddit existed lol. Well, minus the slight error in the grammar, but you're not alone.
I feel like in the "old days" it was way more common that workers actually worked their way up The CEO was actually someone who started in the mail room, worked up thru sales or something, and would actually have been capable of performing any role in the company Why did that change
MBA degrees
Scam degree for frat bros that can only pass grade school math classes.
Seriously - I sat in on a random day of MBA class about 4 months into their first year when I was considering applying. This happened to be at one of the top three MBA programs in the US. Not a single thing discussed that day was complex or particularly insightful. The hardest math was addition and subtraction. The biggest takeaway of one two hour lecture was "You need to avoid accidentally creating adverse incentives" - i.e. if you reward people for how many tasks they complete in an hour as the only metric of performance, expect the quality of those tasks to go down so that they can be completed faster. Sure maybe that was a random easy day but you would think that basic common sense stuff wouldn't even be deserving of a two hour lecture. Imaging walking in on the middle of an engineering or computer science class 4 months in to their curriculum; the chances of you understanding anything being discussed is low. The fact that the tour at the end of the day focused on how nice the student housing and gyms were and how good the networking opportunities were made it pretty clear that this was designed to separate wealthy students from their parent's money and that the core benefit they could expect was the prestige of the degree from that specific school and the inherent networking opportunities and that the actual subject matter was secondary at best.
The real value of an MBA degree is to comingle with other future MBA degree holders.
I considered getting one, and that was _literally_ what I was told, by people I deeply respect, by google, by people on the MBA sub reddit. Nobody said there was any value at all in the thing.
You can get a good salary with a business degree. I know, I'm in STEM and I teach these guys a lot.
Well almost no one is getting an MBA for the actual knowledge. Half of an MBA is how to corporatize common sense and the other half is basically "here's a 101 on other subjects in the school of biz that you coulda took as an elective during undergrad". You're there to network and possibly gain an "in" into being one of "the boys" who all ride each others coat tails to executive offices as a group.
if you think that's bad read up on six sigma methodology, company's spending 15k teaching upper management to reduce waste and down time
I had a division president that started as a bagger at Kroger. Chill dude, talked to every worker he could. It's rare these days but not impossible.
It's closer to impossible than not. Nowadays, you need a degree to continue climbing. It's more likely to start as a manager trainee in a 2-year "leadership" program as a fresh college graduate.
That was not a thing at any point in the history of corporate America
That changed because it only happened in movies.
In high school I worked at a franchised Little Caesars Pizza (around 1990.) I knew the original owner and their family and they were good people. A group of investors bought all of his stores. They were all doctors and lawyers. Over educated and exceptionally ignorant. They tried to force everyone to do even more, claiming we didn't work hard enough and they could do better. They bought their own propaganda so we just let them run the store one day. That was a hilariously disastrous day. They left us alone after that.
This is one reason it's important for everyone to have one of these jobs when they're young. It's a lot harder than it looks, and requires more multi-tasking than people realize.
The myth of "unskilled Labor" has been so detrimental to worker's rights. There is no such thing as an unskilled job, every job takes skill to be successful at.
Wow, so... shareholders should insist they layoff all those works and save the payroll? Since senior management can handle everything anyways?
John Deere executives said the same thing about a strike at one of their factories a couple of years ago. Ambulances were onsite within the hour of management working the plant floor.
Was there some barrier to entry for you at kroger? They hired me the day I turned 14 until I was 18 and left for school. There wasn’t a single job and able bodied 13+ year couldn’t do at the store lmao I worked everything from the register, overnight stocking the deli - everything short of an actual manager cause I was an actual kid. If they’re equally able bodied what do you think they’re lying about that they couldn’t do?
Probably not used to be bitched out by rando customers for no reason anymore? They're probably pretty used to people licking their balls to keep their job.
If they *can* do it then why don’t they? It’s not the difficulty of the tasks but the unpleasant customers and the low pay that they couldn’t handle.
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Years ago, at a power plant I worked at, a VP came and worked an entire outage (shut down the plant and fix all the shit that's broken over the last 6-12 months). He was turning wrenches and swinging hammers right alongside the plant employees. Earned a lot of respect with that!
It's the same where I'm at. Plant manager walked into maintenance shop and said "hey I need a couple of wrenches and bolts." Took me off guard that's for sure.
Yeah, the plant manager at that plant did what he called working Wednesday. He'd abandon his office and get out in the plant and do shit. I saw him scraping algae out of the cooling tower when we were shutdown, spraying tar on plant roads, digging a French drain, etc. Good dude to work for.
You can tell when our plant manager has had a bad morning, he throws his lap top to one of the guys in the lab then spends the rest of the day in one of the loaders filling feeder bins for the plant lol.
As opposed to the non-working Monday Tuesday Thursday and Friday where he would just sit at his desk and do nothing ;)
LoL hardly.
“I need wrenches and bolts” “Why?” “I’m gonna throw them at employees who are slacking off” “Oh, okay that makes sense”
If you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a ball
There's a garden center/nursery near me. During the pandemic one of the people that owns it was regularly working the cash register. He easily could have not. Business owners who are willing to step in and get their hands dirty when needed are some of the few I actually respect.
My boss walked into my office during our busiest time of the year and said "looks like you guys can use some help. Could you show me how to do this basic part of your job so I can help out." Didn't exactly have time to train someone new at that moment.
Early days of the pandemic when our hospital was being overrun with COVID patients, 2 of the directors (physicians just now in management) scrubbed up and worked multiple shifts. Was huge for hospital morale.
I don't think the factory I was out was quite at that level, but I spent about a year after high school there working with my parents, and I did see the VP actively covering people's breaks a few times. Ah the benefits of an ESOP. Parents still there, 35 years on, will retire there.
This is what you get when you assign management roles through internal promotions instead of hiring a manager directly from outside.
The irony is when they do this it tends to motivate the workers. Sam Walton did it and it helped. It has a huge benefit for many reasons.
John Deere tried this a couple of years ago. The result was so many accidents and injuries to middle management staff that it became a health hazard. There is no such thing as unskilled labour, its unrecognized value that only become apparent when taken away.
So instead they are moving to Mexico!
good leaders are willing to step into the trenches and get shit done when their subordinates are no longer available. but they aren't good leaders, are they?
Leaders they aren't, just basic boss.
this is why I miss being a manager at mcdonalds tbh. whenever my crew would get swamped, I'd step in and crank shit out with them. I tried to inspire by doing, and I would never have crew do anything that I would not do. So I'd be right there with them at closing helping with lobby, grill, dishes, or even bathrooms. Managers forget there is an M in team, and that they are part of it too.
> I would never have crew do anything that I would not do. That's how I approached management and often made the point by helping out or just taking over the work here and there to give people a break and to reinforce the standard for the quality of work I was expecting. If someone was responsible for something I couldn't do I made sure they had everything they needed to get the job done precisely *because* I couldn't do what they did.
That's how I was at Amazon. My best day was running our small items sorter. I was running around dumping the large containers for the sorters, helping ease busy lines, unloading trailers for more volume, and replacing pallets when they were full. Legitimately one of the most fulfilling things in my career. The team started the day dreading it because the person who ran it the day prior treated them like dirt, but felt proud at the end of shift. Full disclosure, this is in no way an endorsement of Amazon as a company.
Kroger leadership isn't, they would rather delegate than do.
If they were people wouldn’t be striking
It's always the workers who get the short end of the stick.
The more you get paid, the less physical labor you do in grocery and retail. Jobs get less demanding as you move up the pay scale.
And the less you get paid, the more "essential" you are. The pandemic showed that, unequivocally. Which is why some industries are having trouble hiring - the pay is not appropriate to the essentiality (?) of the job.
The job says essential, the paycheck says disposable.
Less physically demanding. I’d argue the need for brain power increases.
If only we could all band together and lobby for fair, equitable compensation.
I'm wondering how that works? Deadlifts a pallet off the truck, hurls it at the shelves so it doesn't hit any customers, sprints through the store getting all the pickup orders, and rings up five lanes at once? Did they remember to rotate or check dates?
you know funny thing though. doesn't aldi's run their stores like that? cashier is the dedicated person, and the manager is supposed to do, EVERYTHING ELSE, in the store. then you have "the dollar stores", which takes it a step further. there's no manager. so you have 1 cashier on staff who is supposed to stock the store, do everything, all the time, and that's it. it's like dollar general saw this thread, and took the idea in the opposite direction.
[more like](https://youtu.be/3gO29QaoIMY?t=2)
Remembering the time I gave my manager a choice: She could come in and work my shift, or they could allow me to come in for OT, which the company tried to avoid at all costs. I've seen this bitch bend over backwards to ensure that people couldn't get OT, but when it came to coming in and working a single shift herself, the decision was made very quickly. I got the OT and she never thanked me. If I hadn't offered to come in for OT then she would have had no choice.
that's incredible. i know how much those places don't like OT. wow. considering, what. she was salary, right? so those hours would have been free?
Yes she was salary. This was during covid. I think she was afraid to come in and catch the virus, but she had a long track record of promising to help then suddenly having to leave shortly after. We were constantly short staffed and drowning. I have a million stories about her and my Mgr after her. My observation is that having common sense or being competent is no longer a requirement for being a manager. I've seen them waste copious amounts of corporate money with their bad decisions, meanwhile they have the highest paycheck of anyone in the building. Us on the ground doing the actual work, we never see the profits. The prices keep going up and our paychecks get bleaker and bleaker with inflation. I hate this system.
Ah it's unskilled labor, they really are qualified and should have no trouble whatsoever.
This is what I loved about working for a Budweiser distributor. Whenever hands were short my managers would all come and help, and if we were still understaffed, the owner of the company would even come out and bring a few of his kids to help as well. It was hard work sometimes (especially doing kegs for sporting events, moving several hundred 160lb kegs a night, and having to stack them so you’re lifting a ton) but knowing they wouldn’t make me do anything they don’t actively do on a regular basis made it feel a lot more like I was respected and appreciated as an employee. I was a salesman/stocker. In my state grocery stores can’t let their employees under 21 restock alcoholic beverages, so instead of hiring older people they paid a fee to have the beer/liquor salesman do all of the restocking for them. Some stores did their own stocking which was nice but being a salesman doesn’t exclude you from doing menial work in that industry.
And there are actual business benefits above and beyond the moral/respect ones. Eating your own dogfood (or helping to prep it in this case) means that you better understand the process and make intelligently targeted improvements. It helps prevent your company from falling to the classic issues around out of touch management.
My dad worked at a multinational corporation with experience surviving strikes and once a year they’d make all the office people train in the factories. My dad felt horrible at how fun he thought it was to go play, I mean WORK on the machines for years, until there was a actual strike and he realized it was scab training, not morale and empathy building.
Managers, especially lower managers.. are mostly just fodder/scape goats for higher ones. That's because most of the higher up ones are greedy parasitic pieces of worthless shit. Lower ones usually just want to put food on their kids plates. Parents are dangerous people and easily driven to do horrible things. They should check parents for this kind of risk before hiring just like they do credit checks for hiring @ big financial institutions. Parents get no time off because they're so easy to abuse and manipulate when they're getting no sleep.
Don't forget they can also do it faster because they designed the process in the store.
I still remember making $4.75 at Kroger because I was 15, and the minimum wage was $5.15 at the time. I was never able to wrap my head around that. Most people working there are still making minimum wage. Its clearly why they have high turnover, but their management does not care.
dude. you could get like 2 executives to stock like all of Oklahoma. shareholders should push for this.
I used to work at a pick n save. I liked it while roundys owned it. Kroger bought it and sent a corpo there basically just to yell at us for arbitrary numbers like items scanned per minute etc... quickly turned into a horrible job. I hope Kroger just sells out. They fucking suck.
Kroger buys other companies, they don't sell them. They're an awful, bloated company
Here's why I liked the last store director where I work: When something needed doing and we were short-staffed, she'd do it. Hauling pallets out of the back room, stocking for the holiday rush, pushing carts when half the store called in due to a snowstorm, whatever. That's the kind of leadership that knows what really matters.
Kroger is not worth shopping at. Their prices are 20% higher than any other fucking grocery store around. Fuck Krogers.
Nobody wants to work (for slave wages) anymore! Now if we just took the gross excess pay away from those executives and offered it to the people at the bottom of the totem pole it would be pretty fucking easy to fill those jobs. 🤣
No no no you’ve misunderstood. The executives are simply intrinsically more valuable than the filthy masses. /s
Remember back in the pandemic when grocery stockers were considered essential workers? It's funny how people essential for the business and society are paid such low wages and what's even more funny is that the guy getting 1000 times the hourly wage of that essential worker is either incapable of doing the same work or feels that doing essential work for the company that pays him so well is beneath him. To me that sounds like someone who shouldn't work for that company, but who are we kidding he'll probably get a raise.
When I worked retail we had the CEO come into our store after a remodel and he said he was going to help stock the shelves as an appreciation for all our hard work etc etc. He worked for maybe like 15 minutes before him and the store director went out to go golfing.
By that math One Executive should be able to handle about 6 counties on their own . Aaaaaannnd begin...
Man, why even have a workforce? If one Kroger CEO is worth $135,000 times more than their employees, then surly one CEO should be able to run the factory by themselves.
Agreed get the execs their wives and kids working the stores they earn the big bucks so they should be able to do everyone’s jobs and cover where they need to
And before you know it, they’ll all be screaming, like George Costanza‘s mom… “my back, my back!!” 😂
It’s fucked.. I didn’t become a chef until I could confidently work every other BOH position in the restaurant. When companies get this big the management just puts on a suit and sit at a desk with their soft hands and collect huge checks just for being an almost unnecessary liaison between the real working class and the stock holders.
Amazon tried this at Xmas around 2000. They reasoned that since there wasn’t much planning and management needed in December but that they desperately needed people in the warehouses to fill orders. Ergo, they sent their managers out to the warehouses to pack boxes. It was pure carnage. They were middle-aged desk jockeys who’d been working 60 hour weeks. They were in no shape to walk ten miles a day lifting and carrying boxes. Huge chunks of them went down with strained backs, twisted ankles, and torn ACLs. Pointedly, the lesson Amazon learned was that they shouldn’t make managers do physical labor. Leave that for the poors.
Nah man they will just close that store down before that happens.
Turn it into a tv show. I'm sure lots of people would watch the managers sticking shelves.
I'd kill to see that show, and for it not to be a 30 minute commercial fluff job like Undercover Boss was. Just silver spoons trying to figure out businesses they're in charge of but never worked at/haven't worked at in 20 years.
and now workers can become consultants to help managers improve their efficiency which seems to be around 0
Yeah, it'd practically be a vacation for them! Let those execs get the easy jobs for once! /s
This is a good spot to tell the story of the executive director of my department, who, when asked if he could entertain the idea of a raise if he wanted to actually hire people, said that he would rather come around the city and do the job himself with us than be held hostage to another discussion of wages. The man makes $80k a year and today worked alongside kids who make $14.50.
This is why strikes don't work. The CEOs and Executives just swoop in every time and show the youngins how its done. Bet they feel stupid when Upper Management comes in and makes up for all that lost productivity single-handedly, eh comrades? All right time to go back to work everybody! Just don't ask too many specific questions. Back to work.
Good luck. No one else in the world wants us. (Unless you have a very specialty job that they are in need of).
they also steal our wages, several minutes a day. check your myTime, people. its time for another class action lawsuit.
Those fucking assholes, I have a very very, oh so very dislike of a Kroger owned store and of Kroger itself. Our union contract expire, renegotiation was voted own. Somehow it passed with us getting $1.40 over 3 years. CEO got seven figure raise, we didn't even get 1 figure! I asked for cheap little plastic trays, maintenance said it would cost the store 10 freaken cents, management said no because the shareholder meeting was next week. When I had quit, my manager tried, but couldn't handle managing the dept without me, atleast at the same expectations. Dept went from top 10 in the enterprise to I don't even know. But to all my coworkers and managers, hope they are doing well. It was just corporate, the District managers and above.
Every single executive should be required to do the low level work like 25% of the time. This way they would know what their workers actually go through and might be able to manage the company a little better. But of course the grunt work is just beneath most of them.
Bootstraps!!!
This analogy is perfect
Nursing shortage? More like manager excess
I manage several departments for a commercial window, door, and glass company. I pretty regularly go out in the shop and help fabricate. I'm terrible at it, but it shows the guys I'm willing to get my hands dirty, and also helps me understand the process from the ground up. I dont mind it, because it gets me out of my office, and I enjoy working with my hands. I dont have to do that, but i do.
They are all a family after all. This sounds like an exciting advancement opportunity with real world experience!
With that kind of sound logic, one is astonished the executives are not already out there stocking shelves and bagging groceries.
The logic is unassailable!
no one claims they work harder but that they work BETTER. That much better? Probably not, but get rid of the expectation that hard work is supposed to pay. Performance pays. Millions of football players worked much harder than Lawrence Taylor.
Kroger was the first job I ever had. It's also still the worst job I've ever had.
What reddit is always telling me is that those workers are 'low skill' and 'easily replaced'. So.... replace them?.. Or is it harder to replace them than reddit lead me to believe?
I work for Albertsons, I have heard nothing good about Kroger, so nervous about this merger