Kmart Christmas Casual (1 Viewer)

[Panda Bear]

mmmm...

i have to say that at officeworks.. its one of the better colesmyer brands coz customers are actually fairly patient

and zie pay ain't bad ^^

 

[tomorrows_angel]

I work at myer and up until about 3 weeks ago i was working full time. Up to 60 hours a week, for which i was very grateful.

Now i only get one shift a week, they desperately need staff to work, but they can't give us any work cos they used up all their budget at christmas and sales and can't afford to pay us. It's not that they don't want us to work, it's that they can't let us. They haven't even been calling me up to work extra shifts!

But hearing other stories makes me appreciate how fortunate i was to get that much work, $4000 in 2 months for an 18 year old on minimum wage was fine for me! gave me the money to pay for uni upfront!

Now i'm just praying they ask me to stay on as a permanent staff member.

Good luck with Kmart!

 

[princesssparkle]

ex- kmart employee

hey,
i worked at kmart from october 03 to may 04 on a christmas casual contact on registers. during school holidays i did about 30 hours a week and then during school time i worked thursday nights, saturdays and sundays and not to mention every public holiday. sure it was nice to work and get the money and if i wasnt rostered on i would be called and asked hey "joe blow" is sick come into work within 15 mins ( and i lived 20 mins away!) but the thing that really got to me in the end was having to fight with managers to get time off to go on school excursions and to a funeral.

kmart never specified when the contract would end it must have been "christmas" for 6 months! i ended up quitting because i didnt have any time to do my schoolwork and they wouldnt let me have time off to go on an excursion.

my friend works at myer now and she said that all the christmas people are under review and they can only keep on three or so people per store which is ridiculous!

check out this website, to hear more ranting from a disgruntled ex Burger King employee:http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2645/

he is one pisssssed off employee!!!!!

 

[loquasagacious]

I doubt they will call you again - but thats life. They'll probably keep fobbing you off and passing the responsibility around and you are unlikely ever to get a staright answer.

Get a reference and then get a new job.

Happened to me last year when I was working at bi-lo.

 

[Casmira]

thats wierd, i didnt do many xmas holiday work, but bunnings put me in for roughly 45 hour weeks all of january, and they asked me if i wanted to work more during school because not to sound very arrogant but they said i did a very good job in homewares, originally the WHOLE of homewares was a shithole, it was dirty, it had excess stock everywhere, i cleaned uip all those big aisles, 4 of them to be exact and served customers and i got brillaint feedback

on top of that the original worker there never answered the calls or helped cashiers to get a fineline (like a barcode but only 7 digits) - and i did so yeh, i had to cut down my shifts because of yr12

but seriously i reckon what they did was employ too many and realise they made the mistake, bunnings had too many people on pub holidays, and they raelly made it arkward, because it wasnt that busy, we had casuals being on floor, the cashiers etc.. - some didnt even want to get off the job lol

 

[Supra]

ive been at kmart since november doing night fill, i used to get soo many shifts up until stocktake, i havent got a shift since...im not coomplaining tho coz i h8 that place soo mcuh the managers r all fukd and enjoy bossing ppl around, i shud look for a job elsewhere but i cant b fukd lookn for one so im jus working at my dads office

 

[_Bushra_]

i went to kmart the other day and its so like, dirty and messy eww

 

[MiuMiu]

Ok as someone who does the rosters at kmart, I can tell you that there is literally no money on the payroll budget at the moment. We are seriously understaffed, not because of lack of people available to work but because we have no money to pay them. It gets better in a couple of weeks, but nothing like over xmas.

 

[Panda Bear]

lol

my officeworks is chronically understaffed and we need people!

 

[iambored]

Ok as someone who does the rosters at kmart, I can tell you that there is literally no money on the payroll budget at the moment. We are seriously understaffed, not because of lack of people available to work but because we have no money to pay them. It gets better in a couple of weeks, but nothing like over xmas.

that's interesting. i didn't realise shops had a payroll budget! so do they hire too many casuals over christmas? even though most shops are STILL understaffed over christmas? also what happens to shops who have a lot of staff from christmas, do a lot of people leave at this time of the year? or just during the year, because each year before christmas shops are understaffed and hire so many people.

 

[Komaticom]

Xmas casuals should stay on for Easter.

 

[Carlito]

Alot of them just work over Christmas and quit themselves when school or uni or their regular job starts back (I know a few school teachers who were christmas casuals at my store and quit when school started back)

 

[lil_star]

Alot of them just work over Christmas and quit themselves when school or uni or their regular job starts back (I know a few school teachers who were christmas casuals at my store and quit when school started back)

:s:s:s School Teachers work as Christmas Casuals? I thought they enjoy their holidays :|

 

[spin spin sugar]

that's interesting. i didn't realise shops had a payroll budget! so do they hire too many casuals over christmas? even though most shops are STILL understaffed over christmas? also what happens to shops who have a lot of staff from christmas, do a lot of people leave at this time of the year? or just during the year, because each year before christmas shops are understaffed and hire so many people.

every retail operation has a budget according to what percentage of profit goes to wages. i know at my last store, where i wrote rosters, we were strictly supervised in keeping every single roster under 10% of our overall profit. basically this means if our store was only making 3000 a day, we could only spend 300 on wages... which isnt very much when you really think about it.

i imagine places like kmart are expected to keep their wage % even less than 10 - they can get away with having stacks of people on all the time over christmas, a) cos they can have purely 14 year olds basically running the store , which costs them a third of the cost of a senior, b) cos theyre making A LOT more money.

i dunno if this explains it very well, but thats why at the moment its a bad time to be working as a casual in retail, and an even worse time to be trying to find a job in retail (i dunno how i just got one - very lucky, tho i'll prolly get like 1 shift a week)

 

[MiuMiu]

Yeah my store does about $28-32k on an average day. Goes much higher over xmas.

Although Kmart actually employ very few young people (im talking like the 14-16 age range), your youngest is usually bout 17-18 and even still they prefer to hire people who are out of school so theres better availability and staff are willing to work later at nite.

Age doesn't really make much difference when rosters are drawn up, nothing like they do at Maccas anyway.

 

[spin spin sugar]

hmm, where i worked age was everything, it was the difference between paying 17 an hr or 7. thats definitely how maccas make their money too

 

[Ranger Stacie]

i always thought "christmas casual" meant a casual for the christmas period. therefore of course they will put you off afterwoods..

 

[Supra]

the thing is i wasnt employed as a christmas casual, i was always spose to work there for howeva long i wanted, i dont think 2 many ppl stopped after christmas at our kmart...still no shifts oh well

 

[MiuMiu]

the thing is i wasnt employed as a christmas casual, i was always spose to work there for howeva long i wanted, i dont think 2 many ppl stopped after christmas at our kmart...still no shifts oh well

Unfortunately its not quite that easy....if there isn't enough shifts to go around its only fair that the people that have been there longer get priority. Although I do try and do it fairly, most people only end up with one 4-hour shift per week.

 

[MiuMiu]

Xmas casuals should stay on for Easter.

Why?



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