The Woolworths Thread (22 Viewers)

[bensneddon]

NC8000 - what exactly is your role in Woolworths? :\
I gather some 'high up' position somewhere? IT perhaps?

NC8000 works in Buying and Marketing I'm pretty sure.

 

[MMacka]

What annoys me though is that they use these buzz words to make us feel like we're doing something new, when in reality all they're saying is, err, someone needs to be supervising.

I walked into work today to see my SM on mains. I almost died, but then I looked around and realised it wasn't busy at all - wtf? Then our SSO did the last hour of her shift on checkouts as well. You could tell that we were supposed to have a managers visit today, they were calling the most ridiculous express alerts, someone had to be "walking the floor" at all times, I got in trouble from my CSM/SSM/SM for serving. Actually quite comical.

But, at the end of the day, it makes me feel good to realise that my CSM does just as bad a job of close as I do.

Did the manager end up coming in?

Apparently it was someone flying over from Sydney, head of fresh food or something along those lines.

 

[lordtopcat]

Are you in Australia or NZ ?? Only 2 supermarkets in Australia use ISIS, All BWS/Dans/Petrol sites also use ISIS.

About 3 weeks ago a script was done that wiped out any Temp GTIN's(TUN) in the liquor division as it was a headache, this ability is about to be removed to add them.

If it takes you half an hour on hold, simply fill out an E Form is CASS and we will action it. or don't you have 4 minutes to write it ??

And snobs ?? I bust my butt to help stores out, everyone makes mistakes but if a store makes the effort to call me, I do my best to assist.

I understand also about SMS time pressures, Ive been in 3 sundays in 5 weeks for an excess of 10+ hours clearing a backlog of stores requests/issues.(and no, no pay for it, just satisfaction that ive taken pressure off stores.)

I'm in NZ. I'm fairly sure all Woolworths/Countdown/Foodtown stores here use ISIS.

Also, I'm fairly sure we don't use CASS either. The only form of electronic communication we use is Outlook Express, which only the SM, SSM and PI have access to. Duty Manager's used to but it got taken away from them.

And I apologize if you aren't one of the 'snobs'. However in my experience whenever I call someone from the Buying office, or any other Support function, they talk to you like complete shit. I understand they must work damn hard and it must be frustrating answering silly questions from small store workers, but we all work for the same company and they need to show a bit of respect to their colleagues.

 

[NC8000]

I'm in NZ. I'm fairly sure all Woolworths/Countdown/Foodtown stores here use ISIS.

Also, I'm fairly sure we don't use CASS either. The only form of electronic communication we use is Outlook Express, which only the SM, SSM and PI have access to. Duty Manager's used to but it got taken away from them.

And I apologize if you aren't one of the 'snobs'. However in my experience whenever I call someone from the Buying office, or any other Support function, they talk to you like complete shit. I understand they must work damn hard and it must be frustrating answering silly questions from small store workers, but we all work for the same company and they need to show a bit of respect to their colleagues.

If your in NZ, you are in a totally different basket then, Many teams are not shared so it is possible that it is a NZ only team ??

If your manager uses outlook its even easier to send mail, Eforms are a pain but still gets to us(3 checks a day) FYI, CASS is used everywhere, NZ is division 09 in the system. We ALL use the same records. same refno's, same GTIN/EAN etc.

Small store workers ?? We are all foot soldiers mate no need to think like that.

I bet Woolworths loves that they can rely on you to work overtime and not have to pay you for it.

My Boss would not know I was in, not many people around on a sunday. And when I was in supermarkets I did 8 hours a week more that normal like all salary people do so doing the extra bit is not hard

NC8000 - what exactly is your role in Woolworths? :\
I gather some 'high up' position somewhere? IT perhaps?

I prefer not to say but its not a 'high up' position, as I mentioned, we are all foot soldiers, you work the floor, I work the phone and computer so you don't need to walk as much

 

[lordtopcat]

Thanks NC8000. I guess I've had sour grapes towards you from when you first started posting in here, in the wrong context you could have come over as obnoxious, but going back you were only trying to help, and from a different view point.

I guess NZ and Aus do have different support offices, I have only had to call B&M in Aus once, and from what I understand, our buying offices are located here.

Although you do realize that you aren't getting away with not posting which area you work in? I'm afraid that isn't an appropriate answer

 

[NC8000]

Although you do realize that you aren't getting away with not posting which area you work in? I'm afraid that isn't an appropriate answer

Ha, I work in the area that is there to help the people, that narrows it down to 1 in 3400 people that work in the one building

 

[babikakez]

Did the manager end up coming in?

Apparently it was someone flying over from Sydney, head of fresh food or something along those lines.

I have no idea, tbh. Everyone was really on edge all day though.

 

[yoddle]

We were meant to get managers this week, but i don't think we did.

Um new hate: this customer double-bagged all of his fruit and vegetables in the fruit&veg bags, and even double wrapped a wrapped bag of carrots, which i tried to weigh because i couldn't see the packaging because it was so deep in plastic. WHAT A LOSER - THINK OF THE DOLPHINS!

However there is a motorhome convention on in Tasmania atm (if you have been watching Sunrise you would have seen Grant Denya there) and so we get lots of fun old people, not annoying old people.

Hey and clarification, if someone returns some unopened baby formula, we are allowed to put it back on display, yeah?

 

[BSammy]

I'd have to say no, any baby stuff returned shouldn't really go back on the shelf.

Some stores may be stricter than others.

 

[yoddle]

It's not an issue of varying from store to store, it is an a policy somewhere, but I can't remember where i read it.

 

[PyroTek]

I thought the policy was that any baby products were to be dumped on return?

 

[BSammy]

It's not an issue of varying from store to store, it is an a policy somewhere, but I can't remember where i read it.

I mean what varies is how often the stores follow policy.

I had a CSM stop me from writing off some returned nappies and put them back on the shelf.
I disagreed but what can you do.

 

[lordtopcat]

One of our Supers was majorly told of by the SM for putting an unopened tin of baby food back on the shelf after it was returned. Big no-no apparently.

 

[PyroTek]

at our smokeshop register (naturally) we have a sign that says "All refunds on:
Fresh Produce
Meat
Deli
Baby Products
(a few others)

Must be dumped"

 

[shinji]

wat the fudgeeeeeeeeeee. worst day at work today.

2 people called in sick - had no-one to cover their shifts. so manager went home early to rest up beforec oming in at 3pm to do the close. so we only had 4 people throughout the day on a SATURDAY. Was pretty much hell.. but we were managing.

I finally go on my lunchbreak at quarter to 1. Comeback, and everything is taken out the case, we had staff member from Groceries, duty manager and front end coming in help ptake stuff out and clean. Turns out that the cooling system for the case broke down, so we had to take everything out .. on a SATURDAY where 2 people had called insick. ==
Deli specialist came in and helped us, with asking the customers what they wanted and quoting prices (wow he actually remembers the prices!)
So we were deep cleaning in the middle of the day... sucha weird feeling. Was so disgusting deep cleaning chicken though, had to do a lot of extra cleaning coz fans were turned off ... and it wasn't nice. -______________-

Needless to say, sales is gonna suffer substantially today.

 

[MMacka]

Floor staff got a massive talking down to today.

We scored 0% in our latest mystery shopper. SM was livid with us and we got called to backdock for a 20min meeting. To sum up the discussion: they did a walk through coles and atm they are better than us, have to show customer to the product no matter what (even if we are signed off), wear a namebadge in a visible manner, do a sales pitch on customer queries and know the products in our dept. They also said that in mystery shopper the culprit is named and if it happened again formal counseling sessions would begin.

It was one of those moments when you laugh when you shouldn't. I couldn't stop laughing at everyone and the people that were getting verbally put down by the SM. Also people were asking really stupid questions and it didn't help that we had heaps of stuff in Bakery to do.

 

[iMatthew]

Floor staff got a massive talking down to today.

We scored 0% in our latest mystery shopper. SM was livid with us and we got called to backdock for a 20min meeting. To sum up the discussion: they did a walk through coles and atm they are better than us, have to show customer to the product no matter what (even if we are signed off), wear a namebadge in a visible manner, do a sales pitch on customer queries and know the products in our dept. They also said that in mystery shopper the culprit is named and if it happened again formal counseling sessions would begin.

It was one of those moments when you laugh when you shouldn't. I couldn't stop laughing at everyone and the people that were getting verbally put down by the SM. Also people were asking really stupid questions and it didn't help that we had heaps of stuff in Bakery to do.

1 word: fuck.

 

[babikakez]

Warning, this is going to be an epic post. I'm angry.

It's not an issue of varying from store to store, it is an a policy somewhere, but I can't remember where i read it.

I think it might be, I noticed what looked like a perfectly good tin of formula being refunded as damaged yesterday.

Floor staff got a massive talking down to today.

We scored 0% in our latest mystery shopper. SM was livid with us and we got called to backdock for a 20min meeting. To sum up the discussion: they did a walk through coles and atm they are better than us, have to show customer to the product no matter what (even if we are signed off), wear a namebadge in a visible manner, do a sales pitch on customer queries and know the products in our dept. They also said that in mystery shopper the culprit is named and if it happened again formal counseling sessions would begin.

It was one of those moments when you laugh when you shouldn't. I couldn't stop laughing at everyone and the people that were getting verbally put down by the SM. Also people were asking really stupid questions and it didn't help that we had heaps of stuff in Bakery to do.

What MMacka also forgot to mention was that the mystery shopper came in on LABOUR DAY. Fuck. If you recall this was the day where my 2IC abandoned me, ALL floor staff were on checkouts for at least 5/7 trading hours, we ran out of plastic bags and complaint forms, none of our ends were done BECAUSE the floor staff were on checkouts etc. Now I get that the mystery shopper doesn't know that, but maybe management needs to walk through on THAT DAY where everyone worked SO HARD.

And, on the name badge issue, I seem to have lost my name badge somewhere between uni and work on Thursday. I asked for a new one yesterday, jeez you would have thought I was asking for a million dollars.

Also, I am going to defend the guy in question (that apaz caused the 0%) to the death. No question about that.

Nice to know that we got 0% on a day I was in charge though :|

That is horrible...

Did the cashier even serve the mystery shopper??

Checkout staff have not been spoken to about it directly. But I have noticed particular staff have been picked out personally by our SSM to have him do their MOS. Those people have been given follow up training.
I lol'd though to see another supervisor in that group though.

I have no idea who the cashier was. Knowing my luck, it was probably me. I'd very much like to see what was said about service area, maybe the reason why no express alerts were called was because everyone had been on checkouts since 10.15, the reason why I couldn't put anyone from express to mains was because someone needed to be there to deal with the service 100's/other calls/be a supervisor/be a manager etc. Also the express line was like a zillion miles long.

I AM SO ANGRY.

ANYWAY, for todays vent. They gave two complete newbies 2 and a half hours to pull tickets off the entire store. Not 2.5 hours each, 2.5 hours between them. I can't even do that. These girls had never done tickets before. An hour after they'd started, 3 aisles were done. I went downstairs at 7.15 when I finished tickets, they were already over 45 minutes of their allocated time, and they still had six aisles plus meat and perishables to do.

I left work at 8.45 - I sent them home as soon as the tickets were down (around 8pm), and then checked over everything at my SSM's instructions. I had a full bag of tickets that had been missed, so I left them on my SSM's desk with very sarcastic note attached.
It felt a bit nostalgic, I remember the first time I did tickets my CSM went behind me to fill an entire bag with tickets that I had missed.

Seeing as I didn't write an adjustment though (I was supposed to finish at 6.30), what do you all think my chances of overtime for that are?

 

[babikakez]

ps. HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRY!

 

[TG Fan]

Seeing as I didn't write an adjustment though (I was supposed to finish at 6.30), what do you all think my chances of overtime for that are?

Chances of getting overtime at Woolworths? Hmmmm....how about zero/nil.

In regards to the mystery shopper - I can't stand how management over reacts to the report every single time. You'd think we flicked boogers at the shopper and flipped them off as they walked out the store!! I feel like telling them to give it a rest. There are other things in everyday life and my life that are more important than if I asked for their Everyday Rewards card or not!! Sheesh!!!

I do agree with you babikakez, more investigation needs to be done before management decides to rip into staff. Ask for comments from staff who worked on that day if anything unusual had happened.

As far as staff losing RF Guns. We had a staff member lose an Rf gun while I was on a 5 week holiday last year. It went missing a week after I left and I was notified of it's loss when I got back. Going by the RF Gun Report I knew who had lost it and this particular staff member was a very good friend of the STM & SM (but then, she immediately becomes good friends of every new SM and STM we ever get.....*shudder*). Her excuse was that a customer must had taken it......yeah, right. A few days after telling me that BS excuse I caught her by the box crusher with a RF gun in an empty box. :mad1:

The SM told me to contact the head of regional IT and ask for another RF Gun. I did which in turn he told me the SM had to contact his regional manager and then he had to give approval. Of course the chicken sh*t SM didn't call his regional manager to tell him because not only would he get dragged along the coals but his buddy would too.

I loath balless SM's and favouritism within Woolworths stores..........