Thread regarding Whole Foods Market Inc. layoffs

Um, I think you are forgetting about OTS. This program makes sure every store operates exactly the same regardless of footprint. (sarcasm)

Our 1,000s of different store footprint sizes has always been our weakness and will eventually be our undoing. You can not streamline or implement procedures across a company with such insane variations on store size and store features. I really cannot figure out whey amazon bought this mess.

Right. In our metro we had a store that cost $15 million to build in 2008 years ago remodeled for around the same amount. There was nothing wrong with the store at all. Half the store remained unchanged. The things that really needed to be replaced like the broken a– frozen doors and dairy cooler were left as is. It actually made the employees jobs harder with the new layout. I do like the new meat displays and that the store is brighter. They got rid of the big a– fans that we never turned on once because of the noise. The new store in our area is built so poorly. There are footprints in the concrete floor and actual sticks permanently embedded in the floor as well. Plastic taped to the ceiling to prevent leaks, sewage/p–p pipes from the apartments above leaking onto the sales floor and onto product, construction measurements still written on walls, the employee bathrooms weren't built properly causing us to not have use of them for months. They said at first we weren't going to even fix them at all. They had to dig up the concrete floor 10 feet deep, 8 feet long to fix it so we couldn't use the hallway leading from the parking garage TL office to the sales floor. Giant support columns in the middle of aisles, no phone are able to be used inside the building, department wireless phones don't work properly causing many angry customer interactions. Dairy cooler had to be replaced before the store was even open even though we warned everyone they fans were installed incorrectly. Same issue happened at the other remodeled store. How do we pay for this? Cut labor.

The company spent millions remodeling stores that didn’t need changing. Guests were actually angry with the remodels. That money should have been spent on updating with decent SOFTWARE and EQUIPMENT in the stores. It was ridiculous how much was spent while the bones of the company crumbled. JM says he was too good to the team members for years. I’d say we kept the company moving on the store level with software that barely worked and aging equipment. We deserved the good pay and great benefits we had. We made the company look amazing every single day.

LOL Whole Troll Marketeers

My punctuation was misleading. Didn't mean to say all those programs used flash. Just Kronos. The other programs are even MORE archaic. We only stopped using DOS for tag batches 5 years ago. There is a flash free version but we don't use it and there is a real possibility that we may not be able to upgrade to the flash free version without significant tech upgrades. The mere fact that we are using an unsupported highly hackable program like this now is the issue. We are also so far behind in upgrading anything. Just because there is a flash free version that became available just a few months ago does not mean Whole Foods will be able to get it working by this deadline. They have 2 months. It takes us years to do anything.

Uninstall flash then tell me why DVO, IRMA, and ChefTec still work id–t. Kronos already has a flash free version which we will migrate to.

Wrong

Kronos is actually the only program/site you listed that uses flash, but sadly the rest were created even before flash existed.

Sad

IRMA, DVO, ChefTec, Kronos is still using flash! Flash will discontinued by Adobe in 2020 and Chrome will not use it at all by January 1st. That means Kronos needs a big update just to use it after the years end.

Right. It’s called IRMA. h-lla lol🎈

Perpetual Inventory will still require buyers. Perpetual inventory does not take into account theft, mispicks, damage or unknown shrink. It will also not take into account product that has been ordered but not yet received. Once we receive a case of Cheerios the system will say we have 12 boxes. Every time one is paid for it will subtract 1 from the total. If 6 were damaged it will still think we have 6 when the shelf is empty and not order. It's used for accounting not ordering. Even if eventually they get to the point where a computer created suggested order is being made they will still have a human audit and approve it. Now maybe in the future they will spend money to retrofit every whole foods with new tech but we all know we are so far behind on that.

Written in Stone? Soon. We are told to we can only make changes to 15% of Kronos schedules and only to meet the needs of the business and not to cover for poor availability. We simply have to ignore that rule because the Kronos schedules are insane. What's really going to happen is no one will ever be hired without full open availability. The problem with that is we hire people who say they have open availability then a week later they say they can't work Saturday or after 4 p.m. Instead of holding them to the availability they agreed to when hired or separating them, we just deal with it. Not many people have the kind of availability Kronos needs to actually work. We pretty much can't hire students, parents, people with other jobs, people who have hobbies, church, are taking care of sick relatives, etc. Kronos is just so bad. It ignores the basic needs of the business. It can't work unless every t.m. has 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. availability. That also means it will schedule tms overnights, opens, closes, and mids in the same week. People can't operate like that.

So between the labor cuts/kronos debacles,the new alexa aisle markers to help with app customer service, self checkout and the coffee making robot you guys see who will reap the benefits–shareholders..major labor shedding soon...and the ots/planograms/perpetual inventory gonna axe ya complicit buyers and team leaders...just wait

Meh

I'm getting very tired of answering every whole body and grocery question while trying to work in my own department. There is no one on the floor after 2-3 pm.

I never follow Kronos because every schedule it makes is completely bonkers. 4 Tms all day Saturday? No one to work load or receive the load? 20 people on wednesday? However we have been told to only give FT Tm's 36 hours max/week. PT's only get 19. PT20 only 28 (Until Jan1st). If our team has 15 FT tms guaranteed 36 hours that is 540 hours a week. On top of that we have 6 part timers That's 114 hours a week. A total of 654 hours a week. Our labor budget is 475 hours a week. We can't even afford to schedule our FT Tms their guaranteed hours with that budget. If we scheduled to that budget we'd have no one in the department for hours every day. All our part timers would have zero hours and several full timers would need to be fired. But OTS says we need to work every backstock and face every day. It's really dumb.

Kronos can be manipulated to the needs of the Team. It is not written in stone that Kronos has to be followed. As a 30 hr a week Team Member with a partially set schedule I was told by store leadership and my Team Leader that I can keep my current schedule. If store leadership in a particular store wants to be a hard a– concerning Kronos then of course it will be difficult for Team Members but the system can be molded to each individual team and Team Members its all up to those in power.

16. s. our sales ARE increasing. Every team in the store is positive comping. Especially Whole Body. There is also never anyone in Produce. People from the opposite side of the store have to leave the deli counter to go help people find basil all day long.

The labor hours they give us to schedule in a week is lower than the hours we guarantee our full timers. We had a full timer just quit and we cannot hire a replacement because we are still over labor budget without them. That means they think we should be getting the job done with fewer employees. We aren't getting it done as it is. That means we have to really crack down and get rid of under-performers just so we can hire good people to get things done. It's a long process when 2/3rds of all new hires are worse than the t–ds we have now. Add to that the several Tms we have with accommodations eating up our labor and not showing up, it's just silly. Our lines have gone from non existent to stretching 15 feet into every aisle. Customers are p-ss-d and calling to complain. The Whole Body department (the department that requires most c.s.) goes completely unstaffed for 9 hours a day. That alone is k–ling sales. So many people turn away from buying $50 supplements because there is no one to answer their questions. Gotta spend money to make money!

If sales don’t increase they will cut labor more. Reducing prices is great, but if the increase in sales doesn’t balance off the price reduction the Money has to come from somewhere.

Labor is controllable. And just realize how thin Amazon runs their margins. It’s not hard to figure out it’s going to keep happening. Grocery retail is too competitive these days.