The company has no money for raises or their buildings to fix up but they have someone in a room watching all the activity in their stores..If something looks out of place or associates just standing around, they will call your store ..Creepy how they monitor your every move...
25 replies (most recent on top)
The remote monitoring occurs, but usually focuses (no pun intended) on safety-related issues or potential OSHA problems that could result in injury to employees or Sears customers.
Those who monitor by "remote" are usually the District Managers, although that doesn't matter anyway. The almighty DM employees care even less about Store profitability than Eddie. I mean, of course, "fast Hedge Fund Eddie", the CEO who will go down in history as ruining a Store icon through greed and incompetence.
All AP and LP employees, both past and present, know the Store cameras are a joke.
It's not an invasion of privacy because you're working in a public space and the cameras are in plain sight.
I agree with the above post that this has been going on for years in some stores. As a former ASM I actually took the calls. I can take it even further. When I was the CAC lead in our store they actually had microphones hidden at the cash wraps to see if cashiers were asking for credit. They played the tapes with sound for me so I could hear and see it. They stopped doing that in our store after about 6 months. I don't think they still do it. And by the way, this is not an invasion of privacy.
How is this an "invasion of privacy"? You are in a public place which has no expectation of privacy. Give me a break, grow up
That is truly an invasion of privacy someone really needs to look into this and what can be done with this company
2xoz If his info was so wrong why don't you correct it?
I agree I don't think they have a room specifically at HE but I know there is an offsite location where people are paid to watch cameras and report to the higher ups. It also wouldn't surprise me if the higher ups did have remote access considering how everything else is so integrated with the SHC apps.
@3scf I think if their is to much loss in a store get rid of LP. In my store LP is pretty much useless as well even the guy in charge I don't think he makes much of a difference it seems more of a payroll waste since I keep seeing empty boxes or boxes with switched products. Hes professional don't get me wrong, but its just not helping along with his 2 other co workers that just go around the store flirting with the girls.
We need someone watching LP, at our store they do nothing but sit in the back. Meanwhile, you find empty boxes and hangers everywhere I've even found empty boxes right underneath the cameras. So either they are sleep or not in the room doing the job they were paid to do.
Why speak of things you have no knowledge of, 2yjn? You're very incorrect.
They don't have a room at Hoffman. What they do is the Market manager and the district AP have the ability to watch remotely. Just like in most retail environments. It all depends on if your district market manager does this or not.20
No money? They took AP out of 50% of the stores and have 15 people at corporate that monitor the systems that they had the teams set up before they fired them. Big savings there.
Maybe like someone said it is through phones as we dont have a room in Hoffman to watch stores. If we did it wouldnt be necessary to face time stores and have walk throughs of stores as you could just comment on the store.
@xny- exactly how it is in our store as well. They call to tell us good job with that MPU order. At the same time people walk out with their stolen goods. It's actually pretty hilarious.
I'm a softlines zone supervisor and I have received several of these calls. None of them had anything remotely to do with shoplifting (we have a HUGE problem with carts full of merchandise walking out of our doors and people loading up purses and backpacks just until the seams bust).
Instead, they call the CAC and insist on speaking to a manager to "congratulate" us for associates doing a process like SAM, BOB and LISA or recommend to us something like putting out wet floor signs on a day that is nice and hot because their "forecast said rain was in our area".
Finally, after the 90 trillionth call, I told them point blank that I am running around DOING things--typicals, freight, conference calls, schedules, etc., and I don't have time to take your phone calls for a gold star, and don't bother calling if you can't put a stop to our shoplifting problem that no one in the store is allowed to handle. I haven't received a call since, and as far as I know, other managers in our store haven't either.
They need to bring their a--es down to the store and DO an actual LP job! Phone calls don't fix s--t!
Ya that's just bull! A watches the cameras and sometimes the lazy managers that want so much work done,that have time to sit on there a--.
They do watch the cameras! We've actually received good calls! One call was for the soflines lead changing the entrance signs before the store opened, and the other was for a large cash pick-up from a register.
Now we're in liquidation, and haven't heard a word.
I don't know about the smartphone thing unless that's recent but I can definitely confirm the cameras in a lot of stores can be access remotely. That said, you aren't always being watched but you could be watched at pretty much any moment.
Store managers, and others atbthe district level can monitor the store using their smartphones.
Literally every store is online for remote monitoring. This was a huge initiative that AP had to have completed in all stores last year.
I dont think we got this because I basically do what I want in my terms and I never gotten called on. Hell even the Video Camera in my department looks broken I never hear it move or spin anymore lol.
The top 25 and top 50 do have this..Security cameras hooked up to Corp. They call for check out issues an backroom. Freight stacked top high or issues with pallets..
This has been going on for years. I'm surprised more associates don't know about the cameras. Yes corporate watches and yes they have someone dedicated to do this. Don't believe the "cameras don't work" line, even if you don't have AP, you still have cameras and corporate still watches. In our Kmart store they made us put tape lines at the registers so that they could better see out of control lines at checkouts. If customers were waiting past the tape line, it meant there were more then three in line and we would get a call from corporate to get backups on immediately. The DM would also get a call and we would get yelled at. Our store was one of i think 50 Kmart's to "test" the tape lines to see why we have lines in stores.
You sure it's not someone in the store playing a joke on you. Sounds odd.
Yes we DO have that. We have been receiving calls for awhile now. They ask for a manager and then tell you what they saw. Sometimes it's to tell us about associates just standing around, sometimes letting us know of a safety issue in the warehouse. They called me twice already today.
That's a funny thought, but no we don't have that. It sounds like someone is just "feeding you a line" to make sure you are productive each day.