I have been with sears part time for about 6 months. Our store manager keeps screaming at us that we are not getting our work done even though I only have 6 hrs this week. Today I was in the office and I looked at the managers schedule. He only schedules his assistant and himself for 8 hour shifts and he takes one hour lunches. So he is only working 35 hours a week. I asked a girl who has been there awhile and she said that him and his assistant are salary so their check is the same no matter how little they work. Do DMs not check to see what managers are working? How many hours are managers supposed to work?
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At my store, we called our Kmart manager "part-timer" behind his back. He definitely did not work his required hours. And after being with the company just a few years, somehow he had accrued more vacation time than a grandfathered long-timer. We use to laugh about his many excuses to skip out of work early. Sometimes he would leave to "pick up his kids from school" and just take the rest of the day off. I often joked that he counted his drive time as work time. The kicker was when he would brag to corporate visitors that he worked 80 hour weeks. We couldn't stop laughing when we heard that.
@2hee- its called having pride in your job and caring. Something I think that most Sears/Kmart managers and associates have lost due to the constant lying and demoralizing from corporate.
@2hee - Wow, your SM and my SM sound like identical twins. What you describe is exactly how our SM operated as well. Our store closed two years ago and our SM was lackadaisical to the very end.
Our store manager takes a vacation about once a month. When she is not on vacation, she locks herself in her office. She's only out on the floor to do the rally meeting, unlock the doors or lock the doors in the evening if she's closing. I've been there about six years and I've never seen her help out on a register, fold clothes, help with an ad set, talk to customers, put away freight, do a planogram, etc, and I was a full time softlines associate until last year. I would have eventually seen her help out with something after six years, but no, I haven't.
I remember one time I was at the CAC alone with just one other MCA and it was on an busy evening about two weeks from Christmas. She ignored my call for a code 3 even though she was standing about ten feet away from the CAC, making eye contact with us and seeing how long the lines were. Eventually the hard lines manager was the one to come to our rescue.
After the lines died down she walked up to the CAC and told us that we needed to get freight put away. She knew that we were short on people because she's always cutting hours or being told by her bosses to cut hours. She could have helped out on a register or could have grabbed a few carts of freight to put away, but she just stood around like she had no purpose. Probably doing an "observation" or just plain out "milking the time clock" even though she's salary. I'm pretty sure that she'd get a better "observation" done if she worked in the trenches with us! And, if she doesn't like how the day drags by, I've found that if you keep busy and DO SOMETHING it goes by MUCH quicker!
It's always either the hard lines sales people or the managers under her that are pitching in and helping. She does not pull her weight at all and yet she makes the most. Funny how that goes. It's so bad that a few times i have called her office and asked for her to come out because a customer was upset and specifically asked to speak to the store manager only to be told by her that I need to call one of the zone managers or leads over to handle the situation EVEN THOUGH the customer SPECIFICALLY asked for "THE" general manager!
Why are so many store managers lazy? I've been to other kinds of stores and have seen people wearing "general manager" or "store manager" name tags ringing up customers, putting stuff away or doing store maintenace and upkeep. I even remember going to Kmart and my stuff being rung up by the store manager. On the other hand, my friend works at a Sears store two states away and always talks about how lazy her store manager is. Why do the Sears managers think that they are too good to work?
Our SM Comes in at opening every day for an hour and then goes to the gym for two hours. The gym is next door so if the DM calls we run next door and get him. Then he comes back for a few hours and spends the time in his office and then goes to lunch for a few hours. Then he comes back and clocks out. He is in the store maybe 15 hours a week at most and probably gets paid for 40 or more. Nothing new because our last manager did the same thing.
@1dlb LOL, that is bad. If she really cares about her orders not getting misplaced, she should rent a mailbox at a UPS Store or post office (I've heard most post offices these days will let you receive non-USPS shipments to a PO Box by using a street address format).
Mine seems to "be there" 40 hours...BUT...I don't know about "working" the 40 hours. That's a whole different ball game. She shops on Amazon, eBay and other sites on the company issued computer in her office, or if she's not doing that she plays Facebook games.
She has friends who will stop in and they chat and eat lunch in her office for an hour or two. If she eats solo, she'll be gone for about an hour just to go a mile down the road to grab some fast food or takeout. If any of us drives down the road for lunch we are almost always back to clock in before our 30 minutes. I remember when my lead was 45 minutes late ONE TIME because there was road construction down the road and he was written up by her, and he (along with the other leads and managers) have do her grunt work!
She has representatives from Avon and other companies coming in to take her order or drop off her orders and new catalogs. She actually gives the assistants or leads the cash and her order forms for these Avon orders for the times they stop by and she's not there. She's had Schwan's orders too. Same thing, except with the Schwans orders, she complains that there was no room in the breakroom fridge.
Oh, and remember when I said that she is always shopping on Amazon, eBay, etc.? She has those orders shipped to the store and so naturally when UPS comes by to drop things off they are mixed in with customer orders, store replenishments and supplies. Those of us in the backroom have to put store supplies away as they come in, so we open all the boxes to find out what they are and where they go since we get things like RES signs and janitorial supplies and printer cartridges under the store manager's name.
Obviously we know it's the manager's order if there's the box with the Amazon smile on it or Zappos (shoes), Macy's and so on but some of her other orders come in plain brown boxes, so we have to find out what they are so they can get put away. Well we opened a box one time and she ordered some glass globe thing that was broken. She yelled at us because she didn't want us to open her orders and blamed us for the breakage. Our backroom lead defended us and said that she probably shouldn't have the orders sent to the store in the first place and that it was probably a violation of policy. She of course asked "what policy" and he just said that loss prevention may not take kindly to her orders being shipped here. She just stormed off and said that she would see our lead in the office later on.
She still ships her orders here to this day. Now we have to take any boxes with the store manager's name on it to her office so she could go through the ones that are "hers" and we come back and take the stuff that isn't her personal orders back to MPU so that we can put it away where it is supposed to go. Doing double the work, and the work has nothing to do with store functions!
We've all called the hotline by the way. Nothing ever changes. All the district managers, including the loss prevention DM, are either oblivious or they don't care. We just s--- it up until we can find something better. I bet c-ap like this doesn't happen at other places.
If the General Manager keeps the transformation moving and can do it with only an occasional visit to the store, then that's all that is needed! The CEO & Chairman of the Board does it so it must be okay!
In our Sears store our general manager always comes in early and leaves early and sometimes he comes in in plainclothes and then leaves like three times this week came in in plainclothes and leaves and the assistant managers when he’s not there work whatever they want to leave early come early and do nothing all day make us part time and lead’s work our asses off and they say we don’t work fast enough so now they’re changing all the schedules around again every week there something different in our store that are ASM changes each week is different it’s supposed to be one way but she changes it around every week to suit her needs. in our Sears store our general manager always comes in early and leaves early and sometimes he comes in in plainclothes and then leaves like three times this week came in in plainclothes and leaves and the assistant managers when he’s not there work whatever they want to leave early come early and do nothing all day make us part time and lead‘s work our asses off and they say we don’t work fast enough so now they’re changing all the schedules around again every week there something different in our store that are ASM changes each week is different it’s supposed to be one way but she changes it around every week to suit her needs . don’t we even have standards for managers to follow attendance and do one for do something for one but not for others attendance in our store is atrocious and it has been since we opened our store nine years ago we are at Sears Grand and our attendance is atrocious if you’re friends with the manager they let it slide if you’re not friends with the manager and you don’t get along then you’re going to get a ride up so I was like nobody is consistent here at Sears other companies do way better than we do this company has done nothing for attendance for years .
@sxu - "Salaried managers are required to work 5 ten hour days." Although technically correct, at our store that definitely was not the case. Our salaried managers, especially the SM, interpreted that to be 5 six hour days. The managers possessed an art for contriving convoluted and opaque reasons (excuses) for their short hours. The excuse for a long lunch was, "I was required to obtain some observations about our competitors." In other words, they wanted to do some shopping!
Our SGM practically lives in the store...
He is the rare kind of SGM that gets his hands dirty and helps out on the floor.
I remember the old Sears days back in the early 1980's when our SGM wore a suit and tie and was addressed as "Mr".....no first name when talking to or referring to him back then.
He spent much of his time in his office and when he was seen doing a floor walk, everyone scrambled and grabbed a dustrag and was on best behavior....It was equivalent to a corporate visit when he came out of his office in suit and tie to walk the floor.
Our SGM and ASM are to be in the store 12 hours a day including lunch breaks and other breaks whenever they want to and can. That being said, it rarely happens. Our DM never knew the SGMs schedules but called the SGMs to come in at a moments notice. If you didn't come in immediately and didn't have a true and honest life or death excuse you were gone. Being on a vacation and still within driving distance was not an excuse. I saw it many a time.
Sears 48 kmart 70
Salaried managers are required to work 5 ten hour days.