Grocery Employees
Manager: “Billy can you stock aisle three please?”
Billy: “Yes I will, but let me go to the bathroom first.”
(Billy goes to find Marie)
Billy: “Hey Marie, the manager said to go stock aisle three. I am done with all of my aisles, so I get to sit back in the back until it is time for me to clock out.”
Marie: “Uhm, okay, but why did the manager not come tell me?”
Billy: “She was too busy, so she told me to tell you.”
Marie: “Okay, I will go work on it.”
In the U.S today, the workplace has made a drastic change. Billy does not want to do his job that the manager assigned him, so Billy decides to pend it off on Marie. According to Anthony Mirhaydari from MSN Money, “For the first time since the recession ended, businesses are increasingly unable to squeeze more and more work out of existing workers.” Productivity is no longer what it use to be fifty years ago. Employees leave an everlasting impression on customers. When walking into an IGA grocery store, a customer will experience three different types of employees.
Hard worker First, according to Dictionary.com, a hard worker is defined as “one who is industrious and diligent in carrying out tasks or duties.” When thinking about a hard worker, he or she strive and rise above the job task. An employee who works a night shift is to complete a work list which consists of filling these products on the shelves: sugar, eggs, milk, bread, Red Gold Tomato Juice, IGA 2-Liters, 12 packs of cokes,
After reading this it makes me want to be a manager for Trader Joe's. There making a lot of money. But with the workers that work for them there given a lot of benefits with all the health, dental, vision and etc. Also they're given promotions from within philosophy because they're privately own. Also they tell there employees to try the produce so when someone has a question about something they can take them to something that is something there thinking about or better. Trader Joe’s has designed jobs to increase job satisfaction by showing appreciation in providing more benefits to their employees than other chain grocers.
High turnover is something that goes hand in hand with low wage jobs, so companies are always looking for a workers replacement. Finally Ehrenreich is able to secure employment at a place she give the pseudonym, Hearthside. To help protect identies of companies and people she actually worked for and with, Ehrenreich decides to use fake names to achieve anonymity. Ehrenreich starts out at 2.43 an hour plus tips. One of the first things Ehrenreich notices is that the people around her are only working hard enough to get by. Because the managers will yell at anybody who is done with their work, and not doing something new, the workers seem to be happy with just working at a slow pace, doing just one job. Because the only reward for finishing early is being yelled at by a manager, that apparently spends his day doing nothing, there is no real bonus to go the extra mile. Due to this negative reinforcement, Ehrenreich notes that the restaurant is almost moving in counterproductive mode. With less being worked on, less is being accomplished, attributing to the overall sad appearance and low morale of the restaurant and its employees. The next problem Ehrenreich encounters is the constant berating handed out by her supervisor "Stu". Ehrenreich observes that due to this constant barrage of insults and degradations, workers are forced to feel like they are subhuman. Weekly the managers announce
Rose begins his essay recounting his experiences as a child watching his mother work as a waitress in restaurants. He portrays his mother as a hard worker who possesses a great amount of physical and mental ability so as to satisfy customers. Whether it was memorizing orders, balancing plates along her arms, or arguing with the kitchen staff, her job required her to be dynamic in every aspect of the business. Similarly, Rose details one of his uncle’s jobs on the assembly line of General Motors where he too had to become a consummate multi-tasker who not only resolved issues, but identified issues to solve. After working on the line for an extended period, his uncle received numerous promotions. With every promotion came the need for more creative thinking, problem solving, and machinery and production processes. Furthermore, the necessity of knowing how to work budgets and the ability of managing groups of people became an increasingly crucial aspect of his job.
Sammy’s experience gave me a personal insight to an experience I once had while being employed at Kroger. The location of the Kroger I was working at was just about to have a grand opening. We had all gathered to the front of the store to have a store meeting to prepare for the opening. Our manager at the time was speaking to us and just telling us about how he was expecting everyone to be on his or her tasks. He wanted to make sure that no one had any questions or concerns of their jobs.
The next story is about an employment discrimination based on disability. A disability is defined as a lack of physical, mental or social fitness; something that disables, a handicap. (Reader Digest Webster Canadian Dictionary and Thesaurus) This story started at Tim Hortons Canadians favourite coffee chain was ordered to pay a formal employee $12,500 plus three months’ worth of wages lost to Joanne Ko-Csonka. Joanne who was a former restaurant designer was fired. (Friscolanti, 2014) She was fired because she suffered from a legitimate medical issue that forced her to miss work. (Friscolanti, 2014)The first medical leave happened in late 2010 which was a month long. She underwent surgery for a potentially cancerous conditions. (Friscolanti,
Ehrenreich chooses Minnesota at whim. After some internet-based research, she is convinced that there will be a comfortable correspondence between rent and wages. She decides she wants to work for retail, and applies to Wal-Mart. After the process of applying which includes a survey and a drug test, she is later hired for $7 per hour. Working at Wal-Mart makes Ehrenreich realizes there isn’t much human interaction in retail. “I could be a deaf-mute as far as most of this goes” (Ehrenreich157). There are also the people in the store who tend to make work a living hell and can turn regular chipper people into angry, cranky pushovers. “Once I stand and watch helplessly while some rug rat pulls everything he can reach off the racks, and the thought that abortion is wasted on the unborn must show on my face, because his mother finally tells him to stop” (165). In many cases the “smiley” greeters who welcome people into the store, are very unhappy and think unkind thoughts about everyone who comes to visit the store, “I even start hating the customers for extraneous reasons…” (165). This sudden change in character can be strenuous on a worker, regardless of their personality. Resenting the people who workers work for isn’t a healthy trait. “ ‘Aggressive hospitality’ gives way to aggressive hostility” (165).
The job itself isn’t bad, depending on the shift and the day anyways. Our duty is to cook food in a fryer, oven, rotisserie, slice meat and cheese on a slicer, serve customers, wash dishes, and the list could go on. For example, if there is a night shift there 's a long list of things we have to clean. If the staff work together, we’ll be able to leave work early. For instance last night we were able to get the job done. Megan and I were the only ones there to close the store last night. We are normally supposed to have three people closing and Megan was sick so I had to do a lot of cleaning. She hated the fact that she kept asking me to do things, but I really wasn 't doing anything. Like the phrase same stuff, different day. That 's not how it 's said, but you get the idea.
This book had several strengths, for one it contained first hand experience; experiences being that Ehrenreich had worked in different cities and in a wide range of jobs. This was able to give the reader a feel that no job is similar, but the way the employees get treated is similar. For example, Ehrenreich had worked as a waitress, maid, and a cashier. In the time of her waitress occupation she dealt with many unfair rules of management and rude customers. In the time of her maid occupation, she also dealt with unfair rules of management and rude homeowners. Finally, as a cashier; she also dealt with unfair rules of management and unfair schedules that they wouldn’t accommodate to. So the relapsing problems in these jobs that Ehrenreich took on would be that management were the
In the show, “The Office” we can apply an economic lens. We can apply the economic lens through the workers and how they see and act towards one another. Michael Scott is the dictator of this show, he tells everyone what to do and when to do it. When the warehouse people were finishing up training people on safety in the workplace,Michael got offended when Darrell told him it was like playing nerf in the workplace, that basically it’s a joke and it tested Michaels authority at work. He then changed his attitude to make everyone think that it’s the best job ever. He tried to convince all the workers while acting depressed and tried to kill himself by jumping off the roof of the building and calling the workers “blue collared workers” while everyone was watching, even though he wasn’t actually going to jump off the building. He tried to explain through his actions that the workplace is a much more dangerous environment than they make think. This was made out to be really funny but could happen in real life to some companies.
When entering a grocery store, most people don’t take the time to stop and observe their surroundings, for their soul purpose at that instant is to purchase what very food they may need for that day or maybe even for that week. However, through all the haste of wanting to go in and out of grocery stores as fast as one can, most are unaware of the very culture that they too are now apart of, the interactions, both verbal and through people’s body language that they are experiencing, how people look and dress, even what is considered appropriate behavior although not specifically written down. Culture is all around us, and we all contribute to it, whether it is through our norms, values, symbols, or mental maps of reality (Guest 2014, 38-43). That is why through this assignment, I took the time to observe the culture experienced in the American grocery store Stater Brothers, the ethnical Filipino grocery store Seafood City, while also taking the time to reflect on my own personal views of what I thought was “normal” through my experience working in Northgate Gonzalez Market, a Mexican grocery store for three years.
When workers bring up their boss in conversation, words like intimidating or hard-nosed might be tossed around. Also, any good employee knows to look busy when their boss is around and to be on their best behavior. Bartleby, in Bartleby The Scrivener did not abide by these office rules many of us follow. Bartleby was a scrivener for a law office on Wall Street. In the beginning days of Bartleby’s new job as a copier, he exceled greatly surpassing his fellow co-workers. This inspirational work ethic soon turned sour when Bartleby refused to do any work at all around the office. Lack of discipline from the boss of the law office turned Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” into a much larger problem. The boss being such a pushover
In 1883 Bernard (Barney) Kroger invested 372 dollars that consisted of his life savings to open the first ‘Kroger’ grocery. That first store, located at 66 Pearl Street in downtown Cincinnati, would soon turn into the giant retail chain that consists of nearly 2,500 stores all over the country and most recently produced sales of over 76 billion dollars. Barney Kroger was revolutionary in the formation of the modern grocery, in that he was the first grocer to have his own bakery, as well as selling meat and other groceries all under one roof. Kroger was also the first to manufacture the products that he in turn sold in his own store. This was the beginning of what is today one of the largest food manufacturing companies in America.
Breakings through the chains of corporate slavery is in full affect. In other words, nobody wants to work for a heartless corporation that does not value their staff. Individuals are educated and ready to make a career change if necessary. The overwhelming feeling of being imprisoned by a job is dreadful. Even the most loyal captive will seek an opportunity to break free from a dreadful organization. The sensation of being confined within an organization with no room to grow or expand is a daunting feeling. When individuals are treated as if they do not matter, it raises the question; why stay here? If employers are naïve enough to think that there are no other options for hard working people, they are wrong. The information being
Grocery Gateway would like to increase their deliveries from 2.7 to 4 per hour. Dominique Van Voorhis, vice president of industrial engineering and operations systems, must provide recommendations for improving and optimizing the delivery operations.
The general essence of the article is that the old ways of work and the work ethic of the older generations have broken apart. In place of stable routine and predictable career paths, employees are now expected to be fluid in their jobs, and open to change on very short notice. Workers of today's generation can no longer expect long term work, or the trust and loyalty that were given to the employees of the older generation. In some ways, the writer argues that this change between the generations is positive, as they can make for a more dynamic economy. However, they are also the cause of the article's title, "The Corrosion of Character". The work ethics of the employees are no longer valued. They are taken as