For Us Thanksgiving Was Over Before You Carved Your Turkey – Another Thanksgiving Adventure With Uzi

For most of us that work in the Uzi family grocery stores our Thanksgiving is over before you the reader of this blog even begin yours. Upon reflection I believe most of us will agree that Uzi was even more weird this Thanksgiving than he has ever been in the past. Some of this was the result of the new technology that Uzi is using to run his crumbling empire while the rest of the weirdness is probably the result of the need to increase the dosage of something that he is taking.

If most of you have not figured it out yet this blog is an outlet for not only myself but also  some of my fellow patients at the Uzi family grocery store chain and mental health clinic. In essence we hate this particular holiday yet like abused spouses we keep coming back for more. Why is that? Who cares?

Thanksgiving you see is the most important holiday for retail food stores everywhere. Some industry experts say that a typical supermarket will do 20% of its annual sales from the week or so before Thanksgiving to the end of December. So you see for the Uzi family it is the time of year that the cash register rings really loud and often which means that all of the Uzi family pigs come to the trough to fatten up. There are more trips around the world to take, more clubs to join and more money to salt away from watching eyes.

To show our readers that we are a blog that keeps up on current events let us tell you that Uzi and one of his brother-in-laws keep all of us up to date on the economic morass that the world finds itself in. As we were all giving it 110% in the stores and had been working the 24 – 7 schedule for weeks both of them let us know just how bad things were “out there” and how President Obama’s new health care plan had so many hidden costs that things were not looking like they were getting better – at least for us workers read no raises again and no bonuses. Yep here we were giving it our all, thanking the customers, stocking the shelves, being shouted at by the customers, working in filthy conditions with equipment that should have been junked decades ago and they told us how bleak it was out there. Such an inspiring management style they have. Actually they have the social and management graces of an impacted wisdom tooth.

It goes without saying that when the average consumer thinks about their Thanksgiving holiday dinner the image posted above comes to mind. For the older/ancient readers of this blog perhaps something out of a Norman Rockwell painting is in your mind and for the younger readers something that one might see on the Food Network. Yes it is a grand time to eat well, get together with friends and family to gorge ourselves on good food while listening to some of the bizarre things that come out of each others mouths around the dinner table.

For the person responsible for making this meal happen the effort necessary to pull off a successful holiday celebration begins sometimes weeks ahead of time or at least a few days before Thanksgiving. These modern-day Martha Stewarts, Paula Deans and Rachel Rays usually begin by planning the head count and dishes to be served. Then it was off to the grocery store for these holiday warriors to gather the provisions that they need feed the hordes.

First on the list is the main course and in most cases this is a turkey. The ongoing debate has been whether to procure a fresh turkey or a frozen one. Yes some just prefer a turkey breast however after a Thanksgiving working for the Uzi family I myself prefer a Stouffers microwave dinner with a Valium chaser.

So today the decision as to whether to select a fresh or frozen turkey rests more on the cost per pound of the bird and/or what kind of promotions your regular supermarket is having on turkeys. For many years now the turkey has been a loss leader for stores meaning that they will give the turkey away for cost or below cost in order for the consumer to purchase all of the other ‘fixin’s’ at their store. Some stores would give you a turkey free if you purchased so much in groceries over the weeks preceding Thanksgiving while others retailers would offer special prices on the bird for their bonus card saving customers.

Oh yes back to the fresh or frozen turkey discussion. Well if the consumer knew how long that frozen turkey has been frozen they might think twice about getting one but today it comes down to price. Yes the American consumer wants it cheaper than ever especially if they work for someone like a Uzi since they do not have that much money for food.

For the most part fresh does mean fresh although I do know of one large poultry supplier that flash freezes their freshly killed turkeys so that it has a little frost on it but all in all they are fresh.

I often wonder how these poultry farms can sell us a fresh turkey at 99 cents to 2 something a pound and make money on it. What with the cost of feed, veterinarian expenses, transportation, processing, packing, marketing and what not it seems like not a big money-maker but year after year they do it.

There are some consumers that today have neither the time or inclination to cook a turkey so they buy packaged turkey dinners from their supermarket. Safeway, Stop and Shop, Whole Foods/Whole Paycheck and others sell these meals pre-cooked and in a box complete with side dishes, rolls and pies for prices that range from $50 to hundreds of dollars. The late gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson once wrote that the “Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” while I submit to you the readers that any consumer that goes for one of these boxed holiday dinners is lazy and mental as well while also having no taste.

For the most part the supermarket chains do not bring in thousands of gourmet chefs the week of Thanksgiving to prepare that special meal for you their valued customer no they buy the dinners and sides already prepared and throw them in a box. The bigger the chain the less of a chance that it is store made. As a matter of fact the Uzi family of stores/mental health clinics is relatively small in number and they do not prepare one damn thing that goes in the box. The turkeys come in pre-cooked, the side dishes are in microwaveable containers, the pies were frozen and rolls were heated up.

For the love of god people you can not take a turkey home, spread some butter on it and throw it in the oven until the plastic pop-up shoots out to say that it is done? It is supposed to be that time of year for friends and dysfunctional family members to gather round and enjoy the moment.

Well Uzi has communicated to all of us inmates that we did a great job this year however sales were down but not because of our efforts so the state of morale is just above that of the crew of the Titanic before it sank. Another holiday has come and gone and as the Uzi family settles in to their chairs around the dinner table to gossip about all of the whining employees and how much money they made this Thanksgiving the rest of us will collapse in our beds knowing that we made through it alive.

Happy Thanksgiving from Supermarket Stories.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories.

Strangling Company Communications and He Also Has Spies

The flow of open, two-sided and clear communications between a company’s associates and it’s management is an important underpinning of any functional organization. As I typed in those last few words I realized that in the Uzzi family company there is no such thing as functional so this post might just be non-applicable. None the less the communications between people in an organization is vital to its success and I can not think of anyone who would disagree with this premise – oops I just did think of someone.

Okay Uzzi has got me on that point but I will still continue writing about the importance of good open company communication practices and how the terrible ones stifle an organization in this post. In most organizations communications flow in an open and unobstructed manner. Ideas are exchanged, opinions voiced and other views considered. Feedback is a good thing not something to be scorned at or belittled. In the end a problem is solved, a decision or strategy is arrived at and the organization moves ahead better for the effort. Yes ultimately someone has to make the final decision however by taking advantage of multiple viewpoints and other relevant positions the company wins. In addition the company employees feel part of the decision-making process as well. Seems like a win-win situation to this observer but not to an Uzzi type manager.

When communication between the companies associates are constantly choked off like crab grass sprayed with Round Up then low morale and a general malaise within the company is bound to be prevalent. I must admit that I have never been involved with any type of organization where communication is stifled like it is at the Uzzi family company, very strange indeed.

Uzzi is at best a micro manager and at worse he is a control freak. He must know about and be part of every decision that is going on in a store or the company as a whole no matter how small or trivial that it may seem to others.

Here are some examples of Uzzi communication practices as a manager/owner:

– Why did a store manager tell an employee that they could be scheduled off for a Greek Orthodox holiday 3 weeks in advance? Did the manager do it because the employee is a devout Greek Orthodox? Of course they did but Uzzi sees something dark in a decision like that. Mainly Uzzi wants to know why he wasn’t contacted or consulted on this decision to permit the employee to celebrate this important religious holiday?

– Why did a produce manager decided to put some delicious looking red apple’s in a farmer style basket for a display in their department? Why would the produce staff want to do this? Well to sell more product that is why. No not in a store where Uzzi must be asked for his approval on any merchandising issue.

Uzzi must be in the loop on anything and everything – nothing is to small or petty for him to be the final decision maker on. In addition Uzzi demands, through his caustic mannerism, that no idea can emanate from any associate, read his slaves or minions, within “his” company unless it is his idea. If you say or suggest something than you are automatically wrong or he tells you that you do not know what you are talking about. However later that terrible idea of someone else, his label not mine, will reappear but this time it will come from Uzzi’s lips and it will be put out as a revelation from on high.

These words are not coming from some bitter underling frustrated that they are not getting the credit for their ideas rather they are the plain and simple truth stated by many associates who have experienced the Uzzi ego in action. Some employees just shake their heads or chuckle about his controlling personality – sociopath and or narcissistic who knows which one, but deep down they wonder how someone like this got into a position of ownership of a company. Well the answer to that question will be blogged on in a later post and believe me it is something that happens in a lot in family owned businesses.

As I have said in a past post thank goodness there is a prescription plan in the organization, if the impacted associates get health care insurance at all, although his in-laws have probably not paid the policy premium so the employee will get a bill for their medications later.

Anyway back to our post’s topic of company communications and spies, Uzzi is a master manipulator and a pretty fair judge of whether a person he has just met can be manipulated by his sly although obvious sneaky mind control or not. If you are an easy mark then Uzzi goes to work on you from almost the first time that you meet him. He sizes up how you will fit into his network of informers and what type of information that you can deliver to him. What position do you occupy within the company and therefore what tasty morsels of gossip and innuendo can you bring to him on a regular basis. Will you be the type to call him at home and report that you think so and so did not see to it that the bathrooms were cleaned that evening. Can you rat out a night closing manager for not walking around the store and checking each thermostat on the collection of vintage product cases that the Uzzi family had acquired in the last 5o years but has never updated. Can you squeal on the mentally challenged cart person for sipping a bottle of water by the grocery carts in 100 degree weather when they were on the clock and working outside? Well can you? Uzzi needs to know that you can do these dastardly things while being loyal only to him and no one else including his extended family.

Forget things like working together as a team where everyone communicates with each other to make things run better as well as keeping the dialogue open between all facets of the company. No the communication must come through Uzzi and it must be the tasty stuff please.

Can you feed Uzzi distorted facts and out of context observations about someone who works in a particular store including personal information? Uzzi loves to hear about personal information. This can be used later so that they will do his bidding. Do you posses a low sense of self-esteem so that he can manipulate that personality quirk to serve the greater good – Uzzi’s? This is the power that he possesses like that of a Jedi Knight in a Star Wars movie and how they used their mind control powers on other weaker beings or life forms. Well Uzzi is no Jedi Knight however he is a master at manipulating people to serve him.

Uzzi has placed a vast collection of mostly honest but weak-minded individuals in all of the key locations within his families retail empire. These lemmings report to him on a regular basis and even communicate with each other from location to location within the companies domain hoping that they can rise to the rank of chief spy and informer – Uzzi’s number one spook.

For the most part the Uzzi-grams, as some refer to them as, are worthless idle gossip along with trivial information that can be used for individual attacks on honest and for the most part hard-working company associates. For some reason these victims somehow found themselves on the “Uzzi Black List”. Possible reasons for getting on this list include requesting family health insurance coverage to which they are entitled, going out on disability for a major injury or the worst offense making more than $8 an hour and receiving health benefits! Perhaps they asked for a raise since they had not had one in 6 years. This is not something that you want to ask of Uzzi because it will only get you labeled a non-loyal employee and you will end up on the black list.

Of course some company associates get on the feared Uzzi list just because he feels that they should be on it for some past petty transgression. Uzzi uses his amazing powers of recall to remember how a particular employee failed to stay and work in a store for 14 hours straight during a snow storm because they had to go home and look after their children. Far be it from Uzzi to remember that it had snowed like heck the night before and that this employee basically walked through snow drifts for hours to get to work on time that day. Forget that the employee worked for 12 hours that day when they did get in, on time, and that it would take them another 2 hours to get home that evening. Forget that the employee was scheduled for 8 hours that day and that half of the other employees called out because they could not get through the snow to make it work.  Those things did and do not matter to Uzzi because now this worthless employee is on the black list. Believe it or not this particular example of sub-par employee loyalty could have happened 10 years ago however Uzzi will always remember it especially when an opportunity presents itself for him to get back at that associate. Those of us in the world of reality would probably call this type of behavior vindictive but if you have been with Uzzi for a while you will  just call it normal behavior for him.

Uzzi prides himself in listening to everything that emanates from the family stores and then uses it to his advantage. If a customer mentions that a competitor has a cheaper price on chicken then Uzzi takes that customers word as fact and proceeds to call up the chicken buyer and then berate them for not buying cheaper chickens. The funny thing is that the chicken buyer is his in-law. Uzzi plays no favorites!

So remember that Uzzi does not just use these dogmatic statements from his clan of spies against company associates, he also uses them against his extended family as well. After all Uzzi in Hebrew means my power and in the end that is all that Uzzi cares about – his power.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Paper or Plastic and the Environment But it is Still About Me

The debate over plastic bags along with local and state governments wanting to remove the option from our shopping trips leaves a lot for one to think about. As a matter of full disclosure I obviously favor paper bags as my choice for carrying my grocery purchases home from the store. I especially like the heavy duty ones with handles.

I do recognize that meat and poultry products leaking through my paper bag would be messy if not dangerous so there is still a need for smaller plastic bags to take care of these situations. My awareness level for food contamination and food borne bacteria has increased over the last five years thanks to the media and the stories about the chance for an animal urinating on the produce products in the fields that I might buy. No leaking trays of chicken juice or bloody packages of ground beef do not even make the sensational headlines on the Fox Noise Channel but it is just gross to look at these things in my shopping cart and think about the possible consequences that they may bring.

A friend of mine would call me anal in my grocery shopping habits for I make my trip through the store with the precision of a military pilot with a GPS unit. First the produce department is shopped with each “fresh” item dutifully entombed in its own small plastic bag. Although some stores need to watch what type of plastic bags they use for these purposes because I have used some that just will not open up after being yanked from the roll. I know that some people have seen me struggle with the bags and then just mumble under my breath that these types of bags are evil. In all fairness they are usually the cheapest ones for a store to buy just ask Uzzi.

After my journey through the produce department I make my way to the dairy department scrutinizing the sell by dates. What I have noticed in my grocery store is that the sell by dates seem to be closer and closer to the current date than ever before. I first noticed this a year ago when this particular supermarket chain had announced a new round of cost cutting moves to boost profitability. Were these two issues related? I do not know the answer but is all I know is that they left my plastic produce bags alone and I can still easily open them at will.

Anyway after a quick trip up a couple of traditional grocery aisles I arrive in the meat department and there I begin to be ecological unsound once again. Every tray or package of “fresh” meat or poultry that goes into my cart is encased like pieces of asbestos having been just removed from the basement of your grandmothers old house. Some packages of meat, like roasts, can not be accommodated by just one of those tear off bags nope sometimes it takes two or three of them to complete the mummification process. On some shopping trips I can not even find one package that is not oozing juice or blood like something out of a True Blood show. I think that I am going to recommend that supermarkets install sink and shower facilities for the customers to use after selecting their meat department purchases.

These department plastic bags can cost between 1/2 and 1 cent for the retailer to buy while the plastic bags for use at the registers can cost 1 cent and more depending on store logo and community message requirements. Paper bags are a couple of cents while the really good ones with the handles costs even more. Of course there are levels of quality and strength within the plastic and paper bag lines but as far as Uzzi is concerned the cheaper the better. As long as the customer get’s out the door with their purchases then it is their problem as he would say. In the mean time he feels that he has to keep the costs down because he is taking his wife and kids to Europe soon and they need the traveling money.

I remember the time that one of the product distributors that calls on the Uzzi Family business mentioned that they had some reusable shopping bags that a CPG, look that term up or follow the hyperlink, company was using to promote a particular line of dinner entres and the Uzzi company could have a couple of boxes of them to give out to their customers. Give out Uzzi must have thought, yea right. Well as Uzzi usually does he got the distributor to provide even more boxes of these FREE reusable shopping bags to Uzzi Family company. I thought to myself wow Uzzi is really a dedicated ecologist or at least more green than I thought he would be capable of being. Of course Alex you were wrong, just dead wrong.

Here was Uzzi’s plan, get as many of the FREE reusable shopping bags as possible and then turnaround and sell them to the Uzzi Supermarket chain customers for what he feels is a discounted price – maybe a buck. Like magic the boxes of FREE reusable shopping bags flowed into the stores and then were put on racks for the customers to buy. When Uzzi ran out of these FREE bags to sell he somehow got more. This went on for a while and I guess that is why some people say that there is money in the green movement it is just that I did not realize that this was one of the ways to do it.

As to reusable shopping bags well I just do not know where I stand on them. These bags do tend to get dirty much less worn after a few months of usage. Depending on the material that they are made out of they get bit funky. Now some customers bring in their reusable shopping bags that are adorned with logos and other chic graphics.

To begin with there are reusable shopping bags like the ones from the local Public Radio fund drive, the charity walk, the Green organizations but then there are the ones from ones personal vacations and upscale retailers. Yes narcissism is alive and well even in the world of reusable shopping bags. Let’s see you have the ones who’s writing on the bags say I have been to the Bahamas or Amsterdam and how about the ones that say Coach or Chanel. How did reusable shopping bags become just another opportunity for someone to be a Label Whore and say that this bag is all about me? Narcissism at it’s best even in the world of ecology.

Sorry I was on another tangent so it is time to return to the main theme of this post. Can you imagine what kind of bacteria and germs are on those reusable shopping bags after a couple of trips to the supermarket? What happens if you do not wrap your meat purchases in plastic bags before putting them into your reusable bag? If you do not put your produce purchases in plastic bags first than to me it means that before you get those peppers or onions home they would have had a chance to leech the dog urine that was applied to your produce products before they were picked at the farm on to the bag itself. That’s right and that Baguette in the thin paper sleeve that you put in that reusable bag gets that same animal urine from the produce products on the bread as well. Yea go ahead and use those reusable bags now – not me.

You can see why I might have issues with reusable bags and now when I am in a grocery store I take a closer look at what type of bags that they are trying to sell to their customers. Some retailers today have ones with that cardboard bottom however the sides are recycled paper and not that strong. Then they put this yarn type string in for handles and want to charge a dollar for those bags along with the stores logo. Some have the true recycled weave style bags with the international symbol for recycling on them. The thing with those type of bags is that what the hell were they recycled from? The ones that I have touched felt like they were made from 6 pack soda rings and old sneakers.

Now back to my shopping trip I usually finish up in the Frozen Food section for some Ice Cream and then it is down the main aisle to the checkout. Where I live now there is no more paper or plastic bags it is just plastic. Whether you get checked out by a cashier or use the infamous Self Checkout Registers – for the life of me I still can not get use to a retailer wanting me to ring up and bag my own purchase but more on that in another post, you get plastic. At my regular store the thickness of the bag has gotten thinner and thinner over the last few years. If you put more that 8 or 9 items in the bag or if you accidentally bump the side of the bag with a straight edge or something then it splits open.

I know that Uzzi is a possessed item in the bag counter type of person. Whenever he is in a store, either his families or a competitors, with laser like focus Uzzi looks and sees how many items a cashier is putting into a plastic bag. Fill it to the max is his philosophy. Oh and no double bagging for Uzzi’s customers so do not even think about asking for them because the family is planning on buying new company cars for themselves and Mercedes, BMW, Infinity and Lexus will not take plastic bags on a trade in. Thank God someone is helping the automobile industry in these trying economic times.

One day a while back I saw Uzzi run after some little old lady that had just left the store because she grabbed a couple, yes a couple of plastic bags from an unmanned checkout stand. He moved out the automatic door like a lion on the hunt and pounced on the elderly lady before she could walk out of the loading zone. While I could not hear the words that were exchanged the facial antics of Uzzi and the utter look of bewilderment on the face of the little old lady was one of those images that I will never forget. As Uzzi returned to the store I watched the lady that procured those couple of extra bags take one out and put her gallon of milk in, I guess to give it extra support for her walk home and the second one she fashioned as an impromptu plastic hat since it was raining very hard that day. I later asked the store manager if he knew that customer who had picked up the two extra plastic bags and he said oh yes she is in here 4 or 5 times a week and buys groceries for herself and a couple of others at the retirement home a mile up the street. He asked me why I wanted to know that and I said never mind. Uzzi really knew how to take customer relations to a new lower level.

Paper or Plastic the choices are less today than they were even a few years ago. Again I want to consider myself ecologically aware but not driven. When cities in California instituted their plastic bag ban the warning shot was sounded but I heard salvation. When the local government in Washington D.C. did the same thing my spirits were raised. I know that at some point in my community I will get my paper bags back and plastic bags will be banned from the supermarket. I am counting the days.

Well I have to dash now and stop to pick up my dry cleaning which will come encased in three very large plastic bags – thank goodness for the Green Movement.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Even With the Perscription Plan He Is Probably Still Both

I never thought that working in the grocery business would ever prompt me to know the exact definitions of two different wretched personality disorders. No it was not because I was doing any self-analysis, even though at times I thought it was me who might have needed it, no it was what I kept seeing acted out in front of me on a daily basis. Anyway having worked around an individual for so many years who seemed, as my son would say, has issues I found myself asking the gods of Google for an explanation. What were these personality quirks that I saw day after day after day? What would cause a human being to act and treat other human beings in such a caustic manner? I needed to know what this behavior of his was both for my own sanity and perhaps that of my fellow workers.

In my first post on this blog I made a fleeting reference to the Health Insurance Care System in the United States. Politely I asked the readers of my blog to leave this discussion at the door and not bring it up. Today I find myself contradicting my earlier request by bringing this hotly debated topic into today’s post.

Today’s employer sponsored and/or supported Health Insurance Care Plans for the most part offer less coverage, higher deductibles and fewer options than in recent years. With employer policy premiums continuing to escalate the companies and their owners have responded in very predictable ways. Leaving that very broad generalization to the side it is the grey areas of Health Care Insurance rules, eligibility and employee premiums that some business owners really know how to further reduce these spiraling benefit costs.

Now let’s identify some common Health Care Program terms. First Multiple Plan Offerings, Eligibility Dates, Anniversary Dates and finally Employee Contribution Premiums. These are the grey areas of Health Care Insurance Coverage that a savvy business owner can either do the right thing, not altruism, or be a Management Sociopath.

Uzzi is the most interesting of all the business owners that you will every read about on this blog. Uzzi saw opportunities to further reduce company expenses in the area of Health Care Insurance Premiums by attacking it like a Pit Bull on a Poodle. A quick note here no animals were injured in the course of writing this post.

So let’s see how Uzzi took advantage of these grey areas of Health Care Insurance Plans. First his families company is divided into three distinct employee groups. At the top of the pyramid is the executive or owners group. Next there is the administrative group and finally there is the companies store operations group. It should be noted that the companies store operations group is unionized to a degree which has been a thorn in the Uzzi family side for years.

For years Uzzi has used the health care insurance plan definitions and employment classifications to minimize who would get what as turnover took place in the stores. Additionally he realized that his long-term employees, who were the source of such drastic increases because of their more numerous claims he says, were getting older. His mindset has to be that as these older workers remain with the company they will have no place to go so he can also reduce their coverage while raising their premium rates at will. Is this practice illegal? Certainly not. My point is to introduce you to the mind-set of Uzzi and the dynamics of the family business as it pertains to benefits. There are subtle moves on his part that individually do not show malice to the employees however taken in conjunction with everything else that he does in all facets of the business then the picture becomes clearer if not bizarre.

With the ownership of a family business comes hard work, frustration, responsibility and if successful rewards. What an owner chooses to do is ultimately their decision however it is just not about rewards. Or is it? Some feel that there are moral obligations to both the employees and it’s customers. Uzzi, his brothers and in-laws elected to always have a separate Health Care Insurance Plan for themselves. No not for the other executive or directors in the organization just for the family. This plan would have the best coverage including a lot more flexibility with choices of doctors, a better prescription plan and besides it was mostly paid for by the company.

The administrative workers insurance plan and the other managers who participated in it have been subjected to constant premium increases over the years as just about every other worker in the United States has been. But then there is the “Uzzi factor”. Uzzi, having paid a careful eye on what this group of employees were paying each year, along with recognizing that the company had changed Health Care Insurance Plans for the last 7 years, saw an opportunity to exploit the situation and therefore put more money in the families pocket not into the business. During a recent change in companies that provide Health Care Insurance he had the HR department send out a “we are sorry but the premiums the company pays for Health Insurance continue to go up so you will need to pay more yourself”. Reasonable in this age? Yes. Here is the rub by switching Health Care Insurance Plan companies two years ago the total monthly premium actually went down for the company! So last year he had the employees in the administrative group paying more for coverage and the company less. This year the company switched again and the company reduced the total premium that it paid yet required the employees to pay more. So here is a question to ask yourself. Was this the right thing for Uzzi and his family to do? Again as an isolated incident it seems insignificant after all some assistance on Health Care Insurance is better than none – agreed. However readers if you continue to read this blog you might see that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Uzzi’s narcissistic approach to company employees.

Let’s continue now with the topic of Eligibility Dates for Health Insurance coverage. Uzzi uses this to his advantage as well. HR lets Uzzi know that so and so is now eligible for Health Care Plan B or C each week. Uzzi’s response is well unless the employee asks for it do not say anything about it. Okay getting much more into a right thing to do situation and knowing Uzzi as I do this is exactly not the right thing to do especially since the employee was informed at their hiring that they would be eligible for coverage on a particular date. But with Uzzi there are even more opportunities to not do the right thing when it comes to Health Care Insurance.

Uzzi uses the system of position classification to sometimes move an employee from one Health Care Plan to another without telling the affected employee nor actually enrolling an employee in the New Health Care plan. If the employee does not make a claim for the time that they are not covered in a plan than the Uzzi family profits. If the employee does make a claim on the plan when they are not covered then Uzzi claims it was a clerical mix up to both the employee and Health Care Provider. Factor in that today’s workforce is more international and an employees command of English along with the rules of Health Care Insurance favors the employer then Uzzi with the family reigns supreme. Kind of a diabolical “Don’t Ask, Don’t Cover” variation on a theme.

One day I asked an acquaintance of the business if he ever knew anyone else like Uzzi and they said “there is no other one like Uzzi”.

Alex, I said to myself, be objective to Uzzi and the extended family in your writings but as I typed this post those two clinical terms mentioned earlier kept circling above my keyboard demanding to be keyed into this story one last time. I refuse to believe that those two words are really what this post has been about. There are plenty of future post to use the terms sociopath and narcissistic in, yes in deed there certainly are.

Good thing Uzzi and the family have the best Health Care Insurance Plan perhaps the Prescription Plan holds hope for all of us. As to myself I hope that I am still covered.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Your Chicken Takes a Road Trip or Dumpster Diving is Not Just a Sport

The humble chicken is one of America’s basic dinner and lunch entrees along with being a popular source of protein. Some individuals that do not want to eat Beef or Pork for the most part do not seem to have a problem consuming chicken. So it seems to me that this food product is as good a place as any to begin our journey through some of the weirder practices in America’s family run grocery stores and supermarkets.

That chicken or chicken based product that you see in your local grocery store had already traveled many miles before it found itself on the shelf in your local supermarket. It’s life began in a breeding cage in some massive Chicken Gulag where it was required to stand for long periods of time hyped up on some insane chemical cocktail mix that the producers called feed. From the time it begins its life a chicken has been selected for a particular purpose in the Retail Food Chain such as that of a fryer, plump boneless breast, nuggets etc. Science and technology has helped the food industry to maximize the chickens contribution to their profit structure and our daily diet.

So once this Roger Clemens bred chicken was determined to be the right size for what it was designed for it was killed, stripped of its feathers, dignity, processed, packaged and put on a truck for parts unknown. For the purposes of our story its destination is a family owned grocery store somewhere in the United States.

For most people the packaged chicken will be picked up from a store shelf by the consumer, scanned, bagged and put into their mini van or SUV where it will finally reside in the refrigerator ready to be used for the family meal. In some of the grocery stores that you will read about on this blog this is only the beginning of the Chicken’s Road Trip.

Some years back I was working for a grocery store chain and it was lunch time so the suggestion was made that all of us go to the store’s deli department to get some lunch and continue working at our desks. Having worked in other family run grocery stores I was filled with a bit of trepidation because their basic sanitary practices sometimes leave a lot to be desired. Anyway I hid my fears of a Biological Attack on my body and followed along with everyone else to the store’s deli department.

As we were all gazing at the display cases filled with assortments of meat, cheese, salads and already prepared foods my mind felt like it was being teased by the overall appearance and presentation of the food products neatly arranged before me. My stomach began to growl quietly and I felt this overwhelming urge to make a decision so that I could savor the taste of these visually appealing dishes. Suddenly the clerk behind the counter ask me what I would like and I quickly responded “Chicken Salad please”.

“No, do not get that” one of my fellow lunch mates sternly said to me. No I asked – why? He said “don’t you know where the Chicken Salad comes from?”. The storage cooler I naively answered. He started laughing and then began to tell me of how that Chicken Salad got into the display case.

First of all this store sells Rotisserie Chickens he said. I looked at him like why are you talking to me like I am an idiot almost every store does? Anyway he said that this store  had a policy to use chickens in the meat case that have gone out of date in the deli department to boost its profitability. I thought for a moment and figured well I was always told that if a product has a Sell by Date it just means that the customer should have bought it by that point not necessarily used it – they have a few days at home for that. Well I kept my thoughts to myself while my lunch mate continued with the origins of the chicken salad story.

Normally he said the deli brings in special chickens from distributors to make Rotisserie Chickens or Fried Chickens in this store. These distributor supplied chickens tend to be injected and pre-seasoned and will be the source for a future blog entry. However one of the owners son-in-laws of this small chain of stores was passing the trash door in the back of one of the stores some time back and saw someone from the meat department throwing away some chickens. The story goes that this son-in-law who had witnessed this brazen act of waste and just about jumped through the Trash Door to grab some of the chickens before they landed in the outside trash container. Ever smelled the chute of a trash disposal in a supermarket? Because of this son-in-laws possible background in waste disposal at some previous job he saw no reason why these dated chickens could not be rescued from the trash bin and actually used for something else in the store.

It was at that point in history that this grocery store decided that they could take the dated chickens from the meat department and use them in its deli department. Okay other than reaching into the trash chute or digging chickens out of a trash can what is the harm in using a chicken who’s sell by date is yesterday? Boy was I in for a shock.

Remember that I had asked for the Chicken Salad? Well what was wrong with that I thought. My lunch mate now continued the story of the Traveling Chicken. He said that the store will fry some of the chickens that are “rescued” and then sell them in the deli department. These pieces of Fried Chicken will usually be kept in the case for a day or so. Okay I thought so far it is not like the Fried Chicken will be rancid smelling besides I ordered the Chicken Salad. Then he said if the Fried Chicken is still there the next day it will be pulled from the display case and then that meat from those chickens will be cut up into chunks to use in the Chicken Salad. Okay now I was getting scared. Then he said that some portions of this “rescued” Chicken Salad might sit in the display case for purchase for another couple of days. Wow I thought that Chicken Salad might have been out of date for a week or so before I eat it. No I was saying to myself I do not want the Chicken Salad. Too late the clerk was already putting the Chicken Salad into a container for me to eat.

My lunch mate started to chuckle and said “do you know what happens to the Chicken Salad that is not sold?”. Sheepishly I replied no what happens to it? Well he said the old Chicken Salad is then put in a colander and all of the mayonnaise along with the seasoning is rinsed off and the chicken is then used for anything from a Chicken Ala-King entree to Chicken Soup.

Now I felt the insides of my stomach rumbling and my mouth felt like it does after one has vomited yet nothing comes out you know the dry heaves? Then I realized that what I had ordered was not such a bad selection after all because I did get the Chicken Soup!

AB

Blog Entry Foot Notes and Perspective Comments:

– Most grocery stores today procure their deli salads and prepared foods from either an outside distributor or they are made in a companies central commissary. However there is still a significant percent of stores that make their own salads, entrée and take out foods in-store.

– The ability to hold the temperature of a refrigerated display case or a storage box in supermarket is an important factor in keeping perishable food safe for the consumer.

– Case maintenance and electrical usage is a large expense in every supermarket operation today.

– One university study stated that Supermarkets in the United States account for 5% of the total amount of electricity used annually.

– All grocery stores are subject to random health department inspections from local government or state agencies along with investigations initiated by consumers.

– It is not in the interest of any retail food establishment to endanger their customers health by selling contaminated or spoiled food products.

– The number of reported food related illness or contamination incidents varies from location to location.

– Retail Supermarkets operate on one of the smallest net profit percentages of almost any industry in the United States.

– Next to the cost of goods sold in a typical supermarket or grocery store labor is the next largest expense of a retail food operation.

– The stories in this Blog entry are true.

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories