Grocery Store | Bread, Milk and Mayhem in the Supermarket

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

November 25, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

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.

“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddle Masses” – The Supermarket Industry and it’s History With Immigrants

November 4, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

I do not know if it was all of the noise from the Talking Heads, no not the musical group from the late 70’s and early 80’s, what I am referring to is the shrill from the mouths of today’s news media personalities and the fact that the November 2010 elections have just finished up but I do feel a bit nostalgic if not at least very patriotic today therefore the reason for this particular post. While this years election was basically built up into a referendum on the public’s perception of the current Presidents performance in office for the last two years the national debate over Immigration Reform became lost in the swirls of accusations and other forms of character assassinations except for the occasional rant from a Tea-publican complaining that real Americans speak English.

I for one am so very proud to be working in such a progressively minded industry as the Retail Supermarket Industry. It was my pride in the Supermarket Industry along with the backdrop of the end of the 2010 election cycle that I was thinking about how my industry has given so much support to so many immigrant groups over the years. Yes I was sitting here envisioning all of our new immigrants arriving in this great land of ours and peering through the free binoculars that the international air carriers have provide them then suddenly each of the passengers see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. With the tears rolling down my cheeks I see that from every window on the plane hundreds of sets of eyes zooming in on that famous plaque at the base of Lady Liberty. I wipe the tears off of my face knowing that these future citizens, or hopefully at least Green Card holders, are reading the lines etched at its base that the poet Emma Lazarus wrote many years ago – “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” with the caveat at the end of the plaque that added and owning your own supermarket.

The poet Emma Lazarus was the daughter of a successful family who resided in New York and was of Portuguese-Jewish decent. Her families roots in America go back to before the American Revolution. I kind of imagine that her father and grandfather were grocery store owners operating their business out of the first floor of their homes although they probably were not retailers at all.

Depending on the particular area of the United States that an immigrant to America of the late 19th or early 20th century found themselves in the neighborhood food market or general store of the day was the type of business that opened its arms wide for a group of any hard-working people. It did not matter if they were Italian, German or Russian and it certainly did not matter if they were Christian or Jewish for the opportunities abounded for everyone in the food retailing business who possessed a strong work ethic. Some of the most successful family owned U.S. supermarket chains, pre-multinational mega corporation days, can be traced back to some form of immigrant roots of the late 19th or early 20th century.

Back in the day, so to speak, these immigrant operators of the neighborhood food stores spoke to their fellow immigrants in their native tongues and also made sure that they sold the products that their customers wanted to buy. Most of these old world products were certainly a source of comfort for their immigrant customers who found themselves in a new land, with a new language and somewhat strange unfamiliar things to eat.

A number of these early immigrant food retailers thrived and became extremely successful. There were some who built up their corner neighborhood store into 30 to 100+ regional supermarket chains by the 1960’s and 1970’s. During the years that these local neighborhood stores became city and state-wide supermarket chains the immigrant founders had become totally assimilated into their adopted country and as such found themselves speaking English like natives and marketing to their mainstream customers of the area that they serve. Today we might see those same early development patterns found in the first generation of immigrant supermarket operators and what is happening today with America’s latest wave of immigrants retailers.

Then in the 1980’s the consolidation bug had bitten the supermarket industry and we saw operators like Safeway, Kroger and even the grand daddy of supermarkets A&P buying up those older immigrant founded regional supermarket chains. Later that same decade with blood still in the water, along with the advent of a true global economy, European retailers like Koninklijke Ahold N.V. (“Ahold”) and Delhaize Group (Euronext Brussels:DELB) (NYSE:DEG) came to the colonies and began to snap up retailers on the East Coast. One after one most of these immigrant founded family supermarket chains began to disappear from the retail landscape.

There was one other event in the 1980’s to hit the U.S. Supermarket Industry like a tsunami rolling over the beach in Thailand and of course this was the massive market share gathering thrust of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s entry into the food retailing business was going to provide opportunities for our latest wave of immigrant grocers something that even the crowd from Bentonville has still not grasped even today. The mega multinationals mentioned in the preceding paragraph trembled with fear as Wal-Mart’s foray into the food retailing business gathered steam however the latest group of immigrants seemed to not give it a second thought. They would find opportunities from the ashes of the closed stores run by earlier immigrant families that Wal-Mart helped close.

The differences between the multi-nationals buying up regional family stores and the entry of Wal-Mart into the food retailing business was the size of their Super Center format stores. The large tracks of land necessary for a Super Center impacted local real estate prices by driving them up yet at the same time it increased the availability of closed smaller store locations after the Borg, if you do not know what is meant by this reference then just keep reading, swept through a community. At this same time Wal-Mart was building 100,000+ square foot sized stores which required huge swaths of land in which to build. Within their “Super Centers” Wal-Mart was dedicating a fair amount of floor space to selling food and non-food products commonly found in the supermarket of day. Slowly this retailing behemoth was choking off their competition in every aspect of food retailing from product cost, labor to the price real estate where a competing store might want to locate.

Well as Wal-Mart and other warehouse format stores got more and more into selling food products a number of smaller food retailers were put out of business. Chain stores saw a loss of market share as well during these turbulent times. In most cases chain stores worked to cut labor costs, reduce services as well as better control inventory costs so as to maintain their profit levels. Some of the chain’s stores however were no longer profitable and decisions were made to close these under performing locations. Smaller locally owned supermarkets and grocery stores that had served their communities for one or two generations began to look hard at their operations and work even harder to stop the hemorrhaging of their profit margins and customer base. More and more of these smaller retail grocery stores began to close their doors as well. It is interesting to note that some of these closed stores were 2nd and 3rd generation immigrant founded businesses. These owners had decided that they could know longer live the American Dream at least as a retail store operator.

It was not just the competition from the mega stores that was contributing to the closing of these smaller family owned retail stores. There were increasing general liability insurance costs, rising health insurance premiums, more government regulations, higher environmental fees, legal fees and growing labor costs that were proportionally higher than their competition. This wave of small business closures had been coming for a long time and the final blow was the competition from the mega stores. Today’s consumer wanted a wide selection of products and always at the lowest price regardless of the size of the store that they shopped in. Let’s not forget that other retailers were eating away at supermarket sales by stocking certain food products along with the variety of non-perishable food products available on the Internet.

Now the retail commercial real estate landscape contained more and more empty store fronts. Most were for lease however Wal-Mart in some cases, along with other larger retailers, would build a new Super Center in another part of a particular town or county and shutter the older one. They would still keep paying the lease on the old location and contractual terms allowed them to do this so as to keep a competitor from moving into the old location. This would contribute to a look of a ghost town in some local communities now that the shoppers were driving a few miles down the road to the new store.

That old saying is that when life gives you lemons then make lemonade is probably the most appropriate way to begin this part of the post. America’s most recent group of immigrants, those that have arrived in the last 25 years or so, seem to know how to make the best of the situation.

Whether they hail from South Asia, the Far East, Latin America or Eastern Europe some of these immigrants have shown that hard work and in some case cultural or language barriers can still go far in America. I might also add that in some metropolitan areas a bit of political correctness on the part of local politicians has also helped these new arrivals succeed in the supermarket business.

While readers can perhaps read in different things to which was written in the previous paragraph the point is that the latest wave of immigrants work hard, tend to stay grounded in business relationships with their fellow immigrants in their own communities or extended families venturing outside of this circle only when they have to. There is a view that local governments seem to bend over backwards to help these new business people get their start and on their feet. What I find ironic is that this type of assistance is what the existing retailers resent so much. A perception of favoritism towards the new immigrant retail supermarket operators is prevalent in a number of communities today.

There are stories in some locals that imply that these new immigrant owned food stores are given breaks by local regulatory agencies who might not seem to enforce the same set of rules that they do at other established food retailers. It has been said that some new immigrant owned food retailers seem to always have managers or employees on duty in the store when local agency staff come around to perform inspections that conveniently do not speak English. To hear some of the municipal inspectors try to tell someone in a store that there is this or that violation with products not being kept under the right storage temperatures and the employee just stare at them with a puzzled look of I do not understand what you are saying. The picture of an agency enforcement representative unable to communicate to the store associate must be priceless especially if the employee really does understand what actually is being said.

You might also have a new immigrant store operator who might say to the refrigeration company representative – what I have to dispose of my old refrigeration coolant because my cooler cases are using EPA outlawed coolant and I need to pay $1,000’s of dollars to a company to do this? Heck no I do not have to because I have a cousin or in-law of mine who does work on the side and said that he can do it for a few hundred dollars. I do not know where he will dispose of the old coolant. Perhaps it will be put in the retailers dumpster or possibly in another retailers dumpster in the same shopping center instead of being disposed of properly. Is my guy going to put the correct EPA coolant that costs so much back in my cooler case? Who knows. What that tile that I want taken up has asbestos in it and I will need to call someone special about it? No I have someone else that can do that job without the need to have a hazardous waste company come in and do it. Of course there are older more established retailers that have probably done the same thing and only worry about it when they get caught.

New immigrant business owners tend to be wary of employing non-fellow immigrant employees possibly just as immigrants did at the turn of the 20th century. There are many other similarities between this generation of immigrant grocers and ones from a hundred years ago.

So have things really changed that much in terms of immigrants owning and operating supermarkets today that did not happen a hundred years ago? Probably not. Are there opportunities for hard-working people with money from their communities or family to own and operate supermarkets? Yes there are. Do the closed store locations left by other retailers offer opportunities to our latest group of immigrants? Yes they do.

A new generation of store owners is living the American Dream here today and is ready to serve the food needs of our most recent wave of immigrants.

God Bless America.

There Is No Honor Among Thieves

October 27, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

I can remember it like it was just yesterday. “Everyone is stealing from me the suppliers, the employees, the customers and even my family, hell the Rabbi himself would do so if I gave him a chance “. These words have been lodged in the back of mind for years but every now and then something happens to me at work or I remember something that Uzzi said that was spectacularly selfish or ignorant which reaffirms my hope that all bosses are not like him.

It was one of the Apostles, in this case Peter, who vented those fatalistic words to me one day because he had just stumbled upon another incident of a supplier’s employee shorting one of his families stores bread deliveries. “See he said every one of them is a thief” Peter raged on to the point of almost bursting a blood vessel. He was making this statement to me at the same time that he was emptying all of the bills and coins from the soda machine which was out front of one of his families supermarkets. Like some retailers or operators of establishments with vending machines they come to see these things as an opportunity to supplement their already ‘strained’ incomes by putting a little coin in their own pockets. The tactic is simple, as are they, in that one takes product like sodas from their own store and then put these items in the vending machines that are located on the stores premises. Once a week or so the owner, or a trusted employee, will empty, read loot, the vending machine(s) of their money. Later another employee will fill up that same machine with more product. The money that was taken from the vending machine let’s just say probably never gets added to the stores sales for that day. These types of retailers might say that the more vending machines the more tax-free income there is for the family to share in. For some particular reason the word hypocrisy came to mind as I thought about Peter’s rage over the bread vendors delivery shortage on that particular stores order as he looted the vending machines.

When cigarettes used to be sold out of vending machines in stores some unscrupulous retailers considered this the mother lode of tax-free cash. I believe that in some states the price of a pack of cigarettes was over $4 before laws were enacted forcing these machines of death to be removed from the sales floor. However prior to that I remember the Apostle Peter removing over $100 a day from one of these machines. Granted the retailer had to pay the cost of the carton of cigarettes that went into those machines put heck that was just inventory costs on the books so to speak. When you are talking about taking $100 per day of off the books income out of a vending machine then this theft can add up to some serious money – roughly $25,000 per year from one cigarette machine. If the machine was located in a high traffic area then the annual no-tax take could be even higher.

The list can be quite lengthy when it comes to the assortment of vending machines that can generate that oh so loved no-tax income. There are machines that dispense gum, candy and small plastic toys. Have you ever seen one of those claw machines with the mechanical arm that children play to pickup a stuffed toy? Those types of machines might seem ancient compared to the variety found in supermarkets today however the amount of cash that they can take in is still substantial. Now we have postage stamp machines in stores. Have you checked the price on postage stamps lately? There are, in some states, instant lottery scratch off game machines. Video DVD and game rental machines and so much more. Granted the trend in the vending machine industry is to also allow a customer to pay for these purchases with a credit card however the ones that only accept cash are king in some retailers eyes.

Depending on the type of store ownership, independent or chain, of a particular supermarket there are numerous vendors who deliver products to it on a daily or weekly basis. Some supermarket industry statistics suggest that there can be mistakes on anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of these delivered orders. These mistakes can include shortages of products on an order, paperwork or invoiced quantities versus the actual number of products delivered, as well as mistakes in the amount a store is charged for a particular product. In supermarket industry terms we call this shrink. Supermarket shrink is composed of many components and some of these are not related to delivery shortages or overcharges. In fact, like I have stated before, I could write a post just on shrink in the supermarket industry but it is too esoteric of a topic for this post.

At the beginning of this post the Apostle Peter had raged on about the bread vendor who was stealing from one of his families stores, actually like most of the these bellicose blow hearts they married into the business so I guess the relationship is more like a business-in-law, anyway what actually happened is that the delivery driver shorted the store 2 loaves of white bread and 3 loaves of wheat bread on a delivery. Whether the route person made a mistake or was so desperate to feed his family that he needed to steal 5 loaves of bread is beyond the screed that I am writing here on this post. It was a shortage that is for sure and most stores normally have an associate whose responsibility is to verify all incoming deliveries of products. In my years in the supermarket industry I have met delivery people who are thieves as well as some who are in such a hurry to get on to the next stop that they make sloppy mistakes. Does stealing occur at the proverbial back receiving door of a supermarket? Yes it does. That is why there are or should be physical barriers as well as operating procedures to maintain the integrity of the store receiving process from a piece count standpoint. If delivery drivers are constantly coming up short on deliveries than that particular company should be contacted and relief sought from this type of poor customer service. My point here is that if a delivery person is allowed to short a supermarket on a delivery from a product quantity standpoint it is the fault of the store’s staff and possibly its management for not exercising best industry practices during the product receiving process. As someone once said to me locks on things are there to keep honest people honest. The Apostle Peter just did not get it. In his zeal to cut corners and put more money into his own pocket he decided that using standard receiving practices was something that he did not have to follow because after all he was just like Uzzi in that he knew best and everyone was stealing from him.

Did you know that employee theft can also include actions by the owners of the supermarket itself? Yes it can and the argument that it is their company therefore they can do what they want to is an operationally ignorant statement. Lead by example is the point that I wish to convey in this part of the post. As an aside the action of taking product off the shelf with out paying for it also applies to managers at chain owned stores as well – it is wrong. Employees look to their bosses and supervisors for examples on how to behave, in essence they look to see what the standard is in an organization. The argument can be made that businesses, like schools, can not be the parents to young people and there is much credence to that statement. So one can be “old-fashioned” and bury ones head in the sand and say that it is not the supermarkets responsibility to teach things like not to steal to their employees. Yes the parents should have instilled these values to their children at home. However store owners and management can have a more realistic perspective on this issue which is lead by example then discipline as the circumstances demand. Obviously I am directing the thrust of this part of the post to employee theft as it pertains to younger workers. The issue of older workers that steal will not be covered in this post so do not even think of taking me to task for being soft on store theft. In my opinion older employees have been around the block and on the street so to speak and therefore should be terminated in the vast majority of cases. Theft is not acceptable by anyone of any age or demographic group.

So to continue with this post I ask the question what is a younger employee to think when they see a manager or owner simply take something off the shelf and consume it or take it home? The employees know that their store has company policies on theft and consuming unpaid for products at work, usually this is stated in the employee or associates handbook, but this behavior by people in positions of responsibility can send the wrong signal to younger workers. Earlier in this post I regaled the reader with the quote about locks keeping honest people honest so my point here is that by leading by example the correct message is sent to all store associates – no product may be taken unless it is paid for. Managers and owners should never take something from a store shelf without paying for it under any circumstances. The attitude that I own it therefore I can take it makes absolutely no sense in the operation of a retail establishment and if you see this approach used by someone like a Uzzi or Apostle Peter one should not be surprised by the increase in younger employee theft. No I am not condoning any form of theft by younger or older employees. I am suggesting that everyone should act responsible whenever they are supervising others. Let’s send the right message to all store associates that taking something without paying for it is wrong. As store managers and owners we have responsibilities to ourselves, our employees, our customers and our families.

Back in the day a customer might sample a grape or begin to eat candy out of a bag then upon completing their shopping trip they would hand the bag to the cashier who would ring up the item. Well today some of that still goes on except the customer might sample an olive from the olive bar of course they just do that to make sure that the olives are okay – yea right. Perhaps they might sample a piece of fruit or a vegetable from the salad bar. This is part of the nature of food shopping. Sometimes a young child might have taken something off the shelf and put it in their pocket however when the parent found out about it they disciplined the child – hopefully they did anyway.

Unfortunately today there are customers, and I use that term loosely that just flat-out steal things. Some might be labeled as individuals with some sort of personality disorder however they are still thieves. I remember standing in line at a Starbucks in a upper middle income town one day and watched a woman in a fur coat lift a couple of CD’s off of a rack and put them in her purse. When I got to the counter to order I mentioned to the order taker what I had just witnessed and their response was wow she is in here all of the time but we will keep an eye on her now.

In the supermarket industry we see customers steal Health and Beauty products like deodorant, razor blades and shampoos on a regular basis. That is why some of these products are sometimes available for purchase from only behind a customer service counter. Having been through good and bad economic times I know that some people steal from stores no matter what the stock market is doing. Whether the shoplifter has a head full of bad wiring or they just do not know the difference between right and wrong theft is wrong and dealing with it is part of the challenge of doing business with the public.

Where the industry fails on the shoplifting problem is that they do not have a consistent policy on bringing charges against shoplifters or being proactive with law enforcement organizations to deter it. Some retailers take the approach that it is too expensive to prosecute shoplifters. The retailer has to dispatch the employee(s) who were involved with catching the thief to court on the appointed date. When they go to court the case seems to be postponed multiple times. Finally when the offender’s case is prosecuted the sentence is usually very light. Yes the retailer can and usually does ban the shoplifter from returning to their store. Also the industry as a whole employees a database of shoplifters that have been caught in stores that they can share with participating retailers however this service is usually used for pre-employment checks. The main point here is that the shoplifters who are caught are seldom prosecuted and if they are the sentences are relatively light. Can the retailer change the legal system so that the courts take these crimes more seriously? Probably not. However they can let prosecutors know just how serious of a problem that this is in the community and these thefts are not just nuisance crimes to be swept aside. If the local police officer seems indifferent to do something with the shoplifter that has been caught in the store then talk to their supervisor. Call your local community police liaison officer and raise objections to the way your situation was handled. Just like the leading by example that I wrote about earlier in this post supermarket managers and owners have community responsibilities when it comes to store theft as well. While it might seem a frustrating experience to deal with this issue in your community remember that change has to start somewhere. Eventually more in the community will support your efforts.

The general public should know that the industry’s trade associations, FMI and NRF, have lobbied hard to have organized theft rings be a focus of the major law enforcement agencies however what I am referring to here is theft by the single habitual thief who seems to pretty much get away with stealing for a variety of judicial reasons. Improving a stores internal and external anti theft procedures coupled with a fair and equal application of enforcement policies along with a constant effort to make law enforcement professionals support retailers in the community is the best solution available for retailers today.

Sorry no stories of Rabbi’s stealing anything from the local supermarket.

Look for a post on the Apostle Peter’s and Uzzi’s family shopping spree behavior that perpetuate the “it is my store so I will do what I want to do” syndrome sometime in the future right here on the Supermarket Stories blog.

Ice Hockey and Rugby Players Now in Your Local Supermarket

October 9, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

Nothing lends more credence to the viewpoint that today some people think more about themselves and behave in a seemingly narcissistic manner than by walking the aisles of their local supermarket. One thing that is certain is that manners seem to be something that is left at the front door when some individuals pull a shopping cart out of the row at the front of the store.

I have often wondered if the reason for some of the behavioral traits that I will write about in this post originate in the early days of mankind when we hunted for our own foods – the times of the cave man. Back then we fiercely competed with one another to bring down a wild animal that could fill our stomachs with much-needed sustenance and for the most part we did not want anyone else hording in on our kill. To me these primitive traits are especially prevalent in today’s supermarket meat and deli departments but more on that a little bit later in this post.

So let’s begin now with an example of some of these peculiar shopping habits. Some people use the grocery cart to stalk and capture their prey. Shopping cart etiquette begins when one selects a shopping cart or lasso’s it from the cart corral so to speak. This etiquette ends when you put the cart away at the end of your shopping trip – if you even do that.

First though let’s talk trash. The trash that I would like to talk about here is the type that a previous shopper leaves in a shopping cart for someone else to deal with. In today’s supermarket labor environment there just does not seem to be the resources to keep the shopping carts as clean as they should be and we put our food in these carts. Anyway this type of rude behavior can set the tone for a shoppers food purchase experience and it might not be a pleasant one at that.

I have seen, as well as been a victim of, shopping cart trashing syndrome. Having a store’s paper advertisement laying somewhere in the cart is not the type of trashing that I am referring to. No I am referring to the spilled coffee, empty coffee cups, crumbs from fast food establishments that a previous shopper had left in the cart. Another example is the smashed produce items in a plastic bag that some how got damaged between checking out and being tossed into the family mini van for the trip home. Tomato drippings, banana ooze and apple chunks along with leaking milk or spilled hot soup can make for a slippery shopping cart. One of the most disgusting examples of leaving one’s trash in a shopping cart is the used Kleenex or tissue. This just flat-out makes me want to heave. How can someone wipe their nose or their mouth in something and then leave it in a shopping cart? My favorite instance of extreme shopping cart trashing was when a customer, in a store that I was working at, brought a used diaper to the counter and said that it was left in the shopping cart she was using and could we dispose of it for them. Well at least that it was not a used Depends.

Anyway some people just live like swine and the common courtesy that one should exercise by taking their personal trash from the shopping cart before they push it into the middle of the road or cart corral is for the most part lost on them.

Back to our shopping trip now. With your narrator now in control of their wobbly wheeled shopping cart they begin their journey up and down the aisles of the store doing the hunter gatherer thing.

What I have really begun to fear at my own local grocery store is the Denny Crane like senior citizen, though they might not be carrying a firearm like Denny always seemed to be doing on Boston Legal, some seniors seem to use the shopping cart as their weapon of choice with which to wreak mayhem throughout the store.

Senior citizens seem to be most forceful in the dairy department. Is it their pressing need for yogurt or cottage cheese? Perhaps it is the juices that are commonly found in this department. Whatever the heck it is I can tell you that standing in front of a dairy case for more that 10 seconds can subject a shopper to a body check that would please any member of the audience watching the Montreal Canadians playing the Chicago Blackhawks. My knees have been bumped and checked by numerous 70-year-old seniors on more than several occasions.

While today’s supermarkets do not have yellow lines painted on their floors or traffic signals like roadways do there is an unwritten directional map that 99% of us follow when we are in the supermarket. Most people know that we go in the front door of a store then we follow the crowd around the perimeter of a store as we navigate up and down the center aisles as we go. The senior citizen either does not remember these mental directional maps or chooses to ignore them by claiming some form of mad cow disease.

Last week I was shopping in my local supermarket when I found myself in the dairy department and was immediately mesmerized by a shelf containing 16 or 17 types of yogurt. It took me a few seconds to decide what variety of this custard looking yogurt to take off the shelf when I felt a searing pain shooting up my leg from the area of my knee. As I looked down at my leg I saw that there was a shopping cart attached to my body exactly at knee level. At the handle of that shopping cart was a very prim and properly dressed white-haired lady roughly born about 20 years before Ronald Reagan. Of course she slammed into me from the opposite direction of the store’s normal traffic flow especially for that particular area. This proverbial little old lady stood about 4 foot 8 inches with an obvious calcium deficiency. No wonder I did not see her coming at me since she was short and on the wrong side of the road so to speak. Well she wanted in at the yogurt and nothing was going to stop her for getting to it not even my now wounded knee. There was no excuse me or an apology uttered from her lips instead there was just a self-absorbed look that also said out of my way you jerk.

Have you ever noticed how today’s grocery shopper is forced to confront all of the product displays in the shopping aisles? It used to be that a shopper would see a few of these product displays in the aisles during certain holidays like the aluminum pans around Thanksgiving or perhaps a promotional display from one of the sugar-water producers for a product featuring the image of some hyped up athlete.

Anyway pushing one’s basket up and down the aisles in the store today requires that the shopper dodge more of these numerous product displays that have been placed almost everywhere in the store. I guess these stores get promotional money or pay less for the products in these floor displays but that topic is for another post. In addition to dodging these promotional obstacles a shopper has to be aware that these displays can also be used as a refuge for some shoppers that wish to spring an ambush on their prey so to speak.

A few months back I was making my way through the spice aisle and all of a sudden, from behind a 5+ foot high floor product display for some new sugar substitute my shopping cart was t-boned by another cart even though I was not in the meat department. Apparently some shopper, a short one at that, had pushed their cart to the side of the previously mentioned floor display and was carrying on a conversation on their cell phone.

I do not know what made me more upset the fact that they were able to get phone reception in this store, because I never can, or that they slammed into my cart while they were talking on the phone obviously not looking where they were going or who might be around – kind of like the way some people drive today.

Well after the two of us eyed each other for a moment possibly waiting for the other one to say something the driver of the other shopping cart did not miss a beat with her phone conversation and now was slowly proceeding up the aisle away from me. I was thinking about running after her and demanding her driver’s license and proof of insurance or at least insist that we should exchange our stores valued customer saving card information but it was too late as another customer curtly said “excuse me” because I was now blocking the narrow aisle.

To be continued on another post.

Blackberry’s Are Not in the Produce Department and Can You Wait for Just a Minute I Have to Make a Call

October 4, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

Someone recently said that cell or smart phones are not the reason for a perceived increase in rude and ill-mannered behavior by some people in public. The fact of the matter is that these types of people act selfishly and rudely with or without the use of technology. We do not need to use a cell phone to explain why people today exhibit bad manners in public places because behavioral traits like these operate without the need for an electric charger.

Wander through the aisles of your local Supermarket and you will see, what appears at first, to be people talking with themselves. Then upon closer examination one realizes that these people are actually speaking to someone else on their cell phone through some sort of ear piece device. Cell Phones are a handy way for one’s wife, husband, significant other or elderly parent to get in touch with a shopper to ask them to pick up this or that since they are already at the store. If only this were the case in reality.

Listening to people talk on their cell phones in the supermarket can be an insight into our social norms or possibly a case study of conversations at a mental health clinic. For one particular group of shoppers, sorry young ladies, being at the Grocery Store seems to be the time that they can catch up on the gossip of what their fellow girl friends are doing and in some case doing it with. In the case of the busy 30 something male it is a chance to catch up on voice mails from the office or planning for the next sporting event. Every social group that I have observed talking on the cell phone in the Grocery Store have their own particular subject matter that needs to be talked about as they pickup the sodas, chips and frozen food. Why is this? Sociologists I am sure will have an answer and the statistics to back up a study on this type of behavior. Psychologist will have their perspectives on this subject and most of the rest of us will still go around scratching our heads as to why people feel the need to talk about things so loudly on the cell phone in public.

In the interest of full disclosure I own a cell phone or smart phone as they are referred to today. I have never really felt the need to wander through some public place and carry on a conversation with someone else at the same time. Remember though so far I have only been writing about customers using their cell phones in public at the Grocery Store.

So who says that Supermarket employees should be excluded from exercising a little bit of narcissistic tendencies on the job as well. I know for myself that they do so regularly and see it just about everyday or every time I go into a supermarket.

Let’s briefly go off the current subject matter for a moment so that I can provide some background as to why this socially rude and unacceptable behavior of using a Cell Phone at work in the Supermarket has been allowed to grow roots.

Technology is a wonderful thing in most cases. Technology allows for one to be more informed, in touch and have access to the volumes of the accumulated wealth of man. Years ago in many American business, not just the Retail Food industry, computers perpetuated the reduction in numbers of mid-level management positions in an organization. In older businesses the executives would set policies, then area directors would package them for use by the managers who in turn would supervise those policies implementation and adherence to by the line employees. Whether this was a manufacturing, traditional office or service operation mid-level management were the supervisory Bee’s in the business colony.

Technology, namely computers of all different sizes and capabilities, allowed executives to monitor productivity and the operations of a business at all levels. In the interests of cost savings and organizational profitability it was determined that there was too much mid-level management in place. More managing could be done with less management and more technology. Executives could have their finger on the pulse of an organization all of the time. Anyway this change in the organizational thought process worked its way through every industry in the United States even the humble Supermarket Business.

Depending on the size of a particular Grocery Store the organizational structure use to include a store manager, assistant managers, department heads, office personnel, inventory clerks, front-end supervisors, cashiers and perhaps someone to load your purchases into your car. Well to the owners and executives of the Grocery Stores this was just too many people to have on the payroll. Right Uzzi? After all the owners and executives now had the technology to manage every aspect of the business. They did not need someone else interpreting results for them or even carrying out some policy because they could do this themselves or through others further down the organizational chart. In addition the age of hello e-mail good-by personal visits by a mid-level managers was dawning.

So the Supermarket Industry went through an organizational change at store level. First store managers, through the use of technology, could do more to monitor the different areas of their stores. They did not need 3 or 4 assistant managers to help in the running of the store, now they just needed a couple of assistants. The need for multiple department heads was no longer needed either because technology has proven to the owners that the Dairy Department Manager can also be the Frozen Food Manager. Instead of having a pseudo bookkeeper at the store the computer would keep track of things and flag any exceptions which now the store manager must look into first. Front-end Supervisors became more and more extinct in most stores. Instead an office type person can help the cashiers or attend to the odd customer inquiry now and then. Cashiers can be cashiers or Self Checkout Registers can even eliminate the need for the number of cashiers as well – more on this in another post. The store can now reduce their over all store payroll by two to four percent. Considering that a Grocery Store can have a payroll of 7 – 14 percent of its total retail sales the savings are huge. So fewer eyes and more technology was the answer to a store’s profit and service be damned just ask the Holy Grail of retailing Wal-Mart.

So now we can better understand why in some cases no one is watching the proverbial store anymore – other than the closed circuit cameras that are for the most part not being monitored just recorded, the store is on its own as are the customers.

The other day I was in one of the Uzzi Family company stores and I noticed that a cashier, a young man, seemed to be fidgeting with something or with himself while he was waiting on a customer. Of course my thoughts were that perhaps the customer is really a robber and threatening the young cashier. However upon closer observation I saw that the cashier was still checking out or scanning a customers order it was just that the customer was not really putting the products on the check stand with any particular sense of speed. Heck there was not even a rhythm to this process for this customer was just slow putting things on the checkout belt.

This cashier apparently felt that he could use these snippets of 10 or 15 seconds between the groups of products being dug from the customers cart to carry on a Text Messaging conversation with someone who he knew. How’s about that? This cashier certainly practices some type of extreme time management if you ask me.

In the past I had noticed that even at my own local supermarket younger cashiers almost always seemed to have their cell phone or smart phone within close proximity to where they are working. Occasionally I would hear a ring tone similar to a Lady Gaga hit single or some other current R&B or Hip Hop artist going off in the employees pants pockets or purses that were placed under the counter of their workstation. I also noticed that if an opportunity presented itself either after the customer had finished checking out or before the next customer’s order was completely placed on the Checkout Belt that the cashier would reach for the phone and see either who it was that called earlier or what the Text Message said that just came in. There have been times where I have seen the cashier either respond to the Text Message or make a quick phone call before checking out the next customer.

I must be sensitive to this type of behavior now because I see it more and more in the retail stores that I am in. The points that I would like to make here with this post is that rude behavior and poor manners do not need technology to bring it out into the open. If people acting like this today were allowed to do these things and act like this growing up it certainly was something that the parents failed to communicate to their children as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable forms of behavior. It is not up to the schools or businesses to be surrogate parents and teach their employees not to be rude however the businesses should always provide good examples of proper behavior. However it is up to the schools and the businesses to let their students or employees know what the rules are along with the consequences of not following them. Hello kids do you want fries with that order.

The second point that I would like to make here is that with the lack of supervision in more and more Supermarkets today it is not surprising to see that this type of rude behavior and employee malaise can occur. Store owners and management have an obligation to their customers to provide food products in a clean and sanitary environment with efficient and effect service at a reasonable price. No more and no less. Without proper supervision and periodic associate reviews that include addressing behavioral traits these forms of rude behavior will continue to find fertile ground in the supermarket.

As an aside it is not just the cashiers who are using their cell phones whenever they want to at work it is also the cart person, the meat cutter and the person behind the deli counter. At times I have heard more colorful language emanating from behind the counter from my location on the sales floor than I have heard in some bars.

Quickly to give Uzzi some credit he has a very strict policy on the use of cell phones in a store while an employee is on the company’s time or as he says his time. This policy requires that the employee not use their cell phone when they are working or on the sales floor only when they are on break or leaving for the day. Of course you always see Uzzi when he is in any of the stores with his cell phone at his ear but I guess that he is using it for company business – yea right.

It was only 10 years ago or so that if someone mentioned or used the word Blackberry in a Supermarket one would think of a particular type of fruit berry in the Produce Department. Today one’s first thought is of that famous type of smart phone. Oops I have to run now because I just got a Tweet from Paris Hilton and I want to read it right away.

Categories: Employees, My Supermarket, Operating a Supermarket Tags: Acceptable Forms of Behavior, Assistant Managers, Assistant Store Managers, Behavioral Traits, Blackberries, Blackberry, Bookkeeper, Cashier, Cashiers, Cell Phones, Cell Tower, Checkout Belt, Checkout Stand, Checkstand, Chips, Clean and Sanitary, Computers, Customer, Customers, Dairy Department Manager, E-mail, Employee Malaise, Family Company, Front-end Supervisor, Front-end Supervisors, Frozen Food, Gossip, Grocery, Grocery Store, Grocery Stores, Hip Hop, Holy Grail, Ill-mannered, Lady Gaga, Market, Mid-level Management, Neighborhood Market, Organizational Change, Parental Failure, Parents, Paris Hilton, Payroll, Produce Department, Psychologist, Retail Food Industry, Rude, Shopper, Shoppers, Smart Phones, SMS, Sociologists, Soda, Store Managers, Store Owner, Store Owners, Supermarket, Supermarket Business, Supermarkets, Supervision, Talk Loudly, Technology, Text, Text Messaging, Tweet, Uzzi, Wal-Mart, Young Cashier

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

October 4, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

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.

Categories: My Supermarket, Operating a Supermarket, The Family Grocery Business Tags: Animal Urinating, Asbestos, Bacteria, Blood, California, Chicken, CPG, Dairy Department, Dinner Entrees, Double Bagging, Ecologically Aware, Ecologiically Sound, Environmental, Fox News, Fox Noise, Fresh, Gallon of Milk, Germs, GPS, Green Movement, Green Party, Grocery Store, Grocery Stores, Ground Beef, Ice fream, Label Whore, Land Fills, Little Old Lady, Markets, Meat, Meat Department, Meat Departments, Meat Tray, Narcissism, Old Sneakers, Paper Bags, Paper of Plastic, Plastic Bags, Plastic Soda Rings, Poultry, Profitability, Public Radio, Public Radio Fund Drive, Re-usable Bags, Re-usable Shopping Bags, Recycle, Recycling, Reusable Shopping Bags, Roasts, Self-Checkout Registers, Sell by Dates, Shopping Trips, Shoppng Habits, Sneakers, Soda Rings, Supermarket, Supermarkets, Tear-off-bags, Travel to Europe, Uzzi

Even With the Perscription Plan He Is Probably Still Both

October 4, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

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.

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

October 2, 2010 Supermarket Stories Leave a comment

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!

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.

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Archive

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

“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddle Masses” – The Supermarket Industry and it’s History With Immigrants

There Is No Honor Among Thieves

Ice Hockey and Rugby Players Now in Your Local Supermarket

Blackberry’s Are Not in the Produce Department and Can You Wait for Just a Minute I Have to Make a Call

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

Even With the Perscription Plan He Is Probably Still Both

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

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