There Is No Honor Among Thieves

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.

AB

Copyright 2010 @ Supermarket Stories

They Might Want to Film the Next Nat Geo Show at My Supermarket

Please believe me when I say that I have seen more wildlife in the supermarkets that I have either worked in or shopped at than most people might see on a nightly Nat Geo broadcast. There are various reasons why wildlife is more noticeable in today’s supermarket. The readers of this blog should understand that I certainly do not purposely seek out stores to shop at where animals roam freely nor do or did I only work for companies that have bizarre sanitation practices although the Uzzi family stores come pretty close to strange cleaning practices. Perhaps the purpose of this post is that by sharing some of my wildlife experiences with the readers of this blog than together we can hold our local supermarket to a higher level of cleanliness and sanitary conditions that will further ensure the safety of the food that we buy in our stores.

For some reason my recollection of going to the supermarket as s a child was not filled with images of animals and assorted wildlife lurking under counters or shelves to startle and scare me. Nor while I was growing up, some will possibly say that based on this blog I still haven’t,  do I recall running for cover like the crowds did in Hitchcock’s classic film the Birds. Those winged avengers in that film strafed and pecked at the human heads scurrying beneath their glide paths while back then I was just reaching for a box of Frosted Flakes on the shelf and never looked up to see if a bird was circling above me. Surly supermarkets back in the day had the odd attack of fruit flies in the produce department or the lone mouse running under a shelf or case that must have gotten lost on it’s way to Disneyland. No today there is certainly more wildlife in the average supermarket than there used to be perhaps you just have not notice them.

Why is this the case? First of all most supermarkets are not as dutiful about regularly using an exterminator in their stores. It is simply a matter of expense control. No I am not out of mind in stating this is a more common industry practice of treating when there are signs of infestation as opposed to treating to prevent pests. While no store manager wants to be accused of running a dirty or infested store the fact is that chain consolidations and the more prolific role that accountants play in today’s food operation lead to a reduction in store personal who’s duties included cleaning.  The reduction in a store cleaning efforts is another reason as to why more wildlife roam the aisles in our stores. In addition it contributes to more bacteria and assorted germs lurking just beneath the surface so to speak.

In addition another reason as to the rise in the wildlife population in today’s supermarkets is that they contain more “fresh” and prepared foods than they did back in the day. Years ago other than produce or meat items most food came in either a box, tray or container. Convenience was king and the microwave ruled the house.  In the homes of the day the Food Channel was in it’s infancy and chopping one’s own garlic was not a common household practice. The Foodie had not yet begun it’s rise in the food shopping chain. Consumers were beginning to demand more fresh and prepared foods for their shopping carts and these products were made in the supermarket itself thereby making them a more attractive target for our winged and multiple cell pests. While some industry pundits and observers will scoff at these notions of mine the practices in use today in the supermarket industry, both labor expense control as well as the reduction in store operational expenses, lend credence to the arguments presented in this post. It is one of those ugly hidden truths that no one likes to talk about.

Poor Marvin the mouse for he did not even know what he was getting into when he sensed those juicy bread crumbs laying in the tray of that Bread Slicer in the stores bakery department prep area. Every evening when the bakery department workers had gone home Marvin and his friends could play amongst the bakery machines, ovens and product ingredients. They could eat to their hearts content and then snooze through the day coming out the next evening to eat again.

The particular store that Marvin and his buddies lived in offered their bakery department customers a bread slicing service. The bakery department sales racks were filled with whole loafs of Pumpernickel, Rye and other varieties of fresh baked bread. So a customer would just have to hand the bread that they want to buy to the bakery department associate and they would load it into the Bread Slicer and within a minute the customer would be handed a package of sliced bread. To the neo-Foodie this is a great service and for the older customer it is the way that they want to buy their bread.

Well this bread slicing machine has a metal slide out tray at the base of it where the crumbs from the slicing operation fall into. If the bakery department staff was not diligent about cleaning that tray out every day then the crumbs would accumulate in significant quantities, enough to entice Marvin and friends to come get some carbs.

Now if you ever have an opportunity to see one of these commercial bread slicing machines you will immediately notice the rack of sharp cross cut blades about 2 feet long that does the slicing of the bread. When the machine is running it looks like it could mutilate a human limb into 1/2″ sections without a fuss. Well the point that I would like to make is that in order for Marvin and his friends to get at the tasty morsels of bread crumbs they have to run the gauntlet of these sharp blades. It is a tight space to squeeze through even if you are a mouse and the machine is not running at the time.

Since this was an Uzzi family store it meant that the department head as well as the store manager were constantly being squeezed to reduce their payroll expenditures to almost nothing. When line employees are berated constantly about their payroll hours by an Uzzi type manager they tend to do less on the things that are not noticeable like cleaning and focus more on making sure that there is product on the shelf. In this store the amount of bread crumbs in that metal tray was more like a coating on all of the tray surfaces and there was a good build up of crumbs within the machine to get Marvin’s attention.

On one particular evening Marvin worked his way into the metal crumb catch tray however he never got out, at least alive. Marvin died and the metal crumb tray became his short term coffin for he laid in that tray for some period of time. With Marvin’s decomposing body in the crumb tray the slicer continued to be used for slicing customers bread purchases. Finally after weeks had passed an employee noticed a foul smell coming from the bakery department. It took a bit of exploring but Marvin’s body was located and disposed of. The tray was cleaned out – finally, and the slicer continues to be used to this day.

I am willing to say that no more attention is being paid to keeping that bread crumb tray cleaned out today then it was when Marvin lost his life.

If any story about animal life in the supermarket grosses me out the most it would be the time that a store’s meat case had a layer of maggots in the bottom of it. What I mean by the meat case is the refrigerated display case that customers pick the packages of meat out of to purchase. Yes this really did happen in a store and without proper cleaning procedures it will continue to happen. Please believe me that this is not the first time that this type of infestation has occurred in a supermarket.

The store that I am referring to was not an overtly dirty looking store. It was equipped with older refrigerated product cases that had a history of equipment breakdowns well above the industry average. The reason for these breakdowns were due to the overall age of the cases along with the lack of preventative maintenance practices and a poor effort on the stores departmental staff to actually keep them clean. Again like in the case of Marvin’s demise the meat department staff, being one of the highest hourly rate departments in the store, was pressured to keep their payroll costs down so cleaning became more of an after thought.

So packages of meat that were displayed in this particular case left traces of meat product, juices and blood in the lower grate/grill area of the case. With the older case not keeping a cold enough temperature to inhibit this type of bug growth coupled with poor cleaning and sanitation practices by the staff maggots began to thrive in the display case. The bottom of the case was lined with a sheet of vented honeycomb type plastic mesh, like the type found in most supermarkets, which allowed the maggots to nest under this liner. Since the liner was not regularly removed and cleaned under the product that was layered on top of it provided more sustenance for the maggots to thrive on.

Such disgusting sanitary practices from businesses that we buy our food from who sometimes fail to recognize the obligations they have to keep their premises sanitary in order to protect the public’s health should never be tolerated. When these business do not live up to their responsibilities people can get sick. If you as a consumer notice something unsanitary in your local store report it to store management. If nothing is done about it right away do two things. First contact your local health department and lodge a complaint. Second stop shopping at that store because they are endangering your health. Uzzi family type sanitation practices should never be tolerated.

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

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

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.

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