Skeleton crews are the norm after 4:30/5 PM. There are nights where there are only 3 employees (including a manager) in the building for 5 hours. The tasks that are expected of these 3 people are the same: constant cart runs, cashiering, cleaning up after ridiculously messy customers, making things look nice in case the owner, Marc Perlman makes an appearance and yells at the Leader on Deck for not having everything look beautiful.
Each employee is expected to be in four places at once doing 10 tasks at once. We have people in many different departments during the day, especially Department Heads who are expected to ring if the lines gets past 3-4 customers. Department Heads are also constantly being asked why their departments aren't stocked, or why their freight hasn't been tackled but how are they supposed to work in their departments when they're expected to be at the beck and call of the drowning Front End? Oh and some days, when we only have 3-4 employees on at night, our Code Adam (missing child) positions are doubled up, meaning if a Code Adam were to ocurr, some associates would have to be in 2 places at once. That can't be safe at all, and it goes against our training.
Hours change constantly and it's an expectation for employees to change their availability to fit those new hours. Holidays are the worst because we often are told that Marc Perlman wants us open at and until a certain time, but we are told that 1-2 weeks or less before that day. I was once asked to come in at 8 Am (which is not in my availability) after working the night before until 9:15. This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't live a little farther away than others and if I were given ample time to think it over.
Communication is beyond poor, the scheduling is a mess and we are constantly made to move items around the store, causing confusion for employees and customers.
As a cashier, you can't void items over $4.99, the Check Limit is somewhere around $75, and these 'red boxes' will haunt me for the rest of my life. Red boxes are what pops up when an item doesn't scan, or doesn't show up as an item. This stays on the screen and does not allow you to scan anything else, but the scanner still sounds the same. So if you don't look at the screen or have a screen that's not in your line of view, you won't actually be scanning what you think you're scanning. Customers have crabbed at me and my coworkers for double scanning items, and one coworker has been called 'sketchy' for rescanning an item. We have to show customers the screen or else they don't believe us. SKUS are a nightmare, 1/2 of our products aren't marked or if they are, they're marked incorrectly. We have to go and investigate in as short a time as possible, but if there's only 3 employees in the store, something that should take less than 5 minutes can sometimes take 10.
Things keep breaking at my store and it takes a good month before they're fixed. Multiple air conditioners have conked out, and with this heatwave we're expected to get, it will be very dangerous if those aren't fixed promptly.
I'm sure I could come up with more, but for now, that's all I can think of.
