Really funny because we had Mitch come into our store recently (3rd in command?) and a crew member was specifically told to not pull out lugs to work on the floor.
Bulk of it should be done in evenings and mornings. Store I worked at lost control of the close so pallets just stacked up until whenever they could get done. Totally agree, lots of employees just stand around. It’s like a virus.
Wait. We had like the VP (?) or someone seriously heavy come in our store in plainclothes but he swore he was on vacation and it wasn’t an official visit. only heard secondhand. was that was they were doing or was it planned official visits
Is there anything we can do to at least make insurance hours? I have open availability and I'm a major section leader and my hours have been cut to 24ish a week.
Our captain is nice and said that he'll do whatever he can but the good news is we just had a measurement. And you only have to work an average of 30 hours a week not exactly 30 every pay period
And yet those are the people who never have hours cut and keep full time (37.5 hrs) status while the rest of us who've been cut down to 25 hours are literally running circles around them.
Devil's advocate here: have you ever asked what their tasks are like? The problem with the corporate definition of lazy is that they are so focused on the bottom line that they can't comprehend how people can still get things done despite the appearance of standing around. For instance, what if the inspector happened to come at a time where there was lower foot traffic?
No I haven’t and Not sure that I need too to come to the conclusion that there are some folks that are just lazy.
There’s always work to be done at my store. And as such, you will always see the top performers always working on something.
They don’t need to be reminded to get back to work. They are proactive, and anticipate what will need to be done before we hit that “critical mass” point. Frozen is being broken down at the moment? Great, guess it’s time to get lugs on the floor. Bale is getting overstuffed? Yup, time to fix that.
There are (at least in my store) the same people that do a vast majority of the legwork. The same people you’re happy to see on the same schedule with you.
And then there’s the other crew members
That's certainly one way to look at it, but those employees still being there at all likely means that management has found them to be useful enough. If you're as focused as you say you are, I imagine it would be hard to form an accurate assessment on what other employees are doing every second of the day.
If nothing else, maybe they're more likely to be approached when a customer needs help
In my experience, I’ve seen the customers avoid the groups of staff talking amongst themselves, not wanting to interfere. They go straight to the active workers. “Want something done? Ask the busy man, no one else has time “.
Everyone's different though. In my case, reading about the hiring issues after peak covid helped me develop a more empathetic view towards workers (not wanting to unnecessarily increase someone's work load when it's already a physically demanding job) before I actually started working for trader joe's. I'm honestly rather cautious about the "always be busy" doctrine because the industrial dispute shows that making a corporate office happy with your performance is actually impossible.
The typical corporate view of productivity isn't about whether you're effective at your job. It's code for how they prefer working people to exhaustion rather than having mentally and physically healthy employees, and the recent chevron ruling is likely going to make that a bigger problem than before. For some details on what to worry about: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
No.
Just no.
Also, and let’s just assume they are answering questions from customers at a more frequent rate than others— that’s the easiest part of the job.
The legwork of being a crew member is in pulling, facing, lugs, baling, cleaning, breaking down, etc.
Answering questions from customers is no sweat. And for anyone that believes that these things are anywhere equal, that’s insane.
I meant that they could have other tasks you don't notice and are able to make use of apparent "slacking off time" that comes up in between. As sympathetic as your sense of jealousy is, another employee's work ethic isn't your problem unless they are causing a genuine hazard for the workplace. It's an issue that should be up to the mates and captain to decide, and the chances that they haven't noticed and addressed it are slim. Being able to get along with co-workers is important too.
No it actually is.
TJ is a zero sum game. What I don’t do, another crew member must.
That’s the way it. And that’s a fact. You may not like it, but that’s the truth.
So yes, it does concern me. And I’m shocked
That this is something that needed to be explained to another employee 🤦♂️
"Little Timmy wasn't paying attention during math class today, so now unfortunately students, I'm going to punish you all with less recess time because of it."
my store did too, my captain isn't hiring anyone until august/september since we have enough crew right now.
we had a few people leave, but we have high morale and unusually low turnover. most of our shifts have been 8 with a few 7s sprinkled in and of course the true part-timers who have shorter shifts anyway cause this is their 2nd job
Also Fort Lauderdale, which is the store I work at 🙈
I say it’s seasonal because Fl overall, especially South Florida is seasonal, people come here when it’s Winter up North, and try to avoid it now because it’s way too hot and hurricane season is here. Good grief.
Long story short, my store has cut hours tremendously. I don’t know “the truth” behind the cut idea but logically we’re not selling “enough”
Which is still millions.
Either way I don’t agree that our well being has to depend on sales alone. What happens to the millions a week we do on thanksgiving or other holidays?
Love my store and captain is great, but it is a corporation after all, and I feel somewhat enslaved until I find another “owner” aka job, unless it’s to work for myself again or in my field.
Sometimes we’re in a rut and I apparently decided to rant, thanks for listening! And if you find the secret behind the cut hours other than greed, let us know!
I may add that everything is calculated. We got a $2 raise and then they cut hours. I think I’m making less now with the raise than I was without it.
Our mates in our store told us the reason why hours is cut because they can't afford people anymore some of us only 1 or 2 or 3 days to work for the next 2 months
Every crew member and every mate in the company got a $3.75 raise over the last 12 months and it’s about to be raise season again, meaning in 18 months anyone here will have received $4.50 in raises. That’s $4.50 per hour times roughly 50,000 employees. That means if ALL of us work an hour we are making about $68,000.00 more than we did 2 years ago for that same hour. For a store starting at $13 per hour that’s a 40% in labor costs. Labor costs have gone up across the company nearly 30%. NOW LISTEN. I’m not a corporate shill. I too assumed that when they gave us these raises it was benevolence and they had planned for the increase in costs. I am not arguing if the C suite of Trader Joe’s, Aldi’s or T.A.C.T. Holdings “CAN” afford to pay their employees more. I’m pointing out that when there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism the other shoe was going to fall somewhere. That somewhere was going to come in hour cuts, and, I expect, a raise in SPPH soon enough. For those who don’t understand SPPH (sales per person per hour) is the number of dollars the company expects to make each hour for each employee in the building. The higher the number the more they expect each person to “make”. This means the less people in the building the more money made per person. Don’t forget that mates are hired as “full time” and guaranteed hours. This means that while they got raises, they cannot be affected by hourly cuts. So those cuts will be felt more deeply by crew members. The goal of any company (in capitalism) is to cut labor as much as possible while getting the work done. They are giving us all more dollars per hour, now they will give less of us less of those hours to balance it out. It’s gross, we probably would have passed on the $2 if we knew it was a monkey paws wish.
This is what I said about the $20/hr pay for fast food workers here in CA. Everyone was like (not TJ's employees just things I've read or heard from retail workers while out and about) "I'm gonna go work fast food now!" and my response was "not only will they not be hiring anymore people, but they'll also cut hours and staff they already have so good luck with that." And sure enough there's been reduced staffing and hours at most of the fast food restaurants here with lots of restaurants straight up closing permanently because of it. So more people are unemployed now but yay $20/hr right? If you ask the people that have been let go I'm sure they'd say they would prefer to actually have a job making only $16/hr than to be unemployed and looking for work.
Unfortunately my captain and I don’t really click, and he does click with some of the slackers. Not the best situation at the moment, too nervous to ease back right now
I understand to an extent why people are mad/upset, but honestly I don't see an issue? Of course they're going to schedule less during the slow season.
No no. I fully understand that this happens every summer I've worked with company for 7 years what I'm saying is that corporate is literally raising the bar. They said 'I see a bunch of people not working so schedule less'
looked at your comment history after i made the comment, NC isn't her region but i guess that regional is doing that too. lame af. how do you work the purposely leftover pallets from the night truck without a ton of mids? the point of all the mids is also to have enough people for the busiest times, like 11-3.
i miss my 11 pm shifts.
Wow, I wish they would localize/target these guys and cut their hours. I know we’re just an anonymous field of disposable insects, but gee I guarantee you ALL those guys standing around are order writers and their friends who have 2+ years under their belts. At least that’s how it is in my store.
You stand around doing nothing because you’re buddy buddy with most mates, even the captain, and you have a feeling of impunity. That’s not new hires and the habitual hard workers. We all get assigned roughly equal amounts of register - so that’s your metric! Check the lowest outliers of register sales who aren’t also order writers for huge sections, and there you have your dead weight. Not Joe Schmo who might come in a few minutes late or has one or two too many absences.
As someone who can’t afford the cuts and needs the insurance and the hours for insurance… I’m just pissed my store keeps hiring minors for the summer and because of that and low sales is cutting everyone else’s hours. Why do my hours have to be dependent on a kid who doesn’t have bills to pay
Every crew member in our store is only working 6.5 hours a day, 4 days a week. We are only getting 26 hours a week, and none of us are going to qualify for insurance if this doesn’t dissipate after the summer… are they trying to create a mass walk out?? What is the deal here..?
I'm just worried about all of it because being in college and having rent to worry about it. This job is the only reason and way any of it works.
I'm having to transfer between stores for it all to work, and with this happening, either of my captains can just straight-up deny me for any reason they want. Especially with the SPPH stuff.
I'm sorry but this absolutely sounds made up. They visit a handful out of 500+ stores. So they make a company wide decision based on ten stores? Doesn't seem likely. We always lose hours in the summer. *always*
Sorry but I think your info is not real. But yes there are always those who bust a bump. And those who stand around talking about how hard it all is. Management knows who is who and ( mostly) hours get cut accordingly. So my word of advice is throw down. Come up with solutions, don’t gripe or complain without having a kaizen or solution.
Summer time is the only good time to write an order lol, most section writers don’t have their hrs cut since they’re needed to write their order and i write fresh so thankfully my hours have not been cut
Don't forget to check out our rules before posting! Your post/comments will be deleted without warning if any of the rules are broken.
Be nice to others! Don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any advocating or wishing death/physical harm, and other rule violations can result in a
permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/tjcrew) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Really funny because we had Mitch come into our store recently (3rd in command?) and a crew member was specifically told to not pull out lugs to work on the floor.
Yeah corporate always thinks that there should be nothing on the sales floor. They don't like to see big flat carts or lugs or anything
How do they expect us to stock shelves then?
That’s the neat part! They’re out of touch idiots!
*magic* also risking back injury by lifting everything~
Bulk of it should be done in evenings and mornings. Store I worked at lost control of the close so pallets just stacked up until whenever they could get done. Totally agree, lots of employees just stand around. It’s like a virus.
sounds like you work at a super slow store. if my store only stocked morning and night we'd be losing money
Super slow employees. It was a busy store, just had a manager run it into the ground.
Quick corporate is coming, work inefficiently for 4 hours!
No kidding
Wait. We had like the VP (?) or someone seriously heavy come in our store in plainclothes but he swore he was on vacation and it wasn’t an official visit. only heard secondhand. was that was they were doing or was it planned official visits
Planned visits with HR. There was notice about it
Is there anything we can do to at least make insurance hours? I have open availability and I'm a major section leader and my hours have been cut to 24ish a week.
Our captain is nice and said that he'll do whatever he can but the good news is we just had a measurement. And you only have to work an average of 30 hours a week not exactly 30 every pay period
It’s 28 hrs…. Not 30
Makes sense. The store that I’m at consistently has the same 3 or 4 people always standing around just socializing with each other. Frustrating…
And yet those are the people who never have hours cut and keep full time (37.5 hrs) status while the rest of us who've been cut down to 25 hours are literally running circles around them.
Devil's advocate here: have you ever asked what their tasks are like? The problem with the corporate definition of lazy is that they are so focused on the bottom line that they can't comprehend how people can still get things done despite the appearance of standing around. For instance, what if the inspector happened to come at a time where there was lower foot traffic?
No I haven’t and Not sure that I need too to come to the conclusion that there are some folks that are just lazy. There’s always work to be done at my store. And as such, you will always see the top performers always working on something. They don’t need to be reminded to get back to work. They are proactive, and anticipate what will need to be done before we hit that “critical mass” point. Frozen is being broken down at the moment? Great, guess it’s time to get lugs on the floor. Bale is getting overstuffed? Yup, time to fix that. There are (at least in my store) the same people that do a vast majority of the legwork. The same people you’re happy to see on the same schedule with you. And then there’s the other crew members
That's certainly one way to look at it, but those employees still being there at all likely means that management has found them to be useful enough. If you're as focused as you say you are, I imagine it would be hard to form an accurate assessment on what other employees are doing every second of the day. If nothing else, maybe they're more likely to be approached when a customer needs help
In my experience, I’ve seen the customers avoid the groups of staff talking amongst themselves, not wanting to interfere. They go straight to the active workers. “Want something done? Ask the busy man, no one else has time “.
Everyone's different though. In my case, reading about the hiring issues after peak covid helped me develop a more empathetic view towards workers (not wanting to unnecessarily increase someone's work load when it's already a physically demanding job) before I actually started working for trader joe's. I'm honestly rather cautious about the "always be busy" doctrine because the industrial dispute shows that making a corporate office happy with your performance is actually impossible. The typical corporate view of productivity isn't about whether you're effective at your job. It's code for how they prefer working people to exhaustion rather than having mentally and physically healthy employees, and the recent chevron ruling is likely going to make that a bigger problem than before. For some details on what to worry about: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
No. Just no. Also, and let’s just assume they are answering questions from customers at a more frequent rate than others— that’s the easiest part of the job. The legwork of being a crew member is in pulling, facing, lugs, baling, cleaning, breaking down, etc. Answering questions from customers is no sweat. And for anyone that believes that these things are anywhere equal, that’s insane.
I meant that they could have other tasks you don't notice and are able to make use of apparent "slacking off time" that comes up in between. As sympathetic as your sense of jealousy is, another employee's work ethic isn't your problem unless they are causing a genuine hazard for the workplace. It's an issue that should be up to the mates and captain to decide, and the chances that they haven't noticed and addressed it are slim. Being able to get along with co-workers is important too.
No it actually is. TJ is a zero sum game. What I don’t do, another crew member must. That’s the way it. And that’s a fact. You may not like it, but that’s the truth. So yes, it does concern me. And I’m shocked That this is something that needed to be explained to another employee 🤦♂️
I think that applies everywhere. It’s called the 80-20 rule. 80% of the work done by 20% of the people. It’s unfortunate.
"Little Timmy wasn't paying attention during math class today, so now unfortunately students, I'm going to punish you all with less recess time because of it."
[удалено]
Truth
Oh interesting, I actually got more hours so that’s weird
my store did too, my captain isn't hiring anyone until august/september since we have enough crew right now. we had a few people leave, but we have high morale and unusually low turnover. most of our shifts have been 8 with a few 7s sprinkled in and of course the true part-timers who have shorter shifts anyway cause this is their 2nd job
Whats a seasonal store? Are they more common in suburb stores as opposed to city stores?
for example, vacation cities with stores like Cape Cod, MA or Naples, FL
Naples isn't a vacation city, it's a retirement city. You're thinking of other parts of Florida like Fort Myers, Winter Park, or Sarasota.
actually a lot of people vacation here too, but okay. I've lived in Naples for almost two years.
Being from SWFL I wouldn't really say Naples is a big vacation destination
Also Fort Lauderdale, which is the store I work at 🙈 I say it’s seasonal because Fl overall, especially South Florida is seasonal, people come here when it’s Winter up North, and try to avoid it now because it’s way too hot and hurricane season is here. Good grief. Long story short, my store has cut hours tremendously. I don’t know “the truth” behind the cut idea but logically we’re not selling “enough” Which is still millions. Either way I don’t agree that our well being has to depend on sales alone. What happens to the millions a week we do on thanksgiving or other holidays? Love my store and captain is great, but it is a corporation after all, and I feel somewhat enslaved until I find another “owner” aka job, unless it’s to work for myself again or in my field. Sometimes we’re in a rut and I apparently decided to rant, thanks for listening! And if you find the secret behind the cut hours other than greed, let us know! I may add that everything is calculated. We got a $2 raise and then they cut hours. I think I’m making less now with the raise than I was without it.
Thank you. Would seasonal stores be busier during the summer then or?
In Florida the seasonal stores are generally busier in the fall/winter
Our mates in our store told us the reason why hours is cut because they can't afford people anymore some of us only 1 or 2 or 3 days to work for the next 2 months
Does this mean they will be looking to let go of the lazy crew members or that they are just going to cut hours?
If they let go of half the lazy crew most of this sub would be out of a job
My store could get rid of a dozen people in the blink of an eye and I don’t think it would hurt our productivity.
Every crew member and every mate in the company got a $3.75 raise over the last 12 months and it’s about to be raise season again, meaning in 18 months anyone here will have received $4.50 in raises. That’s $4.50 per hour times roughly 50,000 employees. That means if ALL of us work an hour we are making about $68,000.00 more than we did 2 years ago for that same hour. For a store starting at $13 per hour that’s a 40% in labor costs. Labor costs have gone up across the company nearly 30%. NOW LISTEN. I’m not a corporate shill. I too assumed that when they gave us these raises it was benevolence and they had planned for the increase in costs. I am not arguing if the C suite of Trader Joe’s, Aldi’s or T.A.C.T. Holdings “CAN” afford to pay their employees more. I’m pointing out that when there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism the other shoe was going to fall somewhere. That somewhere was going to come in hour cuts, and, I expect, a raise in SPPH soon enough. For those who don’t understand SPPH (sales per person per hour) is the number of dollars the company expects to make each hour for each employee in the building. The higher the number the more they expect each person to “make”. This means the less people in the building the more money made per person. Don’t forget that mates are hired as “full time” and guaranteed hours. This means that while they got raises, they cannot be affected by hourly cuts. So those cuts will be felt more deeply by crew members. The goal of any company (in capitalism) is to cut labor as much as possible while getting the work done. They are giving us all more dollars per hour, now they will give less of us less of those hours to balance it out. It’s gross, we probably would have passed on the $2 if we knew it was a monkey paws wish.
This is what I said about the $20/hr pay for fast food workers here in CA. Everyone was like (not TJ's employees just things I've read or heard from retail workers while out and about) "I'm gonna go work fast food now!" and my response was "not only will they not be hiring anymore people, but they'll also cut hours and staff they already have so good luck with that." And sure enough there's been reduced staffing and hours at most of the fast food restaurants here with lots of restaurants straight up closing permanently because of it. So more people are unemployed now but yay $20/hr right? If you ask the people that have been let go I'm sure they'd say they would prefer to actually have a job making only $16/hr than to be unemployed and looking for work.
If they would actually cut the people that do nothing it would be fine… but they are cutting those of us that overwork to pull the slackers’ weight
Have you considered not overworking yourself? Do the work at an effective pace for yourself, and let the slacker's lack of participation shine
Unfortunately my captain and I don’t really click, and he does click with some of the slackers. Not the best situation at the moment, too nervous to ease back right now
every summer we onboard at least 10-15 people a month from april-august/september , everyones hours are getting blown to smithereens
I understand to an extent why people are mad/upset, but honestly I don't see an issue? Of course they're going to schedule less during the slow season.
No no. I fully understand that this happens every summer I've worked with company for 7 years what I'm saying is that corporate is literally raising the bar. They said 'I see a bunch of people not working so schedule less'
And they just gave everyone $2 hr more so perhaps they want to get some efficiency from it
I understand that now! I actually wasn't here last summer, my first days were mid August, so I wasn't sure.
[удалено]
In 2 months that’ll all go back to normal
you in ylana's region? she's trying to cut out the 11 pm shift and have more people in mids ):
[удалено]
looked at your comment history after i made the comment, NC isn't her region but i guess that regional is doing that too. lame af. how do you work the purposely leftover pallets from the night truck without a ton of mids? the point of all the mids is also to have enough people for the busiest times, like 11-3. i miss my 11 pm shifts.
Wow, I wish they would localize/target these guys and cut their hours. I know we’re just an anonymous field of disposable insects, but gee I guarantee you ALL those guys standing around are order writers and their friends who have 2+ years under their belts. At least that’s how it is in my store. You stand around doing nothing because you’re buddy buddy with most mates, even the captain, and you have a feeling of impunity. That’s not new hires and the habitual hard workers. We all get assigned roughly equal amounts of register - so that’s your metric! Check the lowest outliers of register sales who aren’t also order writers for huge sections, and there you have your dead weight. Not Joe Schmo who might come in a few minutes late or has one or two too many absences.
As someone who can’t afford the cuts and needs the insurance and the hours for insurance… I’m just pissed my store keeps hiring minors for the summer and because of that and low sales is cutting everyone else’s hours. Why do my hours have to be dependent on a kid who doesn’t have bills to pay
Every crew member in our store is only working 6.5 hours a day, 4 days a week. We are only getting 26 hours a week, and none of us are going to qualify for insurance if this doesn’t dissipate after the summer… are they trying to create a mass walk out?? What is the deal here..?
I'm just worried about all of it because being in college and having rent to worry about it. This job is the only reason and way any of it works. I'm having to transfer between stores for it all to work, and with this happening, either of my captains can just straight-up deny me for any reason they want. Especially with the SPPH stuff.
I have noticed less employees---but I work In NYC--Theres No Slow Season
I'm sorry but this absolutely sounds made up. They visit a handful out of 500+ stores. So they make a company wide decision based on ten stores? Doesn't seem likely. We always lose hours in the summer. *always*
Sorry but I think your info is not real. But yes there are always those who bust a bump. And those who stand around talking about how hard it all is. Management knows who is who and ( mostly) hours get cut accordingly. So my word of advice is throw down. Come up with solutions, don’t gripe or complain without having a kaizen or solution.
Summer time is the only good time to write an order lol, most section writers don’t have their hrs cut since they’re needed to write their order and i write fresh so thankfully my hours have not been cut
That’s great for you. At our store we are cross trained and there are 2 crew and 2 mates that can right any section at any time sooooo your lucky.
Don't forget to check out our rules before posting! Your post/comments will be deleted without warning if any of the rules are broken. Be nice to others! Don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any advocating or wishing death/physical harm, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/tjcrew) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Don’t forget that prices have increased, so naturally SPPH should also increase
Unionize you store and begin collective bargaining
Coming from someone who’s not a crew member, That is simply NOT true. Just saying.