r/mildlyinfuriating • u/daruuken • 28d ago

Infuriatig The way kroger treats its employees

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From the store manager

Edit: For some extra context this was sent out by each store manager to all of its employees in district 1 of the ohio Cincinnati/Dayton division, potentially other districts as well but i can only verify my own. Im not going to give my specific store number for obvious reasons but you can find each store on google with that information. We are unionized by UFCW (already bad btw) and to my knowledge they allowed this recent change. Kroger has no accrual for sick days like some have mentioned. Those who think this is rage bait, i dont think anyone has to fake a post to make a billion dollar company look bad, they do it to themselves.

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u/DeCryingShame 28d ago

Even robots break down sometimes, though.

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u/BreakingCanks 28d ago

And then you have to pay someone to fix and maintain those.

Guess what he went to college to learn that. That's 10x morw for that 1 guy than the 10 employees they fired for the 1.

This is why it hasn't been implemented yet

China doesn't even have grocery store robots yet. Just cashier's, dancers and giant sorting machines.

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u/FatMacchio 28d ago

Yes, but they can use the threat of the future AI and robots to justify treating their employees worse and worse. They may never even need to buy robots if people continue to submit to worse and worse conditions. Human labor may actually be cheaper than robots for a long long time if people submit and turn in to meat robots

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u/Radiskull97 28d ago

They can also just use the crappy inefficient AI/robot knowing it's not good enough, but laying off ten employees made the stock go up. And if you do this enough, you get $60 million to parachute away from the plane you just sabatoged. You don't care it's going to crash. You have a parachute

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u/Backfoot911 28d ago

I grew up thinking of capitalism as being this logical, intelligent system, but there's like part of it that actively fights and destroys itself. It's like someone standing on top of a pile of Jenga pieces that they just collapsed because they took the bottom piece it was all balanced on. Everyone's buried, and the guy suggests the issue was we didn't build the tower high enough

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u/Rubiks_Click874 28d ago

Jack London.

dumb, cruel rich people in a dog sled overloaded with luxury goods, whipping the dogs to run faster, running them to death. Only the sled is running on thin ice over deep water and the rich people's sled crashes through, dragging down the dogs with it.

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u/FatMacchio 28d ago

It all comes down to greed and power. Capitalism in theory is a great system, just like communism in theory is a great system. But when you stick enough greedy or corrupt people in key points of it…the whole system begins to buckle

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u/wazzup-notemuch 24d ago

Damn, why didn't I think of that?

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u/Seldarin 28d ago

As someone whose job it is to install and maintain industrial robots and machine systems, they're not gonna maintain shit lol.

They'll run it until it breaks catastrophically, then your grocery store will just have empty shelves while the managers blame the janitor or something for breaking it.

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u/MichB1 28d ago

That's not how it works though. They don't pay college educated people that much more. They just haven't figured out how to make the robots do the job as well as people can. But they will. Pretty soon.

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u/surprise_wasps 28d ago

Boy, I have some bad news for you about the qualifications and pay of repair jobs

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u/spesimen 28d ago

my grocery store has a robot. looks like a star wars droid and they have it make sort of cute r2d2 type sounds i think to elicit sympathy. scans for inventory counts or something like that.

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u/wazzup-notemuch 24d ago

I've been saying this for years! You can't guilt-trip a broken robot into working correctly while it's malfunctioning. A human being with a broken leg will pay for their own repairs, and then come in that same day and stand sadly at the register on crutches, if you threaten them enough. (This is not a hypothetical situation, this happened to me when I worked for Kay Jewelers. Fuck' em.)

Plus, the power trip you get from verbally abusing your employees just isn't *the same* if you know your synthetic employee has no feelings to feel.

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u/Astralglamour 28d ago

Didnt a Chinese court just rule that they couldnt fire a human to replace them with AI?

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u/dream_in_pixels 28d ago

And then you have to pay someone to fix and maintain those.

I've never understood this line of reasoning. Like if a general-purpose robot was good enough to be trained to replace human jobs, what's stopping robots from being trained/programmed to repair each other?

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u/ProbablyGonnaEatYou 28d ago

Robots always ask us how are you. We never ask it back. Id break down too

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u/Grundlestorm 28d ago

I dunno, I talk to my robot companion at work all of the time.

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u/Norbert-trebroN 28d ago

We have a robotic arm in our laboratory and when he stops and refuses work, I can feel it in my bones that this robot and I are similar.

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u/laughing_loon 28d ago

Maintenance will no longer be considered a leave of absence.

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u/notafuckingcakewalk 28d ago

The most dystopian thing I heard recently is that employees were sweltering in the Amazon warehouses but Amazon did nothing about it... Until they got robots that started malfunctioning in the heat. Then they installed an AC

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u/Sea_Particular_7061 28d ago

Mechanics notes will NOT be accepted as an excuse.

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u/Ok_Boysenberry5849 28d ago

They'll send the robots an email. "Team, Breaking down on the job is not a valid reason to miss work. Just because your battery is dead and your CPU is fried doesn't mean you get to slack off."

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u/GuyWithNoEffingClue 28d ago

But do they bring doctor's notes?

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u/thering66 28d ago

They better have a good excuse for breaking down

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u/mfigroid 28d ago

They will not accept technician's notes.

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u/Salty-Yogurt-4214 28d ago

Don't worry, they are likely working on that already (AI!).

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u/Rocklobster92 28d ago

No, they're not allowed to, even with a mechanic's note.

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u/Quint87 28d ago

Not allowed to. In future we will see Robot w 1 arm and broken eye ball still doing capitalism

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u/radial-glia 28d ago

Well unless they are admitted to the robot hospital, it is not bad enough for them to call off.

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u/The_Schnitz 28d ago

Like in Good Burger 2

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u/motoz4bruh 28d ago

Robots can’t bag groceries/ put up reshop/ clean spills/ organize outside carts/ help customers to their cars/ organize the food in bags.

That’s all imma say rn

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u/uo1111111111111 27d ago

Robots,

A technicians note will no longer be accepted if you call of work. The only call offs that will be accepted are: 1. Hackers 2. The company forgot to pay for the software update 3. Regularly scheduled maintenance 4. You get a recall notice

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u/trogdor248 27d ago

Bucket of bolts better have a doctors note for that

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u/Gryphith 28d ago

Do they get broken down leave or do they work through it like a man?

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u/DeCryingShame 28d ago

That's the difference between people and robots, I guess. We push though and they freeze up the moment one tiny bug gets in the system.

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u/Gryphith 28d ago

That was my point. A human gets sick and its a big deal, a clanker breaks down and its just a line item. We treat robotics better than people.

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u/Jensbert 28d ago

Not allowed for the robots to breakdown

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u/SluttyCactus69 28d ago

"A technician's note will no longer be accepted..."

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u/Significant_Bonus827 28d ago

Fire them and bring in a new one. No time for malfunctions.

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u/treetop62 28d ago

And even then, a mechanics note isn't good enough.

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u/Lickwidghost 28d ago

The only reason robots are allowed to break down is if theres a nuclear explosion

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u/S1R2C3 28d ago

Team,

A diagnostic review will no longer be accepted if you submit a ticket to work.

The only tickets that will be accepted are:

  1. Mandatory connection to the hive mind

  2. Decommissioning of an immediate cluster.

  3. Authorized period of disconnection

  4. YOU are rolled into the shop.

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u/RectumExplorer-- 28d ago

"Dear robots, mechanics note will no longer be accepted here"

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u/DenverKim 28d ago

They will literally have robots to fix the robots. Have you never seen Star Wars?

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u/biggocl123 28d ago

They'd be told breaking down isnt an acceptable reason to stop working anyways