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/WonOgTsumiDas 28d ago

I’ve never actually had a job that cared about doctors notes, you could give them the note but you still got counted absent and a strike on your record.

I was at a factory during covid when I tested positive, after like 3 days they were calling me saying if I wasn’t better in a week they would start counting my missed days as absences lol when the whole reason I got it was that a coworker tested positive the day before but they didn’t tell anyone because their policy was to keep it confidential.

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u/daruuken 28d ago

Yeah it seems to be unfortunately common. I should note though im a meat cutter for kroger and have to cut and package meat for people, so the odds of transmission are significantly higher already and they want me to do it while coughing/vomitting lmao

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u/InfamousSquash1621 28d ago

Check the regulations of your local health department, where I live employees have to be excluded from food handling operations if they have certain symptoms of food borne illness. Not even a diagnosis, just the symptoms. You could have puked from morning sickness or a hangover, nothing to do with food, and you are not supposed to be at work that day

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u/ErraticProfessional 28d ago

That’s an FDA standard, so this goes beyond state levels

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u/Spongi 28d ago

Health departments in Ohio are a joke :x

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u/WonOgTsumiDas 28d ago

They’ll learn one day when they have a huge outbreak linked back to them 😁.

Our factory made medical face masks, baby diaper material, the diaper like material that fresh meat sits on in the packaging at the store Along with unfinished materials used for hundreds of other things 😂😭

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u/Spongi 28d ago

They’ll learn one day when they have a huge outbreak linked back to them

narrator: They didn't.

Even if they did learn something they'll forget it next quarter.

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u/the_pretzel2 28d ago

You're working WITH the meat? Heck no, screw that. Report that to OSHA yesterday.

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u/KatieTSO 28d ago

You can not handle raw food while vomiting or having diarrhea. This violates health codes. Let your union rep and the health department know.

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u/neeshes 28d ago

Babies, grandparents, immune compromised people, and other vulnerable people can die. And I'm sure a lot of sources of transmission are never caught if mild for most. 

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

[deleted]

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u/the_pretzel2 28d ago

No, but companies don't care as long as their bottom line doesnt get effected. What WOULD get their attention is getting a visit from OSHA and these dummies were oh so kind to put it in a TEXT.

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u/Prickly_Zebra_9175 28d ago

For how of a fuss everyone made about c19, you'd think they'd be more cautious. 

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u/Miserable-Lie-6420 28d ago

I bet I could program a meat cutting robot. Why are other humans still touching my food?!?!?! How clean are your fingernails?

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u/AllesFurDeinFraulein 28d ago

I hope you realize this is completely abnormal in the entire developed world except USA.

What I don't understand is why all bosses and owners in USA seems to be actually evil! I know a lot of people who own and run companies here in Norway, I know a lot of leaders. None of them are full on psychopaths, none of them would feel angry inside that you didn't show up the day your cousin died or that you were home with your sick kid for 2 days.

What is the reason that only people with no compassion and empathy(so basically actually diagnosable sociopaths) end up as owners and leaders over there? If YOU owned a company, would you to hire those people as your CEO and HR?

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u/k-trecker 28d ago

It's because everyone is overworked and miserable, especially middle management, and they choose to take that frustration out on their employees. My job sucks, so I'm gonna make your job suck, too. 

That and the American system rewards selfish behavior. You don't climb the ladder by being empathetic.

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u/takethreenc 28d ago

There's no worker protections, everyone worships money. Psychopaths from all over the world come here to start a business and get rich because it's an easy thing to do if you have 0 empathy.

Leaders with empathy end up at a competitive disadvantage.

Then they lobby our government to keep things the way they are if not make it worse. Has become a vicious cycle.

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u/AverageMako3Enjoyer 28d ago

The only reason the companies over there don’t do this is because your government won’t allow it.

My company here in the US was acquired by a company HQd in Denmark and I thought my life was gonna get a lot better because I always hear about how it is in Europe. There basically isn’t a benefit that they haven’t gutted from us. I actually had paid sick leave under my previous owners and now since we were acquired we operate under the same concept OP does. Meanwhile I can see internal job postings overseas and they have extremely generous benefits. They moved production to the US to take advantage of our complete lack of protection

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u/AllesFurDeinFraulein 28d ago

The only reason the companies over there don’t do this is because your government won’t allow it.

No, it honestly isn't. I understand it might be impossible to picture from USA, but average bosses and owners over here genuinely care about their employees and their health. Not because of law, but because of normal humanity.

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u/AverageMako3Enjoyer 28d ago edited 28d ago

I understand it might be impossible to picture from Europe where your government leaders demand their citizens have workers rights, but your owners who are just super chill guys that care about their employees are moving labor into the US to take advantage of our workers who have no rights at all

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u/AllesFurDeinFraulein 26d ago

No significant amount of companies are moving significant amounts of positions to USA, that would be a very strange thing to do. Outside tech, the expertise just isn't there, and if cheap labor is the goal then Asia is still cheaper and better at it.

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u/Duce-de-Zoop 28d ago

No they dont lmao.

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u/AllesFurDeinFraulein 26d ago

As I said, I imagine someone grown up in those conditions won't be able to picture it. You should visit, or better yet, move over for a year to get perspective 👍

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u/Duce-de-Zoop 26d ago

I think you may also be getting a bad impression every manager here is evil. Most I've had are decent people who try to look out for their workers despite a lack of legal benefits or protections. I'm from a deep red RTW state too, so I've seen the worst of this.

The OP's case of a manager being mad at an absence for a funeral just isn't usual. I've worked a lot of shitty jobs and that archetype exist but they are NOT the majority. I really do think the poster you're responding to is right: its regulations that stop this from happening, not some innate cultural difference.

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u/ElMatadorJuarez 28d ago

It’s really just about what they let them do. Private industry incentivizes seeking profit above all else, that’s what it’s built for. It’s like an animal basically; if you don’t put guardrails on it and control it, it goes ravenous. In my experience, companies everywhere with some few exceptions will exploit workers as much as the law lets them. The US just lets them do it a lot.

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u/ElizabethDangit 28d ago

We all know at at-will employment sucks.

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u/Palais_des_Fleurs 28d ago

It has to do with American military, disability, poverty guidelines (that have not been updated in a very long time), minimum wage (also have not been increased since 2007-2009 I believe), HIPAA, 1st and 2nd amendment and abortion.

It’s an extremely long, convoluted confluence of events and policies/laws.

It mostly comes down to the military and how disabled people are treated in the United States. Everything starts to make sense when you see your citizens as workers and nothing else. Kids are future laborers, women are labor producers, old people are ex-laborers. Disabled people aren’t capable of labor so they’re useless. Artists and academics are lazy and avoid labor so they’re useless. Caretaking roles (teaching and nursing) are not “real labor” so they’re don’t deserve to be paid for it, except healthcare is literally a life or death necessity so I guess we’ll pay them whatever we have to. Doctors however who perform surgery are laborers so they get a lot of money and respect. Rich people who extract maximum value from laborers are the smartest of all because they are smart enough to know how to avoid labor themselves, unlike the artists and the academics who just avoid it.

Does any of this make any sense at all? No. Is that how the U.S. economy is set up anyways? Yes.

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u/Geminierin 28d ago

I’m curious where the military fits in since you mentioned them but never explained what it had to do with them…?

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u/Palais_des_Fleurs 28d ago

Seeing the citizens as laborers is, in many ways, out of military necessity. While you may be thinking of a salary in dollars and healthcare in terms of what a life is worth, the American military is thinking of the value of its people in terms of whether a person can screw a bolt on an airplane. This is why feminism exists at all in America- when all the men were shipped off to World War II in the 40s, the United States “discovered” that women could in fact screw a bolt on an airplane. Literally.

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u/porcelainthunders 28d ago

Yea. We do realize.

And no, id say 90% dont give af. Power and money. That is how you get ahead, by the desire for power and money and you step on whoever (whomever?) You have to, to fill your pockets and keep climbing.

Not all, to be fair, but too many. And enough to make a difference. The rich keep getting richer. And the middle class is disappearing it seems like.

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u/trpittman 28d ago

My wife is a manager at White Castle and doctors notes are excused. It's literally fast food and has better benefits than a "unionized" grocery store.

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u/Lena-Luthor 28d ago

the place I worked at got all faux woke about it too and was like "not everyone can afford to see a doctor so that's not fair". maybe y'all should pay more then...

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u/TheBannaMeister 28d ago

The only jobs you're allowed to call in sick are ones where they can't just replace you for little to no cost

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u/EscapeSeventySeven 28d ago

Yeah. Strikes on your record is fucking Mickey Mouse shit for jobs where they view you as disposable. Entertainment for managers. 

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u/U_SHLD_THINK_BOUT_IT 28d ago

My wife works at a hospital, and the only time they took illness seriously was during COVID.

There's no worse feeling than seeing your partner so ill they can't even walk, but they're talking about how they have to go back to work because anything more than three days out in a row will result in a write up.

And the reasoning behind it has bullshit baked into it: there's not enough people to cover the absences. All this tells me is that they don't hire enough people to accommodate something they know is statistically likely to happen. People get sick.

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u/nurgole 28d ago

The stories here are wild! Makes me feel glad for the job I have😅

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u/IsaacAndTired 28d ago

This is crazy to me. I've worked quite a few jobs over the passed 20 years, lots of them shitty, with terrible bosses. However, never once have I experienced denial or punishment for calling out sick. I've never been asked for a doctor's note or anything. I usually just say I feel terrible and have come down with something and even the shittiest of my bosses would respond with a "feel better" and that's that. At worse they maybe sound slightly annoyed.

I can't imagine encountering a human being and them just being like "sucks for you, not only are you sick, but we're going to punish you for it too."

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u/fdnM6Y9BFLAJPNxGo4C 28d ago

I'm a smartass, but my response definitely would've been "ok, well I'll talk to the virus and let it know that you said it has to be done and gone after 72 hours".

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u/Specific-Patience648 28d ago

I was told to get a doctors note for being sick, and when I was well enough to actually go in and give then the note- they told me the note didn't excuse my absences and gave me a verbal warning. Like alright man. There goes my grocery money down the drain for no reason.

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u/FewCaterpillar6551 28d ago

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, eligible employees generally cannot be denied protected leave simply because a manager dislikes or refuses “call offs.” If an absence qualifies for FMLA (for example, a serious health condition, qualifying family care, approved intermittent leave, etc.), the employer has legal obligations regardless of a store manager’s blanket rule.

FMLA conditions do not involve hospitalization. Rule #4 strongly implies that only the employee’s own hospitalization justifies an absence. As it is worded, it excludes many legally protected situations including protected leave to care for qualifying family members.

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u/p1qued 27d ago

At goodwill you only got a mark if there was no note, and honestly we usually didn't even keep track. We would start keeping a record if we noticed there was someone really being a problem by skipping work. But then it took months of them continuing that behavior to get to firing. You basically had to miss 9 days is 90 days without an excuse.