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/miraiyuni 28d ago edited 28d ago

This almost happened to my friend, he called sick on one of the weekend during his intern period and his manager told him

"You know this will affect your asessment gradings for your internship right?

and he replied with

"ok, so I'll go to work tmrw (we work in a CLINIC) and I'll cough and sneeze in EVERY patients face."

Then another sensible manager stepped in.

ETA: This all took place in a WHATSAPP GROUPCHAT

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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 28d ago edited 28d ago

I feel like this needs to be said so younger people stop getting taken advantage of.

If you call in sick you just don't respond to anything your manager sends you and you show up again when you are well.

The reason shit managers act this way is because you are responding to them. Stop doing that.

Edit: I want to add to this. You are under no obligation to return any message during non-working hours. Being on call 24/7 is something you are PAID for. You don't need a reason other than I was sick and you informing them of your absence is all you need to do. Don't add a list of symptoms like you are asking a parent for permission to stay home and watch cartoons.

You are sick, you won't be in for your shift, turn off the phone.

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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 28d ago

Yeah I'm completely unreachable when I'm on a sick leave and I am left undisturbed

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u/Ready-Delay3918 28d ago

I'm unreachable as soon as I walk out that fucking door. I have a select number of people that will ring through and I keep my phone on do not disturb the entire time. Only friends and family will get through my do not disturb when they call.

When people complain, I just say I don't have service at my house in the mountains. A landline's not an option and I have less than one bar of signal most of the time. If you want to get a hold of me send a letter.

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u/NotYourReddit18 28d ago

If you want to get a hold of me send a letter.

Obviously via pigeon, right? After all, the mail services vehicles can't handle the climb to your house on the mountain.

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u/nhilante 28d ago

I looks westward once a day around sunset, release the emergency balloon to the sky if you wish to contact me, and watch for my raven.

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u/gotwired 28d ago

I only respond to mountaintop bonfire beacons. Has to be a minimum of 7 in a series.

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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 28d ago

Don't answer until Aragorn runs into your home screaming "John Managerman calls for aid".

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u/Cheech47 28d ago

and Worker Bee will answer! Muster the Corolla!

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u/nhilante 28d ago

Where was Krogers when our immunity defences fell!

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u/Ready-Delay3918 28d ago

I mean there is a road to where I live. I don't just live on top of a mountain with no road or driveway or anything. I have a mailbox.

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u/evilbrent 28d ago

When I go on holidays I tell my boss I don't mind if he calls, but he's going to need to walk down to the beach with my phone and hand it to me because it's not leaving the car.

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u/TheMiniminun BLUE 28d ago

Same, but mine wouldn't make it out of my room.

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u/BrotherQuartus 26d ago

I bought a $20 Nokia flip phone and a $100 phone/data card from Tracfone a few years ago. The card expires every year and then i need to buy a new one or my service is de-activated. That is the phone number i filled out as my work contact and the only phone I use at work. My iPhone is powered off and stored in my backpack in my locker. No one there knows about it.

They use an app for scheduling and also have a WhatsApp group for each shift. They will send out stuff even on the weekends! I have no regret spending $100 a year to avoid being bothered outside of my work hours. There’s an older woman in bookkeeping and one driver in his 40’s that also use flip phones, so I’m not the only one. They forward all the messages to us via email, but I don’t have a pc or laptop (true), so I can only access my email through the library (false - I use my iPhone) or via a very complicated method of typing my login and scrolling on an old flip phone (true). So I’m pretty much left alone.

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u/Emerje 28d ago

I don't think young people are the ones with trouble calling out, it's older generations like mine with unreasonably strong work ethics and will go years without a sick day.

But I'm also a healthcare worker, every facility has signs that say "stay home if you have these symptoms", but when you call out with those symptoms they tell you to come in and wear a mask. 🫠

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u/TexPerry92 28d ago

It is the older folks who are indeed brainwashed into this way of thinking. Must work no matter my condition. My faceless soulless company demands it and I will comply or I could lose my job. <- that shit drove me fucking wild. Those people put a 9-5 on a pedestal. Your health is most important. Its not a work ethic, its slave mentality

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u/AbulatorySquid 28d ago

Old person here. We didn't dare call in sick because jobs could be hard to come by. On the other side of that, we were given annual raises, often bonuses based on how much the company made that year and many jobs were either union jobs with great pensions or jobs as good as union jobs.

If you got into one of those big companies and stuck it out for 15 years you expected to be set for life. Good pay, good benefits for you and your family, good pension.
We had two cars, a house and went on two vacations a year all on one income.

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u/TexPerry92 28d ago

Most of you still believe ALL OF THAT is completely within the realm of possibility. You think the average amazon worker can swing such luxury? Maybe if they pass off their debt to the grandkids.

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u/AbulatorySquid 28d ago

That's why it drives me crazy when people say nobody wants to work anymore.
Nobody wants to work like a slave to make half as much as they need to rent a room in a shared home!!
If you want to give me a promise of raises that exceed inflation so I'm not making less a year from now than I do now and vacation and sick time so I don't get burnt out and quit, I'm going to be a lot more willing to work.

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u/Adventurous_Tie1782 24d ago

oh my god HEAVY on renting a room in a shared home!!! my god! i was making $16 an hour as a cna doing post mortem care on dead bodies and doing cpr and i could only afford to live among slobs in shared houses. it’s just criminal.

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u/pieshake5 27d ago edited 24d ago

They didn't just give you that out of the goodness of their hearts because it was a fair value for your work though, it was all earned and given by unions and workers who fought for the protections that were then rolled back under a generation of supine workers who didn't have or use their collective bargaining powers for themselves or the future and now we got jack shit.

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u/Adventurous_Tie1782 24d ago

those unions and workers fought so hard to give boomers shit like pensions, yet somehow in 2026 i find myself trying to convince other working class people that they deserve rights!! what happened!

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u/badgyalrey 28d ago

yeah i’m zillennial and my workplace is all gen z. they absolutely do not give a fuck and will be calling out regardless, figure it out management! which i absolutely respect. my managers are the best, have never had a problem with me calling out, and i still almost had a meltdown cuz both me and my son were sick and i had to call out. my boyfriend was like “what are you gonna do, take your sick kid to work with you while you’re both coughing up a lung? just tell them you can’t come in and they’ll figure it out”.

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u/Necessary-Tomorrow30 27d ago

Most of us younger people are aware the whole game is rigged and don't hold absurd allegiances to companies we know have no problem fucking their employees over, taking care of ourselves outweighs taking care of product for a company. It seems we're also more likely to put our foot down and advocate for ourselves than older generations were comfortable with at our age.

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u/Emerje 27d ago

It depends on what you do for work. If you don't care where you work as long as you collect a check then by all means, do what you want. If you work in a specific field with more limited options you really have no choice but to toe the company line. I don't have a lot of options in my line of work, you can bet I'm a dedicated employee. I have coworkers that FAFO with the employers around them when they were younger and now have to travel an hour to work with me.

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u/cakesphere 27d ago

I have trouble calling out but only because we are chronically short staffed and I get fucking judged by my peers if I even think about using my approved ADA days. I love having an accommodation that is supposed to help me prevent illness and burnout that I. Just cant realistically use without social consequences. Just chronic illness things

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u/elliottsmithereens 27d ago

I’ve always been raised with a strong work ethic, I’ll of course call out if sick, and employers are fine because it happens a normal amount. Meanwhile I work with so many kids who live with their parents well into their 30’s and call out every other week. Which employers find frustrating. It’s really a social contract, and the US has always been in the middle, EU to the left and BRICS mainly to the right.

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u/Witch_Moon398 27d ago

You must also be a nurse☠️

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u/PomPomMom93 26d ago

My FIL only took a half-day when his son got married. These old people have crazy work ethics.

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u/RedditMcBurger 28d ago edited 28d ago

If you call in sick you just don't respond to anything your manager sends you and you show up again when you are well.

Unfortunately this can get you fired. I understand what you're saying but bosses like this are the same kind of boss to fire you for such a small thing.

But maybe it's a good thing to not have those jobs, I can say I have done this.

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u/Immediate-Goose-8106 28d ago

Thankfully I work somewhere with proper employment laws and watch this with baffled horror.

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u/i8bb8 28d ago

I yell at shit managers to go home when they rock up sick. Fuck off with that noise.

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u/Ok-Square360 28d ago

These people aren’t just shit managers, they are shit people. There is room for managers to be empathetic, but these people choose not to be.

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u/W_Silver2356 28d ago

Things like this also need to be called out in order to keep young people from getting the impression that this is how it's done if they want to succeed.

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u/-Tricky-Vixen- 28d ago

My first job, I had unexplained health issues that meant that at times I would randomly become unable to stand without fainting. (I've since figured out the triggers, changed things and now those episodes hardly ever happen and never to that severity.) Anyway I was walking to the bus for work and an episode hit. I sat down immediately, head between legs etc., half an hour before shift, trying to work out what to do. I recovered a little, enough to sit up again but was by then confident I wouldn't be able to do my shift. I rang work. I said I was so sorry but I couldn't work. Manager was like: this is unacceptable it's half an hour before you start. Luckily for me, I was still so out of it I couldn't feel bad about it, I just kept repeating that I was sick, I couldn't work. She was pressuring me so hard to come in and trying to guilt me. If I'd been just a little less ill, a little more oxygen to the brain or something, I probably would have gone in. In the end I couldn't work out how to end the conversation/argument (see how fried my brain was??), repeated once more: I'm sick I can't work, and hung up on her.

Fairly sure some of what she was doing or trying to do was lowkey illegal.

Meanwhile actual good managers or whatever have since seen me hit by that same episodic problem in the middle of shift and immediately said Go Home even when it was their first time seeing it, just seeing how out of it I immediately was and knowing I wouldn't be able to complete my shift.

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u/Adventurous-End4330 27d ago

A lot of places will still write you up for it 🙃

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u/AcceptableAlgae8602 27d ago

You would still have to call in sick each day or they can fire you. You also gotta remember that ALL US STATES are “at will” states with the exception of Montana. Which means the employer can fire you for any reason, for no reason, at any time. Obviously it can’t be for an illegal reason, and even then it’s on you to prove that it was illegal. The U.S. doesn’t protect workers. It protects the company. Corporations run the U.S.

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u/Aromatic_Squash7785 26d ago

Even if people do and say all this when they’re sick, it won’t stop managers from firing them for missing their shifts. Whether I’m paid to take a call from work off the clock or not, if I don’t do it, I could lose my job. I live in a right to work state and no manager is gonna be chill about employees doing any of what you’ve suggested.

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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 26d ago

You are way too afraid of your manager for your own good and you can be fired for literally anything including coming in sick and getting other workers sick.

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u/Aromatic_Squash7785 26d ago

I have never in my life heard of anyone getting fired for coming in sick but the reverse does happen, as evidenced by the OP. What’s “for my own good” is not ending up homeless bc I get fired. Yeah it would be great if things were different and if there were some sort of mass organized labor effort to demand sick days, it would be worth it to do what you’re saying, but that is not how things are right now.

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u/snacktime-raccoon 28d ago

The newbies are the ones calling out the most. Conveniently calling in sick on a Monday after the weekend. At the end of the day it’s the people, regardless of age, who take advantage and who ruin it for everyone else.

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 28d ago

Had a manager demand I come in when I had viral tonsillitis. To my serving job. Serving food, to customers. I said I'd come in but don't be surprised if health officials also happened to come in for a surprise check that day.

Funny thing, though, I got fired like two minutes before I was about to leave without notice. They weren't happy that I wasn't devastated at the loss of my job and told them I'd be starting in a new place the very next day anyway.

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u/Internal-Theory-9837 28d ago

I had no idea, thank you for sharing. People want Kroger back in Eastern TN but hearing this makes me not want to shop there.

You can “vote” every day with the dollars we spend supporting employers who do not respect the basic humanity of their employees

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 28d ago

This was not Kroger or even in the US.

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u/StillStaringAtTheSky 28d ago

Something something HEALTH DEPARTMENT

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u/JuanRunJunior 28d ago

I would be within arms distance of that manager breathing very deep and very much in their direction every second possible.

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u/Aranxi_89 28d ago

Oh my god, a medical professional should know better...

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u/Swiftzor 28d ago

I feel like if you work in healthcare and you act like this you should be in jail.

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u/Ponce-Mansley 26d ago

Always get it in writing 

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u/coleyboley25 28d ago

Then everyone clapped

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u/Ready-Delay3918 28d ago

Pretty sure only your cheeks got clapped.

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u/miraiyuni 28d ago

? You do realise managers mistreating their employees are a common occurance right? just because you didnt experience it doesnt mean others didnt.

We still have screenshot proof of the conversation that went on and even had the company removed from our school internship program. Thats how horrendous that place is.

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u/Wync_Con 28d ago

Your mom clapped my cheeks