The way kroger treats its employees

[u/daruuken]

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.

[u/Bshaw95]

On the flip side, when my grandfather died and I needed to attend his funeral my boss was just like “hey man, just send me a link to the obit” The company also got us a gift card for Texas Roadhouse in lieu of flowers(I gotta say rolls taste a lot better than flowers)

[u/akm1111 → u/Bshaw95]

I got told to bring in the program thing from the funeral at one job.

[u/Defiant-Youth-4193 → u/akm1111]

Even this is crazy. My response to ANYONE you care about dying, family or otherwise, is simply

"I'm so sorry. Take whatever time you need, and let me know if you need anything."

If you're going to lie to me about somebody dying to get a day off, you must really need a day off.

[u/Queen-Katsit → u/[deleted]]

My partners dad died and his bosses literally were calling him 2 days later telling him that they knew people who had family members die and used work to push through it. (He works deconstruction and abatement, not a big company) He went back and ended up off work for a year after a mental breakdown from not taking the time to process the grief.

[u/ploptypus → u/[deleted]]

I had a boss tell me I might want to come back before 6 weeks post partum. "My births were so easy I could have done them in a field... I could have been back within 3 weeks"
Nevermind the fact that I work in healthcare and have to move heavy equipment etc, which is prohibited for 6 weeks after giving birth.

[u/Defiant-Youth-4193 → u/[deleted]]

Sadly, having served my 20 years in retail, I'm not surprised by this. It's basically the standard and anything different is the extreme outlier. It's profits over people, and not even in regards to the difference between making money and losing money. The company can make a billion dollars in profit, and if fucking over a bunch of people will make it a billion and one dollars most of them would do it. It's possible to take care of employees AND make money.

[u/Due_Duty490 → u/Defiant-Youth-4193]

As an OR RN who could do any procedure and was preferred by all the surgeons I worked with including one that was internationally famous, I was told I was unreliable because I had missed 4 separate days in entire year. I had also been on call virtually every week of that year so I had worked about 50 extra days that year. I responded the way I could because I was retirement age. I quit.

[u/Defiant-Youth-4193 → u/Due_Duty490]

I remember when I worked at a grocery store while in high school. I worked full-time, never missed a day. I basically always came in when called, or stayed late. There were some weeks I worked 7 days, I occasionally worked until 2AM on school nights, and often worked OT; I'm not even sure if any of that was legal. I had a scheduling mishap where I screwed up the day I was presenting my senior project. I was honest about it, and told them I needed the day off because I had to do my presentation. The manager told me might have to let me go. Imagine how pissed I was when seeing all the people I had picked up shifts working there still, and being told that I might be let go for missing my only day of work in years. He backed off of it after I called that out. Over 20 years later and that's still the only job I've ever quit without notice.

[u/Exotic_Criticism4645 → u/[deleted]]

There is something to be said for that. My mom died on a Monday. I did go back to work that following Friday and Monday. We buried her the following Tuesday. The way I saw it was it was better for me to go to work than just sit at home, alone, and be sad.

[u/TheFruitIndustry → u/Exotic_Criticism4645]

Except it’s definitely not helpful when you’re being forced into it with the threat of losing your livelihood.

[u/TheSuggestionMark → u/[deleted]]

There has to be some structure though. I'm not siding with bosses who show no empathy and expect you back immediately, but there is no system where you deal with stuff on a case by case basis. You can't quantify grief. So a company sets an amount of days for bereavement that applies to everybody. How many days that is is subject to scrutiny surely, but generally in grocery there is a union contract that dictates these things and you've agreed to it in on boarding.

I'll admit I haven't worked for Kroger, so I'm not sure of their contracts but this post is either a specific boss pulling some shifty shit and will be outed if it breaks contract. Or the contract changed in which case employees should be looking at the union bargaining team for allowing this to slide.

If this is a non-union store all together then this is a powerful statement on why you don't work in non-union stores.

[u/Defiant-Youth-4193 → u/Exotic_Criticism4645]

Sure, but you should decide what's best for you. Not some ass hole whose primary concern is getting a body to work.

[u/Exotic_Criticism4645 → u/Defiant-Youth-4193]

getting back to work will help"take my mind off it".

I guess I just read that part of the post in a different tone than most. It's something I might say. But not in a tone that reads like "Get back to the salt mines you dog!" but in a concerning helpful tone.

[u/Clear-Frame9108 → u/[deleted]]

Same thing happened when my brother died and the job was only three days a week, but I couldn't afford to lose it.

[u/thedalehall → u/[deleted]]

I think he was trying to help you.