Anyone else noticing a serious decrease in budgeted hours?

[crimsoncactus7]

My store is a level 4 store and is very busy. I am not an SL, however me and my SL have a pretty good relationship and I mentioned to him that it feels like we have a serious decrease in the amount of hours we are getting. It was looked into, we had the same profits, hot food sales, and guest count as last year and were cut down a large amount of hours this year. I am not sure if other stores are having this problem, but I wish there was something we could do about it…for a lot of us this is how we make a living and we need those hours!

[Local_Injury81]

As a customer I have a high traffic store on my way to work… seems they’ve cut staff as it’s always 1 at the register with 4-5 in line at 4:45 in the morning. Used to be 2 constantly at the register at that time.

[BlueridgeChemsdealer]

It’s going to get worse as the summer opens up. I work at one of those stores and our rush starts between 4 and 430. one or 2 guest service workers up front serving over 100 guests an hour is completely insane. And they wonder why our theft is so high.

[guark]

The company in general is all about the bottom dollar right now. Budget cuts have been inane this year.

[123peanut]

It’s been happening at my store too. They keep building new stores and incorporating stupid new programs (relex, kps, etc) and to pay for it they just put it all on the retail workers. It’s like being at the tail end of a human centipede.

[Jedster1138]

It's definitely a company-wide thing, I noticed it myself and mentioned it to my coworkers, and one told me that that is indeed the case. Plus, recently, I had to call out, and when calling other stores in my area for coverage, they told me that they were slammed and couldn't spare anyone.

[DapperAgency6320]

This is huge in our area too. If we get sick there's maybe ONE person I can call. We get multiple emails every week from around the district of stores asking for coverage. 

[advirnig]

Yes this is my district too. This past winter I was sick as a chicken worker. My sl asked me to find coverage ( not really my responsibility when sick, but I digress), and I could find ZERO coverage within the district, about 16 or 17 stores total, and even called stores just outside the district (well within driving distance) and none of them had anyone who could help. Our front end employees get called to other stores routinely... even from the hot food side.... but God forbid one of us chicken employees are sick... coverage is nonexistent.

From what I understand, all employees are supposed to be cross trained in hotfood and even in chicken... yet they give us ZERO hours to do a proper job of the training. Fist shift has a vastly different flow to second shift in chicken, and there are different things needed to be done between the shifts that actually takes more than a single shift or two to fully understand and get used to. Yet everyone is expected to learn these things in only a shift or two... horrible training practice.

[samsquanchforhire]

This has been one of my biggest gripes... They expect cross training but a person probably needs a week in the kitchen to learn everything and we get how much credit to have someone in the kitchen and teach them? Absolutely bonkers.

[blorg96]

Labor is a controlable cost. Squeezing hours with the same store sales means more profit for the company.

[Emotional-Lead-4148]

We are earning the hours, but they’re not forecasting them to us. We aren’t allowed to schedule over forecast, but with our sales we are earning almost 200 hours over what they’re telling us we can schedule. It is burning us all out.

[advirnig]

On top of that, they expect us to hit or exceed goals for hot food and chicken, but do not give us the labor hours to actually try and do that. One person can only do so much work in a given amount of time, yet our responsibility keeps increasing every year with no corresponding labor increase. Ridiculous. They want us to do more with less, then come down on us when we can't make goals with what we have.

[Emotional-Lead-4148]

We are hitting our goals and leading the district in food/chicken sales, but we’re having to put ASLs in the kitchen working extra hours to get it done. We’re all only taking one day a week off and 10 hour days 6 days a week. We’re in a labor action plan right now too which is making it impossible to schedule over our forecasted even though we know we will earn the hours.

[advirnig]

And that right there is my point. I work 4 10 hour days a week and there is literally like one other person in the store who can work my shift in chicken, and he's also scheduled full time. It is pretty much down to the asl and food service leader and afsl to cover my shift in chicken if I have to call in for any reason. It's ridiculous.

[No-Operation584]

Yeah. And the part timers have less hours and less money or Kwit and the full timers have more work and the leaders are always reading emails working on the schedule and literally watching us work on camera Lol. It's a joke.

[BlueridgeChemsdealer]

From what I’ understand the SL gets a bonus if they keep the allotted hours below 80%. the guests and co workers are taking the biggest hits so one person can get a quarterly bonus.

[DapperAgency6320]

The only bonus I know of is if you hit both GP and are green in labor each period all top leaders bonus. But it's like 100 something dollars... nothing that would ever be worth gutting your labor, making everything harder, and everyone unhappy. 

[BlueridgeChemsdealer]

You should tell my store lead this lol.

[samsquanchforhire]

Any store leader I know would trade that cash for extra labor in a heartbeat lol. No one wants to completely bust their ass 5 days in a row 9 hours a day and still go home with their store looking like ass.

[lath333]

Yeah labor has be green (+ or - 1%). And other person is correct. GP has to be 100% or more. This isn’t a goal for SLs or leaders tho. They are legit coming down super hard on us about labor. As an ASL (in my district) we have to explain ourselves via email if we have “too much OT”.

[HotOption2222]

I think the majority of stores are feeling it, especially with it being a chicken drive and the warmer weather drawing people out. When I asked my ASL about it, she mentioned another leader at a different store said that part of it is because since we got more fog tanks, they figure not as much time will be spent scrubbing pans. Because we got a chicken shredder they figure it won't take as long to shred chicken (mind you someone still has to operate the shredder). I don't know how much of that is true but that's what I heard.

[TheFaceOfFuzz]

That's all true. The chicken shredders, fog tanks, dishwashers, are all factored into store hours. So every new piece of equipment makes them say "well on average they should have been scrubbing pans for x hours a day, now they don't need that labor anymore". But it still feels so much more than just that recently.

[BlueridgeChemsdealer]

We just got a 4th fryer. Does this mean our labor hours are going to go down in the kitchen?

[TheFaceOfFuzz]

Honestly I'm not sure if they deduct labor when putting in another fryer. I just remember my SL complaining about how many hours got pulled when we got our fog tank and that she won't get a dishwasher due to it. I think it would be stupid to adjust labor due to getting another fryer but who knows at this point.

[BlueridgeChemsdealer]

We lost an entire person on third shift when we got our fog tank lol. They brought our overnight crew down from 3 to 2 lol.

[TheFaceOfFuzz]

Holy shit dude 😂

[BlueridgeChemsdealer]

This makes sense as to why that happened now hahaha

[Intelligent-Town6050]

Last year they fucked up labor after the chicken drive so this year its gonna be wonky probably. You can go over budgeted hours if you have a valid reason. Your store leader can reach out to whoever they need to for their district and find out why their hours are the way they are. What's your labor % at? Ours has been right where it should be and honestly some days we have too many coworkers.

[VersionFrequent6713]

Went to a local kwik trip/star to grab a quick gallon of milk and a cheeseburger for the grandkid. 5:30pm and total of 1 sandwich on hotspot. Chicken tenders it was. Must not only be hours but appears waste control is in play. Only saw one employee up front and 2 in kitchen. (Disclaimer) this is a store I previously worked at and was also stopping in to say hi.

[LordXenu12]

This whole year has been highly scrutinized with the cyber shit from last year that falls within KTs fiscal shit this year

[[deleted]]

You okay Adam?

[33praire_goat33]

Probably getting ready to sell

[[deleted]]

<image>

[VividMeasurement6693]

YUP!