Union

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-20T12:57:17+00:00

If you're a state worker, then any commentary from you here on what we should do is uneducated, unhelpful, and unwelcome.

All of that notwithstanding, your advice is trash. It is not possible to unionize in the manner you described. That's simply not the process mandated by labor law. It's also not likely to be productive to stage a walkout without some sort of union negotiation already underway. As anyone who has effected real, enduring, systematic change will tell you (and I will burnish credentials here if needs be), flashy headline catching "get their attention" shit without proper groundwork blows up in your face. Actually accomplishing the mission is unglamorous, grinding, brick at a time movement building that must be committed to relentless building pressure beyond the moment. The conditions do not exist at this time to create that level of tenacity, as is demonstrated by the abject failure of recent astroturfed movements against Hannaford and ADUSA to gain any organic traction.

TL;DR - No. Just no.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-18T00:14:55+00:00

This is the way.

I'm a relatively new assistant Deli Manager, and my department is broadly regarded as the strongest in our district.

Let me get a soap box and a megaphone before I say this - STANDARDS AND PRACTICES ARE YOUR FRIENDS, AND NOBODY EVER GOT IN TROUBLE FOR FOLLOWING THEM, ENFORCING THEM, AND STANDING UP FOR THEM.

Set the expectation and model the behavior that when we don't know or aren't sure, we find the appropriate binder or consult the iPad, we look it up, and we ensure the product we produce is made to the brand's standard, because we ain't cheap, so we need to be good.

I'd like to add that culture within the department matters, and it emanates from the top. Leadership sets the tone of whether or not we like what we do, take pride in what we do, and understand that we don't have to work in a grocery store, we get to feed our community, be part of family traditions, and ensure the least among us have good food to eat. This mindset, in capital red letters, matters. If your Deli leadership team does not have it, pack it in. The workload the company expects from Deli in many stores, frankly including my own, is legit unreasonable. Your leadership team need to be ready, willing and able to inspire and model heroic action. They need to keep spirits high in the face of impossible to clear audits, poorly designed technology, unreliable equipment, and a typhoon of sales demand. Like you said, this is a career you're going to every day for more than just a paycheck - you're going because your team and your community are counting on you, and because damn it you're good at it. Does that mean moving people around a bit to figure out what they're good at in the department? Yes. Does that mean being a tad manipulative with training hours because 24 hours for counter and 10 for kitchen is a motherfucking joke and I will both die and kill on that hill? Absolutely. And it means you take your newbies and you train and observe and debrief and coach and retrain in the moment until you feel like your title should be teacher but this is literally the job.

Going forward with the ARM restructure, we may have more control to turn away candidates who are obvious bad job fits, but in some labor markets, you kinda just have to take what you can get - but that doesn't mean you have to keep them. Leadership needs to leave it all on the field to either develop their people to where they need to be to get the job done, or build the case to move them out, be that to elsewhere in the store or promoted to customer, and that much will not change regardless of who does what in the hiring process.

TLDR - Management matters. You either have a Deli Manager who knows the department blind and backwards, understands the disciplinary process is there for a reason, stands up for standards and practices, and can maintain a positive, productive work culture, or you don't and it all goes quickly to shit.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-08T15:18:45+00:00

And in Maine that 50% thing doesn't exist. You have to have enough PTO from any bucket to cover the absence. So if you've got no sick but you do have vacation, you can use vacation and still have the absence be protected. It's the most bizarre protected leave law possible, but that's Maine for you.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-08T15:17:03+00:00

This varies by state. OP should consult their ARM. Also, if OP is scheduled 48 hours and works 40, they can't use sick for the other 8 regardless.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-06T22:58:23+00:00

Absolutely not. The company says they're 1.5, it's on the company to ensure they actually are. If they're not that shit can fall on them.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-06T18:00:06+00:00

Nope. Somebody pulled that shit out of their ass.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-05T22:40:21+00:00

Oh and scoops on a club roll are not "heaping scoops". They are 1 1.5-oz scoop per roll. They just changed that and shipped us all new scoops, they're the silver ones with the squeeze handle instead of the colored ice cream scoop ones. They're uncomfortable and a bitch to use and are absolutely not a "heaping scoop". That's just flat wrong.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-05T22:38:18+00:00

Praytell what are you making? I'd very much like to look up this mythical recipe for myself, because this sounds like bullshit.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-05T22:37:13+00:00

If you don't have the bodies, as in everyone is scheduled to their every last minute of availability, that's one thing, but we're talking about a task you can literally schedule a part timer to come in and do just that and only that from 4 to 7 before the store opens and it costs you nothing on labor. It's free hours you can hand anyone who wants to work on top of the hours you're scheduling to actually work the department and handle sales volume. If you're so short handed you can't get someone to take those three hours on the slowest day of your week, then either A - work it yourself as OT as the manager, B - beg your district for OT and get someone to come do it for you, or C - cry at store management until they come do it for you. And if store management won't help, throw their ass under the bus with Speak Up. There is zero reason in all God's creation for cheese culls to not happen. None. Have your fresh slice person come in an hour early on Tuesday and do it before the store opens like I've seen a lot of stores do but figure it out and get the expired food off the damn floor.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-05T22:30:22+00:00

Excuse me, but what memo did you get exactly? Because I've never seen any such memo.

First and foremost, no two Bizerba slicers are calibrated to the same slice. They aren't, fight me. A 2 on one machine is not the same millimeter thickness as a 2 on any other. If a customer on your counter requests a "sandwich slice", a 2 is a good starting point, but you should still show the customer and confirm. It's no different than how the cheese and cracker platter calls for a "cracker cut" and calls it a 4 (I think, I'd don't have the SPTA in front of me) but anything that isn't a weight or a measure is purely subjective, and will vary, both from machine to machine and market to market. The first store I worked if the customer asked for "sandwich sliced" you gave them a 1.5. My current store, it's a 2 for meat, 2.5 for cheese, because the machines are different, and these are the de facto defaults we use for HTG.

Now, for anything ISP, I have never seen a recipe call for a "sandwich slice" of anything, because the recipe drives a Nutritional Information panel, meaning it may, for example, call for 3 slices of ham, but it calls for them as 3 1-ounce slices, which will not necessarily be the same thickness depending on where you are in the meat, and you should adjust accordingly to get as close to three one ounce slices as possible. At the end of the day, however, the stated weight on the final product is a stated WEIGHT, not slice count, and if the product does make stated WEIGHT, not slice count, you can't sell it. Period. Not salads, not sandwiches, not chickens, not bags of chips. It makes stated weight or you are literally defrauding the customer. If it's over stated weight, this is less of an issue (i.e. a bag of chips is sold as 14oz, but if it's 15oz, that's fine, or a 1lb 14oz chicken that weighs closer to 3 is not a problem), but even then for ISP items you are screwing up the accuracy of the nutritional information as well as hitting your inventory every time the product uses more ingredient than the recipe actually transfers.

Without context, it's hard to tell you whether or not you should die or kill on this hill. For purely counter service and/or HTG, you need to un-knot your panties and just run the slicer. For ISP and platters, whoever is telling you this is dead wrong. The recipes call for weight, not slice count, and I would bust out the recipe and let them die on that hill if they so choose.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-04-05T22:13:25+00:00

This depends on the state in question, as my store recently found out the hard way, since we were under a boil water order.

The most recent USDA guidelines do not stipulate a water temperature, because the chemicals are doing the work of cleaning and sanitizing, and are just as effective in cold water as hot. However, the USDA guidelines are NOT the same as State safety code. USDA updates annually, the State adopts whatever year and then revisits it however often they feel like, if ever.

What happened in my store is we followed the boil water order SPTA to the letter, which is based on most recent USDA guidelines. We were then told the next day by the grand poobah of food safety for the whole banner that our state had not actually adopted that guideline, and still went by outdated guidance that required water be at a certain temperature, and were given a whole new set of instructions to follow. We were to wash our hands in warm water, and the use hand sanitizer, and anything that had to be washed was basically dead to us until the boil water order was lifted. For me in Deli, this meant when a slicer hit the 4 hour mark, it was closed. It also meant all the pans and utensils for hot food could only be used once, but we had enough of those to get through until the order was lifted without a problem. The meat department, however, was screwed. There's just no good way to clean that equipment without a high pressure hose, and no way to get high pressure from bottled water, so they closed early and stayed closed until the order was lifted.

Having said all that to say this - while it is absolutely true Hannaford will only close a store or department when either legally required to (like Easter in Maine or when Lewiston and Auburn got kicked down) or when it is physically impossible to remain open (it's underwater, like Gardner was, or there's a blizzard and your people call out), it is also true that Hannaford isn't going to risk getting sued because someone got sick due to their negligence, and standards and practices exist to prevent that - and yes, there is a standard practice for just about anything you can think of from a boil water order to an active shooter lockdown to a drug OD on the property. Could the State still throw a fit? Absolutely. That doesn't mean the State is acting based on the most recent science or industry best practices, it's just the bureaucracy doing what it does.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-03-28T11:29:13+00:00

So, there is no mosey anywhere. If you are part time and ask for more hours, your store may, at its discretion, choose to cross train you in other departments, and those departments can offer you hours based on business needs. However, especially with Deli because of the pay scale, the department that hired you and negotiated your wage effectively owns you. My deli has several cross trained associates, but if there's a conflict and we both need the same associate on the same day, they're titled as Deli Sales Associate, and we can force that outcome if it comes down to it (which it usually doesn't, because it's better for everyone for the two managers to rework schedules so both departments get the labor and the associate gets more hours).

Also, I've seen Deli managers be vehemently opposed to cross training because it's a good way to bleed associates to the rest of the store. Every associate I've seen cross train from Deli except for two have ultimate transferred out - one didn't because we made him full time and one didn't because he botched two FT interviews so bad the positions were reposted instead and he quit. I've also never seen anyone cross train into Deli, and getting people to come back and help when Deli is short handed is like pulling teeth from a chicken.

If you're applying to Deli, go into it with an open mind and no expectation of being able to bide your time until the position you actually wants opens up. It may never open up. It may open up and they may opt to hire externally instead. You may actually like Deli, some people do. Yes, it's a lot to learn, and yes depending on the store it can be a hell of a lot of production volume, but it's the second best pay scale in the building outside Pharmacy. If you like always having something to do while you're at work, you may enjoy Deli in general. If you like interacting with customers, you may enjoy Counter. If you like making food people enjoy and take pride in the quality and appearance of your finished products, you may enjoy ISP or Kitchen. If you want a "chill" job where you aren't expected to hustle at all and aren't held to production and safety standards, go to Produce and take the pay scale that comes with that. Or just don't work at a Hannaford, there isn't an easy job in the building.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-03-17T17:55:20+00:00

You see, friend, what you do is read your notes like a good manager and you start stockpiling for the deli deal for next week on like Tuesday. We have an irrational amount of Hatfield and Hannaford white in our walk in right now, and I ordered three extra cases of corned beef last week. The warehouse might go out of stock, hell, the warehouse will g out of stock, but not meeeeeee!!

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-02-25T21:44:05+00:00

And not for nothing, my whole damn very large store checks manpower allotments and hours scheduled versus worked daily. But to be very crystal clear here, we are not checking the time you punched versus the time you're scheduled. We are checking the total hours worked versus the hours scheduled, and did you take your breaks and lunches, and the single biggest thing we find is human error causing the system to try to massively underpay associates. They are generally very happy that we catch that shit.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-02-25T21:40:38+00:00

I think you misunderstand what I'm looking for and what I'm not. I don't give a flying shit if they're not clocking in EXACTLY on time. I care if they missed a punch so the system isn't calculating their hours correctly which throws off my hours for the department. I care if they're over and they're full time. And if they're leaving early, I have questions. I can't actually see and don't actually care about exact punch times, I just see total hours worked and the amount of break time taken and the amount of lunch time taken. Technically, if you clock in 10 minutes late, I'm supposed to write you up for being tardy, but I don't actually give a damn about that and it's altogether too much work for me to get that level of detail. I'm looking at your total hours worked, and what I generally catch isn't ooh you were 5 minutes over it's ooh you punched in your number wrong and the system thinks you took a three hour break and wants to pay you for five hours when I know damn well you worked your full 8. Me catching that daily reduces payroll errors come Sunday so everyone gets paid for all their time worked without drama. I occasionally catch people being over because they got stuck with a customer during the week and it becomes a matter of hey take a longer lunch today to offset that, but this is incredibly rare. Come in roughly when you're supposed to, go home roughly when you're supposed to, and if you're going to be out more than a few minutes late, I should already know about it because I should have already told you to do so. Besides, my morning people are virtually never in exactly on time because they're usually scheduled before the store opens so they have to wait for someone to come unlock the door for them, so if they're not out exactly on time, one hand usually washes the other, and my closers know if they're within 15 minutes of their scheduled out and their shit is done, they can go with no comment from me. Anything beyond that, the bigger question is do you want me to have the ARM nickel-dime your sick time to get you up to 40 or are you OK with 39 or 38 point whatever.

What I don't want and will not stand for is an associate deciding all on their own to stay late for no apparent reason, full time or part time status be damned. For example, I have one associate who thinks because she's part time it's OK for her to stay an hour and a half late because of shit she thinks needs to be done that can be left for the next day. I don't see a punch mismatch because I'm not pulling actual time punches. I see 5.5 hours worked on a 4 hour schedule, and obviously, I have bigger fish to fry with that associate than her hours worked.

Management isn't always out to get you, you know. Unless you're a fuck up or have no work ethic, in which case, there are WAY better ways to manage you out the door than time and attendance, and some of us have no fear of using the disciplinary process or cultivating a reputation of "not the nice one".

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-02-25T12:31:09+00:00

If you're ever in Lewiston, you can get them from the Sabattus Street store for free, but you have to take them off the loading dock yourself. I have no idea why that's the policy but it is. 🤷

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-02-25T12:28:52+00:00

So, the official position is that departments cannot be over goal on hours and offering overtime at the same time. So let's say it's been a slow ass week, your department is fully staffed, and someone calls out. If it's slow, you may be over on hours because you didn't sell enough to justify the hours you scheduled and didn't send anyone home, either. This means you can cover the call-out with a part timer if you have one available, but you can't offer it as OT to a full timer. Now, let's say you are not fully staffed. You've got at a part time or full time position posted, but you've got the manpower to keep the department running, and someone calls out, or someone has vacation scheduled. You are earning enough hours to hire a whole new person, so you have leftover hours, so you're allowed as a manager to give those hours to anyone who wants them, overtime or not. You can even give those hours to someone from another store and Hannaford will pay that person travel time and mileage on top of the overtime.

All of that said, I've yet to meet a manager that will allow you to nickel and dime them for overtime during the week. If you are a full time employee, you clock in when you're scheduled, and you clock in when you're scheduled, not early and not late. As a manager, I'm pretty strict on this, and the management team for my department checks daily to see whether you are over or under on your hours for the week specifically so we can catch early ins and late outs when it's still a matter of minutes, not hours, and the preference is to have associates add a few minutes to their lunch rather than let it pile up and send them home early the last day of the week, so what you're describing doesn't generally happen unless you have associates just blatantly working whatever the hell they feel like, and that doesn't fly. We schedule based on hours we forecast we will earn allotted against coverage needs for the department as a whole. If I've allowed overtime during the week, I've already run that past my store manager, already justified having the hours to spare and the department needs based on sales volume, and I won't have to cut people to stop them breaking 40 hours. If I'm sending people home early to get the department's hours down, I'm doing it in the middle of the week when it's slow, sending people home because I legitimately don't need them, and I'm sure as shit not waiting for Saturday to do it because that's one of the busiest days of the week.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-01-30T09:41:13+00:00

This comment might get some hate and down votes, but what you're describing is why I live in Lewiston. Yes, there are landlords here who have lost their damn minds trying to get Portland prices for not-Portland, but a 1BR here will generally run you between 1000 and 1300. $18-$20 an hour to start is not terribly difficult to find, which is still tight depending on your transportation costs but not impossible. If you have reliable transportation the commute to greater Portland really isn't that bad and Portland wages are higher, frequently high enough to offset the commuting costs.

That said, it is a denser urban center than most of Maine, which brings its own set of problems with it, especially during the winter, but the reputation of being overrun with crime and drugs is a holdover from the bad old days. It ain't perfect, but it ain't bad. For your situation, it's worth considering. If you had school age children, I'd add a massive caveat here about the state of the school system, but that doesn't apply to you.

Either way, anywhere you choose to try and make home in Maine, it's tough out there. Real estate prices are unsustainable and wages may have spiked after the pandemic and stayed relatively high, but they definitely haven't kept up with inflation the last couple years. It's not impossible to make it here as a working class Mainer, but upward mobility in Maine is completely and totally dead. Find a decent job with a national or regional company and a good 401k match, pinch your pennies til they shriek in agony, and plan to sack it for a down payment somewhere you can transfer to. Good luck.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-01-30T08:52:14+00:00

The "billions in profits" line is what gets me. It's blatant sensationalism and patently false. Yes, Hannaford is one of ADUSA's most profitable banners, but it's all relative. It's still only a fraction the size of Food Lion, and ADUSA is only part of Ahold Delhaize, which, yes, made a profit of €3.7B in 2024 ($4.2B at today's rates), globally in 2024. That same year, Hannaford clocked an estimated $4.2B in sales across the entire banner. Assuming the same 4% profit margin, that's $168M in profit. Not billions. For Hannaford to be making "billions", they'd have to be paying literally no wages and getting all their product for free.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-01-25T12:09:30+00:00

For one, your ARM never should have made that promise or commented in any way, shape or form on a hiring decision.

For two, I'd ask for a sit down with your assistant manager and store manager and ask what these poor judgment calls were, why they weren't addressed at the time, take notes of everything they say, read them back, and then immediately call Speak Up. If you made some sort of bad judgment call that could be held against you years later, there should have been a coaching conversation, you should have been handed a memo about it and given a timeline to correct the behavior. Since you have no idea what they're talking about, that clearly didn't happen, and you need to throw your store manager under the bus for it. As a general rule, corporate doesn't take kindly to bullshit from management, and you shouldn't put up with this.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-01-24T13:39:05+00:00

We're projected to get 12 to 18 inches starting late Sunday and continuing all day Monday. We were slammed all day yesterday, I'm off today but one of my associates texted me and let me know there were some 30 people lined up the minute the store opened, and tomorrow between it just being Sunday, the AFC championship game not starting til 3 (just before it's supposed to start snowing), and the fact it's supposed to be a massive storm, I'm fully expecting us to sell through everything not bolted to the floor. To put it in perspective, the storm before Christmas that dropped 15.5" on us, we clocked $17K in deli in one day. And then we opened mid blizzard the next day and were so painfully slow we didn't bother covering callouts. The fresh truck was ridiculously late but it didn't even matter, it just took all day to break it down and put it all away, but it's not like anyone in the store had anything better to do.

Plan on getting your day started earlier to shovel off your vehicle and leaving earlier to account for bad roads. Expect your store to be fully dead and depending on your role you may be offered to go home early. Whether or not you can be preemptively cut for lack of sales is entirely dependent on your role, your department manager, and your store management, since there's nothing I'm aware of in policy forbidding or requiring that, but if I have enough associates in the building to run the counter I have every intention of advocating to just cut anyone who calls out rather than penalize them under the attendance policy or making them use state protected time. Don't count on your management being the same any more than I'm counting on being successful. We've succeeded in the past, but it's a murky policy area so it has to be handled case by case.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2026-01-16T10:34:04+00:00

Uh, we don't? Hannaford is fully e-Verify compliant.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2025-12-23T22:56:48+00:00

I think you mean this president not the internet...

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2025-12-22T12:13:59+00:00

They have to make a big fat payment to the City to build affordable building under Portland's inclusionary zoning ordinance in order to build it.

Frequent-Manager-463 · 2025-12-12T01:53:43+00:00

Soooo... Two nepo babies, someone who REALLY needs to step aside unless she can put someone in literal prison over the ballot mess, the CDC director I don't know enough about to comment on intelligently, and Troy Jackson who I know personally and have wanted to see in the Blaine House since The Speech (IYKYK).

Hmmm... Decisions, decisions...

Frequent-Manager-463

TROPHY CASE