Are employers even allowed to do this?

[The Hurting]

This is how my employers announced the newest competition on our store news this week:

"Our new competition [store name redacted] is finally open last Friday, March 15. They've also started an ad campaign this Easter weekend. With new competition in our community it is important to SHOP IN OUR OWN STORE (their emphasis, not mine). Keep your dollars working for you."

This statement would probably be most acceptable if we were a small, family-run business, but we're a major supermarket chain under a company that's owned by a billionaire! Also, we're not going bankrupt anytime soon or seeing a decrease in customers.

To me, it seems less like "support the community" and more like corporate desperation.

[Dreamstalker]

Yup, that sounds odd to me. Are they going to somehow check to make sure employees are only shopping where they work?

I'm not ashamed of shopping at our competitors every so often. One of said stores I don't see as competition at all (the majority of their products are their own brand, and more niche than what we sell so it's a great place to find specialties that we don't carry anyway), and sometimes the others just have a better [item].

[Rosco the Iroc]

I've heard that kind of thing before. Answer is simple, make it worth my while and I will.
But if their reg price is better then "ours" with my employee discount or wait I don't have one...
Guess where I'm going?

[CyberLurch]

They can encourage you to shop in your own store, yes, and personally I don't see anything wrong with that. However, they cannot legally mandate it.

Eons ago, K-mart used to pay their employees in cash. Yes, actual greenbacks. The pay office was located at the back of the store, and employees could only enter or leave through the front doors. Clever, no?

[EricKei]

CL is correct -- They can *suggest* this all they like; they simply cannot require it.

Note that, if the labor laws up your way function similarly to the At-Will laws here in the states, they could always fire someone who was "caught" shopping somewhere else (which would mean they were caught by someone who was, themselves, shopping elsewhere...), and just make up an unrelated reason for doing so.

[Aria]

Don't you have an employee discount? That'd keep me shopping in the store. And if you don't, they could just give you one!

[KellyHabersham]

Same thing kind of happens with my job, although because it's a city department, our equivalent is "Shop in City X, so your sales tax dollars go towards our programs". (this being because sales tax is where we get much of our revenue from)

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Nothing illegal about encouraging employees to shop at their own store. However, I do wonder if this came down from corporate, or if some dry pool diving team member in management thought this up on their own.

[Trixie]

I shop in my store because I'm already there and after 8 hours I really don't want to stop anywhere else I don't have to. I was never a big fan of my store's competition even before I started working there so my loyalty is already there.

[dalesys]

... I owe my soul to the company store ... Sixteen Tons

[MoonCat]

As a suggestion, yes. As a requirement, no.

[Strathclyde]

I used to buy dog food from our direct competition, but that was because my dogs would kill me if I stopped feeding them what I always had and my store (the whole company, not just the location) doesn't sell it.

But then a customer came in talking about feeling awful buying the same food at our competitor and I got to tell him where to get it cheaper!

[Food Lady]

As a suggestion, yes. As a requirement, no.

Exactly. They'd have to make you sign a contract containing that requirement, if that were even legal. If I'm off the clock my company has no business telling me what to do, shopping or otherwise.

[pzychobitch]

Fuck you, I'll shop where I want.

[wolfie]

It was at least 20 years ago, but it made the news when GM made a rule that a large part of the employee parking lot (needless to say, the part with the "good" spaces) was reserved for GM cars. 2 year old Cavalier? OK. Rusted out Nova? OK. Immaculately restored '59 Caddy? OK. Anything not built by GM? Back of the lot, if you can find a space.

Also, when Ford acquired a number of exotic brands (they've unloaded most of them), a number of executives went out and bought Jaguars - since that brand had just come under the Ford umbrella.