Weird Store Policies

[Kitten in the box]

another one of our weird policies are;

you are NOT realy allowed to bring your cd player or mp3 player from home to listen to EVEN if you are on break or lunch. The reason: "what if a customer wants to ask you something....they might get pissed you are ignoring them. Uhhh...thats the point....(I sometimes bring my mp3 player to work and they havn't stopped me yet; I like listening to MY music on my lunch/break times.)

cell phones MAY NOT be answered on the sales floor if you are on a break...you have to go somewhere else to answer them or make a call. for customer reasons. (However I have answered a call on my lunch/break and told whomever was trying to get my attention I was on the phone.....didn't go over well at all.)

you ARE NOT allowed to really leave the store on your break to go to another store nearby...(one of the stores I go to at times is right next door....we share the same property) they say its for safety reasons but mainly its in case they need to call you and you have to be able to hear them.

you cannot say "customers waiting" over the voy call if no one shows up to check/bag...they deem that as "unprofessional" so they want you just to suck it up and handle it....on the same token they want you to call if there is an over abundance of customers in the checkout lanes.

If you are on lunch or break you are not allowed to say "so and so is on a break" over the voycall.... you must call their checkstand yourself or if they do not answer (which is most of the time) you must go over PERSONALLY and tell them you are on break if you cannot find anyone to tell them for you.

If you are gathering carts you must gather your store's carts PLUS any neighboring carts in the lot. (example: we are next door to Longs and Longs lets their carts wander all over the place. If their carts are in our area we have to take them over to them and put them away....no.....they DO NOT have to do the same for us nor get thier own carts from our area....which sucks cos we share the property)

The company I work at...It is EXPECTED you look for customers witha puzzled look (what I like to call the 'DEE DEE DEE' look a.k.a. the Carlos Mencia look) and help them out...if you see them on your break if you are on the sales floor...yeah right....like thats gonna happen. They do not get on us about it yet....but they will soon I imagine.

[Pagan]

Kitten in the box, just how long have you been working for the 3rd Reich? Some of those policies are just inconciveable! And, um, I think it's a little illegal to expect you to help customers off the clock (working without pay). Do they expect that if you come in on your day off, to oh, say pick up your paycheck. And you can't leave the store on your break? (Ya know, that could be construed as false imprisonment, a federal offense ).

Hasting's has it's own little weird-ass thing. They have 8 people line up and form the letters with their bodies, ala "YMCA". Fortunately, this only happens during store meetings, which happen infrequently. I think the last one was over six months ago.

[powerboy]

Ahhhhh the famous Walmart cheer, oh how I loved that little song and dance routine Yeah right. The first time I had seen it, it was before I even worked there, and I thought it was freaken sickening to watch and hear. After I started working there, I was in only one meeting, where we had to do it. I am just glad the meeting was was right after I clocked out. And all I did was just watched it.

The ColdStones shop, last I was in there, was about 3 years ago, and they had to sing.

[Kiwi]

Well as Im finding out some of our policies are....

you will be blamed for any stupid itty bitty mistake the manager makes, including having the wrong password written down... the password that SHE wrote down and handed to you.

[thegiraffe]

And where is that? I never knew anyone in management to be anywhere CLOSE to being sane. I want to see.

I work at Publix at home...I LOVE my management! For example: we have small containers of rubberbands to put around boxes of berries and tomatoes because they open. Well, needless to say, we don't use them for that. I can't count how many rubberband wars we've had with them. We tend to fire them at the customer service desk, and they fire them back at us. The management doesn't mind (as long as no customers are in the line of fire lol), and we've never hit anyone.

There ARE good managers, but they're few and far between.

[Knightmare]

I decided years ago that I was never going to work at any place that makes you sing, dance, clap, cheer, do the hustle, or anything silly like that. It started when I went to this steakhouse with a girlfriend, and like, every 30 min. they stopped whatever they were doing and started dancing in the aisles to some country song. So while this went on for 3-4 minutes, I'm thinking "Where's my beer?"

God, it was so annoying to watch, I can't imagine how it would be to work there and be required to do it. I haven't been back to that chain since. I can't even remember the name of the place now.

Yup. No cheers, clapping, dancing, singing for me. I like to make my own fun at work!

[thegiraffe]

Yup. No cheers, clapping, dancing, singing for me. I like to make my own fun at work!

spontaneous sing-a-longs are always fun, Knightmare. Those happen every now and then now that they're playing somewhat decent music on the satellite radio in the store. They're more prone to happen when there aren't any customers in the store and we're just blocking (or leveling, as some people call it). You know it's a good song when you can hear it 5 aisles over... lol

[alphaboi]

...Some of those policies are just inconciveable! And, um, I think it's a little illegal to expect you to help customers off the clock (working without pay)...

If you don't clock out for your break then they can require you to remain on store property. If you're off the clock they can't.

[Broomjockey]

spontaneous sing-a-longs are always fun

Personally, I prefer the spontaneous dancing. Especially when there's NO music.

[Gurndigarn]

I decided years ago that I was never going to work at any place that makes you sing, dance, clap, cheer, do the hustle, or anything silly like that. It started when I went to this steakhouse with a girlfriend, and like, every 30 min. they stopped whatever they were doing and started dancing in the aisles to some country song. So while this went on for 3-4 minutes, I'm thinking "Where's my beer?"

And you can tell this was company requirement because it was every half hour, on the half hour, and, if they ran true to form from other places I saw this, they had that the-company-makes-me-do-this pseudoenthusiasm.

[Becks]

I work at Publix at home...I LOVE my management! For example: we have small containers of rubberbands to put around boxes of berries and tomatoes because they open. Well, needless to say, we don't use them for that. I can't count how many rubberband wars we've had with them. We tend to fire them at the customer service desk, and they fire them back at us. The management doesn't mind (as long as no customers are in the line of fire lol), and we've never hit anyone.

Sometimes there's these massive rubber bands in the grocery back room. I use them, mostly when asking is anyone wants to have a rubber band fight. No one wants to have rubber band fights with me anymore.

[Knightmare]

spontaneous sing-a-longs are always fun, Knightmare. Those happen every now and then now that they're playing somewhat decent music on the satellite radio in the store. They're more prone to happen when there aren't any customers in the store and we're just blocking (or leveling, as some people call it). You know it's a good song when you can hear it 5 aisles over... lol

Yes, SPONTANEOUS ones are fun. I can handle that, I enjoy that, I used to do that when I was younger (embarrased a lot of my friends!). But when a person is required to do it, it takes all the fun out of it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Years ago, we'd play little games during our team huddles.

One time we played "supermarket sweep". We were all divided up into teams and given a list of five items to find and bring back. This was to test our knowledge of the products in the store.

Another time, we had relay races down one of the mall aisles. You would sit in a wheeled office chair and propel yourself down the aisle using two plungers kind of like ski poles, then turn around at a certain point, come back, and hand off the chair and plungers to the next person on your team.

While we were doing this, some kid came by and said "What are you doing?" I said "Working." He said "Cool! I want to work here then!"

But we don't do that anymore. The store is officially a fun-free zone.