Anti-Employee?

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 214

Does your store's seem to be getting more & more anti- employee everyday? The work load is increasing, I guess they're trying to get more bang for their buck. I could see some of these things in a company that wasn't making a profit, but not a company that reports record profits every three months. Today we're told that if we damage anything (while trying to do the jobs of 10 people) that we can be terminated. They don't say anything about all the items that customers tear up and bring back for a refund. I could add alot more things to the list. What are some of the thins happening at your stores?

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 41 Location: out west

Well Cabinetman, the latest buzz at our store is the phrase "This is broken we need it fixed now!" One day it's the IRP, the next day it's the call buttons, then zones, then phone calls. The list goes on and on. Of course every statement ends with "You will be held accountable and you will be documented"! BFD, if it is broken it is because management broke it. The best way to fix every problem in our store is to hire more people, but that will never happen. We leverage payroll for almost every store in our district but when hours need to be cut our store is the one that is punished. Our PTC has no time to do anything but hire newbies. The new hires are quickly soured and usually don't last more than a couple of weeks, if that. The few old timers that are left just stay out of the radar, listen to the rhetoric and carry on. She's in a death spiral and the spin is making most of us sick. But guess what we still make numbers and the wheels still get their huge bonuses, so why not add just a liitle more to workload? I know you know the song and dance but I thought I'd blow a little steam. Here's a question, why don't any of these hotshot managers get written up when they damage the merchandise? You know that's all we are! So when one of us blows out our back because of no help or because of fatigue,why aren't they written up? We must not be as valuable as a grey upright!

Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 16

It's funny but with almost 1,000 stores, the management complaint seems the same between them. Perhaps the problem isn't actually coming from managment, but filtering down from G.O. You look at the rate of growth Lowe's is at, and think about it. People are going into store managment rather quick at Lowe's, in our district we got ASM's and operation managers that have only been in the company for two years, and have had no managment experience outside of Lowe's, so as they learn, we suffer.
I held managment jobs for years, and been through schooling and national sminars on managment practices and techniques, and I see a lot of management decisions going on that are just plain wrong. For example, the turn over rate. When stores are losing employees with years of service at an alarming rate, then people above the store managment need to wonder whats wrong. Lowe's spends a lot of money on a new employee, with training orientation, drug testing, back ground checking etc. Now they seem to not care about that, and are wanting to bring people in at a lower pay rate in order to compensate the loss they take when an employee quits. However there is a much bigger ripple effect to this. Customer service now gets hurt. If you replace a person with two years or more of experience, with someone fresh out of high school who does not know anything about the industry, then the customer is not given the expert advice they are promised by our ADS. In turn, sales go down, complaints go up, along with mangments stress, which finally gets taken out on the employees, which in turn causes them to quit, and it starts all over again.
I haven't been with lowe's that long, but I have heard of benefits being decreased, work conditions worsening and morale over all hitting rock bottom. This forces those priceless veterans away, and brings in the fresh rookie that has to learn all over. This also brings on such actions as class action lawsuits for overtime, calls to federal agencies such as osha, unhappy employees telling friends that they would never want to work for Lowes (which is negative word of mouth advertising), more injuries, the list goes on and on.
In my six months with the company, I can think of at least a dozen employees who at first said it was a great company to work for, employees who had been with Lowe's for quit some time. Now these same people are looking for other jobs, and can no longer stand working for Lowe's.
If someone from G.O. reads these posts, please wake up and realize a big problem is happening in the world of Lowe's. Instead of Gallup surveys on your store and its mangment, run a Corporation based survey once. See how people rate the company as a whole. The only bad part is if one hasn't been done before, there is nothing to compare trends too.

Just another disgruntled employee
Sunklowe

Joined: 17 Oct 2003 Posts: 12

YO ALL U HOW R U DOING? ARE U TIRED OF GETTING THE BONE YOU KNOW WHERE??????????????????????????/

Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 13 Location: Lowes Land

I recently saw a report on the turn over numbers. It had the numbers for all the lowes stores, The average was about 65%. The highest was 110% the lowest was 35%. My store was 86%, our district ran from 40% to 90%.

Actually the numbers have improved corporate wide. The first year I worked for Lowes I talked to an ASM about our high turnover rate and he told me that our store was a little above the average for turnover in retail. But he told me Lowes corporate wide was 128% the year before!

I once had a commercial sales specialist tell me in a meeting that " The retail machine will pick you up, chew you up, spit you out and keep on going". I now know exactly what he was talking about! It just hasn't finished chewing yet.

BOHICA

Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 4 Location: AL

I've been with Lowes for 8 mo. and I can see all that is going on as well as all of you. I am only 20 and am working here only in leu of using my degree as soon as I find my career job. I have never worked in such a stressful work environment, and before working here I never could have imagined it from such a "great" store to shop at. I was talking to my ZM about turnover and why weren't positions in our dept being filled, he explained, in doctrine, they will not hire more employees to compensate for the lack of work being put out by the current "incompetent" employees (in which I partly agreed).

So upper mgmt basically, in its communistic way, leans on all managers to put out more with less. Rolling Eyes

I have referred several c/workers to this site, but they are too ignorant to bother. They don't have a betterment attitude to change the way things are, or at least get a better job.

Until people wise up, people like me will continued be viewed as "whiners". I won't look back. Wink

Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 15

Recently, I asked my ZM if I could go to part time. I told him that I would open Tuesday thru Friday, but that I would be unavailable for nights and weekends. They promptly came back with "if you go to PT, you will be REQUIRED to work nights and weekends". That sort of defeated the purpose for wanting to go PT, so I gave them my two weeks notice.
The Monday before Thanksgiving, I was scheduled to work a 2-11pm, but the week prior my DM asked me to open instead, so I did. Later that morning on of the ASM's came to me, in front of a customer, and demanded to know just what I thought I was doing, not following the schedule. He berated me in front of the customer, even though I advised him that my DM had changed the schedule. The ASM left, and the customer looked at me in bewilderment, and said "what an ass". The more I thought about it, the more pissed I got, and I waled back to the HR office, gave her my vest, and left....not without being escorted out of the store by the same ASM that flipped......and now......
I went in the other day to get some materials for a customer of mine (I have since started a booming home repair business) and was talking to some of the associates that I had worked with. They told me that the store is now collecting names of those associates not working at least 50 hours a week (specialists and DM's) and giving them an option...either work or hit the door. Another friend of mine told me that he had been scheduled to work a 2-11pm, but had been asked by his DM to come in at 8am instead. He did just that, and one of the ASM's came to him and told him..."either follow the schedule or hit the door, leave now and come back at 2pm, or leave now and don't come back at all"
Anti employee???? YES! Hostile work environment? YES!!
Mislead and Mismanged? YES!
I had some really great times at Lowes, and met some really great people, both coworkers and customers. I really hated being forced out, but then again at least now I work for myself, I don't work weekends or after 5pm, and I make over quadruple the money. Good luck folks, keep your heads up, and watch your backs! Rock on!

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 214

Your ASM should have checked with your DM to see what happened before coming to you. They always preach communication to us but don't practice what they preach. To berate you in front of anyone, customer or other employee is a no no, it just shows that your ASM is not Management material. You should have called G.O. and asked for someone to come in and investigate the actions of this ASM, you had the customer as your witness. These things happen every day by members of Management who think they're hot shit, but we can and we must stand up for our rights.

Joined: 05 Mar 2004 Posts: 11 Location: Indiana

I fully agree with the theme of this thread. I was a computer engineer for 25 years before getting the downsizing handshake and didn't realize at the time that this was the beginning of a massive conspiracy in America to finalize the two-class society so desperately desired by the elite few at the top.

That was 10 years ago. Now I'm working for 30% of what I was making when I was laid off. And nobody wants an old computer geek. They all want young kids fresh out of school with no experience, no long term knowledge of the company (I worked for a major aluminum manufacturer during my heyday), no loyalty to the team. But they will pay them a fraction of what I was making and that makes their ROI improve which pleases the stockholders and that's within the very narrow focus they have. In my opinion, they deserve what they get.

After the downsizing they started cutting everything else. Now when a young kid is hired on they manage to get rid of them before they get vested so there are no long term commitments to deal with.

The benefits are being cut or transferred to the employee's wallet, respect for the employee is fairly nonexistent, and with no surprise the morale and pride are low at best.

Meanwhile the high tech jobs are being moved to India and other countries where the American companies can continue making huge profits and paying huge rewards to their top officers for doing such a great job (for the stockholders, not the company or the employees or the communities or even our country).

Now the big box stores like Lowe's are jumping on the bandwagon for a piece of that action. And from this comes the bulk of the complaints we read in these posts. I was a team leader in BM with a great female ZM in her 50's who committed a fatal flaw - she showed concern and care for the people under her. So they got rid of her.

Actually they influenced her to get rid of herself but that's the normal protocol for someone they want out. It's much cleaner that way and avoids all that messy unemployment paperwork.

I used to have a crowd following me around the store as I was helping someone. When I finished helping the first person another would step forward and request my assistance. If someone grabbed me as we were in route and asked, sometimes belligerently, what it took to get some damn help in our store, I would invite them to join the line behind me and I would be glad to help when their turn came up.

That's silly, sad, and the wrong way to demonstrate a company's understanding of the term "Customer Service". But customer service as we would like it to be pretty much disappeared when the big box stores forced the neighborhood equivalents to shut down.

Now our paradigm centers around commodity selling rather than consultive selling. Too bad. If Lowe's would adequately staff their departments so we could take care of our customers, the customers would eagerly come back and would recommend our store to their friends, and the gain in sales would more than compensate for the salary and benefits the store had to put out for the additional employees.

Back to the two-class society. When all we do in this country is mass selling of cheaply produced (and imported) products, to support the greedy lifestyles of the afluent elite, where will the American dream be?

Wake up America! This is not what made us the great nation we are. Instead it is going to take it all away if we don't put the respect and pride back into our jobs. There is precious little we do in this country anymore that makes us better than the rest of the world. At least reward the people dedicated to keeping the Lowe's cash generating machine alive.

All the complaints we read are based around the same root cause - management wanting to do more with less. That's why our managers are inexperienced and immature, our employees are confused and lack ambition and motivation, and our customers think we don't care about them.

The pendulum will eventually swing back but how many of us will have to be sacrificed in the meantime? This is no way to run a company or a country Naughty!

.

Joined: 05 Mar 2005 Posts: 110 Location: illinois

I know this is an old post, but it hasn't changed in the two years since the original post. WHEN IS LOWE'S GOING TO WAKE UP? You can not run a store on a skeliton crew. The freight can't be put on the shelf, and provide customer service with 1 sometime 2 sometimes 0 in a department. It costs a lot of money to get a new person in. It makes me more tolerant of sales people when I go to other stores. Maybe every ass of a customer should have to work at a Lowes for one week and see what we go through.

Joined: 13 Mar 2005 Posts: 9 Location: Maryland

[quote="classylady"]I know this is an old post, but it hasn't changed in the two years since the original post. WHEN IS LOWE'S GOING TO WAKE UP? You can not run a store on a skeliton crew. The freight can't be put on the shelf, and provide customer service with 1 sometime 2 sometimes 0 in a department. It costs a lot of money to get a new person in. It makes me more tolerant of sales people when I go to other stores. Maybe every ass of a customer should have to work at a Lowes for one week and see what we go through.

Plumbing is our biggest problem. All they have is a department manager, team leader, and CSA. They have yet to find a sales specialist...unbelievable. The CSA was asked but he refused. That has been going on over 3 months.
Speaking of a skeleton crew, front end is having that problem too when it comes to head cashiers. We have our department manager (who just got her job and has only been with the company 8 months). Two longer term head cashiers, and myself. Our team leader is leaving in 2 weeks and we just lost 2 head cashiers to departments (hardware and SOS) I recently replaced one of them a month ago but i just found out that they hired a woman who has never been in retail as a head cashier! Has HR lost their minds? Classylady or someone else, has your stores been in that type of situation? I think its just plain weird. I don't think this new hire is going to know what shes doing. Personally i think they should of promoted within the company.

Joined: 05 Mar 2005 Posts: 110 Location: illinois

delusional, hi, and welcome to this forum, I have missed you. We did have two head cashiers hired off the street. One was the wife of the District ops manager's best friend. She was with the company 3 months and was made the HR manager. Guess it is good to have friends in higher places. She lasted about a year and then moved to a new store in Chicagoland. The other was a back stabbing bitch, who was prejudice against anyone over 25 and treated the older crew like crap. She took after me when she came back from maternity leave, and my boss saw that the crap I had to defend myself for before she went on leave were lies. She told one lie after another in a closed room with my manager, her and myself. My manager saw her true colors and apologized to me for not believing me before. I told her I don't lie and she was making up stuff about me. She sees that now but the damage has been done. She got caught falsifiying her time punch. She would sit in the breakroom and then fill out a miss punch. Shucks, I felt so bad when she was fired. THE COW.

Lowes says they will always promote from within, the problem is they don't. They will hire some poor unsuspecting person in off the street who will come in for less pay because they have NO IDEA how hard it is to work here. They usually don't last. People think the head cashier position is so easy, it is not. As for losing the team lead of customer service. I haven't seen one yet who does anything but gossip and sit and talk on the phone. I wish ours would be demoted or something so she would have to work, but her dad is the best friend of the same district ops manager. So like that is really going to happen. I just love it when the team lead calls a code 3, and all the while she is on the phone to her little ones at home. I hope someday the manager, who thinks she is just adorable, wakes up and hears her foul mouth at customer service. She can cuss like a drunken sailor.

Hang in there, just remember when this head cashier tries to boss you around that you have more senority. Don't let is go on, talk to HR. You department manager is new, maybe, just maybe, she has enough sense to see and handle the situation. Try to help this new person, but I bet she is a friend of someone higher up, so don't piss her off. I am assuming it is a woman, because I have only seen two male head cashiers. One we had, nice guy, great friend, but the position went to his head. The male we have now is a great guy, he will be leaving sometime this year, he is going to be a police officer. He will make a great one. He has the patience of a saint. He usually comes to me when he is really ticked, because he knows I will give him good advice. I get a lot of that, must be the old lady in me, they think of me as a mom, a mom you can be open with, not one like my mom was. If she only knew the things I did.

Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 6

Joined: 23 Aug 2003 Posts: 19 Location: Central Florida

AMEN TO THAT ONE.

Joined: 07 Mar 2005 Posts: 22

We've had a cashier catch a few people trying to steal stuff. basically they take a lumber cart and put insulation on it and then a ton of nails (it was like $300 worth) and wheel it out....she stepped on the thing and it tilted...saw the nails in a tiny crack.

If we really want to make a change the ultimate way would be to boycott it.

Tell people how bad lowes is..and don't stop. Tell people how bad the sos's can be, tell them how bad the service is.

Better yet tell people to go in and go up the managers to ask questions and then not buy anything. Use the bathroom, browsing etc just not to buy anything. hell invite a ton of homeless people into the place!

Joined: 05 Mar 2005 Posts: 110 Location: illinois

Then we would all be out of a job.