November 20, 2019
Dear Sir:
In February of 2018, I was hired as an online shopper for one of your stores. What I hope to accomplish here, in these few paragraphs I will try to compose, is to first relay an appreciation for the incredible people with whom I consider myself fortunate to have worked. Everyone of them is a friend, not just a coworker, as we all passed through the same fire together. The problems I faced, when attempting to carry out the functions of my job, were the same they faced. Whether it involved delivery vans not receiving proper maintenance, or products ordered by customers with no place on the shelves, or the overabundance of orders left to shop, while simultaneously answering phones and delivering pickups out to customers’ cars, all of us were intimately acquainted with the stress of a job where the workers were often insufficient and overlooked to meet the demands of a grateful customer based that never seemed to cease.
Secondly, I hope to make it clear this is not to be viewed as a gripe session from a disgruntled employee. I have refrained multiple times from writing simply because the effort to do so would have been the very gripe session I do not wish to convey. This is not a typical worker vs. management complaint. The majority of managers at my store are honest, hard-working souls who face their own challenges in carrying out the functions of their own jobs. I do not pretend to comprehend their tasks, as that mindset is not one I can call my own. I fall into more of the outside-the-box thinker who considers the results of a particular action, or inaction, and always attempts to employ logic and common sense for the square peg to fit into the square hole. What I observe is a lot of rounds pegs trying to be fit into square holes, as there are no square pegs; and there are no round holes.
So what is my complaint? Why am I exerting this effort in the hope of garnering a small moment of your time?
It occurred two days ago. The people I lauded as my coworkers, they are all gone - with the exception of a single college student who works the weekend, a tremendous worker who deserves recognition as the valued asset he is.
The time I am speaking of is a Monday, the busiest day for this particular store. I arrived for my shift at two; and once the empty totes from the morning shipment are set on a pallet, wrapped, and sent to the dock, not much is left to do until the afternoon shipment arrives. It is within this time frame I receive a call from Customer Care, submitting a question from a customer in regards to whether his order has arrived. This same customer had apparently called our store just prior to this call, asking the same question, and was referred to the customer care number, which now called the store.
I explained the truck had not yet arrived with the order, but I anticipated it soon.
When I learned the customer’s name, I shared this with my former manager, who operated in a new capacity, though assisted with pickups when help was required. He told me this same customer had called him half an hour earlier.
The truck was not on time. It was late; and the customer called again. I explained to him again that the truck had yet to arrive; but I could call him when it was there, so he gave me his number.
When the truck finally arrived, it was as late as it had ever been, and it had a large order of four pallets filled with totes. As I was on my way back to the dock to begin retrieving this shipment, my former manager shared with me this same customer had called yet again, asking again about his order, which vexed me the man would not take me at my word to call him when the shipment arrived.
This particular customer, I must stop to explain, has been a problem for awhile. For a time, he would order steaks, complain they weren’t the right steaks, and then receive either a refund, or replacements, or something. He was scamming the store’s generosity, to which my former manager put to a stop. Nevertheless, periodically, this man would still call to complain about something in effort to receive something for free. He would cuss out my former manager. One time, he cussed out me. This particular night, he called customer service to complain, and cussed out the girl behind the desk answering the phones. He is far from a nice man; and his presence that night became the first of my vexing problems.
There were four pallets from the afternoon delivery. I pulled them out of the backroom and worked to maneuver them along the aisles of our busy store. Twice, due to customer inattentiveness, I turned around in one aisle to attempt passage down another, only to face even worse conditions when reaching the front of the store. The store has only one entrance to it. That entrance is also the only exit. This traffic, which continually was going in and out, passed along a narrow passageway in front of customer service. This passageway was the same route I had to take with the four pallets of totes full of the groceries for that night of pickups.
Somehow, I managed to bring all four pallets to the front - but not before the first pickup arrived. I had to stop retrieving the pallets from the back, so as to prepare and deliver into the parking lot the pickup of groceries the alert phone sounded.
I was fortunate, as this was the cusp of the steady stream of pickups to come over the next hour and a half, my former manager, as well as a former coworker in the former department, were present to assist, unpacking and arranging the orders I had yet managed to attend to, while I delivered the orders out to the customers awaiting their groceries in the parking lot.
This was a frantic hour and a half, perhaps hour and forty-five minutes of time, but nothing any of us where unaccustomed to. Such frenzy had become commonplace in our execution of the online shopping department in this store; and when I utilize the term “frenzy”, I do not imply any of us have fallen into a frenzy. On the contrary, the people I had the pleasure of working with, they are some of the most level headed, hard workers I have ever known. The frenzy stirred out of the conditions in which we had to work. There was no space in which to organize four pallets of totes, so my former manager and coworker made their own space - and that space encroached upon the traffic area of the customers leaving the registers to exit the building through the single exit/entrance the store has - directly passing where the totes were stored and organized, and where I was barely able to break through to retrieve the next pickup awaiting delivery.
The illogic of it all escapes me. The diligence and persistent hard work of my coworkers, I stand up and applaud. Absent their help, I would have seriously been facing dire circumstances, trying to cipher through the array of four totes yet unpacked, delivering each pickup through a parking lot of busy traffic, while additional customers continued to arrive. There was no one else scheduled but myself, which is another moment of perplexing illogic I fail to understand. This department of pickups is rapidly losing staff. Where online shopping once boasted a healthy bounty of solid workers any company would be delighted to employ, this group now employs no one. Last Thursday and last Saturday evening, there was no one to work. This morning (Wednesday), as well as yesterday morning, there was no one to work. Tomorrow and Friday evening, my days off from work, there is no one to work.
I don’t pretend to understand why this stands as the case; but it does appear to be a serious problem ignored. I know our online shopping department, when the high schoolers the store employed left for college back in August, they were not replaced. I counted at least nine employees, lost since that time frame, and only one person hired to replace them - a tremendous worker who will be lost after Friday, as her hours were cut when she transferred to another department. She found work elsewhere, with the hours she needed.
My reason for mentioning this is I view such actions as why the “department” for pickups has no workers. No one was hired to replace the online shoppers who left between August and October. And those online shoppers who did exist, there was no effort to court their services in this new venture for pickups. All that remains is myself, the college student who works the weekend, and two girls hired as stockers who were pulled to work pickups - and I have not seen either of them for days.
Which brings me to the entire crux of my letter. When all the frenzy of the unpacking and organizing the totes had subsided, and the pickups had dropped off to where a semblance of order could be reestablished, my former manager wished to convey to me the HR department was displeased with the pants I wore.
I don’t even have words to express my utter perplexity at such a declaration. With all the problems I faced in trying to carry out the functions of my job, I am chided for attire I have been wearing since I began in this employ. It is a criticism which comes after I expressed to two managers the need for additional workers in this pickup operations, as well as the suggestion to shut down one facet of the self-checkout lane whenever the truck arrived with the afternoon shipment. This would establish a more direct route from the dock in the backroom to the front where the orders are unpacked and arranged. Instead, as is usually the case, one must traverse the aisles around the long way, in front of customer service, and the front door where people continually exit and enter, to bring the pallets up to the front. A simple matter, I would think, which was acknowledged and ignored - as most things have been. I have heard stories this has been the practice from the start. A previous manager for online shopping requested from HR more help, was ignored, did all the work, and was chided for working so many hours. What’s clearly of more importance to HR is to maintain some abstruse demeanor in attire, within a dilapidated store falling in on itself, than expediting the delivery of groceries to customers who wish to have nothing of the store experience on their agenda.
These customers have articulated the appreciation they hold for this service time and time again. Now the store needs to reciprocate with appreciation of the customers by ensuring prompt and assured delivery of their order.
Yet, contrary to what I see as logic and common sense, I am told attire is more important than service to the customer. This is an issue which was flagged on me, six to eight months back, when the same HR department chided me for my shoes. I was told I had to wear black shoes. I could not wear white (though people have told me such a policy does not exist within other Hyvee stores). Without regurgitating my displeasure at such a nonsensical dictate, let me conclude this lengthy epistle with what I replied to the manger who reiterated this pants dictate to me this evening, a dictate he received from the HR. I told him that was not going to happen. I am tired of this nonsense. When there are far more pressing issues to resolve (issues that are not being addressed for whatever reasons), I am not going to spend money I do not have to buy something I do not want - especially when considering, for one year and nine months. I have carried out the tasks of this job to the best of my ability, adorned in the very pants the HR department now despises. If my employment is dependent upon my pants, then fire me or transfer me to the fulfillment center, Perhaps they value hard work above fashion sense.
Wendall Paul Sexton
Lee’s Summit Missouri
p.s. Whenever you receive this letter of mine, I probably will no longer be employed at the store of which I speak. I will either be at the new fulfillment center, where I probably should have gone at the first, if they will have me, or somewhere else I have yet to consider. If this is what occurs, the store will have no workers to deliver the pickups out to the customer’s cars. Why? I don’t know. You have an abundance of good workers: some who are still in that employ; many who left it behind. Why there is such little effort to retain such quality people is a mystery.
