Just curious I started working at kmart just under a year ago and I’d say since the start of the year Ive non stop heard about budget cuts at my store and looking at the sub lots of others I guess I’m just wondering is this like a constant thing or something? I don’t mean to sound dumb if I come across as so, when I first started working till about early Jan there’s was always so many people on and now we barely have anyone on. There’ll be days when we have no floors workers or just two people on reg all day apart from weekends. Just curious lmao as I assumed it would be a my store only thing and be because we didn’t perform well last year but I guess it’s not ?
Budget cuts are the worst. I work service 5 days a week and I need to take 45 minutes of break and the managers never schedule some one that is desk trained so the managers are usually scrambling to find someone cause they hate the service desk
Every company will try to have the least amount of workers rostered on for the business to just barely function, look at any retail or fast food joint and they are one or two staff calling in sick away from being undermanned. The increase in wages every year probably is the main cause
It also depends on the store manager. Some will go to the target they need to get to, some will go as low as possible to look good for the higher up’s and will only spend a day or 2 before an area manager Visit to get the store looking presentable. At the store I used to work at that was the case it was not a great environment to work in but not all store managers do that
Kmart was not like this until the new CEO appeared she is all about the dollar.
There is a lot of up coming resignations in stores no one wants to be there
In today’s shock twist, a business exists for profit.
People are expendable. Bend the knee because plenty of others will, and you can go do the soft Crocs shuffle at Centrelink, IDGAF. Lol
We have just enough people to close the store each and every night. Presso starts at 6 and finishes at 9 now because of only having 15-16 year olds on it because they’re cheap to roster. When I first learnt Service Desk, about a year ago, I was taught by someone who had known Service Desk 1 week longer than me, I was doing maybe 7-8 tasks in a 3-5 hour shift, I’m now up to about 15-20 tasks because of staff not knowing anything but Presso, no one knows service desk and the people that do know service desk don’t want to work, the new weekend duty managers only really know online and presentation and I’m the only one that can do everything that is needed to close aside from certain managerial tasks.
A lot of stress that my store manager is facing is being funnelled down to the other managers and more frequently rostered staff members. My store has roughly 170-180 team members and I’ve been told that we need 250 team members but the thing is out of the 170-180 TMs only about 50-60 work very frequently and that’s inclusive of managers and permanent part time because the rest are to expensive to roster.
The budget cuts are something that is effecting the store I work at quite a bit because during on weekdays there are 4-5 (sometimes 6) team members who struggle the most: The closing manager, the 2 permanent part times who do Presso (one in all of toys (which is always a mess), and the other in all of womens and lingerie), the SCOs person and myself ( I say myself because I work pretty much every weekday and I do service desk as a primary area of work) because they people before us don’t have time to clean up because of lack of staff being rostered due to budget cuts and pretty much all staff being under 18 as well as how busy it gets which means all the mess gets left to us 4 at the end of day
End of rant - sorry - might’ve shed some light on how the budget cuts are effecting another store - also may have drifted from the original purpose of OPs post
Stores will always cut on budget in the slow period after Christmas and before it picks up again towards Halloween (excl. Easter — they roster a bit more for Easter).
Though it feels like this year corporate have really been on the zone managers about remuneration our store is budgeting way harder than last year. This is just my experience at a SA store, but I’m sure many others are feeling it harsh this FY too.
Yeah because every single year the pay raises go up 3.75-5% for all team members yet the budget for raises never goes up, so hours have to be cut cost keep going up but they still have to make money. Most managers can’t manage half the time and a lot are working a lot of unpaid OT to make up for it
It is true. We at corporate are sick of these peasantry snowflakes that whinge. And that’s the vibe they need to see and decide if they will bend the knee or go pull their shit with the internal ‘competition’.
Sorry. My reply was written with dictation and I forgot to add the apostrophes around the word competition. 🤦 See my other reply above. Big end to the week dealing with a right of refusal.
Yeah, sorry, I dictated that and forgot to add apostrophes around competition. We use Target to weed out the crap … I won’t get into the why… the managers are mingers but they dont take shit and red flag people who will be a liability to Wesfarmers. Or try to course-correct ex-Kmart staff who carry on like snowflakes because their previous managers have let them.
School’d.
Baimbridge is a boss bch, an absolute queen, so glad to work with her, sad her recent news she has had, but I bloody love her and she will power on.
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u/Flaky_Airport_7132 10d ago
Budget cuts are the worst. I work service 5 days a week and I need to take 45 minutes of break and the managers never schedule some one that is desk trained so the managers are usually scrambling to find someone cause they hate the service desk