Whole Foods Employees Miserable: "Seeing Someone Cry At Work Is Becoming Normal"

Whole Foods' new inventory management system aimed at improving efficiency and cutting down on waste is taking a toll on employees, who say the system's stringent procedures and graded "scorecards" have crushed morale and led to widespread food shortages, reports Business Insider

The new system, called order-to-shelf, or OTS, "has a strict set of procedures for purchasing, displaying, and storing products on store shelves and in back rooms. To make sure stores comply, Whole Foods relies on "scorecards" that evaluate everything from the accuracy of signage to the proper recording of theft, or "shrink."

Some employees, who walk through stores with managers to ensure compliance, describe the system as onerous and stress-inducing. Conversations with 27 current and recently departed Whole Foods workers, including cashiers and corporate employees — some of whom have been with the company for nearly two decades — say the system is seen by many as punitive. -BI

Terrified employees report constant fear over losing their jobs over the OTS "scorecards," which anything below 89.9% can qualify as a failing score - resulting in possible firings. 

Store managers test employees twice weekly, according to company documents, while corporate employees from the store's Austin, Texas headquarters conduct monthly walkthroughs which stores must themselves pass. 

"I wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares about maps and inventory, and when regional leadership is going to come in and see one thing wrong, and fail the team," a supervisor at a West Coast Whole Foods told Business Insider. "The stress has created such a tense working environment. Seeing someone cry at work is becoming normal."

 

Despite the heart-palpitating shortcomings of the OTS system, employees, supervisors and industry analysts have said that Whole Foods' previous inventory management system was inefficient and needed to be updated. 

"Whole Foods had a very decentralized approach, which adds complexity, and complexity adds cost," said Jim Holbrook, CEO of private label and retail consultancy Daymon Worldwide, which recently started working with Whole Foods.

Under the old system, buyers at the store and regional levels had more sway over what to sell. With OTS, however, those decisions have been shifted to the Austin corporate offices - a similar approach to conventional supermarkets like Safeway and Kroger. 

It remains to be seen whether this business model — and OTS — will work for Whole Foods. Holbrook believes it will. He said Amazon, which purchased Whole Foods last year for $13.7 billion, would be able to help Whole Foods work out the kinks with OTS.

"Amazon is very good at managing logistics behind the scenes," Holbrook said. "Whole Foods will be a better shopping experience as a result."

Many employees are also hopeful that Amazon will fix the new system.

"We all just hope that Amazon will walk into some stores and see all the holes on the shelf," a 12-year employee of a Midwest Whole Foods said. -BI

In their defense, Whole Foods says it's order-to-shelf (OTS) system allows employees more time to engage with customers - a poorly thought out response. 

"The team members are really excited about" order-to-shelf, said Whole Foods EVP of operations David Lannon last year on a call with investors, adding "They're really proud when they're able to achieve that, which is lower out-of-stocks, less inventory in the store, being able to be on the sales floor talking to customers and selling more products."

Boston Whole Foods (Paul Fantoni)

Whole Foods employees around the country thought that was hilarious. One such disaffected West Coast supervisor said "On my most recent time card, I clocked over 10 hours of overtime, sitting at a desk doing OTS work," adding "Rather than focusing on guest service, I've had team members cleaning facial-care testers and facing the shelves, so that everything looks perfect and untouched at all times."

Many Whole Foods employees at the corporate and store levels still don't understand how OTS works, employees said.

"OTS has confused so many smart, logical, and experienced individuals, the befuddlement is now a thing, a life all its own," an employee of a Chicago-area store said. "It's a collective confusion — constantly changing, no clear answers to the questions that never were, until now."

An employee of a North Carolina Whole Foods said: "No one really knows this business model, and those who are doing the scorecards — even regional leadership — are not clear on practices and consequently are constantly providing the department leaders with inaccurate directions. All this comes at a time when labor has been reduced to an unachievable level given the requirements of the OTS model."

Other employees have complained about a lack of training as a key reason as to why the OTS system is failing. 

"The problem lies in lack of training and the fact that every single member of management from store level to corporate is over tasked and overburdened," according to one former corporate employee who conducted walkthroughs at East Coast locations. 

Some even suggested that Whole Foods corporate had no clue about working in stores - and that the new OTS protocols were absurd. 

"In the beginning, we actually had a checklist where one task was to initial that you initialed off another task." 

 

Comments

erkme73 JimmyJones Feb 6, 2018 11:11 PM Permalink

Wife is an ER MD.  The physician leasing firm that employs her, which has the contract at the local hospital, recently got bought out by a new group.  Suddenly she has a new director who assigns quotas to everything, and grades every aspect of her performance.   It is quite stressful, and takes much of what little joy there was in her profession, and flushes it away.  She is actively entertaining head hunters' calls again.

In reply to by JimmyJones

Laowei Gweilo Cognitive Dissonance Feb 6, 2018 10:36 PM Permalink

Efficiency, bitchez!

As someone that has shopped at Whole Foods for years -- mostly because it's the only grocer anywhere near me downtown =/ -- most of the employees have always treated their jobs like a social gathering to discuss quinoa, fair-trade, and yoga. 

I'm no fan of Amazon but since they took over, prices are down and employees actually look busy. 

So can't say I give a shit if they cry themselves to sleep.

OH BOO HOO A FUCKING SCORECARD.

Anyone that has any portion of actual liability for business earnings and people's pay cheques would see a fucking scorecard as a beach vacation.

God forbid they have some accountability in their libtard world.

In reply to by Cognitive Dissonance

BobEore BabaLooey Feb 6, 2018 11:03 PM Permalink

Couldn't happen to a bigger bucket o phucks!

For years these scrub assholes rode high n mighty over the jungle which the world o 'natural foods' had become... gobbling up the market share of independent owners who stuck to the organic only format instead of the sneaky... blend n pretend which would be become the hallmark of the new style 'organic-lite' - avocadoes 'organic' one week... conventional the next... cause the price at farmgate went up. Sleepy do-head customers who never read the small print on the signs would never clue in to the difference.

And everybody was a winner- cept the now extinct local store... the growers who didn't water down production practices at the 'suggestion' of big buyers... and the customer base which now gets to feast on the debris left by BIG K\osher/ ABBLALISMs takeover of the table as well as the finances of TARDNATION.

cRy me a river crybabies... then die like the silly shits what you always knew yu were!

 

 

In reply to by BabaLooey

Implied Violins Billy the Poet Feb 6, 2018 10:36 PM Permalink

That's what needs to happen, but if people don't organize themselves against this bullshit soon it will be too late.  There aren't enough Hedgeless's who have already taken that jump.  And soon it will be impossible to get the land and materials to do it if Bezos gets his way and runs off all competition so he and his ilk can basically decide who lives and who dies.

It's going to take a revolution to stop these motherfuckers at this point.  Or an act of nature... 

In reply to by Billy the Poet

Oldwood Billy the Poet Feb 6, 2018 11:20 PM Permalink

I've spent my whole life working, most of it physical labor and have witnessed a large percentage of those I have "worked" with or employed who will go to any lengths to avoid "work", many actually putting far more effort in it's avoidance that the actual work would have called for. 

Principled abstinence I think is how they see it. It has become our dominant religion now. Just as accepting charity was once perceived as low character and now is revered as "smart".

We're doomed. Let's not pretend this is as it always was when it is anything but. This is not the world of my father or his, who WORKED to build a life for himself and his family. 

Today we are far too self absorbed to even consider the hardship or feared inconvenience of children or even the labor of actually remaining faithful to a spouse. No, it's all about ME now and there is no sacrifice too small to fail rationalization as beneath one's self esteem or potentially benefitting another.

Doomed I say.

In reply to by Billy the Poet

Oldwood NoDebt Feb 6, 2018 10:53 PM Permalink

Illegal aliens and automation are a direct response to cost of labor. Every action that government has taken has been to increase the cost of labor while simultaneously providing cheap labor alternatives as well as cheap imports.

This isn't higher math here. We allow our government to impose regulations and easy lawsuits that drive up our costs under the premise  of protecting us. We allow them to hold our borders open claiming some higher humanitarian motives while we apparently ignore how much CHEAPER they work.

We look the other way while they impose trade deals that allow cheap imports to flood our markets and as long as OUR job ain't fucked, we applaud it while denigrating American producers as price gougers producing inferior products.

We are NOT that STUPID, we only pretend to be as a means of rationalizing our own selfish self destruction.....just like any good drug addict would do.

Now that illegals are achieving parity with domestics, automation is taking hold....and will take what is left using debt and redistribution to attempt to anesthetize us from the disease eating us alive. 

None of this can touch us anymore than drugs. All we have to do is abstain. Just say no.

But we can't, can we? Too weak. Too insecure. Too lazy. Too indoctrinated to deny the rationalization that makes sense out of suicide.

In reply to by NoDebt