Recently started as a grocery person at a certain Amazon-owned store and was wondering if people here had any pro tips for inconspicuously slacking off, staving off boredom, corrupting fellow workers with Marxist thought , things to avoid, etc.
Idk about yours, but at the Amazon warehouse I used to work at they had gates that used lasers to open and close for health and safety.
As in, if the lasers path was blocked, an alarm would trigger and disabled your quadrant because it would mean someone was in the dangerous middle area where the automated robots rule over.
Well, I just stuck bits of tape with dust on the laser emitters every now and again when I felt my quadrant of the warehouse needed a break. The technicians come over to see what's gone on, I'd shrug my shoulders, watch them play about on the computers for a while trying every little thing, then I'd discreetly peel the tape off again as they try some last solution so everything boots back up again.
If you have anything that you could possibly get some sort of special help for, use it. For me, I told my managers that I could only do certain tasks (the easy ones) because of a back injury I sustained in a car crash (I can't even drive a car, and I've never been in a crash), but that I'd do my best in all other areas!!
In tandem with that, another thing is acting dumb but nice. To your managers, you are a dumb prole, a well meaning oblivioid. If I didn't get work done, I'd be super apologetic and bootlicky. Make promises that the work will be done next time. One time, I was suspected of stealing (because I was in fact stealing), and a guy asked me to tell him what's in my bag. I painstakingly pulled out bits of my packed lunch one by one, with a story as to why strawberry yogurt is my favourite, why oats help me stay energised on shift, and my mother's special sandwich recipe (surprise - it's cheese and ham between two pieces of bread). Eventually the guy just got bored and sent me on my way so he could get on with more important things.
I just stuck bits of tape with dust on the laser emitters every now and again when I felt my quadrant of the warehouse needed a break
:fidel-salute-big:
Well, with the stealing I was on a little ladder packing the 10ft tall robots. The camera was behind me by a few metres, and about a metre above me. I just wore a big jacket, and stole bits in one smooth movement where it looked like I'd put it in the robot. That's why I think they had a 'loss preventions officer' come to scout me out rather than bringing me straight to HR. I remember the loss preventions guy used to follow me round, so sometimes I'd lead him down a corridor, get to the point where he was about half way down it following me, then I'd suddenly turn on a swivel to walk straight back towards him, and every time he'd swivel with me and pretend he was just going about his business. Always used to make laugh. It was cartoonish.
Customers will ask you to check if you have an item "in the back." Due to just-in-time logistics and strained supply chains, it's unlikely that you'll find much of anything. So just go to an employee-only area, check your phone for a couple minutes, go back and tell the customer something like "Sorry we're all out, we might get some more next Tuesday."
Hiding in the walk-in cooler (especially in the summer) is a time-honored tradition.
If you encounter an irate customer, hand them off to a manager ASAP. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
You'll hear the same dumb lines repeated by customers: "If it doesn't scan I guess it's free." It's your choice how sarcastic you want your response to be.
Stealing expired groceries rather than throwing them out is praxis.
If it doesn’t scan I guess it’s free.
the correct response to this is "it should be but my boss is cringe".
then if the customer gets pissy you should be legally allowed to shoot them
If it doesn’t scan I guess it’s free.
"It is! You just have to outrun security", while gesturing to the 80 year old greeter to quietly encourage stealing.
Working the night shift was my favourite part when i worked at a grocery store. Plenty of chances to pocket stuff, and night shift crews are generally chill. Also, no managers or customers.
Got yelled at by the store manager for that when she found out, since she believed in keeping schedules unpredictable to “keep them on their toes”.
:jokerfication:
Refused to change it to the randomized schedules everyone else in the store got. Got demoted to day crew grocery, then manager’s son took on my job.
:jokerfied:
And less than one week after getting demoted and the manager’s son taking over, he missed that power had failed on most of the refrigerators and freezers, because he was sitting in the central office, gaming on his laptop and not doing the required regular temperature checks. The store lost about CA$100,000 in product, and even more in lost sales over the following few weeks as customers shopped at competitors for frozen stuff before we could restock. I had the biggest grin on my face at that news. Karma, man.
Yeah but I bet he got to keep his job because he was being sufficiently sadistic to the workers :guts-rage:
I was lucky enough to be union, and got consistent days off. And yeah, we got ti slack off, but the day our bunkers started to defrost because day shift forgot to check the temperatures, we were on it. Saved a bunch a bunch of product, got a paid day off, and because we were the place low income people shopped, managed to save the groceries they needed. Also, my shift lead always turned off the christmas music. Blasted metal instead, which meant we partied with the other night shift mall guys almost every shift on our breaks.
Everyone on the night crew got at least 2 consecutive days off each week, and always the same days for each person, which is even more important on night shifts than on day shifts. Got yelled at by the store manager for that when she found out, since she believed in keeping schedules unpredictable to “keep them on their toes”.
Jesus that is fucked. I worked 3rd shift stocking/truck unloading and sorting for a while and having 2 consecutive days off was so important! Any normal people shit (dr appointments, bank stuff, god forbid you have to a gov't building for anything) requires you to totally fuck up your sleeping schedule, and then unfuck it so you can go to work without being a zombie WHICH TAKES AT LEAST 2 DAYS FUCKIN HELL
Bosses like that deserve things i probably shouldn't say in the view of my dedicated nsa agent
Everyone on the night crew got at least 2 consecutive days off each week, and always the same days for each person, which is even more important on night shifts than on day shifts.
:maduro-salute: Braver than the fucking troops
Empty boxes are your best friend. Like in that video game from forever ago. An empty box that looks full? You're on a mission and everybody needs to step the fuck back. You got an empty box that looks empty? "Oh shit, sorry, I gotta take this back to the compactor,"gets to be used to overly friendly customers.
Unless you do full shifts as a cashier you probably won't be getting bored on a regular basis. If you're doing fronting/facing and you're not a person who easily gets into a Zen state that can be irritating.
Avoid drinking coffee or energy drinks unless you're just dragging. Nervous caffeine energy will wind up with you going out and doing more work than you get paid to do.
Remember the phrase, "Non-mechanical hearing issues." Its a way to get out of having to talk to people if you don't want to hear their life story when in a somewhat noisier section of the store.
Figure out the "cat is on fire" procedures. Meaning, if you notice another worker that's been cornered by a customer, what can you do to help them out? I worked at a store with an overhead PA system, and we'd page the employee by name and tell them they had a call on a phone line that did not exist. If they needed an excuse to leave, they had it, if they wanted to keep talking to the customer they could stick around.
Clipboards make you look important, looking at a clipboard makes you look busy. Double edged though, sometimes somebody will think you're a manager or something and expect you to have answers you can't possibly have.
Figure out who the stores "Bill" is. "Bill" being an imaginary employee/worker that gets to be the reason why something isn't satisfactorily meeting a customer's expectations.
Buyers get to blame stockers for why the shelves are empty, stockers get to blame buyers for why the shelves are empty. When there's some big national or regional event, buyers and stockers get to blame that for why the shelves are empty.
I found that a decent pair of Etnies sneakers were long lasting and comfortable for being on my feet stocking/receiving grocery/chill/frozen. Probably any reliable brand of skater shoe bought from like Shoebacca.com will be worth the 50$~60$ bucks. Natural uppers lasted longer for me than synthetic. Looking for thick soles as gives some padding, will let the sole flex longer before cracking, and you WILL be stepping on nails/screws/glass so keeping your feet from being impaled is super important.
That's a great tip for the shoes - my feet have been killing me the past couple days
I know insoles are "supposed" to help. But I've never had any that would 1) stay in place or 2) if they were the fancy jelly ones the "parts" would come unglued. So a properly fitted pair of thick soled sneakers wound up being more affordable and slightly more comfortable.
Another thing to think about... I found that having a few pairs of "toe" socks that I could rotate into my weekly foot clothing rotation did great at helping to keep blisters from happening where my toes rub against each other.
Find the department that you like working in the most and then pretend to be bad at all the other departments. If its like the the one I worked in they'll try to make you cover shifts for departments that suck to work in.
Virtually nobody likes collecting carts, so if you don't mind a little manual labor there's prime opportunity to dick around while collecting carts. Just walk slow and take your time. They'll just be glad they didn't have to do it.
When I worked at a supermarket one of my jobs was to collect all the shopping carts from the back of the parking lot and bring them to the entrance. If I wanted to get away from customers I would do that and take my sweet time with it. Also, I kept my "new employee" sticker on my name tag the entire time I worked there, and whenever someone asked me where they could find something I pointed to the sticker and said I was new
If you can get into one of the departments like Produce, Bakery, the Deli or Meat Department, it's a lot easier to go into the cooler, pocket something and leave. Used to steal all kinds of shit from Kroger, but amazon probably has cameras in the toilets, so find out where they all our. There are only going to check the tapes if they suspect you and never leave a paper trail for them to find.
Yeah, I'd be cautious working at Amazon. I worked in the meat department at Safeway, and the amount of shit I took is staggering. Food, razors, diapers, booze not to mention snacks and drinks while I was working. I saved enough money to take two trips to South America in the five years I worked there. I don't think you can get away with that kinda shit today.
I've been pushing shopping carts in a parking lot for the last year and a half. My solution to boredom has been hidden headphones + audiobooks.
Hidden headphones: I got a pair of open-ear bone conduction headphones, and figured out that my hair is long/curly enough that I can wear them stealthily by positioning them such that the transducers are right above my ears, with the part that normally goes around the back of your neck going over the top of my head. I use hair ties to fasten this into place and then cover it with hair. I also wear a hat (wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat and long sleeved athletic shirts is a good idea if you work outside and don't want skin cancer).
Sometimes it's hard to hear the audio because the transducers aren't sitting quite next to my ears, so I use an app to boost my phone's volume over 100%.
Also, I need to be able to pause quickly to avoid someone hearing the noise if someone walks up right next to me, or when I need to listen to someone. My solution for this was to take a headphones cord, and use it to create a "pause button" on the back of my phone case, by taping the headphones cable into place with a quarter to create a larger button over the built-in play/pause button on the cable. That way I can just tap my pocket whenever I need to pause. When the headphones cable is plugged in the phone will want to send audio through the headphone jack instead of through bluetooth to the bone conduction headphones, so I use the app Lesser Audioswitch to force it to use bluetooth audio.
It's not a totally foolproof system but nobody's yelled at me for doing it yet, so I feel confident that it's at least not obvious that I am listening to audiobooks all day every day.
An alternative solution would be if you can convince your boss you need a hearing aid and then get one that is bluetooth enabled. This is probably a hard sell if you already started work there, however.
The audiobooks I mainly get through myanonamouse (private torrent tracker for ebooks and audiobooks), DM me if you want and maybe I can get you an invite.
What i did when I worked at Meijer,
Drink water a lot so you can go to the bathroom all the time. Bring a bottle you can fill up so you can walk around and go fill it up.
I was lucky that I was in a certain job no one else wanted to do, and I was the only one who knew how that system in that department worked. So I could slack off. I was 3rd shift and we were closed so no customers and my managers would leave me alone.
Will I ever get harassed for going to the bathroom too much? I heard about the whole bottle-pissing thing at Amazon warehouses
That I’m not sure comrade. It’s a different environment with different standards. Retail as opposed to warehouse/distribution.
Anyone got advice for wanking at a grocery store?
Yeah I need to go to sleep, my brain has started reading things hilariously
I'm at work roght now but if you give me a rundown of your job description I can give some tips when I get home.
Grocery team member - stocking, date checks, facing shelves, the odd maintenance or cleaning task
Looks like folks here already pretty much covered everything I could think of.
Another thing you should definitely do is check out the resources in this post
Also try to reach out to the folks that just successfully unionized the Staten Island warehouse.
If walking doesn’t bother you just offer to restock stuff from where you have to go to the back room or freezer. And just dick around on your trip there and back as well as while you’re in the back/ freezer. When I worked at a deli the key to making the time going gadget was differentiating your day as much as possible so no day was “routine”
