Maybe management all these years should have paid better attention to product mix and certain popular products that customer's loved, rather than waste money on Starkey Water the $9.99 pint's of ice cream there were selling that got pulled off the shelves after only a few weeks because of listeria contamination!! I can't tell you how many customers complained to me about us getting rid of pop-chips and other items. I for one loved the "Snap Dragon" rice crackers we used to sell, especially the Bangkok Sweet Chili flavor and the random ice cream companies and flavor's that UNFI would disco...loved looking at those invoices and seeing "disco'd from warehouse" with no reason why. I was part of the layoff's and took the severance, I was a frozen buyer in the North Atlantic Region and it was extremely frustrating having to constantly update my sets and merchandising because I was constantly having to fill in gaps and do product mixes over again thanks to UNFI's and the regional grocery buyers incompetence!!! I miss my TM's soooooooooo much, but everything happens for a reason, and if I wound up staying I would be being worked to the bone with no assistance and looking over my shoulder at all time's waiting for the next round of cuts. I've heard from my former TM's, who stayed and or weren't laid off, that the joy and fun and morale has been sucked dry.....still though I have my day's where I'm still asking myself "why did this have to happen?", even though I know it was for the best and out of my control. It's just the grieving process I guess of losing my friends/former TM's.
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A house of cards indeed - &EWaFzAJ-era
it's a proverbial #GeniusManagementMove
This is what happens when you hand your profits to UNFI instead of taking time to set up your own distribution network. Dependency on UNFI is a consequence of growing way too fast and trying to impress Wall Street with a "national brand." Intelligent retailers create regional clusters of stores attached to their own distribution centers and then handle 99% of their own distribution in-house. But we're sooooooo much smarter than them. LOL
I definitely miss the many friends I made. What I don't miss are the arbitrary airheads in regional and global and their lack of customer focus. I remember once when we were changing cereal manufacturers, there was no planning and they pulled several of the top selling 365 cereals for weeks. Customers were so frustrated. There are about 1000 other examples of such idiocy but we persevered and had a lot of fun. We built our store's sales over the course of 3 years from $625k-$650k per week all the way to a typical average week of $850k-$875k. One Thanksgiving week we hit $985k. That was solely due to our efforts to connect with everyone who walked through that door. Hey, it's the executives' loss. They killed the goose that laid their golden eggs and now all they will have is chickensh**t. Just try to keep in touch with the friends you made, shop ONLY at competitors and enjoy watching their ship sink from the comfort of your living room! Be sure to tell EVERYONE you know about the great products you're finding at all the retail and online competitors. It's fun!
@ EWaFzAJ, totally understand and get that. My grieving over the loss of my team members was difficult. Today was the FIRST day I could walk into a conventional grocery store and didn't feel like an outsider. I know it's weird. I miss my teams a lot. We went through a lot together over 8 up years at an underperforming store . STL's came and went, but WE, the ones from the beginning carried the store. I was one of them. And the newest STL determined that I was the one that should be laid off. ( not just me, there were other long term people too who were laid off).
Blessing to be laid off. Enjoy your life that is now stress free from WFM. Realize that TM are not "appreciated" and nothing we said ever mattered. I am so happy to be gone.
I concur @EWaFzAJ-era, I definitely consider myself beyond lucky for getting out when I did, it's just the loss of some of the greatest people I have ever worked with on my team, I was blessed with great TM's and ATL's/TL's throughout my WF's career over 5 years.
It's all a house of cards, consider yourself lucky for getting out when you did. I know that I dread going into Whole Paycheck everyday, you tend to think that things can't get any worse, but somehow they always do.