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Serving who better?

I work for Coles. Woopdedoo. The work I do is monotonous at most. Greet customer, scan items, say price, ask for Fly Buys, do the payment thing, say good bye to the customer and repeat. My question here is who is Coles serving better?

At Coles I get $10.14 an hour generally I work 6 hours a week minimum which equates to ~$72 and considering I spend $35 of that a week on food necessary for my survival it gives me very little "play money". The most I've worked in a week has been 20 something hours and that was when I used to work Sundays. Coles employs people who are 15 years and older. If you're 15 according to this sheet from Coles itself, you can expect to get paid $9.00. BUT, if you are 21 years or older you get paid $15 an hour for the same work. I know that at least 80% of the people working on checkouts in my store are < 21. What happened to "Equal Opportunity"? It's discriminating against younger people. Now compare that to my friend who gets $800 a FORTNIGHT ($400 a week for those of you who either have dyscalculia or are too stupid/lazy to work it out). Where he works, everyone gets paid the same.

We get <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... nsored.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(cens)\' />. Yeah, we get it. Lots of it. And what do we have to do? Bite our tongue, back off, don't say a word. That policy sucks. You get what you give. One lady complained because I put some shampoo (doubly sealed) in with a box of Arnott Shapes (doubly sealed), she exclaimed at my actions and I put them in seperate bags and apologised. The lady went home frustrated, probably watched the Crows match that was on that day, and then called the Manager. Next day, manager gives me <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... nsored.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(cens)\' /> for doing it. Again, the whole tongue biting thing. Instead of serving the "loyal" customers, the manager drags me into his "office" to talk about something I resolved earlier.

At Coles there are two types of bags supplied at the checkouts. You have the dark grey ones that can hold 3 2L bottles without breaking and you have the blue-talcum-powder-tears-it-to-shreds bag. When the operators run out of the grey bags, they have to move onto the blue bags. This means longer packing time because instead of 3 2L bottles it now only holds ONE and instead of the standard 8 items you'd be lucky to fit four in. This results in longer packing time, and generally more frustration from the checkout operator and the customer.

Fly Buys. HA! What a joke. I've heard so many stories about this card it's no longer funny. In fact, it's depressing. People complain that they run out of points before they get to use them. No wonder why! You get a whole TWO points for buying $5 worth of groceries which equates to < one cent in real money. They expire fast, after 6 months I beleive.

Coles is trying to save the enviroment. Now think about which generation screwed over the planet. Oh, that's right, THE PREVIOUS GENERATION. The same people who are "promoting" fixes to the planet. Well, Coles, it seems like you're doing a wonderful job. Selling green bags (would you beleive that they are coloured green?!) for just 99c! Now how much does Coles pay the people who make these bags, oh wait, they use machines to make the bags. How stupid of me not to remember that. A multi-billion dollar couldn't afford to give a job to a few hundred starving Indians. If Coles really wanted to "save the enviroment" don't you think that they would have just stopped using plastic bags all together and just supplied the checkouts with green bags. THEN! If a person didn't bring their bags back, they would charge a levy on the bags. Same as if they didn't have them. That would be "better for the enviroment" and it would remind people to bring in their green bags.

Checkouts are supposed to be monitored all the time. Aha. Sure. I beleive that. There's only at a minimum 3 security cameras trained on the checkouts at all times. But that's a bit hard to watch them when the only people who have access to watching them are too busy talking about what dress they are going to wear to tonight's party or socialising with friends. On a busy day the clearance pipe wasn't working and I had no $20s, $10s, $5s, or $2s in my drawer. How is a checkout operator supposed to operate with just small change in his drawer? Where were the in-charges? Out the back. Talking about clothes. Smrt, real smrt.

So really, the only people Coles is serving better are themselves.

Unfortunately that happens alot, radar; not just with young people but generally in larger corporations-particularly those in the retail business. In BC the government regulates pay scales; those under 16 don't have to be paid the same minimum wage as those 16-18, who consequently don't have to be paid as much as those over the age of 18.

Personally I am more in favour of a more open management policy whereby the employees are more involved in how well the company does, and also in favour of paying an employee in direct relationship to his/her skill level etc. Happy employees tend to work harder, enjoy their work more, and all benefit from that...the company, the employees, the customers.

Obviously the bottom line does bear some importance, but the bottom line is also easier to maintain when there is a flow of mutual respect and a meeting of the minds along the way.

*Casts Rebirth on "Serving You Better"*

I started at Coles on the 10th of March, 2005. They offered me a checkout job and then switched me over to Grocery. Grocery consists of opening boxes and putting stuff on the shelf, then going out back, crushing said boxes using the bailer, then loading up another trolley. Really exciting stuff.

I was so overwhelmed with excitement that they moved me to checkout where I'd deal with the best and worst of the customers. My favourites were the ones that bitched about an item that I didn't discount, and the price difference being something pedantic like 26 cents. The highlight of being on checkout was in late 2005, where I busted a shoplifter. Even more exciting stuff.

I attempted to apply for a transfer in late November of 2005, but the boss (Frank at the time), declined saying they needed all the trained staff they could get for the Christmas rush. If only every day was like those three days before Christmas. In late Feburary of 2006, I again applied for a transfer which was accepted. I went for the job interview at the new store, and they said they had a job for me. Also, they said they would phone me soon about my roster. They said that I had a job in Dairy, doing Nightfill and my brother, in Bakery.

Three weeks passed. I phoned them up asking about my roster and they said they had contacted my original store about not having a position for me, and my original store should have contacted me. I was a little bit upset having wasted 3 weeks from work in which I calculated, doing my then current hours, I should have received anything in the vicinity of $300-550, depending on what days I work (Sundays are double time). Due to the fact I was casual, I could not get this money. If I was part time it would have been a possibility. The original store said they had not received any such communication back from the other store, thus keeping me in limbo.

I waited for a few days longer, and then they called me back. The original store had a job opening in the Fresh produce department, a department which I saw had a lot of friendly people and seemed to have more work than any other department, and was a welcome change from checkout. Michelle contacted me early in April and gave me my first week's hours over the phone.

My first day I arrived late because of a big crash on the main road going into work. Traffic was banked up for ages. Eventually I got there though, and Darren showed me the ropes. Basically it was if it's empty, fill it. If it's dirty, clean it and anything else I needed to know. I was on my own for my first night. There was noone there to tell me if what I was doing was right, or if there was a better way to do it. The vacuum cleaner was broken, so I couldn't use it that night either.

Two weeks later, I had learnt the basics and the vacuum cleaner was still broken. We (as in me) were forced to get down on our knees and go around the entire Fresh Produce department and pick up the little crushed bits of nuts from the carpet using only a dustpan and broom. Lets just say, it's damn near impossible.

A week after that we got our new vaccuum cleaner. One problem, the wheels kept falling off. Another problem, it wouldn't roll over it's own cord. So to move it you needed to lift it up, thus making the wheels fall off. Extremely annoying once it happens to you twenty or so times doing one night. I eventually got sick of it and wrote a short note to Michelle saying if she didn't screw on the wheels, I would bring in my own.

About a month ago, the vaccum cleaner broke again. This time the clips that hold down the top just shattered. Someone came up with the great idea to wrap a few layers of standard sticky tape around it, which by some miracle manages to keep it all together. I brought in my own vaccuum cleaner for a week, but then was told by phone that I wasn't allowed to bring it in because it didn't have an "Electrical Safety Tag" on it.

Thus began my quest to find an "Electrical Safety Tag". I asked Darren, he didn't know what it was. Neither did Steve, Adrian or Dave. To this day I haven't asked Michelle what it is, so I haven't brought mine in. Let's just say the vaccuum cleaner at work is the only vaccuum cleaner I know that sucks in both meanings of the word.

Three weeks ago I got a roster filled to the *brink* with a whole 9 hours. Doing some basic maths this means that I was working only 10% of the maximum time I could be working (the store is open for 96 hours a week) compared with 23% of the time if I was working 22 hours, like I did the first week. The difference in pay is $113.67 a week to $277.86, before tax. I wrote a note to Michelle about this, and she gave me 18 hours the next week, then 10 and a half hours the week after.

So far this is what I have seen done in Coles stores:
1. Fruit that has rolled under the gondolas (where we never clean), has been put back on the shelf.
2. A knife that has gone through a mouldy rockmelon is not washed AT ALL after doing so. It is then used to cut more fruit.
3. The same knife is used to cut Cauliflour, Watermelon, Honeydew and Rockmelon.
4. The note on the fridge door says "Stock in coolroom must cover two days sales only". I have seen stock in there as old as 18 days.
5. Coles gets bananas for $7.92 a kilo. They then sell them for $11.98 a kilo, a 150% markup on the already insane price.
6. They roster on people when it is not required, in a way costing themselves money. For example from 6-9pm on a Monday night the store is DEAD. No crates get filled, nothing gets done.
7. There's a glove there too, which I call "The Foot Glove" for self-explanatory reasons. It smells like a sweaty foot. If you don't put a glove on underneath, your hand smells like this glove. I swear this glove has never been washed, yet it's used to handle products.

And why did they hire me in the first place? Well, there's this guy in Fresh Produce who slacks off. They want to train me enough so they can fire him. Good luck I say. Without proper motivation I will not stay in the job for long.

I also should mention the fact that I have never SEEN my department boss.

Who *are* they serving better?

I would have quit already. Always better jobs out there. Especially now days where job oportunities are opening everywhere for kids under the age of 16. I was hired as a web developer for my countys website at the age of 14 making 6 bucks an hour and in the following year got raised to 8 dollars an hour and my boss just barley put in an application to raise me to 10 an hour. If all else fails you can always go into buisness yourself. Just build a network and build a reputation and thats all you need. Plus in that you can do what you want to do instead of working for some dumb store that treats you like crap. The best job i ever had was when i was my own boss. I had fun with it.

Just a bit of advice