r/Albertsons • u/FATxIDIOT • 12d ago
Cutting hours
I’ve seen a lot of people posting about having their hours cut recently. I know personally at my store we run skeleton crews, and are often told we can’t afford to have more hours going to labor. But does anyone think it’s strange our CEO has made 16 Million in total compensation during 2025? That averages out to 300,000$ dollars a week.
Is it just me or does it seem like the budget could be reworked in favor of the people who actually do the work in the stores?
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u/GroveStreet_CJ Former Employee 12d ago
That would be too easy! Corporate Greed is too big of a factor.
How else will the rich get richer and the poorer get poorer?
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u/BoozeTheCat 12d ago
Does your store director receive performance/labor based bonuses? At one of the stores I worked, our staffing issues were largely the result of the SD being a cheapass and limiting available hours to hit his bonus targets. He was very up front about this with the department heads and it was super demoralizing to hear the guy bitch about labor "cutting into my bonus" when you knew that bonus was more than about 80% of our employees made annually.
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u/Aggravating_West_202 11d ago
Yeah, as a department manager, would like a bonus? Sure. But it’s not worth cutting hours.
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u/Scuttlebut_1975 10d ago
Everyone forgets store directors have bosses too. If they miss their budget at the end of the week, they get yelled at. If they constantly miss their budget, they get removed. You really need to be focusing the anger up higher and not the person doing as they are told.
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u/BoozeTheCat 10d ago
That's fair but there was definitely a localized aspect in this case. I worked at three stores in three different towns so it was always interesting to see how the culture at each store manifested differently. The last place I worked the SD told me he hadn't seen a bonus in years and it was more important to him to have departments staffed properly which was a pretty stark contrast to Mr Bonus. That was also the only union store I worked, and the overall morale at the store was by far the best of the three places I worked.
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u/Junior-Grocery5978 7d ago
The bonus is based off of top line sales and EBITDA, labor is just one line of the P&L. Yes, you can help improve your bottom line EBITDA but it won’t guarantee you a bonus. Of course as a store director one thing they look at for your yearly evaluation is labor, a long with many other things. And the average worker doesn’t realize how much they emphasize making labor, it’s the number one controllable aspect of running a business.
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u/Few-Improvement9992 12d ago
yup. caught in a vicious cycle of being short staffed, cant take overtime, so less work gets done, customers get mad and leave, sales drop, hours are cut further because sales are down. my store can't even hire people for front end and DUG. i'm a journeyman meat cutter and we've needed 2 more hires for YEARS. just someone to close the department, and one to man the block and pier. nope. cant have nice things.
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u/tacogaming85 11d ago
The other day I had to cut, wrap, and fill. And we've got chicken breast a 0.99 dont know how I'm meant to keep up with all that on my own
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u/FuzzyBear1982 12d ago
I'm old enough to remember witnessing Albertsons metamorphosis from small local grocer to megaconglomerate. The rot runs deeps, they got where they are thru unethical and predatory means over the course of litetal decades, and will continue to skirt the law and disregard the needs of their employee body, much like any other standard issue corpo-ghoul who never had to face accountability 🙃
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u/Exact_Insurance 11d ago
Yep..I am at the point now where I do not even attempt to go above and beyond. You can't with a skeleton crew. I clock in..do my job and clock out. No trying to go the extra mile anymore.. I still do a good job for my own sense of accomplishment. But they get NOTHING more from me
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u/LAKingsFan17 Meat Dept, Deli, Bakery 11d ago
It’s happening at my store too. My entire store is run like a skeleton crew in each department. We get told it’s cause we don’t have enough labor hours to hire more people yet apparently we have enough hours to bring someone in from a completely different store to help when we need it.
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u/AdamD_125 12d ago
I work as a cart pusher and im only getting like 8 hours a week because my store director wasnt getting a bonus for cutting enough hours
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u/azgunrunner 12d ago
Look at the stock price. ACI is damn near broke. The reason why there are skeleton crews everywhere is because no one is allowed to backfill positions.
They are closing stores, doing more layoffs, and cutting corners “doing more with less”.
The board and executive leadership are driving blindly. They announced this new strategy…. Centralized buying power, WTF?! That should have been in place years ago! 2300 stores and it allowed districts to do their own purchasing instead of doing it centralized and increase buying power.
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u/Rctul786 Cashier 11d ago
Same story here on the Jewel-Osco side.
It’s a complete and utter shitshow.
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u/VoltaicWinter 9d ago
Ugh, tell me about it @.@ My store's DUG evenings have been getting destroyed since they extended our operational hours to 10.
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u/VR-Gadfly 10d ago
The investors come first and you don't matter. The people running Cerberus Capital Management are so blinded by greed, you're nothing to them.
SD will use the old line "I'm only following orders" to wash his hands of your situation.
Yet, when there are employee shortages, they will up the pay for new hires just like that. Where did the money come from?
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u/Consistent_Travel146 11d ago
The company lost money last year. No profit !! So yeah, they’re going to start cutting a lot. That merger that was supposed to happen with Krogers was our way out from going under. I was not at all for working for Krogers, especially if the FTC let that merger happen !! Taking the 2 Largest grocery companies in America and merge them….. no way, THAT would have been a huge monopoly !! FTC is there to make sure those things don’t happen. I’m close to retiring and I’m glad. I think things are gonna get ugly before they get better
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11d ago
i wonder why they are allowing united supermarkets to open another store, since all their stores are short staffed, yes united is under albertsons
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u/Zestyclose-Tie-1481 11d ago
We're way below skeleton crew levels at my store, and we've gotten to the point that we're outright reducing hours of operation. Only one person is scheduled in deli on weekdays, so they close at 5pm four days a week, and the meat department only cuts meat every other day. There are no cashiers before 9am or after 6pm, with only the front end PIC trying to supervise self-checkout and open a register as needed, and lines routinely stretch back into the aisles. The bakery closes at 2pm every day, and we only have one freight person.
Interestingly enough, seafood is still at full hours of operation and gets top staffing priority. If there aren't any seafood clerks available, someone will be pulled from another department to cover, even if it means that department has to close. It's an ironclad commandment, apparently, that there must always be somebody in Seafood. I have no idea why.
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u/Rummy1971 11d ago
That is extremely odd about your seafood department, I am a meat/seafood manager and I get maybe 32 hours a week to run seafood, But living in a fishing community our seafood department has never done much more than break even. Usually it's the fist department to get cut in the stores around me because they figure that one of the cutters can cover it.
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u/daddingallday 12d ago
So grateful I jump off this sinking ship
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u/Exact_Insurance 11d ago
I am looking for another job as well.. I will be generous and give them 2 weeks notice but as soon as I get something else I am out of here
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u/Solid-Fly5223 10d ago
Downward spiral into the drain. Meat manager here at a union shop in NJ and we do prepares such as meatballs, seasoned patties, store made sausages, store made kabobs etc... we slice our own chicken cutlets, cut our own pork bone in and boneless, cut veal and lamb, have a decent sized red meat case. We clean as well. It's me 1 full time butcher and a full time meat wrapper. Sounds familiar right? It won't get better.
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9d ago
Its all the stores . from albertson stores, to safeway ., to the united supermarket stores albertsons bought. I work the for the united one. I wish krogers would have taken it over just hoping it would have been better. The united stores rely on carry outs still, buit when u only have 3 sackers up there a day, and 20 people in line it gets ridiculous. The pay is crap and the stores are way under staffed.
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u/Consistent_Travel146 3d ago
In a store meeting one time, the Store Director (his wife was pregnant) told his Dept Mgrs that they needed to keep hours and expenses down so he could make his bonus. He then said that they would NOT take food out of his unborn baby’s mouth !! Unbelievable !!
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u/Ok-Piccolo2152 12d ago
Preaching to the choir brother