A sad and unnecessary lesson offered by the Board.....
By DOUGLAS MOSER and LAUREN DITULLIO
Gloucester Daily Times, Mass. (MCT)
August 07, 2014
Market Basket managers are describing loads of perishable food coming to their stores that they did not order and spoke of trucks not arriving, even as the company executives reminded managers about their responsibilities for receiving loads of goods and for scheduling according to current sales that are “substantially reduced from standard levels.”
Several store managers, whose jobs have been advertised in a three-day job fair that started Monday in Andover, called the situation chaotic. One manager sent an email saying that he received a large fish order that his store could not sell in a typical week of sales.
Related Stories
At the same time, co-CEO Felicia Thornton told the managers in an email Friday to schedule in a manner that would “ensure (loads) are received” and align with “your current customer base.”
“We’re just in an impossible situation,” said Stephanie Schwechheimer, manager of the Market Basket on Water Street in Haverhill.
She said the directions from corporate headquarters in Tewksbury were contradictory and confusing.
“They told us to prepare to receive these orders, stock shelves, and cut hours,” she said.
Thornton’s Friday email to managers promised, “we will ship meat, produce, perishable and grocery loads to stores.” And she reminded them, “it is your responsibility to ensure they are received, handled and merchandised correctly.”
In Methuen, store manager Dan Gill said the loads that have come to his store from the company warehouses have included only items ordered, but the loads have been incomplete.
“We only got two trailers and those trailers were dated July 23 and 24,” Gill said. “We got those the week before last. That’s all we’ve seen. We’ve done an order for all the days we were supposed to do orders for, but nothing’s come to the back door.”
Gill said the last load of perishable goods they received came July 17, the day before warehouse workers stopped going to work, crippling the 71-store chain.
Joe Amaral, manager of the Market Basket in North Andover, said he is in the same spot.
“It’s really an incredible e-mail, because they’re asking us to stock the stores, but we haven’t received a single delivery,” he said.
Amaral said the email asked that store managers make sure their stores are stocked and that perishables be stored properly. But at his store, Amaral said, nobody has made a choice to throw out or refuse to stock any food.
“We’ve placed many orders. We just haven’t gotten them,” he said.
Meanwhile, Barry Boivin, manager of the Lee, N.H., Market Basket, said in an email to Thornton on Monday that he received a huge load of fresh fish he did not order.
“The order for the meat department has about 75 percent of the items being sent that weren’t ordered and many of the amounts were altered,” he wrote. “The deli order has fresh fish, and at this point no fresh fish has been ordered. Also, the quantities of fresh fish on the order are far above any amounts that we could sell in a ‘normal’ week of sales.”
It is not known whether any of the reportedly wayward orders were sent to or meant for the lone Cape Ann Market Basket store in Gloucester. The company, meanwhile, said that no orders of fish have been sent since the boycott began more than two weeks ago. it is not known whether any of the
Barbara Paquette of Billerica, an accounts payable supervisor in the corporate office, said of the about 200 people from that office there maybe are five regular people there with a “bunch of temps.”
She said the temps “don’t know what to do.”
At the same time, the company has hired temporary workers to man the warehouses, typically staffed with more 550 regular employees.
“That would go a long way toward explaining why these shipments are a mess,” Schwechheimer said. “But I think the real mess speaks for itself.”
Thornton in her email directed managers to cut back their scheduling.
“As we are all aware our store sales volumes are substantially reduced from standard levels,” she wrote. “As has always been our practice, your role as store director requires you to manage payroll as one of your many responsibilities. This means you need to schedule staff levels necessary to serve your current customer base and maintain store conditions.”
Managers said they have tried to scale back work schedules based on the near total drop-off in store sales, while staffing stockers and receivers to unload goods that may or may not arrive.
Both Gill and Schwechheimer said their schedules for this week were done and already posted Friday when Thornton’s email came through.
“I’m not turning anybody away,” Gill said. “It’s against the law to do that. What we’re doing, we’re asking the kids and they’re volunteering to go home. The full-time guys, they depend on this, so we’re trying to ask the kids who are part time to punch out. But we’re not going to come close to making payroll.”
Since warehouse workers, company truck drivers and corporate administrators walked off the job July 18, store shelves have remained empty and employees and customers have urged a boycott of the company until former CEO Arthur T. Demoulas is reinstated.
Demoulas, whose family owns just less than a majority of the supermarket chain, has offered to buy the rest of the company from his cousin’s family for an undisclosed amount. The company board of directors has said it is considering his and other offers.
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140807/BIZ/140809715/-1/NEWSLETTER100
No comments:
Post a Comment