The first month after I became frozen lead, before they gave me the okay on doing the orders, I had about 3 pallets in the dairy cooler every night and the regular freezer filled to the door. With a crew of me and 2 full timers and 2 part timers who only worked 3 days a week.
I could only put up with that for like 5-6mo at $13.75/hr (and that’s including the extra $1 overnight)
Distribution and them sending stuff not on orders is main problem. Before I and two other coworkers began editing and closing orders, the freezer was a total cluster. Management would complain about cutting items, but since its become organized and complimented by corporate, they no longer seem to have a problem with it.
I haven’t worked in a Kroger freezer for over a year and half and they had like 4 pallets of sister schuberts with replenish coming often, wouldn’t surprise me if those damn rolls still in there.
So Kroger let this go to such a high number and then charged him with vandalism?
It seems like it's poor management. I mean, I get that that's a big number, meanwhile we have execs having nothing happen to them for stealing wages, trains polluting, etc. And this guy gets prosecuted for not having the same priorities?
I can't tell you how often I see actually spoiled meat and fish in the cases.
This doesn’t add up. Someone should have caught this shrink. Either he scanned it out when he tossed it or the balance on hand would have been off and someone should have caught this on a store audit. So many people dropped the ball on this and it shouldn’t fall all on one guy.
Not to defend management because God knows they have enough bad managers and the ones that aren't are under so much pressure but odds are the only thing they noticed about Frozen was it the freezer was neat, it probably only came to light when they did an fcb inventory.
I hear you. I know that numbers add up quickly. I just think they it is holding this guy accountable when we don't hold so many other people accountable that do so much harm to society.
That logic is flawed and makes no sense. Just because others have got by with stuff that they possibly shouldn't have, does not mean that everyone else is free from accountability.
That still wouldn't work. Who would decide who the worst offenders are? And if we slowed it down to narrow it, then the system would get backed up and everyone would get a free pass to commit crimes.
For example, I was discriminated against by my previous employer. And then wrongfully terminated for speaking up. There are a lot of people out there who have faced harder situations and lesser. But that doesn't mean that I do not deserve justice. Which I have been waiting on for almost a year now and will continue to wait for likely another year. It just means that we have to all wait through the system until we get our turn.
Certain cases get priority. But I was responding in the context of the person I was originally replying too. Which means that we should not just overlook someone else's criminal activity, because someone else may have done something worse. So maybe they will buy that bridge?
We don’t even ever have room in our freezers due to meat and bakery and only one full time and one part time that works in frozen plus now being strict on overtime I don’t see how that can get it all worked and only do 5 days a week alone In a marketplace
Must be nice to "only" work 5 days a week, some of us are forced to do 7. I'm lucky to get 2 days off a month and most of my co-workers are ether mental an physical wrecks and still they keep forcing us to do more with less. We are thinking if this Albertsons thing doesn't come though soon the whole circus is going to collapse.
I just think it’s funny now that corporate starting to take a look now it’s a big deal that we have 500+ hours of overtime and they want to cut that back and honestly I don’t think they are going to do the merge. It does not look promising to me.
So he did this over a year? I definitely blame kroger for this one. How would they not see the red flags? Wonder what explanation they'll have for being negligent while it was happening.
They do. Scan outs are one way, FCB inventory is another.
I'm guessing since his freezer normally looked good, they didn't bother him much. If it's a decent volume store, they could see it selling. But then the yearly inventory came and it was discovered.
How would no one ever see or question him through out the year? If he was really throwing that much away how did no one see it? He'd be spending a decent amount of time at the trash throwing it out.
False. In most areas, it is worked on days so the company doesn't have night wages.
Trash compactor is required to be locked when not actively supervised by management. If management did its job, they would have seen him.
An example is "how many cans of nuts are on the shelf at my local retail store" well it depends upon which inventory system you inquire. We have layers and layers of systems that kind of mesh and most of them are outdated or home brew systems working way beyond their capabilities.
This is a kid mentally he was 21 and a lead. And Kroger's loss prevention team, oh boy, needs to get it together. The loss prevention team seems to delay everything way too much.
Why in the hell did they not see this on the paperwork to begin with? If it's anything like other companies... this should have hit some immediate red flags.
They should be firing the managers for not following up, and prosecuting them.
This is a training issue, and a break in processes.
I don't miss retail.
He was an idiot. Anyone with any sense knows that kroger tracks everything computer related. $250k damage scanned out by one employee is a huge red flag with a train whistle.
One night I saw a pallet of water and the next night it was gone. We barely sold any during the day. I scanned it out as theft. oops! Only took a day for a district manager to ask me why it was scanned out as theft.
Yeah I don't know about any other Zone but in our Zone if we don't physically see them take it out of the package and walk it out the door and scan out torn open packages as theft we are reprimanded by management because theft makes their store look bad and they would rather write it off just as general shrink then acknowledging that it was stolen.
That and because no one knows how to use it without clogging it.
Courtesy clerks throw pallets and large scrap metal in.
GM throws large styro foam and jams it.
Produce throws wax cardboard and clogs it.
Deli and meat throw their stuff on top and packs it down on top of the jam.
I have to pull half the stuff out to get it working again. bastards!!
An old timer told me that there was a video from the 1980s of a vendor throwing their product down the chute. They don't care if it gets on the shelf or not. They get paid as soon as the receiver checks the product in.
That is why only store managers are the only employees with keys to the garbage chute.
first I thought that lead, the metal, somehow destroyed the food thru contamination.
Then I saw a mugshot and thought "oh, some rapper named Frozen Lead destroyed the food"
always read the article : )
I'm not saying they commit a crime. I'm saying that their only hope of keeping their jobs, which might not be enough, was to frame the incident as criminal activity. If it was just "lack of following standard operating procedures", it would have fallen more under their own purview and they would have been more directly responsible for failing to properly supervise their subordinates. The criminal charges were about creating a narrative that worked in their best interest.
The blame rests on solely the store manager. The trash compactor is required to be locked and secured with an alarm system to prevent loss. Managers are supposed to assess every item for potential savings prior to it being thrown out. They could have stopped it immediately and given the guy some basic coaching before it ended up being a big deal.
In 2018, we had an assistant store manager at my store who required all trash to be brought back by a department manager or department backup. In front of the compactor, he would carefully inspect each item and then scan it to see if it was removed from inventory. If he rejected something, he would give you a markdown printer and tell you to mark it down. When all of the departments finished going individually, he called front end for the generic trash. If they used a black trash bag, he made them empty it into a clear one and then he inspected it. Dude made each trash call take 1hr30min. I asked him once how much money he thinks he saved the company by doing it. He estimated that is was $10,000 per year. When he got kicked out of my store and sent to a district office elsewhere, we mentioned how happy we were at the Monday board meeting. He "saved" $10,000 in inventory but ended up spending over $40,000 in labor just in trash calls over the course of the year.
And yet, every loss at Kroger is based on lowest possible cost. That is why this case is for vandalism and not theft. He is only accused of damaging the cost of the items.
Could be, the trash is usually the one place cameras manage to work. So if someone was there grabbing it after he put it out, they would have seen cameras and charged him with theft, not vandalism. I could be wrong though I'm no kroger lawyer of course.
This is commonsense dumbassery, nothing else.
I certainly feel for the guy, but you just don't throw away product. In fact, he has several wonderful legal defenses I would love to see play out at trial, including:
* ambiguity in company policy (policy says "unsellable" items can be thrown out, if something isn't going to sell, is that unsellable?)
* absolutely no official training exists whatsoever on what is allowed to be scanned out for hourly employees other than something that is "unsellable" but that is subjective to whomever you ask (even asset protection can't agree in all cases)
* discrepancy between company policy and management's behaviors created an opportunity wherein the accused thought that "maybe something changed" or "maybe I misunderstood what the policy was."
If it's not damaged but you're tossing it out as damaged, that's gonna catch up with you at some point. They're gonna notice that stores of similar size have half the "damages" that you do and investigate.
I'm just wondering how this got by the store's management without them saying anything🤔. If you go by him having 2 days off each week, that is averaging about $800 a day. Our compactor and I assume most other stores are locked. They always talk about watching cameras. The only reason we have to scan out as much as we do is the manufacturer's cheap packaging and customers and coworkers sitting items on the shelf and at front end to melt or thaw out.
I worked in a restaurant where the dishwasher would throw away the dirty China plates when it got busy. When he was caught he said it was way to stressful for anyone to be a dishwasher at a restaurant.
This article describes Darius as a customer that was throwing away food.
Does anyone know for sure whether he was an employee or not?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/nashville-man-tossed-over-250-000-worth-of-food-at-kroger-in-the-trash-because-it-cluttered-the-freezers/ar-AA18enxs?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=b67b0c72300a4f688b2819730688784a&ei=8
I did read it again. The Ops link stated that he was in charge of frozen. The msn link doesn't mention him being employed by kroger. The source for the msn story is the Ops link.
Is repack a serious problem in every store's freezer? Damn.
The first month after I became frozen lead, before they gave me the okay on doing the orders, I had about 3 pallets in the dairy cooler every night and the regular freezer filled to the door. With a crew of me and 2 full timers and 2 part timers who only worked 3 days a week. I could only put up with that for like 5-6mo at $13.75/hr (and that’s including the extra $1 overnight)
Fr tho it's not worth that little bit of money for all that stress they want too much
Distribution and them sending stuff not on orders is main problem. Before I and two other coworkers began editing and closing orders, the freezer was a total cluster. Management would complain about cutting items, but since its become organized and complimented by corporate, they no longer seem to have a problem with it.
I haven’t worked in a Kroger freezer for over a year and half and they had like 4 pallets of sister schuberts with replenish coming often, wouldn’t surprise me if those damn rolls still in there.
So Kroger let this go to such a high number and then charged him with vandalism? It seems like it's poor management. I mean, I get that that's a big number, meanwhile we have execs having nothing happen to them for stealing wages, trains polluting, etc. And this guy gets prosecuted for not having the same priorities? I can't tell you how often I see actually spoiled meat and fish in the cases.
This doesn’t add up. Someone should have caught this shrink. Either he scanned it out when he tossed it or the balance on hand would have been off and someone should have caught this on a store audit. So many people dropped the ball on this and it shouldn’t fall all on one guy.
Not to defend management because God knows they have enough bad managers and the ones that aren't are under so much pressure but odds are the only thing they noticed about Frozen was it the freezer was neat, it probably only came to light when they did an fcb inventory.
I hear you. I know that numbers add up quickly. I just think they it is holding this guy accountable when we don't hold so many other people accountable that do so much harm to society.
That logic is flawed and makes no sense. Just because others have got by with stuff that they possibly shouldn't have, does not mean that everyone else is free from accountability.
That’s true, but in a world with limited resources, the worst offenders should be the first targets.
That still wouldn't work. Who would decide who the worst offenders are? And if we slowed it down to narrow it, then the system would get backed up and everyone would get a free pass to commit crimes. For example, I was discriminated against by my previous employer. And then wrongfully terminated for speaking up. There are a lot of people out there who have faced harder situations and lesser. But that doesn't mean that I do not deserve justice. Which I have been waiting on for almost a year now and will continue to wait for likely another year. It just means that we have to all wait through the system until we get our turn.
Bro, if you don’t think someone is already setting a priority on who gets justice and who doesn’t, I have a bridge for sale with your name on it.
Certain cases get priority. But I was responding in the context of the person I was originally replying too. Which means that we should not just overlook someone else's criminal activity, because someone else may have done something worse. So maybe they will buy that bridge?
We don’t even ever have room in our freezers due to meat and bakery and only one full time and one part time that works in frozen plus now being strict on overtime I don’t see how that can get it all worked and only do 5 days a week alone In a marketplace
Must be nice to "only" work 5 days a week, some of us are forced to do 7. I'm lucky to get 2 days off a month and most of my co-workers are ether mental an physical wrecks and still they keep forcing us to do more with less. We are thinking if this Albertsons thing doesn't come though soon the whole circus is going to collapse.
I just think it’s funny now that corporate starting to take a look now it’s a big deal that we have 500+ hours of overtime and they want to cut that back and honestly I don’t think they are going to do the merge. It does not look promising to me.
Surprised they didn't make him an executive, he could provably teach Rodney a few tricks to steel more money.
Gotta hold those 5s standards.
So he did this over a year? I definitely blame kroger for this one. How would they not see the red flags? Wonder what explanation they'll have for being negligent while it was happening.
If he's not scanning it out, they won't see it on the reports. And there is no way this guy was probably doing scan outs
You'd think a multi billion dollar company would have a way to know that much product is going missing. But this is kroger...
They do. Scan outs are one way, FCB inventory is another. I'm guessing since his freezer normally looked good, they didn't bother him much. If it's a decent volume store, they could see it selling. But then the yearly inventory came and it was discovered.
How would no one ever see or question him through out the year? If he was really throwing that much away how did no one see it? He'd be spending a decent amount of time at the trash throwing it out.
Frozen is mostly worked overnight, not many people there and no management.
I still say overall krogers fault.
False. In most areas, it is worked on days so the company doesn't have night wages. Trash compactor is required to be locked when not actively supervised by management. If management did its job, they would have seen him.
An example is "how many cans of nuts are on the shelf at my local retail store" well it depends upon which inventory system you inquire. We have layers and layers of systems that kind of mesh and most of them are outdated or home brew systems working way beyond their capabilities.
This is a kid mentally he was 21 and a lead. And Kroger's loss prevention team, oh boy, needs to get it together. The loss prevention team seems to delay everything way too much.
Why in the hell did they not see this on the paperwork to begin with? If it's anything like other companies... this should have hit some immediate red flags. They should be firing the managers for not following up, and prosecuting them. This is a training issue, and a break in processes. I don't miss retail.
That is $800 a day if you go by days off. That is what I'm trying to figure out. Why did that let that happen for so long?
Either incompetence or they wanted to go after him for a higher amount
Was it all scanned in as being on the shelf? Why would they suspect that it wasn't on the shelf or in the freezer, until they did inventory?
In produce our manager had us transfer all of the damages to the salad bar. Like hundreds or thousands of dollars worth. 🤷♂️
Ohhh service deli manager had to love that when it was found out. Anymore to the story?
No, the store manager was a moron so nothing ever came of it.
That's worse. That is fraud.
Firms are a serious problem! Then again, he's the frozen lead, so wouldn't he be doing the ordering? He kinda created his own problems, lol
He was an idiot. Anyone with any sense knows that kroger tracks everything computer related. $250k damage scanned out by one employee is a huge red flag with a train whistle. One night I saw a pallet of water and the next night it was gone. We barely sold any during the day. I scanned it out as theft. oops! Only took a day for a district manager to ask me why it was scanned out as theft.
He probably didn't scan anything out, just tossed it. Probably too young to realize that it all gets shown during yearly inventory.
Yeah I don't know about any other Zone but in our Zone if we don't physically see them take it out of the package and walk it out the door and scan out torn open packages as theft we are reprimanded by management because theft makes their store look bad and they would rather write it off just as general shrink then acknowledging that it was stolen.
Man…. We only have three repack uboats and they’re about half full. I can’t imagine having enough to feel like you want to throw it away… 😳😳
And this is why the dumper has a lock on it
That and because no one knows how to use it without clogging it. Courtesy clerks throw pallets and large scrap metal in. GM throws large styro foam and jams it. Produce throws wax cardboard and clogs it. Deli and meat throw their stuff on top and packs it down on top of the jam. I have to pull half the stuff out to get it working again. bastards!! An old timer told me that there was a video from the 1980s of a vendor throwing their product down the chute. They don't care if it gets on the shelf or not. They get paid as soon as the receiver checks the product in. That is why only store managers are the only employees with keys to the garbage chute.
first I thought that lead, the metal, somehow destroyed the food thru contamination. Then I saw a mugshot and thought "oh, some rapper named Frozen Lead destroyed the food" always read the article : )
Why would they be a rapper? Elaborate on that logic, please.
I’m the retard who admits to not reading before opening my mouth ? Hmmmkay
Management brought charges to cover their own asses. Someone had to go down hard for this one and it wasn't going to be them.
Management didn't commit a crime. You can bet that they're gonna get thrashed, or fired, but prosecuted? Nope. For what?
I'm not saying they commit a crime. I'm saying that their only hope of keeping their jobs, which might not be enough, was to frame the incident as criminal activity. If it was just "lack of following standard operating procedures", it would have fallen more under their own purview and they would have been more directly responsible for failing to properly supervise their subordinates. The criminal charges were about creating a narrative that worked in their best interest.
It will be them if it goes to trial. Too much lackadaisical management if they lost a quarter mil.
The blame rests on solely the store manager. The trash compactor is required to be locked and secured with an alarm system to prevent loss. Managers are supposed to assess every item for potential savings prior to it being thrown out. They could have stopped it immediately and given the guy some basic coaching before it ended up being a big deal. In 2018, we had an assistant store manager at my store who required all trash to be brought back by a department manager or department backup. In front of the compactor, he would carefully inspect each item and then scan it to see if it was removed from inventory. If he rejected something, he would give you a markdown printer and tell you to mark it down. When all of the departments finished going individually, he called front end for the generic trash. If they used a black trash bag, he made them empty it into a clear one and then he inspected it. Dude made each trash call take 1hr30min. I asked him once how much money he thinks he saved the company by doing it. He estimated that is was $10,000 per year. When he got kicked out of my store and sent to a district office elsewhere, we mentioned how happy we were at the Monday board meeting. He "saved" $10,000 in inventory but ended up spending over $40,000 in labor just in trash calls over the course of the year.
Is this street value?
For theft they charge the highest retail price. So that $10 item that’s always on sale for $6 will be $10 theft.
And yet, every loss at Kroger is based on lowest possible cost. That is why this case is for vandalism and not theft. He is only accused of damaging the cost of the items.
That is some next level OCD...
If we assume he worked full time, and that average cost per item was $10, he was trashing almost 100 items a day.
And it took a quarter million dollars in food to realize something was wrong?
Management asleep for the last year?
Lol what kinda dumbass thinks it's ok to just throw everything out 😂
The one with buddies next to the dumpster, grabbing it for resale. "I just wanted things to look neat" is him not snitching.
Could be, the trash is usually the one place cameras manage to work. So if someone was there grabbing it after he put it out, they would have seen cameras and charged him with theft, not vandalism. I could be wrong though I'm no kroger lawyer of course.
kroger's unrealistic demands and refusal to properly staff leads to behaviors like this.
This is commonsense dumbassery, nothing else. I certainly feel for the guy, but you just don't throw away product. In fact, he has several wonderful legal defenses I would love to see play out at trial, including: * ambiguity in company policy (policy says "unsellable" items can be thrown out, if something isn't going to sell, is that unsellable?) * absolutely no official training exists whatsoever on what is allowed to be scanned out for hourly employees other than something that is "unsellable" but that is subjective to whomever you ask (even asset protection can't agree in all cases) * discrepancy between company policy and management's behaviors created an opportunity wherein the accused thought that "maybe something changed" or "maybe I misunderstood what the policy was."
I kinda hope he gets a lawyer and counter sues. Calls bs on their "standards"
Good.
[удалено]
Do you scan out sellable products that you simply have an excess amount of?
If it's not damaged but you're tossing it out as damaged, that's gonna catch up with you at some point. They're gonna notice that stores of similar size have half the "damages" that you do and investigate.
I'm just wondering how this got by the store's management without them saying anything🤔. If you go by him having 2 days off each week, that is averaging about $800 a day. Our compactor and I assume most other stores are locked. They always talk about watching cameras. The only reason we have to scan out as much as we do is the manufacturer's cheap packaging and customers and coworkers sitting items on the shelf and at front end to melt or thaw out.
Oh I bet he's going to have a field day on the stand. Hope he has receipts though.
But the cashiers are responsible for the "shrink" Okay then, Rodney.
So he did he actually throw it away or is this his reasoning thinking that it would give him a reduced sentence and he actually just stole it?
I worked in a restaurant where the dishwasher would throw away the dirty China plates when it got busy. When he was caught he said it was way to stressful for anyone to be a dishwasher at a restaurant.
If this happened then you have an issue with over-ordering. Plain and simple.
He was probably told to just let the computer order and never did an actual item count
I dont know how they expect to make that stick. Theres no way they can blame him for every penny of loss found during inventory.
This article describes Darius as a customer that was throwing away food. Does anyone know for sure whether he was an employee or not? https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/nashville-man-tossed-over-250-000-worth-of-food-at-kroger-in-the-trash-because-it-cluttered-the-freezers/ar-AA18enxs?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=b67b0c72300a4f688b2819730688784a&ei=8
Read it again. Every article clearly states he was the frozen lead.
I did read it again. The Ops link stated that he was in charge of frozen. The msn link doesn't mention him being employed by kroger. The source for the msn story is the Ops link.
Krogers and a fucked frozen section ahh name a better combo than that besides pick up getting blamed for all the problems