This question might seem stupid to the people on this board, but I’m not a Lowe’s Employee. My brother works at Lowe’s, and he talks about the implementation of that scheduling system as it is the worst thing that could have happened to him. Would anybody care to explain how does this scheduling system works, and why was it taken with such revolt?
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It's a clusterf–k, especially for positions that are not Customer Centric such as the entire 3rd shift that works all the freight, gets the lion's share of the lumber done, stages the deliveries, and on no-truck nights catches up on any remaining live freight, Hillman, 99, downstocking etc.
They come in when the store is going to close within 30 mins to an hour, don't have or wear vests making them persona non grata to customers anyway, and work Sunday night thru Friday morning, That Friday is spent sleep-farming and recovering from a week's worth of heavy lifting (especially anyone over Hardware/Tools/Building Materials who get pallets of $300 compressors, planers, and miter saws that'll collect dust in topstock for months), leaving Saturday their only real day off for friends, family, kids, and significant others. So 3rd shift is the shift where having 2 days off back to back is a necessity ... and it's now gone with this One Task Team b—s—.
And the start date for THAT keeps getting pushed back because it's has been so much of a sh–show in stores that are testing it that it's guaranteed to hemorrhage labor company wide. Stores are going lose their entire night shift crew as they get fed up and quit in droves, and they'll be replaced with part-timers who'll be perpetually too green from a combination of little to no training, no real HR, and not having enough hours to familiarize themselves with the departments they're responsible for ...
Marvin tried this at Home Depot and they sc-apped it as soon has he was booted. I think the same will happen here. On paper, it's a good idea, but again there are flaws and major gaps in coverage. There are major gaps with coverage now.
The schedules can be changed, and they will be for associates that are in good with the management. I have been with Lowes for about twelve years and one of their biggest problems is special treatment. Everyone knows what im talking about, the policies are so vaguely written that it opens the door for special treatment. I will believe this customer centric scheduling when it effects everyone, even the cliques.
Different days off every single week of the year. If you take a weekend off extra you lose your one weekend every eight weeks. Complete change from a set 4 week rotation with one weekend off per month. Basically they are too lazy and cheap to hire enough staff so they are scheduling full time people as though they are part time.
Also no more minimum hours for part timers so you could technically be employed but have zero hours all winter.
Basically I could tell you what shift I would be working a year from now and now it's impossible to know. Also if anyone asks for your weekend off you may not get your weekend off or if it falls on a holiday, so you could end up with no weekends off at all.
System automated schedules are horrible. They remove all humanity from the system. No matter how much you try to play with the parameters to auto generate a schedule, they are always terrible.
I work for a retailer that is trying to get us to do this. It scheduled departments over their budget, scheduled people on days they had paid time off approved for, scheduled some people at min hours and other at max, and had some people opening all week and others closing all week when they both had open availability. Auto generated schedules are the fastest way to demoralize your staff.
Anonymous @11jQePoR-kso
From what I understand, those of us who are PT associates should not see much of anything different in how we are scheduled.
It's basically the same system that other retailers use. The schedule is made via computer and the shifts and days off are randomized. If you worked a schedule like that, you might be fine. However if you worked for Lowe's then you might have trouble. I've worked a similar schedule before.
I'm interested in the answer as well. As a newer Lowes PT emp working closing shift , we get NO information. Nothing really via email, I think most info is perhaps discussed in weekly Monday mgmt. /supervisor mtg, but never flows down to CSA's. Probably some word of mouth during day shift, but I'm usually on my own covering 3 depts. during my closing shifts so no opportunity for water cooler talk to learn anything about what's going on.