In 2022, Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the country, launched "MyTime" — a new payroll system that Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen claimed would “simplify day-to-day work.” Kroger touted MyTime as a testament to how much the grocery store chain cares about its associates. But since its roll-out, MyTime has been a nightmare for thousands of Kroger employees across the country. Glitches with MyTime have resulted in a host of problems, including missing pay and incomplete checks.
My wife and I are time and labor management professionals and worked for a major payroll company. I now assist companies in implementing new tech. The level of failure in execution by Krogers is gross negligence
My wife and I have worked with large companies, some international, in particular to implement t&l systems. The level of testing and verification takes as much time as the configuration maybe more. It sounds like Krogers had a weak or nonexistent pm team or MyTime is the worst payroll system on the planet
Heads need to roll, we were outraged reading this knowing the level of incompetence it would take that got them there, I'm still in disbelief...the illegality of not paying workers alone is chilling, this is absolute failure. No matter what, people need to get paid, whatever it takes, cut manual checks, you can't blame the system and do nothing!
Right. Imagine going to work hoping against hope to be paid for work you have already performed, while performing more work that you don't know if you'll be paid for. The stress of such existence must be tremendous.
The shame of this out of control example of capitalism (and any other you care to name), is that the most vulnerable are being sacrificed for the comfort of those who are the least vulnerable. And the shareholders receive a small increase in their ROI.
There is no earthly reason why someone working a full time job, should have to take out payday loans to meet normal expenses.
Other than the fact that we are like "cash cows" to a certain class of being. Can't call them human.
Thank you again for highlighting these important issues. Even though Kroger is the closest store to me, we rarely IF EVER, go there. The one thing I do have there is my synthroid prescription & now I'll be looking to move that elsewhere. The best way to teach corporations like Kroger, who operate with impunity, is to hit their wallets. Stop buying there & you impede their growth by lowering profits.
Additionally, I hope the acquirement of Albertsons is stopped. We don't need another monopoly; especially one that "cheats" their workers with impunity. They know their problem, yet they have not corrected it....yet? There must be to some benefit to them to not dump the program; or not have IT fix the glitches. More benefit, than to be concerned that folks are going without the pay they earned until they get around it.
If they were a humane company, invested in their employees welfare; provided the money owed their workers, until the glitch was fixed, we might not be having this discourse.
Remember, the goal of the xe oligarchy supporting the Republicans is to “shrink the government to the size that can be strangled in a bathtub.”
Tax cuts are just as much about this as transfering wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.
The supreme court has limited the regulatory power of agencies in West Virginia v. the EPA. The Republican assault on the ability of the Federal Government is gaining momentum with the help of the people who most need it.
I have shopped at Fred Meyer when there was an actual Fred Meyer running the business (founded in Portland Oregon in late 1950s) and I loved it as it totally got one stop shopping long before anybody else did and it saved me so much time and money.
But once Kroger bought it Fred Meyer's lost its local Pacific NW flavor. At the height of the pandemic, I saw how overworked and poorly treated were the highly "essential" staff. All the while creating for Kroger record profits which they did not sharing with employee as a reward for their hard work. That was it! I've never stepped foot in their store again and I now pay a little more to shop at local grocery stores in my area. KROGER IS THE WORST EMPLOYER!
Boycotts don’t work, numerous studies by really smart people have found these protests are short lived so if you want to stop, that’s fine but don’t think it will change anything.
Companies don’t exist to be humane, companies don’t exist to employ people. Companies exist to serve a need and in doing so make profits. To make profits you don’t pay anyone a penny more than you have to, to make profits you try and serve your customers by giving them few alternatives to spending money with you. As long as Americans prefer the cheapest price on everything from medications to food companies will be incented to get bigger and maximize economies of scale.
This is not rocket science nor is it anything new. Looking for a soul in any corporation, anywhere in the world is a waste of time.
Yes, boycotts may not strong arm corporations into more moral and just business practices. At least I know I have acted according to my conscience. Haven't darkened the doorstep of a Walmart for decades. It hasn't hurt their bottom line one iota. Still, I stand away from them.
I try to do the same as well but I have no illusions my actions will have an effect. I said what I said because most Americans ignore the effects of their decisions and then wonder why their job was shipped offshore. Why they applaud the increased wages as of late and yet complain about inflation? Talk about oxymorons!
I do the same with BP Amoco. I'll never forget not only their callous indifference toi the Deppwater Horizon inciodent, but othen did their level best to (an in many many cases did) cheat those that had been damaged by their lack of care and ineffective damage preventation practices, after destroying their livlihoods and way of life.
The local BP or Amoco station is a franchise owned store. The franchise owner didn't do anything, except buy into the franchise, long before the Deppwater Horizon incident. I'm the daughter (grandpa started back in the 40s) of one of those franchise owners you're holding accountable through no fault of our own. To switch, costs a lot and there's more than simply changing the sign outside.
agree which is why we need strong fed enforcing labor violations, breaking up and preventing monopolies, and strong labor unions-only one pol party is supporting those things right now and they need to do better
David: I understand what you're saying and agree with you about boycotting. But my personal boycott satisfies me on some level. And honestly, I don't mind paying a bit more elsewhere, if I have the understanding employees are treated a bit better & paid a bit more. I also don't mind writing the occasional letter to corporate.
Is it " peeing" in the wind? Perhaps, but I'm retired. I have the time and inclination. Hoping the feds enforce the labor laws on behalf of these employees though. I hope the judges, given these various law suits, obtain judgement for their missing pay, fine Kroger corporate & obtain punitive damages if it's even possible, in this type of litigation. Just tired of seeing the little guy lose to " Goliath" corporations.
Beg to differ there are companies that treat their employees decently all while making decent profits with low prices. Costco and is good example that immediately comes to mind. They had $15 minimum wage years before anyone else. They are an exception though.
I am somewhat of a newshound but had not heard anything about this serious and unacceptable tech and human failure by Kroger. Thank you Tesnim Zekeria and Popular Information for shining some light on what gives new meaning to the term 'wage slave'.
It's maddening that almost invariably, the WORST punishment these companies face (and even then, only on rare occasions) is simply being made to do the thing they should have been doing all along. That's it. That's their worst risk. It's not a risk at all.
If my absolute worst outcome if caught was that I had to give them back the money I stole, but nobody actually made sure I did it, I would be out there robbing banks. There would be no reason not to.
But any individual worker would be in jail for years or decades for stealing even a fraction of that money from their boss, a coworker, or customer. Even a fraction that rounds down to zero.
DOL definitely needs to investigate but not MyTime but Krogers. MyTime configures and implements what a company tells them, it's up to the company to test and verify the system was set up correctly which it seems Krogers did not do
Another monied corporation refusing to be clean with their workers.
It seems any checks and balances on these corporations are not making a dent in illegal activity in these very wealthy corporations . And they want a merger?
Should not be allowed.
Period .
Their history of screwing their workers speaks for it self.
They can not be trusted and they are consummate liars.
My son worked for Kroger for several years. The union was as bad as the company. My read on this is MONOPOLY. Kroger has become the Sasquatch of grocery shopping in America. No one chain should be so dominate in food sales. It bodes ill for customers already in a price crunch.
Period.
Will be interesting to see if the Union steps up any better than it used, too. I won't hold my breath.
It seems that Capitalism itself can’t be carried out in an atmosphere of greed and more greed combined with a callous indifference for human life and civil good. If that statement is true than what? That is, perhaps, the defining problem.
The vast majority of the population not involved in the technology industry have no idea how bug infested and defective enterprise software is. Companies will hide behind the oft repeated phrase “it’s complicated software”, “deployments are very hard to manage” and other such nonsense.
The fact is software vendors often outsource much if not all of their development to third world countries where labor is cheap and quality is so low it is never even entertained. In addition many of these third world countries have no cultural bias towards quality work, it’s just not even in the realm of consideration. If the public really knew they would run for the hills or caves. Who needs a fictional “Deep State” when you have crappy software to break your soul.
There’s an oft quoted phrase among developers “Good, Cheap, Fast, pick any two”, that has been mentioned for over 25 years. Companies know exactly what they are getting when they pick the lowest bidder for an enterprise license and if they don’t it’s because they are lying to themselves and their shareholders. American and European software developers really are good and better than the legions of third world coders that have put them on the unemployment line.
i wouldn't blame consumers so much...Corps pay starvation wages then people have no choice but to buy the cheapest thing, and frequently because of mergers and consolidation in the industry there are no options to even choose from. This is not a consumer problem its a fundamental and unavoidable flaw in unfettered capitalism that can only be remedied with strong unions and antimonopoly actions by the fed.
I'm proud to have Marty Walsh as my neighbor here in Dorchester (even though I admit I didn't vote for him for mayor of Boston). Let's hope he can drive some progress on this end of things as the Secretary of Labor before anyone full stops his efforts.
Someone (not I, of course) should drop this into mytime's Wiki page referencing this column. Kroger's too, for that matter. That would drive them nuts.
this is infuriating. WAPO and legacy media cover "crime" supposedly but this is huge and crickets! They breathlessly reported about Walgreens and Walmart stating they were going to fire workers due to increased theft but never verified this was true (FBI stats say it's not) or reported crime is a pittance compared to how much they steal from workers. Thank you for this!
My wife and I are time and labor management professionals and worked for a major payroll company. I now assist companies in implementing new tech. The level of failure in execution by Krogers is gross negligence
My wife and I have worked with large companies, some international, in particular to implement t&l systems. The level of testing and verification takes as much time as the configuration maybe more. It sounds like Krogers had a weak or nonexistent pm team or MyTime is the worst payroll system on the planet
Heads need to roll, we were outraged reading this knowing the level of incompetence it would take that got them there, I'm still in disbelief...the illegality of not paying workers alone is chilling, this is absolute failure. No matter what, people need to get paid, whatever it takes, cut manual checks, you can't blame the system and do nothing!
Right. Imagine going to work hoping against hope to be paid for work you have already performed, while performing more work that you don't know if you'll be paid for. The stress of such existence must be tremendous.
Kroger’s obviously went with the low bid on payroll software.
t&l systems ?? pm team??
Time and Labor management system and project management team ;)
The shame of this out of control example of capitalism (and any other you care to name), is that the most vulnerable are being sacrificed for the comfort of those who are the least vulnerable. And the shareholders receive a small increase in their ROI.
There is no earthly reason why someone working a full time job, should have to take out payday loans to meet normal expenses.
Other than the fact that we are like "cash cows" to a certain class of being. Can't call them human.
Thank you again for highlighting these important issues. Even though Kroger is the closest store to me, we rarely IF EVER, go there. The one thing I do have there is my synthroid prescription & now I'll be looking to move that elsewhere. The best way to teach corporations like Kroger, who operate with impunity, is to hit their wallets. Stop buying there & you impede their growth by lowering profits.
Additionally, I hope the acquirement of Albertsons is stopped. We don't need another monopoly; especially one that "cheats" their workers with impunity. They know their problem, yet they have not corrected it....yet? There must be to some benefit to them to not dump the program; or not have IT fix the glitches. More benefit, than to be concerned that folks are going without the pay they earned until they get around it.
If they were a humane company, invested in their employees welfare; provided the money owed their workers, until the glitch was fixed, we might not be having this discourse.
And if we had decent regulation, the propsed merger would be stopped.
Remember, the goal of the xe oligarchy supporting the Republicans is to “shrink the government to the size that can be strangled in a bathtub.”
Tax cuts are just as much about this as transfering wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.
The supreme court has limited the regulatory power of agencies in West Virginia v. the EPA. The Republican assault on the ability of the Federal Government is gaining momentum with the help of the people who most need it.
I have shopped at Fred Meyer when there was an actual Fred Meyer running the business (founded in Portland Oregon in late 1950s) and I loved it as it totally got one stop shopping long before anybody else did and it saved me so much time and money.
But once Kroger bought it Fred Meyer's lost its local Pacific NW flavor. At the height of the pandemic, I saw how overworked and poorly treated were the highly "essential" staff. All the while creating for Kroger record profits which they did not sharing with employee as a reward for their hard work. That was it! I've never stepped foot in their store again and I now pay a little more to shop at local grocery stores in my area. KROGER IS THE WORST EMPLOYER!
Boycotts don’t work, numerous studies by really smart people have found these protests are short lived so if you want to stop, that’s fine but don’t think it will change anything.
Companies don’t exist to be humane, companies don’t exist to employ people. Companies exist to serve a need and in doing so make profits. To make profits you don’t pay anyone a penny more than you have to, to make profits you try and serve your customers by giving them few alternatives to spending money with you. As long as Americans prefer the cheapest price on everything from medications to food companies will be incented to get bigger and maximize economies of scale.
This is not rocket science nor is it anything new. Looking for a soul in any corporation, anywhere in the world is a waste of time.
Yes, boycotts may not strong arm corporations into more moral and just business practices. At least I know I have acted according to my conscience. Haven't darkened the doorstep of a Walmart for decades. It hasn't hurt their bottom line one iota. Still, I stand away from them.
I try to do the same as well but I have no illusions my actions will have an effect. I said what I said because most Americans ignore the effects of their decisions and then wonder why their job was shipped offshore. Why they applaud the increased wages as of late and yet complain about inflation? Talk about oxymorons!
I do the same with BP Amoco. I'll never forget not only their callous indifference toi the Deppwater Horizon inciodent, but othen did their level best to (an in many many cases did) cheat those that had been damaged by their lack of care and ineffective damage preventation practices, after destroying their livlihoods and way of life.
The local BP or Amoco station is a franchise owned store. The franchise owner didn't do anything, except buy into the franchise, long before the Deppwater Horizon incident. I'm the daughter (grandpa started back in the 40s) of one of those franchise owners you're holding accountable through no fault of our own. To switch, costs a lot and there's more than simply changing the sign outside.
I see your point, so what do you suggest?
This is an old blog, but still holds true today.
http://www.unhappyfranchisee.com/10-reasons-not-to-boycott-bp/
agree which is why we need strong fed enforcing labor violations, breaking up and preventing monopolies, and strong labor unions-only one pol party is supporting those things right now and they need to do better
David: I understand what you're saying and agree with you about boycotting. But my personal boycott satisfies me on some level. And honestly, I don't mind paying a bit more elsewhere, if I have the understanding employees are treated a bit better & paid a bit more. I also don't mind writing the occasional letter to corporate.
Is it " peeing" in the wind? Perhaps, but I'm retired. I have the time and inclination. Hoping the feds enforce the labor laws on behalf of these employees though. I hope the judges, given these various law suits, obtain judgement for their missing pay, fine Kroger corporate & obtain punitive damages if it's even possible, in this type of litigation. Just tired of seeing the little guy lose to " Goliath" corporations.
Beg to differ there are companies that treat their employees decently all while making decent profits with low prices. Costco and is good example that immediately comes to mind. They had $15 minimum wage years before anyone else. They are an exception though.
Costco was founded with employee welfare in mind. I don't think they were compelled by boycotts.
IF, they were a humane company.
I am somewhat of a newshound but had not heard anything about this serious and unacceptable tech and human failure by Kroger. Thank you Tesnim Zekeria and Popular Information for shining some light on what gives new meaning to the term 'wage slave'.
Exactly. Never heard a peep from the vaunted MSM. Wonder why that could be.
It's maddening that almost invariably, the WORST punishment these companies face (and even then, only on rare occasions) is simply being made to do the thing they should have been doing all along. That's it. That's their worst risk. It's not a risk at all.
If my absolute worst outcome if caught was that I had to give them back the money I stole, but nobody actually made sure I did it, I would be out there robbing banks. There would be no reason not to.
But any individual worker would be in jail for years or decades for stealing even a fraction of that money from their boss, a coworker, or customer. Even a fraction that rounds down to zero.
I have to wonder if all the publicity around shoplifting has been a smokescreen as these cases have been filed against Kroger.
Any reason the DOL is not investigating MyTime? Seems like the payroll system is flawed.
DOL definitely needs to investigate but not MyTime but Krogers. MyTime configures and implements what a company tells them, it's up to the company to test and verify the system was set up correctly which it seems Krogers did not do
Why did Kroger change payroll systems? I bet there's a story there.
Another monied corporation refusing to be clean with their workers.
It seems any checks and balances on these corporations are not making a dent in illegal activity in these very wealthy corporations . And they want a merger?
Should not be allowed.
Period .
Their history of screwing their workers speaks for it self.
They can not be trusted and they are consummate liars.
Theres a surprise.
How are they not legally required to cut checks and make employee whole? Cost of doing business if they can't have functioning payroll system?
And then a lot of stores, including groceries, close outlets claiming too much "customer" theft.
I bet Tucker won't be reporting this story!
forget tucker WAPO and NYT won't but they'll report the corps screaming about petty theft
My son worked for Kroger for several years. The union was as bad as the company. My read on this is MONOPOLY. Kroger has become the Sasquatch of grocery shopping in America. No one chain should be so dominate in food sales. It bodes ill for customers already in a price crunch.
Period.
Will be interesting to see if the Union steps up any better than it used, too. I won't hold my breath.
It seems that Capitalism itself can’t be carried out in an atmosphere of greed and more greed combined with a callous indifference for human life and civil good. If that statement is true than what? That is, perhaps, the defining problem.
The vast majority of the population not involved in the technology industry have no idea how bug infested and defective enterprise software is. Companies will hide behind the oft repeated phrase “it’s complicated software”, “deployments are very hard to manage” and other such nonsense.
The fact is software vendors often outsource much if not all of their development to third world countries where labor is cheap and quality is so low it is never even entertained. In addition many of these third world countries have no cultural bias towards quality work, it’s just not even in the realm of consideration. If the public really knew they would run for the hills or caves. Who needs a fictional “Deep State” when you have crappy software to break your soul.
There’s an oft quoted phrase among developers “Good, Cheap, Fast, pick any two”, that has been mentioned for over 25 years. Companies know exactly what they are getting when they pick the lowest bidder for an enterprise license and if they don’t it’s because they are lying to themselves and their shareholders. American and European software developers really are good and better than the legions of third world coders that have put them on the unemployment line.
Sadly, we American consumers like good (enough), cheap, fast. We are well trained to "need" the next new, shiny device or product. It us discouraging.
i wouldn't blame consumers so much...Corps pay starvation wages then people have no choice but to buy the cheapest thing, and frequently because of mergers and consolidation in the industry there are no options to even choose from. This is not a consumer problem its a fundamental and unavoidable flaw in unfettered capitalism that can only be remedied with strong unions and antimonopoly actions by the fed.
I'm proud to have Marty Walsh as my neighbor here in Dorchester (even though I admit I didn't vote for him for mayor of Boston). Let's hope he can drive some progress on this end of things as the Secretary of Labor before anyone full stops his efforts.
Someone (not I, of course) should drop this into mytime's Wiki page referencing this column. Kroger's too, for that matter. That would drive them nuts.
this is infuriating. WAPO and legacy media cover "crime" supposedly but this is huge and crickets! They breathlessly reported about Walgreens and Walmart stating they were going to fire workers due to increased theft but never verified this was true (FBI stats say it's not) or reported crime is a pittance compared to how much they steal from workers. Thank you for this!