Ha! I knew that title would catch your eye. You probably thought, "What the hell? Has The Misfit finally gone over to the Dark Side?" No, of course not, never in a million years. I will never drink the RGIS Kool-Aid. No, I just noticed that the comments were adding up in the last post and thought it was time to start a new post, to make it easier for people to scroll through everyone's comments. I'm still working on my toilet paper post (see the "Emails" post for more details) so I had to come up with a little shortie like this one to fill in for the time being.
I also wanted to reiterate that I absolutely love reading everyone's comments, both about this blog and about their own past and current experiences working for RGIS. Every last tale, no matter how short or how long is endlessly fascinating to me and I once again want to thank everyone for sharing their own RGIS stories here. Please continue to do so!
137 comments:
Lol Misfit, maybe you should have titled this one "the Lawsuit".
404girl, posted on the other post that everyone she knew got a letter that the lawsuit has gone national. It is now a class action suit involving every single present employee, and every past employee going back to 2004. This is really big. I have already gotten too many calls to mention from people who were on my team and have left RGIS. Every single one opted into the suit. I would have to believe that all former employees will opt in. And, if you think about it, we the current employees are still the victims of their unfair practices like fudging timesheets, etc. So, why would people even give it a second thought about opting in? You have 90 days to sign and return the form. With the paycuts everyone is expecting with their new classification system in April, people are hanging on to them till then. The suit also involves travel to stores. We lost our travel several years ago. Those of us who have been around a long time remember when if you went to a meet, every passenger got travel to a store. Now, unless you are going more than 1 hour away, they give you nothing. According to this lawsuit, the Federal Labor Act requires you to be paid if you are told to be at a designated site to meet and drive together from the meet time. And, if the former employees reap the benefits if this suit is won, why shouldn't the current employees. Fear of Retaliagion? It's against the law and what more can they do to us? They haven't been giving out raises and plan on lowering our pays.
I haven't checked in for awhile.
But I got an interesting letter in the mail that made me check back here.
I got notice of the lawsuit against RGIS with a consent form to opt in. Same old stuff I read in these comments before... Time unpaid getting ready for inventories, traveling, etc.
Wow this lawsuit sounds awesome! I hope everyone who is eligible signs up to be a part of it. I especially like the part about RGIS having to pay people right from the time that they show up at the meet site. Hmm, could this be the lawsuit that bankrupts RGIS? Ah well, a former auditor can dream...
Wow t l too, this is big.
I remember some other unlawful things I'd have to put with also.
The mall we used to work in would lock its doors at night and we'd need to call and wait for a security guard to open them. I worked pm hours for rgis.
Since these rent-a-cops loved giving us a hard time, we would sometimes have to wait up to 20 minutes to be let out. Good thing the place didn't catch fire!
Which also reminds me of a night we had at a target once. I started early that day and was promised I'd get to go home early because I did. Well midnight rolls around, the inventory is going somewhat smoothly and I get the okay to go.
I pack up and when I'm about to leave Target says, "No, the doors stay locked until 3am."
They refused to let the few of us go home claiming they were unable to turn off the alarm until 3.
Of course the rgis manager running the thing sided with Target and we were forced to stay inside until 3.
Did we get paid for those hours? Nope. Our manager didn't even want us back on the clock to count.
And one last thing for now (I could go on forever). Some backroooms we didn't have step stools to reach the high shelves. Or sometimes the one store ladder would be in use and we were not to be wasting time. We were told to climb the shelves but to, "Be careful".
I mention this because some of the shelves we climbed were pretty high and definitely not safe to be climbing without a ladder. The store manager at one even called us CRAZY.
Well, after thinking it over some, I think that I'm going to opt in. Especially after talking it over with some of my family members, who couldn't believe that I hadn't gotten paid for the first hour going to, or the last hour coming home from all of those Home Depots I had to do.
Hey Sir Batch a lot next time a store does that to you, tell them you're going to call 911 and report them for kidnapping. A Best Buy manager tried to pull that one night and someone called the police and reported a kidnapping. Needless to say when the police came they opened the door.
I use to work for RGIS and you'd better believe I'm going to opt-in. I live in California, and the last time they got sued, a lot of old timers got a huge settlement. One lady got $17,000.
I just started at RGIS and in the hiring papers and the interviewer talked about the EAPH minimum requirement of 500.... and that if you dont meet the 500 even 497 or 499 etc... you will lose pay. Or it can mean raises.
I read earlier in the posts above that the EAPH was dismissed a couple months ago?
So who is right?
LOL at having to think it over. For how long, D404... 15, maybe 20 seconds? Stick it to them!
Anyway, I just found this blog last week and have had a good time reading some of the posts and comments left. I've bounced around and read a little bit here and a little there and plan on catching up over the next few weeks.
I am familar with some of the 'characters' mentioned. Poor Mondo, LOL... taking a beating... but rightfully so. His brother Luis, I remember him well also... it's unfortunate that he passed away at such a young age.
LOL at DM Kevin running and hiding in rehab when RGIS was ready to terminate him. AM/DM Joe was another joke, as well as Dan. Enough said of D414, for now.
There are plenty of stories to be told of D414 and many California offices of RGIS. That is if you'd like to read them, LOL! Maybe even a few of the Oregon and Washington districts as well. Oh yeah, and Nevada.
Hey D404... how long did you work for that district, and how many managers did you go through? I heard about 12 AM/DM's have come and gone over the years.
MatchNBatch: Too long! LOL.
No, seriously, I worked there summer before last, went back to school, and couldn't find a job after my financial aid ran out for school so I went back March or so of last year to October.
I've only been through two DMs: Night and Day as I call 'em now. LOL. "Night" was just an awesome DM and I probably wouldn't have left if she was still around. I think I've talked about Roger or Day on here before....but god damn! I could not get out of there fast enough when he took charge!
Imagine having to drive from Portland, OR to a little past Spokane, WA day of the inventory...basically 8 hours on the road, just enough time to get to the hotel and drop your stuff off before leaving to do a 5 hour inventory at HD. Oh yeah, and you're so rushed for time there's absolutely no stopping to get a decent meal before you have to work.
Another interesting point of the lawsuit is the part about donning RGIS equipment.Figure that the average inventory is maybe 5 hours. Even if you only spend 3 minutes a shift finding a machine, putting it on, taking it off, putting it away, etc., that still would amount to one per cent of your total time in the store. RGIS is claiming that it`s insignificant--the " de minimis" issue. But if you look up some of the legal definitions of that term, one percent exceeds the limit. So, it will be interesting to see who prevails on this issue, the plaintiffs (us) or RGIS.If we won the suit and RGIS had to pay us that 1% pay ( or whatever the amount determined by the court) over the four year period,it would be worth at least several hundred dollars each, if not more, to every employee.And any travel judgement would increase the award even more. Another reason to opt in.
I wish I'd known about this years ago. I've been bitching in my LJ about this place for ages now. I would love a post on what everyone's "favourite" part of RGIS is. I think mine is when my team leader calls at 2pm to say the 6pm store's been moved to 4, when everyone on the other teams knew about this for days. Or the travel policy, yeah. Or when my district went from working a district to policing a region. I signed up to count Youngstown (D19) and the surrounding burbs. But they have us going from Cleveland to Pittsburgh to Erie.
I hope y'all don't mind me bringing the VS blind count discussion over to this thread.
I finally got roped into doing my first Vickie's in over a year last night.
The AM did a decent job of laying it out. I was on cosmetics, and in the stockroom every shelf was an area and every box was its counted as a 'shelf.' The sales floor was done similarly, though the cosmetics bowls by the checkout could have stood to be broken up more. However, for those she advised us to take a yellow tag and write down each total as we entered it.
I did end up doing some lingerie as well, and there *is* a way (which I'm sure many of you have figured out) to get a shelf total to compare to your piece count on autoquantity.
Hit the Search key before counting the shelf and note the number of the last entry. Hit Search again after counting the shelf and note the last entry number. Subtract A from B, subtract any entries you've deleted, and there is your shelf total.
Chase--they got rid of the raise and pay loss EAPH system. The new thing is this list of goals you are supposed to reach in order to be classified as a higher rank. Like right now you would be considered a trainee and you would have a list of things you need to do in order to gain auditor status. The EAPH still ties into it because in order to get to the next status you need to achieve certain APH's in certain types of stores. 500 is such a generic number. I get the EAPH list every time I do a store and most auto scan stores don't even have an EAPH of 500 (especially for new people) unless it's a shoe store or something. For example, Burberry is around 200 because you have to key a 2 digit season code before you scan every ticket so there is no possible way anyone could get a 500 in there. It just depends on the store. I think since this new system hasn't officially started yet that they are still telling everyone in training the old EAPH system. I know a lot of new people here seemed utterly shocked when I tell them they don't get raises off the EAPH anymore.
A few miscellaneous notes: Most of the veterans have figured out the method to bypass the "blind counts" as mentioned by texas auditor. It`s even better to transmit after each area, then you know that the starting point on shelf 1 is record #1.Unfortunately, it doesn`t work in multiple quantities; you`re best off doing a search every now and then( especially if you have a lot of onesies and twosies of items), and writing them down.Then add the groupings to get your shelf total.Of course, RGIS next may block out the number of records on a search, just to make things more difficult.
Match&batch was asking 404 girl how many DM`s and AM`s she had gone through in her district. I don`t know if I mentioned this in a previous post, but D404 has a colorful past, to say the least.About eight years ago there was some embezzling going on there, and all the managers were fired, including the DM. I heard this from a AM who was rehired--as an auditor.They then brought in a wunderkid supposed miracle worker
DM, who of course, turned out to be an inept alcoholic, who was drunk most of the time.I know this because he got transferred to my district ( he still had the great reputation--or was blackmailing someone higher up ).He was here in his drunken stupor for about a year before he moved on again.He was good for $1 to 2$ per hour raises for all supervisors, though.Either he realized that the grayshirts were the ones keeping his district afloat, or he was too drunk to remember that he had just given everyone a raise a few months ago.
A turnover of 12 AM`s is nothing for my district--I`m on my 6th DM, and have been through over 40(!)AM`s. Yes,that crappy AM/DM you are stuck with now, may have gotten his/her start in my district!
I have a mixed opinion about RGIS. Maybe I'm in a better district or something.
They are respective of my rather weird schedule, they've been supportive about safety and using ladders and stuff. I can see where it would screw up most people, but I like the variable workload because on a slow week I can just devote extra time to some entrepreneurial irons in the fire.
But there are some problems, and I think the class action suit hits home: I agree, we should be paid for travel time from meet to store, although the potential effect of the suit is to just get RGIS to stop arranging as much carpooling and make us drive to more remote places where there might be carpooling now. And at least in our district, during training it was stressed that we should be 10-15 minutes early, because there is a pre-inventory meeting before we actually start, and I'd expect to get paid for that. But I don't seem to be, looking at pay stubs.
And in exciting news that you probably all know already, the RM-1 download for 24 Sears stores was hosed today. Don't know what other districts did, but we sat around for several hours chatting, then counted working areas for a while before the store finally just canned it (management assured us we're being paid for the full time). About 50 people, 6 hours, roughly $10/hour each = a $3000 mistake. Per store. And I read "liquid damages" all over the wasted Sears employees' time, if the botch up was at RGIS's end.
I worked Lowes today the 2nd part of it, yesterday was the 1st part but we were in Kmart training.
Im not going to write in detail about my day to day but I had a APH of around 1900 for about the 6.5 hours we worked.
The team leader pulled me from the other trainees since I was counting fast, moved me somewhere else having me doing all kinds of lawn tools such as rakes and axes, insect stuff (round up), then the outside section which wasnt really fun since it was cold, also like 5 whole aisles with tiers of bags of dirt or rocks which I liked.
I know of two others that have been there a while one was 3k another was 4.5k which sounds insane.
I will always be a firm believer in giving raises for dependability and reliability and not so much for seniority and APH. Usually it is the senior associates who do the best of 'cherry picking' therefore they count the most. APH has never and will never be a fair way for pay increases. Whether it be a Mom and Pop convenience store, big chain grocery store, or an orange box of a Home Depot, the senior counters will get the easiest and largest dollar counts available. Why? Because management is afraid of losing these people.
The senior counters are generally the laziest of the team, but get the glory since they count the most.. that is in a dollar sense. Wouldn't it make more sense if the more experienced auditors counted the team out of the most difficult of areas and rotate some of the newer and slower counters into some of the easier and higher APH areas? This in my opinion would boost team and office moral. It would be a psychological boost to some of the newer and slower counters to see themselves with higher rankings on an APH report, that is if your office even provides it to the team.
Is it even possible to get raises within RGIS anymore? It doesn't sound like it to me. I understand that most auditors don't do it for the money, but for its benefits. The best benefit (lol, maybe the only) is that you know you can miss work for a day, week, month and still have a job.. if not in your current office, but a neighboring office.
RGIS would rather piss away more dollars in ads, recruitment, screening, interviewing, training, more training, supplies (such as belts and shirts) more ads, more training etc., instead of paying a little extra money to keep current auditors a bit more happy.
No doubt some individuals have little business working for RGIS (or any other inventory service for that matter) due to their unproductive ways and work ethic. At the same time RGIS has seen maany good people leave because they ran them to the ground with little or no reward while doing so.
Let's discuss travel for a minute.
When RGIS paid travel to everyone in an auto from the meet, they were responsible for the passengers in the car if an accident occured because they were on Rgis time. It became a worker's comp. case. It happened to a friend of mine. She had an accident and one passenger claimed injury. The legal department at Hdq took care of everything. So, when they eliminated travel to the passengers, because the driver still gets travel and auto, the passengers became the responsibility of the driver and their insurance. So, in summing this up, they expect people to drive others to their jobsites, but don't want any of the liability. When they took travel away, my friend called the legal department questioning the liability now taken on by the driver and they agreed it was no longer rgis responsibility because the passengers were not 'on the clock'. She never drove anyone again. Remember, these are our personal autos that they are asking us to tote people in to get to their inventories. And if for instance, people have to be at a meet 1 hour before store start time, then they do have to leave their houses before the meet time.
The logic that our DM used is that if you had any other job, you would have to drive yourself there. True, but we would be drivng directly to our jobs and not a designated meet site before the driving to the job even begins.
And, I am quite sure not too many people would be taking jobs that they need to travel over an hour to, to just work 3 hours. Travel is probably one of the biggest reasons we lose people. They hate having to go so far to work very few hours. If, for example, you are a passenger and you drive 30 minutes to your meet site, 1 hour to the store, work 3 hours, 1 hour back and 30 minutes home, you have given up 6 hours of your time to get paid for 3. Maybe that is why the travel is in this lawsuit. They stopped it here about 4 years ago and this suit goes to 2004. They create meets for several reasons and believe me, it isn't to save their employees money for gas. Number 1, they are aware a lot of people would not want to drive far to work few hours, and number 2, it has always been the reasoning that if a whole car of people get lost going to the store, they will make every effort to find directions and get there for fear of leaving a store really short by 5 people. People going on their own have always been of the mindset that if they get lost, they just turn around and go home and the store will only be 1 person short. However, if 10 people make that same decision, the store will be 10 people short. I've been around a long time and have come to understand some of their logic even if I disagree with most of it.
The worst mistake they made was taking away travel and they may come to pay dearly for it.
I recently received *two* copies of the lawsuit opt-in form in the mail - they must *really* want me in this lawsuit! (believe me, kids, it wouldn't take much!) My reasoning, though, is that, even though retaliation is in theory illegal (in theory), they'll *find* a reason to fire you if you join - hell, they'll manufacture one! Look at how good they are at screwing their employees! I just might do it, though, especially if I can find another job fairly soon.
I've been using my unpaid travel time to fill out job applications. Something about that just smacks of poetic justice to me. XD
Match 'n Batch: I totally agree with you on the dependability thing. In fact, I've thought for some time that it's downright obscene that RGIS will let employees go for *years* without giving them a raise (and indeed, screw their employees six ways from Sunday), and yet they just spent all that money on RMs; on machines that aren't even an improvement over the old ones - are, in many ways, much, much worse than the old machines. Not to mention advertising, and various other crap.
Which reminds me; many times, I have had people come up to me and ask if RGIS was hiring. To which my answer was usually something like, 'Yes, they're *always* hiring, but that's only because they keep running people off.' Or maybe just a simple 'DON'T DO EEEET!!!!'
And every time I see a company van with an ad on it, I want to rip it off and set fire to it. The ad, not the van. Well, sometimes the van.
And LOL at giving the team leaders cellphones, since there's two team leaders in my particular city over four people, and one of the team leaders either never answers her phone, or is nasty when she does, so I consequently never call her or answer the phone when she calls. I generally refer to her as the cow when she's not around.
On the RM1 how do you switch from QTY(auto) to QTY(cm). Ive done it before pressing alt + 1 but it doesnt seem to work.
At a different store today I started doing shirts with QTY(auto) already set for this.
Then my team leader moved me to count cards, but he said to auto-scan them. So Im thinking you want me to scan each card individually.... but everyone else was scanning one card then counting the rest and typing it in. I asked this girl counting next to me she wouldnt tell me, but she said the TL probably didnt like me.
Are there any other tips I should know about with the RM1.
In case anyone is interested, here is a link to the lawsuit between RGIS and AST
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-miedce/case_no-4:2007cv10975/case_id-219064/
Geeze, you guys should check out dockets.justia.com. All kinds of people are suing these assholes :)
With any luck, Paul Street will soon be in prison with his compatriot Bernie Ebbers! Hahahahahaha!
Sue the chickshit motherfuckers. Let's run their asses into the ground!
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=10014344
My my! Isn't this interesting? Turns out our boi Paulie is an "investment banker." They're just gonna LOVE him in prison :)
Mr. Paul A. Street a Co-Founder and Partner at Impala Partners, a firm that provides M&A advisory services. It has to its credit completed transactions worth over U.S. $2 billion and has closed principal investments of over U.S. $30 million in real estate and turnaround situations. He also serves as member of the international investment team at India Value Fund Advisors Private Limited. Previously, Mr. Street served as a Senior Vice President and a Member of the Corporate ... Executive Council at GE Capital. He was also a General Partner and Senior Advisor at Lazard Freres & Company, where he advised on the creation and administration of Mexico Partners Trust, a U.S. $250 million distress investment fund. Previously, Mr. Street also held partner level positions at McKinsey and was employed at Patricof.
ummm.. chase...i guess you missed this but most of the people posting here are not working for rgis anymore.
Chase: Multi and auto quantity, and the ability to toggle between them, depend on the program. If you are in a multi program, you can usually (but not always) toggle to auto with alt-1. If you are in a auto program, very rarely will it allow you to toggle to multi.
Some programs (Sears and Walmart come to mind) are driven by the area tickets. The area number tells the machine whether to go to auto or multi. Again, if you are in a multi area you can usually toggle, but I can't think of any time you can toggle in an auto area.
(And back when we used to do Whole Foods, the program for that would switch to auto for certain product UPCs.)
There *is* away to switch between auto and multi by going in through the menus, and it even works in some programs where you aren't supposed to be able to toggle. Damned if I can remember at the moment how to do it, though.
Noticed a repeating question in this blog, "Why are auditors given raises based on APH rather than dependability?" The reason is that in many stores, RGIS is paid by the customer on a piece count or dollar counted basis. Let's say you have a reliable and dependable auditor named Dan. He's not the fastest counter, but he does always show up on time and has worked for RGIS a couple years. In that time he's gotten some raises and now makes $9/hour. In standard clothing stores he averages about 400 pieces per hour. One customer pays $20 per 1000 pieces counted. In 5 hours, Dan will have counted 2000 pieces and earned $45 pay ($9x5 hours). However, the customer will have only paid RGIS $40, meaning that RGIS is losing money on the auditor. Unfortunately, this is a very common situation with RGIS. The faster counters are able to counter unprofitable auditors to make the enterprise profitable, but many customers require a certain number of auditors to do the inventory. You can't expect RGIS to continue increasing Dan's pay while he continually loses money for the company. The mistake is that RGIS should have made it clear to Dan that $9/hour is his cap until he is able to count faster and provided ample training for him to raise his average. Reliability should not be an issue. If an auditor is not reliable, then they should be terminated. Just my two cents.
By the way, I am a former RGIS DM that left the company a couple years ago due to differences in opinion as to the treatment of employees.
I`m sorry anonymous, but your statemnt that some auditors lose money for RGIS is extremely hard to believe ( a rate of $8 per thousand?) The average piece count rate in non financial stores, such as clothing stores, is now somewhere around $50 to $75 per thousand pieces(some accounts are over $100);even the worst putzers like "Dan" would still be making money--at least 10 to 20 dollars per hour over his hourly pay.The so-called problem, as seen through the DM (your)perspective, is that RGIS is not achieving the golden 60%+ profit margin, so you will get some heat from your Division OPS Manager, and any bonus that you may get will be in jeopardy.
If the "Dan" types are that slow, the management will stick them primarily in the man hour stores, where the longer the inventory goes, the more money you make for RGIS. (See post #195 in the next section.)
The irony of it all is that these reliable but allegedly slow people have saved RGIS thousands of dollars just by showing up, thus avoiding many a store cancellation (RGIS loses big bucks in any cancellation) because of lack of minimum RGIS staffing.Even though the management downplays it, there definitely is a reliability factor involved in inventories--why do you think we are continually losing and gaining accounts? It`s not only about just accuracy.It`s a shame now that the "Dans" of RGIS get no credit for their reliability.In the old days they got some acknowlegement and compensation for their dedication.
One final thing: you say that all unreliable auditors should be fired. How many unreliable top gun types, friends, and relatives did you terminate as DM? I bet it was very few,if any at all.Every DM that I`ve ever seen gives all these people the longest leeway in terms of punctuality, attendance, and of course, accuracy.
Misfit:
I forgot what post I was on! My reference regarding man hour stores is #94 of the next post, not #195 of the third.
oh yes do tell us more former DM. there must be lots you can share.
anonymous, former DM...Those of us who have been around a long time certainly understand what you are saying about those who are not producing enough to generate money in stores. But, I think the problem with APH raises is the unfairness that runs rampant in every District. Let's take Dan, at 9.00 an hour for example. Let's say poor Dan who shows up all the time is always assigned the worst areas in stores because he never complains. He might be able to count more but is given the tedious, slow areas in every store.
Then let's take for example, Susie Sunshine, who kisses the managers butts, can't count that great, but is always given the easy areas with high dollar or high piece counts because she is one of the 'favorites'. She will get raises, not based on how good she is, but on what she is assigned.
And that, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with the system. We work for a company that plays such favoritism that it lost its ability to be fair a long time ago.
We all have Dans and Susies in our Districts. The Dans are always sent to crap areas and jewelry counters to do one on one counting.
It isn't a lack of training but more that they aren't being given a chance to get better while those who aren't superstars by any means are made to look that way.
i just started at rgis very recently. they still work you in the ground with very little breaks. sometimes you get a 10 minute break during a 8 or 10 hour shift and that's it. alot of the target stores you get no break for working long hours there. needless to say i haven't worked in one of those stores yet. regarding the travel, you don't get paid for the first hour going to the job from the office in one of their vans or first hour going back to the office. alot of my trips have been two hours there and two hours back.
tl too:
Outstanding comment! You couldn`t have stated the situation more perfectly.
Anonymous..DM, really too bad you left. You sound a lot more like the current way of thinking than a DM of the past. Capping pays is what they will be doing with the new classification system. The DM's of old actually rewarded availability and dependability. But again, that was when accuracy actually mattered too. Recently, we had to classify our teams by counting ability.
Of course, these caps and classifications are really going to be fair too. Let's take Dan who counts 400 an hour and is classified as a specialist with the rate being 9.00 an hour. Then let's add 'John'to the mix. He counts 795 an hour but needs 800 to jump to the next class before he gets a raise. Both make the same pay. Get the picture?
Both in the same class but way different abilities. This is the new system for raises. Zero room for reliability there. Maybe you would have enjoyed this system. Fire people? Since when? And if they do get fired, they get rehired and sometimes with a raise.
OTL, you are so right. The least reliable are the top guns and favorites where management looks the other way. When have any of you seen a top gun get fired? Let's be real here.
I had worked for and along side dozens of DM's in my day. If any DM ever told you or are currently telling you they fired a 'gun' for being unreliable, they are lying to you.
The majority of RGIS' productive counters are unreliable.. FACT!
Unreliable's may honor 8 out of 10 commitments and they count you out of those stores while generally making RGIS money. Usually the unreliable's leave what morals they have at home and do what it takes to get the job done, with a little pressure from their DM of course. Lord knows I have witnessed a lot of this.
Of the 2 stores the unreliable's don't show for, the team usually dies. The DM rants and raves, threatens those unreliable's over the phone and then suspends them.
Usually a suspension will be in the 12-24 hour range (from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon) when RGIS performs few inventories.
When stores run late or they get canceled, who takes the real abuse once the DM gets is ass chewed out? Of course it is those who are dependable, who are not as fast, who count the junk, who are accurate, who try their hardest, who with the right training could be a good counter.
DM's don't see to it that proper training is provided. So long as their district has 10-12 unreliable's (and they don't no-show on the same day) they're good to go. The new auditors are 'window dressing' or 'bodies' just to meet customer requirements or expectations.. FACT!
And of course to set an example, the slowest auditor of the store that got canceled or fried in gets terminated, not the no-show 'gun'.
The slowest and least productive is always the easiest to replace and nothing that a CareerBuilder.Com ad and 3 hours of training can't replace.
Hi.
I'm anonymous from the UK.
Just loved reading your tales along with a friend and employee of RGIS in the UK.
Same work ethics apply over here according to my friend.
Expected to work 7 - 8 hours without a break and then timesheets fudged to make as if break taken after 6 hours. No travel time paid for first hour travel to or from meet location to store location. UK labour laws require travel on work-related travel to be paid. It is what work related travel is defined as, is it travel from the meet point to the store location of is it not.
No mileage allowance paid if store location is within 10 miles of normal meet point and in those instances the meet point IS the store.
In-store hours paid from when you are signed on, on the handset and not as the handbook states, the scheduled start time for the store as per the schedule and you are ready to go.
Signed off and then held in the store until count supervisor is satisfied with count and then requests auditors de-tag store before being allowed to leave count.
UK labour laws require a minimum 11 hours uninterupted break period between shifts. In RGIS district management eyes that means finish a store at 0100 you can start the next shift at 1300, a 12 hour break. But with a 1 1/2 hour drive back to the meet point then a 1/4 hour drive from the meet point to your residence you are lucky to get an 8 1/2 hour uninterupted break period. That doesnt matter to management you have 12 hours OF YOU OWN TIME between shifts. Tosh.
Even the Poles, Czechs, Romanians and other nationals of Eastern European countries who are now legally allowed to work in the UK without work permits / visas and are usually prepared to take on almost any kind of paid employment walk away from working for RGIS in favour of driving buses, replenishing supermarket shelves, doing cleaning jobs and serving in restaurants and behind bars in pubs and clubs (Liquor houses to you US folks).
Most of the auditors in the district my friend works are from the Indian Sub-continent and she says that by now she should be fluent in the Hindi and Urdu languages, there is even a count supervisor that she has worked with who converses with these auditors in their mother tonque.
Having read your Blog she wishes there was some kindly legal outfit in the UK who would take up the cause of RGIS employees in the UK as no auditor working for RGIS in the UK would be able to afford the kind of fees a legal professional would charge to take up their case here in the UK.
My friend is also pissed off with the weekly work schedules she has been offered of late. A short shift followed by 4 full day (8+ hours) shifts in a week.
Well at least she said to me we can have a Saturday night out together until she got a phone call demanding her to attend an extra early morning count on the Sunday which she turned down.
After that she was offered just one scheduled early morning count in a week which she turned down as she had recently said to her manager that she didn't want the early shifts but would prefer the afternoon into the night shifts. What did she get on the subsequent weeks schedule, an afternoon / evening shift and an evening only shift. She needs an average 30 hours a week to keep her 'head above water' financially, I dont think she is going to stick it much longer as she has said to me that she will have to find a second job.
UK Anon: I'm not clear on how class action lawsuits work in the UK, for instance are they even allowed? Maybe someone reading this can help you out. If your labor/work rights are being violated by RGIS then you should talk to a lawyer (some do free consultations) about filing a lawsuit against RGIS without you having to pay lawyer's fees. In some cases lawyers will take the case intending to get paid out of the settlement. Ah, hopefully someone reading this will be able to put it much better than I can!
Based on the various comments from the UK RGIS people, it sounds like RGIS is flagrantly violating the labor laws over there, and is long overdue for some kind of legal action. If us lowly employees can win a lawsuit against RGIS as we did in California, there`s no reason why you can`t try in Great Britain. Surely, you can find some barrister to plead your case--it looks very winable. You Brits should keep a close watch on the current nationwide U.S. class action suit, which should come to a resolution in the next year or two. No matter what the ruling is,you should learn from it and file an even stronger case on your behalf against RGIS in the UK.
Hi, I'm UK Anon.
Thanks Misfit for permitting my posting to appear on your blog.
My female friend who works for RGIS here in the UK has asked me to additionally state that under UK law, employees are entitled to a written statement of their particulars of employment WITHIN two months of starting work. She has completed well over that period working for the RGIS organisation here and has yet to recieve such a statement. It is an offence under UK labour law to punish individuals for asking for such a statement and if dismissed as a result is automatically classed as a case of unfair dismissal however I wouldnt put it past her managers to find some other reason to sack her other than that she requested such a written statement of the particulars of her employment.
Yes we do have some sort of procedure for "class action" litigation in the UK but the cases that do happen here are few and far between.
Speaking personally, I cant see the many RGIS employees from the Indian sub-continent closing ranks and initiating a "class action" case with their colleagues in the UK because for so many of them they cannot understand or speak English well enough to get jobs in other occupations.
We do have an organisation in the UK called ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) which will take up cases of bad employment practices if there were enough employees seeking a redress, but this only happens where the employee numbers are in their hundreds, that is transport workers, fire department workers for example but for one, two or perhaps a dozen RGIS counters, no chance.
There is an avenue where she may be able to claim redress, an Employment Tribunal, but for that she will need her time log from which she is paid to compare with her self kept time log. Then only her store start times from her agreed schedule can be challenged if they differ to the times recorded by the handset when the supervision logs her in. In the case of finishing times and breaks its a case of her word against the record of the RGIS time log. She says however that they could say she was late for the count and the time logged by the time log handset was the time she was ready to start counting. However she did comment that when she picks up a handset there is a window that has the date and time on which she has to hit ESC to clear. I told her to record this time which she did on a couple of occasions but has since noted that only the date is now shown on this window, the time not. Maybe supressed by a program modification so as counters do not keep a record of the times the individual logs onto their handset because as I understand from her, she has to scan or type into the handset her RGIS badge number.
Another point which she has commented on is that when they are assembling to start the count they are handed a handset and told to logon and the time starts ticking away on the handset although they may be standing around for another 1/2 hour awaiting late comers, receiving the stores personnels briefing on Fire Exit locations, Evacuation Procedures, Assembly Point in case of evacuation etc., then the RGIS supervisions pre-count briefing.
Then she says that when going on their breaks they switch off their handsets and when they return from their break they switch on their handsets, the time is still clocking up including the duration of the break when no counting is done, they have to wait until all the counters are back so if one or two counters are sent on their break 10 minutes after the bulk of the counters they have to wait and then there is a head count of counters and if there is one short they are still not logged in from their break until the laggard presents. Thus all in all she says that her hourly counting rate is depressed for sure as a result. What she said needs doing is an option, STOPWATCH, which brings up a STOP / START window when she scans or types her badge number or can be selected from the MENU screen which can be used to suspend the programs internal timing module so that time spent hanging around is not classed as time counting and thus contributes to supress her true counting rate.
I told her to seriously start looking for something else because the enhanced wage rate paid to her, £6.50/hr against the UK minimum wage of £5.52, (about $13 and $11/hr) is not worth it for all the unsocial hours that she is being scheduled.
I wish the US lawsuit every success and hope it succedes and RGIS get a bloody nose as a result.
First off, I am a current AM. That said, I agree with many of your comments on here. I've been with the company over 15 years, and have seen it from both sides. They have slowly taken away many of the perks the auditors used to have. Back in the day you had auditor bonuses, you could rake in the overtime, travel was paid better, reliability WAS rewarded, etc, as long as you made money, which was easy as well back then. Heck, as managers we got decent bonuses twice a year, now it's once a year we get one IF we are in the top 20% of the company. They have also catagorized all offices based on their standard of living as A, B, C and have pay windows for each. So somehow, my office is classified as "c" and thus I've been told I will NEVER be eligible for a raise. EVER. Unless I were promoted, which I don't want to be.
With all our new technology, "competition" if you can call them that, and the economy, our rates we charge customers have gone down while expenses (like gas and travel) have gone up. Then we were bought out, so no longer being family owned, the new group is shaving any cost they can, at all of our expense.
As far as the rates, we have PLENTY of auditors losing money in stores. The highest rates I've ever seen are near $70/1000 pieces, but those are in jewelry stores. Most clothing stores are in the 30-60 range, so people only averaging a couple hundred pieces do lose money while counting. And if you are a productive auditor as far as APH, your managers are hurting themselves if they can't see it and continue to put you in jewelry type areas.
Your experience has a lot to do with your individual office. My DM fired our two fastest counters within a month of being here, one for a bad attitude, and the other for not counting with a stepstool in a grocery aisle. You wouldn't think that would be so big a deal, but she thought, like many of your guns in your district probably do, that she was the fastest counter and was untouchable. Getting rid of problem attitudes goes a long way. Now we still have plenty of problems, don't get me wrong.
...We want people to pull tags, but they are hurting their EAPH in exchange for extra time. More hours, or less chance of a raise...which do I opt for??
...Travel, with the cost of gas now, is a huge problem.
...We expect full time availablility for part time hours/benefits. Most can't afford this, I know I couldn't.
...Benefits. Need I say more? As management, we were relieved when the new ownership came in that this would be taken care of. They sent out a questionnaire to all current employees and that was the auditors #1 complaint. How can my boss expect me to hire quality employees when I can't offer them what McDonalds and Sheetz a block away can, like a set schedule or better benefits?
Oh well, I've rambled enough. I hope all of you find what you are looking for, whether it's within RGIS or not. Maybe you will be graced with new management, things changing, etc. But if you are in a situation like many of you seem to be, why kid yourself into thinking it will change, and just put RGIS behind you?
And jump on the lawsuit. There's no way for individual offices to know whether you are doing it, so what do you have to lose?
Happy Easter...hopefully you DM didn't schedule anything on it :)
Hi from UK Anon.
Well since my lady friend found this blog she has spent many hours reading the tales and also doing her bit to acquire evidence to show how RGIS is shafting its auditors in the UK.
Today she has come up with a good one which would certainly see RGIS taken to task in the courts in the UK unless the courts take the opposite view of the UK law than it is mine by interpretation.
See the text below from a UK Government website aimed at providing employers guidance at complying with the UK Employment Laws.
Rest breaks during the working day
Your workers are entitled to regular breaks in the working day. Workers aged 18 or over should be offered a minimum 20-minute break for every shift lasting more than six hours. You can determine the break's timing, though it mustn't be offered at the beginning or end of a shift. It is your duty to ensure that your workers can take their breaks.
All workers, including part-time workers, freelancers and agency workers, are covered by the rules - but not those who determine their own hours, such as certain members of senior management. Other exceptions cover:
emergencies or busy periods, when breaks can be accumulated and taken later
mobile workers who are entitled instead to adequate rest - meaning regular breaks to guard against tiredness
agreements between employers and workers for breaks to be taken later
The website reference for these regulations is copied below for those interested ;-
http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/
action/detail?r.l1=1073858787&r.l3=
1074014258&type=RESOURCES&itemId=
1073792295&r.l2=1073858926&r.s=sc
She has stated that at no time has she been given a break within a six hour work session and in many instances work sessions have gone on for more than six or even seven hours.
As you can see from the text reproduced from the abovementioned UK Governments website, RGIS could claim that one aspect of these regulations is whether RGIS would claim that a busy period is defined as the time between the start time and the time planned to commence the stores sales area during which the back store (stockrooms) are to be counted.
Usually, my friend tells me, a number of auditors are assigned to count the stockroom and then these are supplemented by additional auditors brought in to count the retail area only. My friend says that rather than bring all these extras to count the latter why dont they bring some of these in to bolster the numbers undertaking the stockroom count and thus give the auditors their regulatory break.
My friend also comments that RGIS could claim that an auditor is a mobile worker, working one day at location A, the next day at location B and so on. Whether or not the UK authorities would fall for this is debatable. This, if claimed however might be to the detriment of RGIS however as regular breaks could mean a 15 minute break after every two hours continuous counting.
The third exception on these breaks issue is the "agreements" mentioned. My friend states that at NO TIME has she or any of her auditor colleagues have been asked to delay their breaks and take them later, the breaks they have been given are normally when they have finished one aspect of the count, usually the stock room, when they are sent on a break and this is usually their one and only break and usually is taken as their meal break.
At least my friend didnt have anything scheduled for this Easter weekend and we have had so far a pleasant Easter weekend and I hope all of you in the US and Canada have had the same.
Will be posting again soon I expect as 'ers definitely got "the bit between her teeth" (Got it in for RGIS for those who dont understand our English humour).
Been working at RGIS now for about a month. Hands down it's about the WORST job I've ever had. I'm a graphic artist newly moved to Middle Georgia from Jersey, and it's difficult to find decent work down here. So for now I need to keep da job.
The "grey shirt" (team leads) are all bitches from Hell, and so is the (pardon my french) CUNT who runs the place. They all hang your job over your head like a swinging pendulum with warnings that if you don't do this, or you don't do that... "you'll be terminated!"
And they speak to you as if they're your principal and your in the 8th grade. There's no respect, they always talk down to you lie your some idiot, and the dress code is ridiculous...
I'm a fifty yr. old man who's been wearing an earing since the 60's. As far as I can see, earrings have been acceptable dree for men for oh... I dunno... the past THIRTY years! So the "handbook" says that men CANNOT wear earrings or have any piercings... but women can as long as their standard, customary earrings. (which is amazingly SEXIST if ya ask me!) But yet their are some "greyshirts" with earrings, and one "greyshirt" girl with not only earrings... but big metal bars going thru the tops of her ears, and huge rubber bungs in the lobes. Large enough to put yer lil finger thru! (Not exactly "standard/customary" earrings to me...!) And also the "handbook states, men cannot have hair lnger than collar length, and absolutely NO ponytails. Wut da fuck... did I MISS something...? Did I climb into " Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine" and slide back to 1963 or something...???
Yet there are employees AND "greyshirts" who have long dreadlocks, and have big afros with bands around them in that "mushroomhead" look. Which to me... constitutes a frickin' PONYTAIL! Starighten dat shit out and it would be WAAAAAY past "collar length".
And now, after recieving my schedule for the coming week... have found that on friday, I have to work a double shift.
6 hrs in one store with 4 hrs travel back & forth, then hop into my own car and drive 30 min. to the next jb... to work for 8 more hrs. and drive back home in the middle of the night. All together... about a TWENTY-ONE HOUR DAY! With no breaks in the first shift other than a 10 min., and possibly a lunch break sometime... oh... I dunno... maybe FIFTEEN HOURS after I start work.
Back in Jersey... it's mandatory that they give you at least a 30 min break for a meal after 5 hrs.
I tried to find out if that was actually legal, and found that down here in good 'ol boy Gee-OH-gee-yah... it ain't. Apparently they never got da memo dat slavery was abolished when...
THEY LOST THE FRIGGIN CIVIL WAR!!!
This is a scumbag company for losers and people stuck without work like me. They're all a bunch of slave drivin' douchebags... and I hope the pending lawsuits I've read about on the net fucks them over big time!
In da meantime... I'll be "batchin' and "guesstimatin' my time in fucking hell here till I get a new job.
As they bastard greyshirts who talk down to ya, yell at ya, and treat you like idiots say after a days worth of abuse...
"Thanks so much... have a good day!"
I worked for RGIS as a Team Leader then AM from 1988-1995 in NYS, NC then NYS again. At that time the company was good. The pay was great, the health insurance was reasonably priced and was actually insurance. I left to attend college full time. I was re-hired in 2006 in NYS and promoted to Team Leader. I was injured in the late fall of 2006, had surgery and returned to work. In Jan. 2007 I received the offer for "health benefits" and, like an idiot I signed up. The benefits were garbage and the costs were high. I withdrew from the "coverage" in April but they kept with-holding the "Health care premiums" through July. I transferred to Texas and was re-injured on the job. Now my condition is inoperable and painful. I was released to work with the same minor restriction I came to TX with, but RGIS will not give me my job back. Furthermore, the Texas Department of Insurance Hearing Examiner decided that my injury was only an "aggravation" of the previous injury. So - RGIS worked the hell out of me, caused a permanent injury, and DOES NOT HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!!! PLEASE IF YOU HAVE NOT WORKED FOR RGIS ALREADY- DO NOT GO TO WORK FOR RGIS. THEY WILL USE YOU UNTIL THEY NO LONGER NEED YOU AND THEN THEY'LL TOSS YOU OUT LIKE GARBAGE WITH NO TREATMENT FOR YOUR INJURY!!!!
You can call me crazy, but I was on both sides - Auditor to Team Leader to AM to DM. RGIS was good while I needed it, but the farther I progressed up the ladder it became clear the company was crooked to the core. I left about 14 years ago and haven't regretted it. I stumbled on this blog tonight and it reminded me of that awful time in my life. I'm so glad they are getting sued!
Fancy a DM who just happens to be Canadian, an ex-schoolteacher, and rings you when the smallest of problems comes up? Well, thats my DM, and in all the years i've worked for RGIS just 2 payrises - I mean is'nt that just MEAN?? we do a 5 hour shift in sainsburys and are told we arent entitled to a break-another example of meanness PLUS the foreign fraternity that has infiltrated all of our districts in the UK, and don't do any work, then end up as ATL's and TL's who like to push us around, and are always on 'wrap-up' teams so they get an extra hour, always scan your badge with the TCA and then have the cheek to ask you to pull tags, if you ask me theyr'e pulling your leg half of the time but our dimwit DM comes and finds you EVEN if you're in the staff canteen enjoying a cool drink from the drinks machine if theres any left after the foreign fraternity have raided it and left nothing in it for those of us who have had nothing to drink. Basically this district is low on morale because our DM has been kicked in the butt more times than the footballs we count in Woolworths in the UK. When he turned up at a count recently everything was fine until he moved the portable from the staffroom upstairs to the sales floor downstairs and guess what? The printer stopped working! I only stay with RGIS because i need the money to pay my bills and i'm not joining all of those unemployed in the UK!
Well in my district 233 New Jersey we are trapped because the personnal manager and the DM are a couple ...so we never win, and both are unfair, they let that one specific manager steals time from us, they want to force us to drive with a unsafe manager who is 20 years old (15 passangers van) without checking his license, they fire people if they dont go with this driver which is a manager (20 yrs old) Can you believe this?
WHATS GROSSER THAN GROSS. WHEN I WAS FIRST HIRED THEY GAVE ME A SHIRT THAT HAD SPOOGE ON IT. THERE WAS MORE DNA ON THAT SHIRT THAN A CSI CRIME SCENE BUT NOT TO WORRY A FELLOW EMPLOYEE TOLD ME HOW TO LAUNDRY IT ON A THREE HOUR RIDE TO WORK. i TRIED TO SLEEP THROUGH THE CONVERSATION BUT HE KEPT ELBOWING ME TO KEEP ME AWAKE. wHEN i WOULD WAKE UP HIS BREATH WOULD KNOCK ME BACK OUT.
HI
I am Team leader in the UK and just want to sympathise with Anonymous a few posts up.
Yes Dm of 771 is a joker, i saw him in action the other week in a store!What a first rate cock!
Well if upper Managment think he is the answer then it says it all.
He will get sued that is not without question or debate.Better get some money in the bank Anne.
Anyway
To the Operation itself
Well RGIS France just wasted a whole lot of money last week in sending Tls over Easter to assist in Decathlon stores in France
NO NOTICE AS PER BLOODY USUAL.
Hundreds of pounds on flights no hotels booked paid for etc etc
THE USUAL
My mate down South get his flight details GOOD FRIDAY!! Can you Adam and Eve it!
Whats the phrase NEVER LEARN?
Anyway turns out France is losing millions of Euros every year!
NO BLOODY WONDER
Its just like that JOKER in Ireland Jason Doherty.Lose him and lets all save some money.
Well i see sales Director and Operatrions Director are doing his bloody job now over there!!!
Its criminal......
Meanwhile we are all working our arses off in the UK Districts and we have Marcus im never wrong Wright saying we not doing good enough.
If he gets of his fat arse and does his bit that would be a start.
Never in my life have i seen such bone idleness and inept manager as him.
You know what
Turns out today half the auditors havnt been paid! some cock up somewhere in payroll
Meanwhile Wrighty boys on holiday on his big fat Arse in ghis big fat company Merc on his big fat salary!!
And the big cock has the cheek to tell us to shape up!!
What Dave Fiedner thinks about all this God only knows
I see you type in Stocktaking or Inventory services in Google ,RGIS doesnt even hit the first page!!
That says it bloody all
Two jags Parry Sales Director....dont get me going on him!!
The really bitter thging about all this is some districts in the North are pretty good operations and the jokers dont see it.
i have been in 3 of them in varios parts of my career and they good outfits then you look at some of them as 771 well what a blody great joke
I'm from UK too.....
UK team leader i totally agree, some of the counts we are doing are really shit. Our DM was really good and took us off the shitty poundlands and kept us on WW & sainsburys, he kept the cheap guys in them and used us more expensive ones in the others. Suited us and him so we all won. I think he made more money that way.
I see a lot of guys are not happy with their DM but ours was great, as long as we did as he asked he left us to and never demanded things were done, he always asked even when he was seriously pissed. treated us like a human being which is more than can be said for others!!!!
I say 'was' because he's now saw sense and pissed off. I dont blame him, he got fucked about really bad last year it was always a matter of time before he left.
Typical it seems to be a theme with this company, anyone remotely good at waht they do and they are forced out.
no idea what will happen now but if we end up with one of these new wankers then i wont be staying.
Also ive been abroad with the company and fuck me there are really shit districts out there!!!!
Really makes you feel glad when you have (had!!!) a DM who know what hes doing!!!
Never spoken direct to Marcus, cant wait but!!!!
Hi guys
lets try this one on ya...we get our usual bunch of new hires in january and guess what? After one count the idiot they actually call a DM at 771 decides a number of our new hires can be promoted to ATL's, which he promptly does. This goes to show what an idiot they chose when selecting the new DM for 771 ("is he new?" I hear you people asking) I too believe his story about being a schoolteacher sounds a bit phoney, and that he has indeed been fired and then re-hired without anne looking into his background! Also get this-one of our teams has 5 ATL's(all new hires I hasten to add)and we also have some accident prone staff on our books at 771. Anyway, some of our staff are disabled and in the UK there is an act called the Disability Discrimination Act, which basically allows staff to work even though they may not be able to reach company standards, I myself am disabled and have to take medication which stops me from being able to drive, so the kind government in England have provided me with a travel permit which allows me to travel anywhere in england and some of wales, but not ireland or scotland, so to get to my point, I have asked many times if I can do the scheduling only to be told 'you have to be an ATL and in order to become an ATL you must be able to drive'. So the dimwit DM at 771 decided to do the scheduling himself-a job which under the previous DM I had been doing as an ATL, but without having to drive, and also when the position of RTS came up, it was the same argument which caused a large meeting involving Anne, the North Operations Manager, My DM, AM, and 2 people from the Department for Work and Pensions, who argued my case, and all they got for me was some benefit which supplements my wages by £241 each month! Do you guys think it's time to expose this Dimwit DM to the government by arranging another meeting? Come on every other company can be flexible, and if RGIS cant be flexible and stay rigid one day they will snap along with all it's managment strategies!
Hi, I just found this blog the other day and I've been just checking it out. I read a comment about top guns and had to comment. I started working for RGIS in 1995 because my mom and sis worked there and my mom said I had to get a job. I've been working there ever since. Sounds like nepotism I know. I am a top gun myself, as is my mom and older sis. We are all on the same team, (mom is the team leader) and anytime we are scheduled for a store we show up and more often than not wind up counting accessories, folded t-shirts, dump-bins, and we don't batch. The clients pay us to count merchandise auto one. I was ATL for my mom for a while and I personally caught people batching.
We worked hard to get to top gun.
That's not to say that there aren't any in my district that do cherry pick. We have those too. They show up like they saved the day and count only hanging racks. Like the other day I was at a Dick's inventory, and one of them counted only t-racks while I was on the wall. But that's just me, the girl with the bad ankle on the ladder while the boy with the toothache, or whatever gripe he might have that week counts the easy areas.
I can't complain about bad management. Our DM is pretty awesome. I guess he's the third we've had in the nearly 13 years I've been working. I've seen a lot of AM's and AAM's but none of them were bad compared to the horror stories I've read on here. We had a few male AM's that slept around with some of the female counters, not me because yuck.
My only real complaint is all the bad attitudes of people I have to work with. We have several night and weekend teams, I'm on one of these teams, and an anytime team that works mostly day and anywhere else we need filled in. I've thanked them, the anytimer's, at the end of our stores and had several say your's is the only team we would come in at the last minute for. Which means if I'm in another night team's store, because that happens when several people from several different teams are scheduled and no one can make it, they won't fill in because, it's not my teams store, so everyone gets screwed. Their attitude is this way because they would do it for us because we would do it for them, help if they were in trouble, none of the night teams are as helpful as us. Most stores we hear horror stories of their last inventory when My team wasn't there. The other teams mess up a lot I guess.
I'm rambling so I better get off now, but I'll be back.
Sounds like RGIS in the UK is in a lot of turmoil. Jeez, I thought it was just us Yanks that are all f*cked up! What I am wondering is how much serious competition does RGIS UK have? Or, is the competition just as inept as we are (like it often is in the U.S.)?
Well
You guys in the UK, will be shouting to get the idiot out from 771 who is currently our DM. I'd like to see how many of you would like to take our DM's in all of the districts in the UK, not just 771! Come on guys before I gather the info together show everyone else we can force these dimwits back to where they came from, by means of an employment tribunal, I'm sure after an organisation like ACAS or the Department for Work and Pensions and various other government departments see some of these comments will force RGIS UK to open up their purse and pay up!
I too work for 771 Newcastle
i can say that ower DM is a right fool the way he goes on
i seen stores been count 100% accuracy with out him been there.
but when he turns up the accuracy goes to hell.
hes got the wrong attitude towards employees of rgis one these days he going to push the wrong button and someone will knock him down to the floor as my self have been very close.
something needs doing about this DM before something serious happens he says hes training towards been a priest what a Canadian joker!
i seen him counting in a store one
day to me where did they get him from if he was giving a 90 day test he fail it at all costs he is one major FOOL !
Hi again.
I'm Anon from the Uk again.
My girlfriend who works for RGIS has written a story of a count in which she was involved and this is her tale.
Hi I'm UK Anons girlfriend.
Let me recount a count which I was involved in.
It was an early morning start and arriving at the store the count supervisor was already there with the auditors which had also travelled in the same vehicle.
The count was due to start at 6.00am but at 6.10am we were all still sat in the vehicles in the stores yard.
I went to the supervisors vehicle and lowering the drivers window the supervisor told me that at the pre-inventory meeting the previous week the stores management stated that they would be there to let us into the premises from 5.30am. As it then began to spot with rain, I was just about to make my way to sit back in my car when a rear warehouse door swung open, the floodlight over the loading bay came to life and we were let into the store. It was a store in a group of cheap stores here in the UK.
We got set up and as soon as areas were ticketed we were away and the count supervisor completed the ticketing, putting the ticket data into the laptop.
With the late start the store management was forced to put a notice on the door at the main entrance informing customers the store was closed for stocktaking when it became apparent that the inventory would not be complete by the store normal opening time. In the event this time was not met either and the store opened its doors one and a half hours after its normal opening time.
I had finished my assigned areas and I was instructed to sweep the shop floor of 'sin-bin' items and to put the items in the shops shoppers baskets. I started doing this but the stores own staff were also doing this AND putting the 'sin-bin' items back on the shelves for sale so a fact lot of good the shop floor count did.
Had a break and then we embarked upon the count in the stockroom.
I had completed a number of stock room areas when I was assigned a large area. This comprised of a section of storage racking about two metres in length, 3 shelves high with the floor area below the first shelf plus a number of large cases in front of the area.
As there was no steps immediately available, I started with the second shelf and I hadn't done much when the warehouse manager came up to me and remarked that I had picked the 'short straw' today and that the area I was counting was 'A pig of an area to count'. He wasnt joking. I took about and hour to count all the small items which spewed out of the box when I had emptied my first large cardboard case onto a trolley to count as there was a mixture of about 2000 items in the case which comprised about 20 sales lines only.
That was only the first case, the second, third, and so on cases that I counted was of a similar 'pigs breakfast'.
Many colleagues were finishing their areas and one was assigned to assist me. Well he went through most of the remaining cases like a hot knife through a half kilo of butter out of the cooler. I watched him count a case whilst I was counting my sixth. He put his hand into the case, pulled out an item, scanned it and then looked on the case for the case quantity and entered this into his audit device, then added another random number, and then another and another. I was speechless and when the area was finished I went to the count supervisor and commented about the apparent miscounting which I had observed. The count supervisor told me not to worry as the counter had used 'a bulking' barcode for this area.
Hearing this the warehouse manager came over to me when I was alone for a while and told me not to worry as when its all finished he would get his men to do a 100% check and they wouldn't be informing RGIS of the discrepancy as RGIS would want a percentage of the missed / wrongly counted stock so they keep quiet and write it onto stock at a later date.
It was just fate that brought us back to the same town a few weeks later and during our break a couple of us went to this store and got some food for our break. I met the warehouse manager and he recognised me and we had a short conversation and he told me that the remainder of the week that we did the count two members of his staff did a full detailed count of the area that I had struggled with and told me that the stocktake count as provided by RGIS was over £20,000 ($40,000) lower than the actual stock levels and the area I was counting was £8,000 ($16,000)lower than the actual value of the stock. "Hence", he said, "thats why we always do a 100% stock reconciliation of those problem areas and write onto the RGIS stock figure all these fudged counts by your RGIS experts".
Well thats my girlfriends tale and I note that another poster has mentioned Employment Tribunal. It might come to pass that a reference to an Employment Tribunal might take place here in the UK judging what my girlfriends colleagues have been suggesting recently. Brace yourself RGIS an ET1 might just be dropping through your letterbox at Leamington Spa in the not too distant future.
I have heard that Columbus district hired someone right off the street to be the DM there.
That is, someone with absolutely no RGIS or inventory experience.
Obviously that's one of the bad districts to work for. There are some good ones though.
Hi to all you guys with 'nasty' DM's in the UK, here is the information you need to make sure RGIS gets what is coming to them, follow this link
www.employmenttribunals.gov.uk
Lets make sure that they pay us compensation and treat us right...I'm leaving if they dont do the right thing (is that possible?!)
Da Magish: I kind of agree with you on the earring thing. I think if a man has a simple earring in his ear/ears, like a little post or small hoop then it shouldn't be a problem, but trust RGIS to find fault with it. I mean, it's not like auditors are in the corporate world, you know? I think it's more important that an auditor be clean and neat than if he's wearing an earring or two.
SMC: Sorry to hear about your injury, that's rough. Did you ever receive a refund for the months that RGIS kept witholding your health insurance premiums, I mean after you withdrew for the program?
Anon 233 NJ: Oh yes I believe it! That kind of thing went on in my district all of the time. RGIS is supposed to check people's driving records but in my dist. they never did, hence any moron could drive the rest of us in the company van and did so, with frightening results. Believe me, this sort of thing probably goes on in many if not all RGIS districts, all the time.
UK Anon's Girl: When I was reading your tale I thought to myself, "Gee, why does that sound so familiar?" and then I realized I had gone through many situations just like that while on the job at RGIS. RGIS often does such a crappy job at "inventory" counting that you have to wonder why stores hire them in the first place. And if you're an auditor who actually tries to do a good, accurate job of counting it can be discouraging to see your managers not appear to care that others are blatantly batching or otherwise screwing up. After a while I just stopped caring about doing an accurate count because I figured if no one else in my district cared then why should I? Hopefully you can take a small comfort in knowing that you're not alone in your RGIS experiences, a lot of other people around the world can sympathize with you because they've been there too.
I also wanted to tell everyone that for some reason the links that people post don't work here, so if someone posts a link you'll have to use the ol' cut and paste.
Hi guys
Yeah, Please use cut and paste method to follow my link (easier to do on a mac than on a pc)
Hi Guys
I heard that on one occasion the DM from 771 actually stopped a count and started to complain about accuracy - then he made the comment 'I dont want to be having this conversation with any of you guys again!'
My point is didn't he realise that his methods of counting and traditional RGIS methods just dont work?? He walked up to me and asked why I was starting an area from the bottom, truth was i had nearly finished the area and we were out of yellows, and when i told him I had indeed counted the whole area, he proceeded to tell me that i had not!
Get your brain into gear, DM of 771 before you accuse your staff of not counting areas, or you might end up counting the days before you return to where you came from and start counting your social security!
Hi UK Anon again.
Calling all RGIS auditors in the UK who are 'robbed' by RGIS with their policy of only paying for travel AFTER the first hour.
My girlfriend is on a count in a Sainsburys store as I write this. From her meet point to the store is about 50 minutes in normal dry road conditions but this morning we awoke to a fair sprinkling of snow and so her journey this morning may have reached an hour which once again she will get no re-compense for as her little car pool share the driving so that all four of them get a share of the travel time and mileage allowances.
Well today feeling lonely without my hearthrob to enjoy the day with I have been hunting the internet for references to TRAVEL TIME and how it should be / is paid.
Surprising there is very little which I have found which would cover RGIS auditors but there is plenty when it comes to the legal profession and other professions who could well afford to slide out from under their sheets an hour earlier of a morning and travel for an hour without recompense. However I have found a few instances which I think would prove to anyone reading this that RGIS is certainly a rip-off employer when it comes to payment for travel time.
REFERENCE 1.
Q. Is travel time hours worked ?
A. Travel from home to the office and back (commuting) is not hours worked, but all travel time once the day starts is. So a trip from the office to another town and back in the same day is all considered hours worked.
REFERENCE 2.
This reference is from the Electrical Contractors Association, a trade body made up of employers involved in providing electricians for elecrical related work on sub-contracts to a projects main contractors.
1. WAGE RATES
Since the 7th January 2002, two different wage rates have applied to JIB Graded operatives working on site, depending on whether the employer transports them to site, or whether they provide their own transport. The two categories are:
Job Employed (Transport Provided)
Payable to operatives who are transported to and from the job by their employers. Operatives travelling in their own time shall be entitled to payment for Travel Time, as detailed in the appropriate scale.
Job Employed (Own Transport)
Payable to operatives who travel by their own means to and from the job. Operatives under this category shall be entitled to payment for Travel Allowance and also, when travelling in their own time, to Travel Time, as detailed in the appropriate scale.
There are separate rates to accommodate those few operatives who are employed permanently at the shop and who do not work on site. These rates are shown under Section 6 of this Determination.
REFERENCE 3.
From the staff handbook of the UK's coal authority.
Time spent travelling on official business before and after the normal daily conditioned hours can be claimed and will be paid at
time and a half. It should be noted that the NORMAL travel time to work must be deducted before any travel time can be claimed
On this reference I would'nt expect RGIS to pay an enhanced rate for travel time.
REFERENCE 4.
See the link ;-
http://handbook.gov.uk/content/pay/chapter-12-travellingtime.pdf
REFERENCE 5.
In my own full time job, I am paid travel time at the overtime rate applicable to the time the travel is undertaken. That is time and a quarter when it occurs outside of my normal contacted hours Mondays to Fridays and at time and a half Saturdays and Sundays irrespective of the hour.
Any RGIS UK employee who can provide further instances of how travel time is variously treated in the UK please post as a comment on this blog.
Thanks Misfit in advance for allowing this.
Oh and to those US employees, where can I find details about the US class action, has anyone a copy of the wording of the lawsuit thats been filed in the US.
UK Anon.
UK anon:
You can get a copy of the US lawsuit by contacting the law firm,Schneider and Wallace, in San Francisco, California. Their address is:
180 Montgomery Street, Suite 200
San Francisco,California 94104
Tel: (toll free in US)877 361-2539, or fax 415 421-7105
I also have a copy of the suit filed in California in January `07. It`s about 24 pages in length. I could make a copy and mail it to you, if you are willing to risk publishing a mailing address.(I suggest perhaps a third party to keep the RGIS spies off your trail.)
TO o t l
Thanks o t l for the info, I was wondering if there was a web address URL which had the details which I could view online, maybe posted on a blog or something which I could access.
Kind Regards for your trouble taken to respond.
UK Anon.
hey Guys, Do you notice one thing???????? The DM of 771 really stinks. You cannot stand and breath when he is with you.
What do you think about all the new APH crap and how they make sure that you will never reach your APH goal so that you will never get a raise?
Yes anonymous you are correct in saying that the DM of 771 stinks. I think he don't know the use of tooth brush and paste. Bloody dirty joker!!
UK Anon,
With all the time you uys are wasting researching the internet for stuff to hold against this company, why don't you just quit?
Seems like you all would lead happier lives if you weren't working for a company you hate so much.
.... it`s always interesting to hear from the occasional sycophant.... But it`s not RGIS that people hate; it`s the unqualified, greedy hypocrites that abuse power and make life miserable for their subordinates, while often conspiring to cheat clients at the same time. Most of us are quite happy and efficient little worker bees when not belittled, threatened, and interfered with by useless,incompetent idiots who are trying to work up the corporate ladder.
I left RGIS several years ago but prior to my leaving I had mastered the Audit and was able to count without looking down at my machine. I was up to 15-20K per hour in financial grocery stores. Because of this I was considered as a valued part of the team.
I have a few questions for those of you that are still working for RGIS or have recently left:
It sounds like the new RM1 is not worn on the hip anymore? Does the Auditor hold it throughout the entire inventory? Is anyone able to key into the RM1 without looking at it? I know those Auditors that were not able to use their Audit without looking at it received less assignments, is everyone now on a more even scale and how does one earn their higher pay if they can't progress by mastering the RM1?
saved771,
A lot of us dont trawl the internet for evidence against RGIS - just go on a count and see it happening for REAL!
Also those 'whistleblowers' as we call them (you call them what you want, boy they sure do deserve it!)should stop eating chocolate as we all know what that leads to
Maybe I am a rarity but my APH went up a huge amount when we switched to the RM's. We did a whole foods last weekend on the RM's (finally) and my APH went from a 13,000 dollar per hour on the old machines to about 22,000 dollar per hour on the RM's. My problem is that I cannot key very well with the machine on my leg. I think it's from years of 10-key on a computer. Far easier for me to hold the thing and key in. Personally, I like the RM's but I know I am one of the very few.
Saved: Woo! Another 404 survivor!
And yeah, I think anyone that dares to claim that we have to go trolling for information on RGIS obviously hasn't been with the company for very long...if at all.
anonymous:
Regarding using the new RM-1 machines, you have to be patient and versatile.They can be worn with the old belts, as well as with new shoulder straps ( which I personally don`t like because the machine hangs too high).Everyone seems to have their own preference. The problem is that there is not enough belts/straps to go around (supervisors often forget to bring them), so sometimes you end up holding the machine in your hand. So you really have to be flexible, because you never know if you will have the proper accessorries, including the coveted finger lasers.
You can still ten key by touch with the new RM 1`s, although it takes a while to get used to the keys being a little closer together, and the awkward placement of some of the keys, notably the "enter" key.My biggest issue with the machines is the poor quality workmanship in the keys. Very few of the machines have a nice "snap" to them like the old Audit 14`s in which keying is a breeze.Instead, many RM 1`s in our district have keys that stick and grind.(Did the number go in at all? Or did it double?)Often I`ve picked up a machine that seemed OK at first, but as the inventory progressed the keys would become harder to depress and start sticking.Others have told me the same thing.So you have to be very patient.I try to pick out a good machine at the start, but sometimes they turn out bad.When necessary, I will swap machines during the course of the inventory, until I find a functional model.( I have so far resisted the temptation to stomp on one of the many RM-1 "lemons"!)
I don`t think Blackstone/RGIS cares about keying speed anymore. I`ve yet to see a manager training a newhire on counting by sight, at least not out here.The main selling point of the RM-1s is the ease of learning their operation (no complicated function keys like the old audits).I think we are gradually going to a minimum wage type of company (McInventory) where the vast majority of employees will be new hires with less than a year or two of experience.It`s all going to be about numbers (of auditors), not skill level.
Something a little different tonight, folks. Instead of my usual ranting and raving about the liars, cheats, and thieves who are rapidly running this company into bankruptcy, I thought I'd seek a little information.
What is the rate of participation in the RGIS lawsuit in your District? Mine is piss poor. I only know of two others besides myself who have opted in, and we all have the worst attitudes in the District. There might be a few others who signed up, but just don't want anybody to know about it. I don't know if it's fear of retaliation or if the auditors are just too damned stupid to understand it. Perhaps it's a little of both.
Also, has any other District had problems receiving paystubs recently?
I've really done it now! If it's only my District with paystub problems they'll surely figure out who I am :)
Ok, I just can't resist...Here is a completely unsubstantiated rumor via a former DM. Paul Street had to hire a bodyguard at one time. Don't know if it was related to RGIS, but I'd sure love to find out.
Lookie here! Impala Partners has their own website. Isn't this cute?
http://www.impalallc.com/
Impala Partners is a U.S. based financial advisory boutique. Impala provides restructuring advisory advice to troubled companies or their creditors, merger and advisory services to select clients and also acts as a principal in investing in healthy and distressed companies.
Impala was founded in 1997 by Messrs. Borom and Street and since its formation have been involved in transactions totaling over $7 billion.
MEMBERS OF IMPALA PARTNERS, LLC
Michael P. Borom
Paul A. Street
Peter C. Keenoy
Erik C. Hayes
Aamir Chinoy
Impala Partners, LLC
18 Marshall Street, Suite 112
Norwalk, CT 06854
Phone: (203) 956-6565
Fax (203) 956-6546
email: impala@impalallc.com
Any Spam Kings read this site? :)
I have happened to stumble across this site from being bored and searching RGIS on wikipedia. awesome blog, great to know me and my other co workers arent being crazy
I had seen an ad about RGIS in my local newspaper, and my brother went in first for an interview, where they showed him some video and surprised him and the other people who had attended for an interview with a surprise "basic math" test.
which was some easy coutning with flat circles and crap, and some 3 dimensional figures that were tough. he didnt pass because he was caught off guard. i went in for the interview snd passed.
they said we weouldnt travel much but we travel almost every time, and im pissed that the first hour is unpayed for. they did train us to use the RM-1s, but it was hard to retain that knowledge. I had to ask alot of questions my first day and now I have most of it down.
the managers don't really do a good job of placing the auditors, and some of them seem unfit to be placed in a public setting. Im convinced im going to be fired some day after I sock some guy in the face.
i see now to get a decent paycheck you have to work twice a day some weeks and shit. it sucks, and ive lost sleep over it.
but the peak of my expierience is when we recently went to work in a town two hours away and we were suposed to be the help. but we did most of the work, they barely had any employees from that town there! we got stuck for 9 hours, and ive heard stories about 12 hour days. now i like working long some times cause its more $$$ but still...
2 weeks with no whining??? Come on, there has to be something to complain about!
Just looking on the Internet for company info and came accross this, makes me laugh. I work for a district in Scotland, UK. Cant stand the job and our DM is a knob, nuff said really.
He was our AM but was made up when our last boss left, really cant hack it and you can see he's stressed up to his eyeballs!!!!
Makes me laugh because when the old DM was here he did bugger all and left it all to the old DM, i think its called karma now looking at his face!
Oh yeah and the DM in 771 dos stink. BAD!!!!!!!!!!!
koolm0dee -
to claim your brother failed the math test because he was "caught off guard" is the funniest thing I have read on this blog yet. There is not a single math problem on it. It's just circles, squares, lines and boxes you have to count. Would he be stumped if someone snuck up on him and said "Suprise! How many fingers am I holding up?"
Hope you all had a Happy Mothers Day.
What has been the effect of the high gas prices on you RGIS drivers? Are you making any money or are you going in the hole?
Hi.
This is UK Anons girlfriend posting.
Hes away on a course for three days this week so I am on my lonesome for the duration so I thought I would look up this blog to see what the latest is.
Very quiet I do beleive.
So let me tell you of a count I attended recently.
We were doing the warehouse of this food store and we had done most of it when we came to the Chillers and Frozen foodstuffs.
I was assigned to the frozen section and two guys donned warm clothing provided by the store to roll the roll cages in and out of the freezer store. I did one and all cases were nicely stacked on the roll cage with the case codes all accessable to the laser scanner on the RM-1. I scanned all bar two of the cases, these two bar codes not registering on the RM-1. I marked these two cases with an 'X' as a reminder to open these and scan an item as per our instructions. However on the freezer room door there was a display of bar codes and I was told to see if the items in the two unscannable case bar codes were on this display and to scan the relevant bar code under each item description. The box descriptions of the contents of these cases were not on this display and so I was about to unload other case to get to the unscannable cases to open them when one of the guys asked if my cage was done. I replied no as I had to open two cases and scan the product itself when he said 'Oh dont bother about that, they'll never check this lot so they won't know you didn't scan them and rolled the cage back into the freezer and we were told to have a two and a quarter hour break.
Well I dont know what the store management would think when they interrogate the stock-take results to their point of sales listing and finding items being sold for which they officially have no stock of.
I am seriously looking for another job as this RGIS work is nothing but "a be at the beck and call of the boss", and to be expected to attend counts at an hours notice because others have thrown a sickie / performed a no show and they are short at the count.
Well here goes to see if I can post a message for misfit to approve and allow to appear on his blog without the guidance of my loved one.
UK Anons girlfriend.
Tagpuller, the gas prices are going to really hurt. Our managers drive no one around. They just use the vans as their own personal property. The district tells us, the team leaders, to create meets for our teams and assign drivers. But, they are now eliminating or removing the drivers pays after they have driven people. They always have some excuse for doing it. How many times do you think they will do that to any individual before they refuse to drive people? They promise to pay to get people to stores then after the store is over, they remove their auto. At the current gas prices, they will do that only once to anyone. And, how many people do they think will drive themselves all over to work maybe 3 hours? If this company was so interested in cuts, etc. why aren't they clamping down on the AM's who are using these vans as personal property and paying their gas to do it? Why aren't they forcing them to drive auditors around to save on auto? Nope. Instead the worker bees are taking the cuts, getting screwed out of their auto, and the real abusers with all the benefits keep abusing.
One thing they had better keep in mind with the current gas prices is the bottom of payscale people can get a job at a local Dunkin Donuts with a starting pay of 9.00 an hour in our area. There are Dunkin donuts on every street corner around here. Why would anyone want to travel 50 miles to work 3 hours for the same starting pay? And, with their current plans about pay classifications and wages going down, they will lose their long time workers also.
And, oh yes, the pay classifications are on hold so they say for now. Uh? Could they be on hold till the deadline for joining the lawsuit has gone by?
I'm betting that as soon as May 29th has gone by, we will get the news of just how much of a paycut we will be taking.
Thanks TL Too for that backup. Gas prices in my area just hit $4.00 a gallon (regular unleaded).One of the problems with driving for RGIS is that you have to pay for the gas out of your own pocket, then wait 2 weeks to get your money back. By then gas has went up another 30 cents. Here's the facts, tell me if i'm wrong: At .38 cents a mile and carrying 3 auditors (@.02 cents per person) equals 44 cents per mile. If you traveled at total of 100 miles, you are paid $44.00.(100 miles times .44 cents). Now consider this, the average miles per gallon of most U.S. vehicles is 20mpg (combined city/highway). 100 miles divided by 20 mpg equals 5 gallons. 5 gallons at $4.00 a gallon (Wow! are you kidding me!?) equals $20.00. $44.00 (paid to you) minus $20.00 for gas equals $24.00. That means you come out with a whopping +$4.00 profit! Numbers don't lie! That gas you burned up driving for RGIS has to be replaced at sometime. Rgis has to understand that their gas mileage program is out of date and that they will have to change it ....soon! My question is where are they gonna get the money to boost the mileage pay? I think we all know the answer to that question! RGIS is in the same boat as alot of other companies that have to move people around by auto. They are being squeezed, how will they react......we shall see!
Driving is one area where D158 treats us pretty good. The AMs (and sometimes even the DM) make their minivans available for travel jobs, and we have a couple of 15 packs that see a lot of use. Plus, we share office space with D177 (Wal-mart) and can use their 15 pack sometimes. And, if needed, the district will rent additional vans.
Very rarely is anyone expected to take their own vehicle to an out of town job. In fact, we even take the vans to some in town jobs where getting there can be a hassle (like AAFES) or where there is a parking fee (Airport or downtown).
I live nearly an hour from the office, (the only official meet site, but sometimes we can arrange some place more convenient) and there are 4 of us in my family that work for RGIS, so I have an instant carpool without having to go pick anyone up. With some out of town jobs, I can get an hour or more extra sleep by driving myself. They've been fair about paying travel time and mileage reimbursement. Actually, at first I didn't realize I could submit my time and mileage, until the DM called me up to let me know.
Hell, one town where we count an average of once a month or so is closer to my house than the office is, and I still get reimbursed from driving there.
I do miss one thing about being in D159, there were a couple of meet sites within 15 miles of my place. But they moved the district boundaries and transferred us to D192. We still had the same meet sites for jobs northward, and the office was conveniently placed to meet for jobs elsewhere. Then, less than a year later D192 was combined with D158, with the new office on the other side of town.
Just a reminder to those in the UK - ditch RGIS by going to ACAS and other organisations, because it seems that the 'big bosses' in the states are screwing everyone - PAYBACK TIME FOLKS!
Texas auditor, nice that you can use the vans and save your vehicles the extra wear and tear.
However, in my District, they are the AM's personal vehicles. You can't use them and they drive no one. So everyone here uses their personal vehicles to drive others. And that is the problem. You drive others then you get your paycheck and they have removed your auto.
Tagpuller, one of our people was just on jury duty. They got 52 cents a mile to come and go to the courthouse. And, they got it whether they drove or rode the bus.
They chose to ride the bus so it was a good deal for them. lol
The amount they pay or don't pay for auto doesn't even begin to cover your personal liability should you have an accident driving people for them or the wear and tear on your car.
WOW!!! I just went for an interview today. I have been reading the bloggs and I am really freaked out! I go in next week for training. Is there any upsides to this job?
Our tightwad DM just sent everyone a mileage chart that shows what he claims is the roundtrip mileage between carpool meet sites and the various malls and retail areas within our district. Of course, it`s just coincidence that a lot of those roundtrips fall just short of the 40 mile minimum for travel pay.... ( He will do anything to save a few bucks to get his bonus!)
I`m waiting for RGIS to have the audacity to discontinue paying for parking. That could be the next cost cutting step.Then things will really get interesting!
New2RGIS: Upsides? Hmmm, I'm going to have to think a loooooooong time for any "upsides". Lol! Well, I guess you could say that one upside is that depending on how your dist. does their scheduling you can have a bit of flexibility in your work schedule. Plus you get to work at different locations so you have some variety there. Also, you can use the RGIS job as one where you can pick up a few extra (extremely small amount of) bucks at nights, mornings or weekends. I would definitely NOT recommend attempting to use your RGIS job as your sole source of income. It's too spotty and unreliable to do so. Have fun oh brave one! ;-)
I can't imagine still working for RGIS with the gas prices where they are now.
Meets? My district NEVER had meets. We were all expected to drive ourselves.
I have read this blog off and on ever since stumbling upon it some time ago - it is HILARIOUS!!! I am many times just about to fall off my chair from laughing so hard! I can totally sympathise with every word!
Anyway, over my almost 20 years with RGIS in the "midwest", I have seen many changes. Some for the good, many for, shall I say, not so good? I kind of the last couple years not been working a whole lot because of the addtion of small children to my family. Many of the other old timers from my era in my district have recently gone, we've had some rather significant upheavels in the office, so I have been kind of "out of the loop" so to speak on the new political mish-mash stuff.
I see some posters talking about a new pay classification coming soon - what is that about? Heck - I didn't even know that the Nicholson's sold out until recently when I was really bored one night and googled RGIS and found all kinds of stuff about it. I am just about to the point of telling the new AM boy to take this shirt and stick it you-know-where because I am really getting fed up with all the schedule games they are playing. And the travel thing? - oh man, that really torks me off! I do NOT do travel stores!
Thanks!
Anon at 5/22: Thanks so much for your kind words! I'm so glad you've been enjoying my blog. I've had a lot of fun writing it and enjoying everyone else's RGIS horror stories. It's been cathartic to get it all out and my RGIS experiences, both good and bad, were such that I didn't want them to be forgotten. :-)
I opted in. I don't even care if I don't getany cash out of it. I just hope it ruins RGIS and they go away.
I was an AAM. I worked for RGIS for 4 years. I don't know how I lasted that long. At one oint Iloved my job. yeah, call me crazy but I loved counting and I liked running stores. I was making $14.75 when I left. We got a new DM (our 4th in 2 years) and he was a real a$$hole.
If God came down from heaven and said "you are allowed to murder one person, you'll nevr get caught and you'll still go to heaven" I would have killed my DM.
He had been fired and demoted and rehired etc etc from several distritcs in several states. He was a grumpy miserable anal retentive BULLY. He never cracked a smile, never said a nice work to anyone. It was his way or the highway. if you tried to argue with him or have a different opinion than him he would make your life miserable. You could run 20 huge jobs in a row and get perfect PIQA's and cut a 79% inevery store and he would never say good job. But you have one job godown the toilet because your printer died, 18 people called off, you ran out of paper because the store was asking for 10% reprint...you would get called into the office and screamed out. he would say you have to type up a report and explainwhy your store went so badly, why you were there 10 hours instead of 7, why you got a 3 on your PIQA, etc etc. He was truly unbearable. A lot of people quit because of them. I finally quit because he had me acting as a Taxi. I would have to get up at 2am just so I could pick up all the welfare cases with no cars in my town. I would be banging on doors in the middle of the night because I couldn't be late. I was running the stores and I was told if I didn't have X amount of people that I was in deep shit. I had to be at the store early to set up my equipment and these scumbags I was picking up wouldn't get out of bed. Did I mention he wouldn't pay me travel even thoughI put hundreds of miles on my car every day? When he came to our district he stopped the travel pay. I used to get 44 cents a mile. I was essentially losing money because of all the gas I put in my car. My paychecks were good buthe was shaving time off my 908's. I just had enough. I have moved on to a better job for just 50 cents less than i was making at hellhole RGIS and I have real benefits, paid vacation, 401k plan. I'm very happy. But I still hope that a$$hole dies a horrible death.
Hi. I haven't worked for RGIS for about two years, but check this blog every now and then and continue to laugh out loud. I too have opted in the lawsuit and wanted to pass on some information.
I worked for 6 months in southern California where there was a lawsuit. When the dust settled RGIS paid out $20,000,000 and that was California only. Since this new lawsuit is much larger, I hope it kills them. The real winners were the attorneys who got $6,666,666.
(notice all the 6's????).
I agree with rgis_sux: I don't care what I get. I just want the higher ups at RGIS to think about all the crap they have pulled on their auditors.
I now work for a large retailer and when RGIS comes to do our inventory, I pretend to count back the areas and just spend all day laughing at how much I don't care.
Alright. heres the score. D771 unite and get rid of this moron. He's racist, disrespectful ( to auditors and store staff), has no clue of people management skills, has no idea how a store count works or the best way to go about it, in fact no clue about anything really...seen him try to count an area of bulk lol (about 12 items) took about 5mins and it was wrong! He causes too much greif within 771 to keep his employment. AND TO CAP IT ALL OFF QUOTING PRIOR BLOGS....HE STINKS!?! let's get something done about it.
Hey, just wanted to say that I love the blog. It's funny to think how much we auditors all have in common. I started this job about 4 years ago when I was in a rather desperate situation, hoping it would be a stepping stone to bigger and better things, and instead I've wound up putting my life completely on hold for these fools.
In some ways this job is like an abusive relationship. It beats you down, runs you ragged and does everything it can to make you feel small and insignificant. I know i should leave and get on with my life, and yet I just keep on going back.
Though I do have to give my AM some credit cause he's a pretty stand-up kind of guy, though I fear the stress of the job will be his undoing as well.
Anyway, I'll definitely be checking back frequently. I've got RGIS stories from the great white north that would make you cringe.
Oh and one last thing.
A friend of mine frequently comments that we should bring a TV crew along on our WalMart run and turn it into a reality show. I didn't really know what he meant until me roommate started watching obscene amounts of Big Brother, and between the drama, head games, and constant firings and re-hirings, you could totally have make sleazy television out of this job.
This could be a youtube project, if we have anyone with the resources to pull it off.
Hello all from D429 SAT
I have slaved away at RGIS for about a year. dirring this time i have suffered from a really "nice" DM... from reading this blog i am wondering if there are any "nice" dm... and a lot of messed up hours. we have travled all over montana and then threw parts of whyoming. this blog has kept me at RGIS because i want to be able to share my messed up stories with everyone here.
To any current employies
if any of you know how to do some interesting things with the RM1 units i would like to know, i have been tinkering around with them and havnt found anything out really. Thanks
keep up the blog everyone, i hope to be comming back and sharing horror stories soon
Hoser and Dargu: Thanks for the nice words, and thanks so much for reading my blog and leaving your comments. I hope you'll continue to do so, I love hearing about other people's experiences while working for RGIS. And Hoser, great idea! A reality TV show about working for RGIS. Now, what to classify it under, comedy or horror?
Ive been working for a few months and yeah definetely sucks, its cool to see that their are plenty of others like me though :)
Ive learned mapquest directions suck, batching is the way to go, and tags will haunt your nightmares for days on end
A reality T.V. show? Awesome, It should be titled: RGIS: Accuracy Is our primary concern because I keep friggin hearing that
Id like to get company T-Shirts that are comfortable and big bold letters that say" RGIS, WE DONT WORK HERE."
because thats a problem
awesome blog misfit
To start off with, interesting things to do with an RM. Well, it is a Windows machine, and you can get into the Windows menu while it is booting up. Handy if you want to turn the volume up. I don't know if anyone has tried to do much else with it yet, but there has been speculation about changing the "Beep" to some other sound, loading music, and adding custom wallpaper. And, on the ride home from a store today, one auditor discovered he could use the USB port to charge up his MP3 player.
And speaking of Walmart-as-reality-show, I never appreciated how relatively drama-free the San Antonio Walmart (D177) crew is until I spent 3 days supporting the Lubbock (D188) Wally World team. They've gone through several DMs just this season, each one initiating their tenure with a round of firings (including 8 at the start of the week.)
So they have flow leaders who have only been with the company a few months, and a whole bunch of newbies doing their first 3 stores this week. The new DM comes across as a bit paranoid (or maybe the Walmart manager really is out to get him, I wouldn't be at all surprised.) In any case, he's having a really bad time of it, and the shit is rolling downhill. Even the most annoying cheerfull flow leaders were getting irritable by the end of the day.
And they were short 3 of their semi-experienced employees today. It seems they were in jail, having been caught allegedly stealing booze because they were too young to buy it.
They tried to tag me with a SKU error Wednesday. Misplaced OTC item, store employee rearranging after I had counted the area. Fortunately, that got cleared up.
And I probably would have caught it before it got that far but for one thing. I swear, I was about ready to punch the next one of them that bitched about the long ride they were going to have to endure going home Friday. At least they had a decent centrally-located hotel to stay in. They wouldn't shell out for hotel rooms for us. We had to drive in from San Antonio every day. Counting the drive from our house to the office, we were commuting 6-9 hours a day on top of spending 11-12 hours in the store. Doesn't leave much time for sleep, we were getting home at 10pm and having to be up no later than 130am to get to the office on time. I'm usually good at spotting unexpected SKU changes, but they were lucky I was able to count accurately. I normally get a 90-count bottle of caffeine pills to last almost a year, but I popped about 14 of them just this week.
But at least the DM and (especially) the AM expressed appropriate gratitude for assistance.
That's not to say our local Walmart team is entirely without drama. 3 DMs this season, one deciding they didn't need any support for their stores, her replacement reportedly padding the numbers in order to look better, and now they've poached our most popular AM to be their new DM. And a good chunk of our crew wants to transfer with her, which is not sitting well with our DM.
Mik3: Thanks! And maybe RGIS could have little buttons or badges printed with your suggestion: "RGIS: We Don't Work Here." ;-)
Texas Auditor, you just described - note for note - an "experience" I had helping the Toronto district out of a bind a couple years ago.
A week after we left, their DM was fired for bailing out on a store halfway through the count, using a company van to go visit his girlfriend, all without timing out.
Oh, there's so much more to tell, I'm not really sure what all I can get away with saying. So RGIS had better do what they can to hold onto me, otherwise I'm spilling all the dirt to anyone who'll listen.
oh, and I'd like to retract my "abusive relationship" remark. I'm sure we've all felt that way, but it's still kind of an inappropriate thing to say, and being typically Canadian, I'm compelled to apologize for such things.
That particular day, I had just come back from doing three out of town convenience stores along with a couple of complete fools who used to be a couple. Their constant power games and bickering made the day drag on forever.
I could almost put up with the inhumane labor practices if I didn't have to deal with so many @$$hole coworkers.
Can anyone substantiate the rumor that we heard in regard to the new finger lasers? What we have been told is that RGIS is cancelling orders for the lasers; what we have now is all that we will get. And of course, as they get gradually get broken, they will disappear.According to rumor, the dimwits at HDQ did some testing (obviously NOT on jewelry peghooks or huge heavy items like picture frames and large boxes),and have therefore proclaimed that the RM-1`s are more efficient without the lasers! Of course, us oldtimers figure it`s just another cost cutting move since the lasers sell for around $500 plus each.
If this rumor is true,we will be fighting for the finger lasers as they become even more scarce.But, we`ve been doing that ever since they came out.We were at a large store a few months back, and one of those special RGIS districts that all have finger lasers was helping us. Well,one of their people lost a laser and could not find it before their carpool had to leave.Well,lo and behold,one of our auditors found it about a hour later. We debated about turning it in. But we noticed that the finger laser had no ID or barcode on it; how could we be sure that the other district hadn`t stolen it from our or another standard district previously? So we decided to keep it.So what we did was give it to a needy team leader (who is on the bottom of the laser receiving totem pole), who uses it in his stores (not the bigger ones with management present).That laser has been extremely handy in jewelry peghooks and other areas that really require finger lasers for maximum efficiency.Hell,it`s a dog eat dog RGIS world out there; we have to start looking out for our own interests now since the RGIS brass doesn`t give a damn about us anymore!
Was working in a count a couple of weeks ago and came accross our Director of Ops for the first time.
My god what a cow!!!!
And the funny thing was that all the Men (DM & AM's) were running round kissing her arse. Hahaha
What is it with senior managers and this company?
Put it this way you would not take that home to meet your mum anyway!!!!!
I have my first store on Sunday. So far things seem to be running pretty smoothly. Of course, I haven't done a store yet. I am really nervous. I am not sure at all of what to expect. How long do PetSmart stores take? I have to go in really late so I am hoping to be able to get a few hours of sleep before my kids wake up!
New2RGIS: I would guess that it would vary from dist. to dist. as to how long the PetSmart stores typically take to do. In my dist. the average was prob. around 3-4 hours. Hopefully other people coming here to this blog will share their dist. average length of time for a PetSmart inventory.
OTL: I used to love those finger lasers, they were so much fun to use, and I found that they worked much more of the time than the other lasers. Of course that may be because my dist. had so few of them (2 to 3) and so they didn't get used that often and thus weren't subjected to as much abuse as the regular lasers. Besides the finger ones I used to regularly pick those old beige laser guns. I hated those newer, black and grey laser guns, they never seemed to work as well.
Hey, you guys fill me in if you know anything about Northwest OH districts
I really want to connect with current and past employees about new opportunities. Also, has anyone been to the RGISlawsuit.com site yet?
new2rgis:
The Pet Smart stores usually only take 4 or 5 hours at most, but the store people can be very obnoxiously anal regarding accuracy issues. On our last inventory cycle there, the store`s prep was awful,and us RGIS people were made the fall guys.There were mixed items way in the back of peg hooks that were 8 or 10 items deep.We were told that the multiple qty areas contained peg hooks of the same item--we were not told to check for SKU changes. Plus all the items had the same color of packaging; nothing indicated, at least from the front of it, that any of them were different from each other.Anyways, after the store checked the printouts and found the discrepancies,a bunch of us, including me, were dismissed from the store.We were more than ticked off,because, since the areas in question were so full of mixed product, that the store didn`t alert us and designate them as auto qty only areas. ( They usually post signs all over the store in areas that should be scanned individually.) We also were annoyed that our AM meekly allowed the store to kick us out without lobbying on our behalf.I heard that after I left, the store made RGIS recount a 1,200 piece cat food area that I had done earlier in the inventory--the difference between my original count and the recount was something like 4 pieces.
You should be OK in your store--you`ll probably get auto quantity areas to count.( Just watch out for mixed SKU`s if you get multiple areas.) Get ready to count leashes!!
misfit:
We also liked the old beige lasers. There also was a very limited edition ( made in 1994) black laser( not the snub nosed/long handle ones that everyone hates) that looked like the beige ones except that they were lighter and scanned even better. There only were about 4 or 5 of them, but all us team leaders discovered them and basically made them our personal property for several years,only relinquishing them for equipment inventory.Alas, they eventually broke and never were repaired--just replaced by the newer, ubiquitous "Star Trek phaser" model.
TxAuditor: Your right about D188(Lubbock) going through new DM's like water. This latest one is just another in the heap. What your not right about is the "firing" of employees as he took on his job. I moved back to local before he came on board but I know that he lost his 2 Top Guns, they walked not got fired. They are working back with us at local. One got a full-time job with another company and he tried to block her transfer. They both said the same thing, it was a circus. We've got Wally world next month and it ought to be interesting. I hear there are more experienced auditors getting ready to walk,not that there is many left, they are tired of being treated like trash. That business about your group not staying out, that was the Wal-mart DM's decision, trying to keep profit. The funny thing is they hired this guy off the street and then he went and pissed of the one person who could help him because she got tired of him not doing his job. I know she could do it because last year when I worked with her she helped that DM take the team from dead last to #5. Typical RGIS mentality. He probably didn't like her because she doesnt' put up with shit.
I signed up for the lawsuit. Has anyone heard anything new?
Been off the boards awhile. Finally gave into my instinct to cut my hours back and to my utter surprise my DM actually cut my hours back.
So the latest rumor I've heard has to do with a new pay raise system. Apparently everyone will have their base pay and then what you earn in each store will be based on how fast you count. So those EAPH sheets they have for each store and what you are supposed to count based on pay will determine how much you make per hour in that specific store. You will always get your base pay though.
Well all I can say is cherry picking will be at an all time high and the fast counters who always get stuck in crap areas are going to lose out big time. It won't work..I am just wondering how long it's going to take them to fricking realize it. They need to seriously get off this whole EAPH thing. They tried a version of this awhile ago and that didn't work. This new thing is just going to cause chaos. I run stores and I can already imagine how bad the counts will be off if people are just trying to haul it through their areas in order to make more money. *sigh* RGIS will never learn..
ex-wally, as to the firings, I was just reporting what some of D188's flow leaders and verifiers told me. Always good to hear more details.
Don't know how much profit the new DM saved by making us drive back and forth. Just with my crew of 4 that worked all 3 days, the travel pay and the overtime we got because of all the extra travel time adds up to just over $350. 2 hotel rooms for 2 nights plus 2 days per diem(*) for 4 comes out to about $315. That's not even considering the 8 or 9 other people we took down.
So, he could have saved $35, had another 4 well-rested counters, and earned some goodwill by shelling out for a couple of hotel rooms.
(*)They should refer to it as per nochtem, because they only pay it for each night out of town, not each day.
I don't know whats the upper management sitting in Leamington Spa is upto???? I am a team leader in D771 and unfortunately drives my car for company purpose. For the last 3 months I haven't got any expenses.. Whenever I tried asking the stinky Dm Murray about the expenses...his answer is always "I haven't got it"...Can you believe it...he is not getting the expense from the HO..(bloody lier)...
Last DM Phil was removed from the job because he didn't the per diams for one store..but this dm is not paying anyone anything since last 3 months....
Is the people in Leamington waiting for this coward to carry furtther loot in RGIS???
I know after reading this blog I and other auditors will get their expenses within no time....because he is a coward...trying to bullshit everyone in RGIS..
On June 2 I phoned the San Francisco law firm (mentioned in someone's previous comment) that is handling the 'Wren, et al v. RGIS' lawsuit to find out its status and was told they expect a hearing to be scheduled sometime in July. In cases like this, rather then going to trial, the two sides try to settle out of court. The final decision (and anticipated payment of damages) should come before the end of the year.
The law firm won a $19.75 million settlement in March against CVS Pharmacy. The case involved claims by CVS Pharmacist employees regarding unpaid meal breaks, rest breaks and overtime. Sound familiar?
Three years ago I was the recipient of damages from another lawsuit against RGIS (Scheidt, et al v. RGIS) to the tune of $5900. My on-the-job wages from RGIS for 2005 as a lowly Auditor were $8800. Nice bonus, huh?
rapman:
Thanks for the info about the lawsuit.If we win a settlement, I think most people would be happy to receive a fraction of what you won in the previous suit. We could consider it our "raise", or cost of living increase that has been so conspicuously absent for many of us the past several years.
Hey
whats this Newcastle Dm done to you?
Hes Ok ish
if you like a big fat sloberring wreck of male in your face for 6 hours when your counting your ass off
Hi
RGIS District 771 rumours have it they are tampering with time and travel sheets to hit aph/pph
ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Staff know about it and are ready to walk out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A Concerned Auditor
HEY
Whats happenning in D771???
Time sheet tampering, students working over 20 hours,no rest periods for over 6 hours.!! Its bloody unbelievable.They sacked an Area Manager up there as a scapegoat and it still goes on.
FROM THE TOP!!!!!
Hi all from UK Anons girl friend.
He's away on a course this week so I thought I would look up the RGIS blog to see whats happened lately.
Tamper with time sheets / time logs. Yea I reckon they do. A comment made to me once was that they got someone in Leamington (UK RGIS HQ) that goes through the time records to ensure they comply with legislation.
Under UK law unless you are in an exempted occupation which RGIS auditors ARE NOT, you must be given a minimum 10 minute break within a 6 hour shift.
On only one occasion working for RGIS have I been ' invited ' to take a break on a shift that was going to run over 6 hours. When I asked why, the count supervisor told me that the count was running towards the 6 hour limit allowed by law and we took a 20-minute break, in company with the count supervisor.
Well you could have knocked me over with a feather on that occasion, I have been on counts where we have worked in excess of 7 hours without a break to get the count completed on 2 occasions in a single pay period.
There is one count supervisor in the district where I work who will ENCOURAGE you to work over the 6 hour limit with comments like, 'we can wrap this count up in another half hour if you want to get home sooner rather than later'. An hour and a half later we are told you can logoff now.
Also under UK labour laws you are entitled to a minimum 11 hours uninterupted break unless you are under 18 years of age when its 12 hours.
On a number of occasions I have been expected to be back at my meet point in as little as 8 1/2 hours later after being dropped off from one count before being picked up for the next count.
One one occasion the person that I normally travel with was asked to divert, with us passengers, to another count after we had finished one count. This was because there were'nt enough auditors at this second count. He refused citing the need for a rest period before the next days count and as he knew the second count was likely to go on beyond midnight and we had an hours travel back to the meet point and a meet time of 10.00am for the next days count.
Once when I queried the duration of rest periods between shifts with our DM, he told me that the 11 hour rest period extends from when your shift ends AT THE STORE until when your next shift starts AT THE STORE. This in effect means that if you got a two hour journey from your meet point to the store (and vice versa) followed by an hour and a half journey (and vice versa) to the next days count both of which start at 12.00noon, if the first days count finished at 1.00am (on day 2), get back to the meet point at 3.00am and expected to meet again at 10.30am. I have a 30 minute journey from my meet point to my home so this meant that I had a 6 1/2 break AT HOME.
According to my DM's interpretation of the relevant UK labour law if I finished one shift at 1.00am and I have been scheduled for my next count to start at 12.00noon THAT is in compliance with UK law. He told me that I should not have accepted one or other of the counts offered. BUT, you turn a count down on the schedule e-mailed to you and he wants an inquest on why you are not available for the count turned down.
I pointed out to him that UNTIL he provides me and other auditors in the team with a written statement of the terms and conditions of our employment as in required under UK labour laws he is not going to discipline me or else I will make a reference to an employment tribunal.
He retorted on what grounds.
He soon shut up when I said ;-
No written statement of terms and conditions of employment ;
Working more than 6 hours without a break ;
Expecting to work shifts without a full 11 hours break between shifts ;
Questionable psy slip failing to give A FULL itemised breakdown of remuneration ;
He skulled off.
Under UK labour laws you are entitled to an itemised pay statement, our present pay statements contain only the hours we are logged counting and the rate / hour for this task. Travel is recorded on the pay statements as just that, a single amount, and not as I have been advised by a lawyer family friend as a statement of hours travelling and travel time rate. Mileage is also recorded similarly and not as miles and mileage rate particularly as my driver may convey 2, 3 or 4 passengers to a count and there are different mileage rates depending on the number of passengers conveyed to / from counts.
If there are any UK employees reading this please feel free to post your comments on the question of itemised pay statements as my lawyer family friend is not a specialist labour lawyer, but the advice given on the subject was only his interpretation of the laws requirements.
UK Anons girl friend.
Interesting that you don`t have a job by job documentation of your hours in the UK--makes it easier for RGIS to try to "nickel and dime" you, as us Yanks like to say.We also didn`t have any documentation until about the time the California suit was settled (coincidence?--I doubt it). Now we get a sheet with each paycheck that breaks each job down into the exact starting and stopping times.
That 11 hour rest rule is interesting, too. The reason they violate the law over in the UK is because of the American influence.It is, and always has been, a common practice here to schedule auditors
for a store at 6AM,even though they are also working an evening store the night before that will certainly go to at least 3 or 4AM, or later.Sometimes three, or even four stores are scheduled back to back, with no thought of auditor health or safety ( such as driving without having slept for 36 or 48 hours, or having to climb ladders in a sleep deprived zombie-like state.)I personally don`t think RGIS of USA could survive if they had to give us 11 hours between stores.
I work for RGIS.
Seems as if they want to "change the pay scale" now.
It looks like a plan to pay people less for the same work.
What are your thoughts on this?
As far as I can see, they are just going to lose a bunch of people come March... when they are talking of making the new big changes... only so they don't lose them for January.
for all the complaining I have seen about the travel pay... it seems they have come up with a new way of cheating the drivers... now if you have 1-4 people in your car... the rate is the same... and they basically just halved the rate per mile in th last few pays. You only get a higher amount with 5 or more.
Now I, when I finally had to get a new car, tried to choose one with great gas mileage, like one who respects the environment would be expected to do, but who also makes a living working for RGIS... and traded in my two-seater for a four... As a result, I'm going to lose money and be able to carry more of my fellow auditors, along with that damned equipment, which we keep being told we are required to bring everywhere... which I did not have before I bought the new car because the locks did not work on my old car... and so I finally decided to start the whole running stores bull... and get that big dollar raise. But that dollar was supposed to be going to make the car payments, dagnabbit!
oh and one other thing they are going crazy trying to do since this whole new pay thing goes into effect soon... they are hand-selecting certain people and forcing them to come in for keying exercises to raise Specialists to Experts and Experts to Top Guns, so the new idea of only paying TGs $11 an hour will work out, as the current long term employees making more than that will have either forced out or forced to accept lower pay rate.
Stepping down and stepping out are going to be huge this season.
Wow, not a whole lot on the airwaves about RGIS, are people over it already? Where are all the older employees of the new regime? It's worse than it ever was and more employees than ever have had money taken away from them for a promise of money to come and as all former employees know will never happen! The new system is an even bigger joke than EAPH ever was! Where are you haters' we need some new stuff on this blog!
Since the "I Love RGIS!" topic has been used to discuss the nationwide lawsuit against RGIS, I will use it again to tell you about an email I received on March 7. The email from Lisandro Cortez of Grady, Schneider & Newman, L.L.P. in Houston, Texas was a reminder to update their office each time we change our address and/or phone number so that they will always know how to contact us. It also said, "In past cases where our office could not locate clients who had moved, their cases were dismissed and they did not receive any money." I would guess that all of the people who opted-in the lawsuit and gave the law firm their email address received the same email I did.
As for when the case will be decided, in December 2008 I called the law firm and was told that a decision might be reached by July.
I used to work at RGIS about twenty years ago, met my wife there, and was a "top gun" back in the day.
The low point of my time there was when the District Manager was driving a van down the highway and announced to all of us that "I am ready to kill myself".
That was my last ride in his van!
i have been employed with RGIS for 3 years and i can honestly say i love this job i have had no problems at all with my district, when the new pay scale came out it did take a month but everything is on track now and they have kept their word on everything. i guess it all depends on the location of your district. i do recall the lawsuit letters which from memory started in california and how everyone could become involved in it, like i said before its all where youre located. my district in maryland is the best the people are so nice and the other employees are a great bunch to work with, im sorry to hear about how others were dissapointed in their experience with the company
I worked for RGIS for three months during 2007 in So Cal and it was by far the worst job I've ever had. I feel I should list some things that made it horribly horrible...
1. There was always some druggy working near by and the fumes coming off their clothes would give me a slight high.
2. They promise Car Pool but usually it was my little 4 seater car that had to trek the journey with at least 5 people in it because no one else going actually owned a car or even had a license. And I never did get any reimbursement or money for gas.
3. For some odd reason I'd always get sent to stores hours away even when there was multiple local audits going on.
4. My poor poor knees. You have to buy your own knee pads if you want to be comfortable when you're kneeling down on the concrete or tiled floor for 5 hours straight. & I never did find a cheap pair that seemed worth it.
5. The RGIS I worked for was paying a whopping $9.00/Hr. But it was somewhat worthless because one week I'd work full hours 6-7 days a week... and the next two weeks I was lucky if I worked a total of 3 days.
6. The managers don't care. If you're stupid, if you're sick, if you're a slut, if you're on drugs, if you're smart, if you're good or bad at what you do. They were all lazy, bossy, and not wanting to do any work on their own.
7. I worked my fingers to the bone and had a counting average that was much higher than most of the people I worked with and I never ever got offered a raise or any kind of recognition.
... I finally found an amazing job that I worked for two years after leaving RGIS and then I ruined it by up and moving to Michigan. I've been out of work for 3 months and out of no where guess who calls me for an interview...?? The local RGIS. What saddens me is that I'm actually considering it.
Some money is better than no money.
;_;
hi, misfit, 404 girl and all the rest of the rgis crowd. I haven't been reading up lately but was inspired by the 404 girl because I too am a former 404 girl. we might not know each other because if you were there in summer 2007, that was the summer I took off. I went back later that year, shortly after "Night" took over. Stayed a few months and That was it.
"Day" didn't do much for the reputation of the home depot crew either and between the two of them, it's a wonder the crew is still in existence at all. I remember a trip to Idaho where "Days" hotel room was busted because several people were inside smoking pot, the maid smelled it, turned them in, the cops came and busted "Days" boyfriend for having a crack pipe in his suit case. If I have this figured out correctly, this was when the dm before "Day" got fired because she and her girlfriend were also involved in the bust at the hotel. (A bag of drugs also being found in one of their suitcases) "Day" was actually innocent because she doesn't use drugs and apparently hid out by the amusement park by the hotel when the bust went down. At, any rate, "Day" was promoted to DM. that worked out for awhile until
"Night" took over. "Night" being rather square individual, moves out here from Colorado and the first thing he does is hook up with one of the worst crackheads on the crew, a thirtiesh woman with rotten teeth. Not long after that his house was robbed by what is rumored to be his crackhead girlfriend's friends. I just threw this in for added entertainment. After "Night" took over, the whole thing started going even further south than it was. Per diem was to be put on the following payday check instead of being paid in cash. The result? No drug money for the "top Guns" and no food money for anyone. One woman was fired for stealing candy bars from the home depot and another guy almost got us kicked out of the hotel for stealing food out of a bin of food at the hotel that was supposed to be donated to the food bank. The crackheads were cranky and lethargic the whole week. If you were smart enough to bring food or had your own lunch money, watch out. You couldn't eat in the van without everyone wanting to eat off your plate. The subway sandwiches and chicken were cut off by the home depot because of greedy, dirty pigs who wouldn't waste the time to wash their hands for fear of not being able to jump in front of the line and vulcher up as much as they could get their dirty hands on. Then they'd go outside to eat and smoke, throwing chicken bones and trash all over the home depot parking lot.
I am unfortunate enough to still have to do rgis part time in my local district and I have run into a few of the home depot crew. One straps the machine to his leg with a "stylin" strap. Says it makes him go faster and these people are convinced that they are the best in the west. It's like their all brainwashed into thinking their the best because if forced to look for employment elsewhere they would fail miserably. A lot of them can't even pass a background test, let alone a drug test. I feel bad for the honest hard workers and I have been around the company long enough to hope that i get my fair share if we win the lawsuit. Good luck to all! (Even the home dopies)
I always thought there is something weird about those D404 people when I work with them on occasion in my district further north! Thanks for the expose';I`ll keep my distance from them.
I doubt very seriously that this is going to bankrupt them. After all they did sell 49% of the company for over 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS and they're stocks still go up. Though I see all of these comments and such, I did re apply at RGIS for a job, not much I could do about it since there was no work elsewhere. Though I was told I'd be called today and be in work by monday.. its 2:30 and still nada
FWIW, Targets are still locking people inside the stores... not allowed to go out during break. Sometimes at the end of the shift (after clocking out) not allowed to leave per Target employees. I refuse to do any more of these... my best suggestion to those who work them is to get the phone number of the local fire marshall before you go - then use it if you have to.
The most notable new occurence is requiring new hires to accept payment via a Total Pay card. Even when a check was presented by the new hire and direct deposit was requested, it was denied. The new hire had to wait until the first payment was received on the card, then allowed to switch to direct deposit... but, the transititon took app. 4 weeks.
The fees for using the card are outrageous:
ATM withdrawal: $1.50
ATM balance inquiry or decline: $1.50
PIN Transactions: .25
Paper Statement: $2.95
Monthly maintenance fee: $3
Operator assisted fees for balance and deposit inquiries are $1
I strongly suspect RGIS is getting a kickback from the company for making people accept the card... those who have had their own web sites and ran banner ads know that the sign up fee on such a card can run from $5 to $25. Surely, RGIS wouldn't be taking such a kickback at the expense of their employees? RIGHT...
Count me as another, sick to death of RGIS hiring more and more people, when they don't have sufficient work for the ones already hired... and sick of the honchos playing favorites.
One last thing which may have not been mentioned... the bonus system joke. Just because you hit bonus in a couple stores, doesn't mean you'll get it. If you don't make the bonus in others during the same pay period, they can cancel each other out. The only upside to this is that they haven't started trying to take a bonus deduction out of our flat hourly rate.
Not all stores are bonus stores - relatively few are. And, they've begun giving the bonus stores to particular people: "dedicated teams" they call them. Generally the people are fast, except for one or two... they get the trash areas and are the first sent home. In every store, there must always be a scapegoat.
Don't know what offices you guys are from, however my colleague and I are truely looked after. After increasing OPIT by a small amount we were upgraded on our company cars to two sports cars. Our DM is class. Our guys are cared for like one of our family - the guys that work with you are the most valuable ASETS within your business.
RGIS day from hell. Leave office 3AM drive from Fargo to Grand Forks, pick up crew, drive from Grand Forks to Devil's Lake, hang tags, leave crew drive to Minot, Pick up Crew, Drive to Bismark, Pick up crew, Drive to Jamestown, Pick up crew, back to Devil's Lake, Inventory ten hour Target, Drive to Minot Drop off Crew, Drive to Bismark, Drop off Crew, Drive to Jamestown, drop off crew, Drive back to Fargo.
13 hours in store, plus 950 miles driven, I got home at 3 in the afternoon, then I got one day off before having to do another run!
Please tell all district to stop hiring people who have bad records.
I hated working for rgis. We had to inventory a 99cent store and we were there from 10pm till almost 11am the next day.....I got no overtime because rgis is greedy and didn't care that the employees are working there butts off.
hey I want to opt in on the rgis lawsuit I work for them back on 2007 and couldn't get any unemployment from there ass and I work for them for a year. I got a letter to opt in but I lost it who do I contact to get in on the lawsuit somebody help please I work for the one in Tennessee
Me be my DM don't give top guns leeway
RM 2 are out specialist expert top gun got pay raises talking about adding a bonuses for sups things are getting better and life is moving on
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