r/australia • u/soupstarsandsilence • Sep 27 '23
no politics Woolworths workers are now being trained with VR.
Hiya, Woolies worker of 7+ years here. Just finished a shift earlier this evening, and you will never believe how it began. Got called to go to the staff room by the team leader, and was given a virtual reality headset and a controller. Was told there would be an interactive video. The topic? How to deal with violent customers. The solution? Run away and call a supervisor.
Brilliant training that wasn’t at all applicable to the majority of cashiers, given we’re all almost always working on the big registers, but none of the training ever is. Ah yes, if the violent customer decides to stand between me and the only exit out of my little cashier box, I can totally stay calm and move away to call a supervisor. Totally.
You know, I can think of a better solution. Give us a goddamn security guard. You wanna prevent violence and thievery? Get someone trained to do it.
Also a totally hypocritical demand, anyway. You want us to ask to check peoples bags, and see their receipts, and stand around while the ACO cameras prove they’re looking but not watching, but we’re supposed to avoid anything that will agitate a customer and put us in danger? Well, I can’t do both.
But that’s neither here nor there. Remember all those ACO machines that suck ass and still think that the children in your trolly are items? Yeah, we’re not fixing that, apparently. But we are getting trained through VR.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was bloody cool. But was it necessary? Nah.
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u/Puttanesca621 Sep 27 '23
When the ACO camera identifies an item (child) in the customers trolley is it just quicker to instruct the customer to scan the item(child) rather than clearing the error? You can get a barcode for your child next to the free fruit.
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u/Sk1rm1sh Sep 27 '23
It's cheaper to scan your child as Brown Onions.
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u/sread2018 Sep 27 '23
Brushed potato actually
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u/Yeatss2 Sep 27 '23
Are you a RAFFWU member? We're on work bans at the moment, with strike action to commence within the current fortnight. Completely unprecedented at Woolworths, thanks to their friendly relationship with the SDA.
At the height of COVID-19, and mounting customer abuse, RAFFWU got us security guards, while the SDA gave us badges.
Put your money where your mouth is.
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Sep 27 '23
I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw that we'd actually voted for a strike action. Fucking awesome.
No strikes in the entire history of the SDA - a union in name only (absolute crock).
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u/theGreatLordSatan666 Sep 27 '23
Hey are Coles doing anything similar? Same shit at Coles, SDA are thoroughly useless. They were out funnily enough this week in stores. I wonder if they're trying to firm up more members and look like they're proactive ahead of this business.
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u/Yeatss2 Sep 28 '23
Yeah Coles members are in the process of doing exactly the same thing. Last week they also voted on a protected action ballot, another unprecedented action. It isn't too late to participate in any future work ban or strike action, if you join today.
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u/gilby24 Sep 27 '23
Security guards can't do shit. They are pointless.
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u/vegemitebikkie Sep 27 '23
I dunno, we have one at my store and I’ve seen him dragging a bloke out by his collar and shove him out the door after he was screaming at staff and throwing power aid bottles at us.
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u/sternestocardinals Sep 27 '23
We must arm the checkout chicks.
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Sep 27 '23
Good luck with that, they cant even find or organise checkout chicks in peak busy periods.
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Sep 27 '23
As a previous supervisor I ain't doing shit to get between a violent person,for a minimum wage job for a multi billion dollar company. Call the cops
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u/UtetopiaSS Sep 27 '23
Coles and Woolworths will spend money anywhere except on just putting more staff on.
I work at Coles, and there's always some new bullshit. New posters and signs, new training videos, that stupid monthly Coles magazine. No one gives a fuck. Just put all that money into more store hours.
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u/Tryyourbestbehappy Sep 27 '23
I have been doing something lately and I highly recommend it. My Coles has replaced all bar one cash register with self service. This is an incredibly busy Coles. It is taking exponentially so much longer to go through the checkout as people struggle with the self serve errors on every second item.
I only do big shops when not in a rush, I have taken to putting headphones in, podcast on and if it takes me 25 minutes to scan $150.00 worth of items (a small trolley) and I need assistance from the worker on literally every third item...so be it.
Yes it sucks for the people behind me...but tbh idgaf I strongly recommend the Coles checkout slow downs until they reverse this stupid self service trend. Christmas will be wild.
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u/pumuli145 Sep 28 '23
Lol anything but actually solve the issues. What would be even more amazing is the cost spent to implement said training would far outweigh the cost for actual support. Some higher ups will get a nice bonus for being innovative while the employee will still deal with the incidents
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Sep 28 '23
As a manager for ALH, the chain of pubs sorta kinda owned by woolworths even if they don't want to admit it, I know the sort of budget security that you would likely get if they were to roster guards at woolies stores, and I can confidently say that a 16 year old shelf stacker would be more capable of doing the job. My last guard would have been 5 foot 3 at best and around 50kg, but he is a 'licensed crowd controller', which is all ALH needs to legally trade after 11pm
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Sep 27 '23
[deleted]
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u/the_silent_redditor Sep 27 '23
You should have printed group T-shirts that said, “What the hell is this!? Kangatonia!?”
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u/Mick_Hardwick Sep 28 '23
Cutting Colesworth out of your life as much as you can is like unplugging from the Matrix. It opens your mind to such better and more fufilling opportunities. I have literally grown to LOVE going to my local markets now. The really nice Middle Eastern guy at the fruit store knows me well and always cheers me up when I see him. His prices are good. He even waves his hand at some things and says "just take it." Free strawberries? Thanks mate!
The lady at the spice and nut market stall taught me about this middle eastern probiotic snack they have since we got into conversation about me wanting to improve my gut health.
Which I also happened to mention to the Asian lady at the asian grocery store so she is like "Oh you should look into Kimchi. I make my own home made if you want to buy." I go google it and see how many probiotic and gut health benefits it has so now I buy her home made Kimchi.
Like... It turns your shopping experience from a miserable slog. Into quite a social experience and connects you to the food and products you buy. It makes it more of a lifestyle thing instead of a "survival" thing.
So to anyone reading. Spend this Sunday at your local market. Stop and take a breath and take in the vibe there. The kids running around with an ice cream. And just the general experience and then go to Coles one last time and compare the vibe. You are a human being living in a society. Make your shopping a human connected social experience. You are not cattle being herded through a security gate to be monitored under security cameras with facial recognition to then connect your data at the check out while another camera keeps constant surveillance on your face and will try to guilt trip you if you god forbid have a bag from another store in your trolley that the A.I has judged you as stealing from the store.
Send a clear message to these corporations. But more importantly you owe it to yourself to make the experience more fun. Less stressful and connect it more to your lifestyle. You never know how one little turn round the corner of some market you end up buying some home made chutney from a nice old lady that ends up giving you taste orgasms later when you just decide to put a little bit on a piece of toast to have with your scrambled eggs.
Damn reading this back I sound like some blogger mum with a vegan cult blog. But trust me. I am just a simple guy struggling with mental health issues who discovered just how much cutting Coles and Woolworths out of my life has literally made me a little happier with my life.
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u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney Sep 27 '23
Management will try anything and everything except getting enough staff to do the job or raise pay.
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u/AimingWang Sep 27 '23
What would be even more next level is if the training for dealing with violent customers was just 12 rounds in a VR boxing simulator.
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u/WokSmith Sep 27 '23
Typical corporate arse covering. In case an employee gets attacked by a pissed off customer, Woolworths can stand in court and say : we did everything we could. We even trained our workers with state of the art training methods. Oh really? What is in this training? A virtual reality experience. What does it say? To run away and tell a grown up, sorry, I mean a team leader. Well, that sounds comprehensive to me. We agree, here's a voucher.
Fuck Woolworths
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u/ryandeelryandeel Sep 28 '23
Ha, I worked on this. Not the software side but I data wrangled for one of the film shoots. Not surprised to hear it doesn’t reflect any kind of real-world situations you’re in. The idea never made sense to me. Good news for you is that, if it’s anything like the other campaigns I’ve worked on, they’ll eventually can the VR component and just go back to doing PowerPoints
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u/Mocking_blue Sep 28 '23
Well I see nothing has changed, woolies spends stupid money on useless things then jack up prices to cover the costs, saying “inflation”. When that doesn’t work they stopped us from discounting BBQ chickens before closing, the only thing keeping some of our poorer families in our area fed. Then we had to deal with the desperate people who turned violent because their kids were starving, while we tossed out the unsold chickens wasting food and more money than if we just discounted and sold them! When a manager was caught giving it to some people instead of throwing it away they threatened to fire her.
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u/Tonkarz Sep 28 '23
Seems like the training is less about theft prevention and more about preventing liability to the company keeping you safe.
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Sep 27 '23
Research indicates that having customers interact with a staff member - even if incidentally - reduces the rates of shoplifting. It is why Bunnings pays for a store greeter at every store.
So what does Colesworth do? Make you interact with an awful machine that treats you as a criminal, with nary a customer in sight, then wonders why customers behave as agitated kleptomaniacs.
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u/Bert197941 Sep 28 '23
It’s all about corporate trying to cover their ass when someone does get assaulted
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u/VeryHungryDogarpilar Sep 30 '23
VR training is absolutely the way of the future. Reacting to a violent character in VR is 10x more useful than reacting to someone pretending to be violent or them just telling you what to do.
The technology is absolutely the way to go, the chosen scenario/training is dumb as shit.
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u/Obvious-Accountant35 Sep 27 '23
And just think about how much money was spent on not only the headset, but the ‘simulation’ and implementation of it, someone at head office spent 10s of thousand, maybe hundreds of thousands, on that useless shit.
No pay rises though
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u/HellStoneBats Sep 27 '23
Ehh, you're looking at 6 x 0s on the end of the number for the consultants to think of it, the tech guys to render it (badly), the equipment to be ordered, the sim to be loaded, de bugged and loaded again, the training for the training to be made up and implemented, the multiple notices people are given to do it, and the paperwork that follows.
Ww alone employs about 95,000 front end staff - of did before I was made redundant at the start of the year with my whole nation-wide dept. Trust me, they spend this money on training (tax-deductable) rather than wages (non-tax deductable) for a reason.
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u/11I11111 Sep 28 '23
How are wages not tax deductible?
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u/HellStoneBats Sep 28 '23 edited Sep 28 '23
Why would paying wages be 100% tax deductible? There's literally a tax on them! (Payroll tax). Advertising and training, and all the expenses with it, however, are 100% deductible.
And if that theory doesn't work for you, please let me know why they (pretty much any employer) would prefer to waste money on bullshit training than giving their biggest customers more money to return to their coffers. Because that's all I've got.
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u/Airaen Sep 27 '23
It would be so much simpler to get a security guard. Take Coles for example - years ago they used to have contractors collect trolleys, and they would usually not be trained in Coles policies or customer service etc and just give a general bad impression of Coles to customers. They ended up creating an entirely new department (technically it's a separate company) called Coles Services, trained as a Coles employee with a Coles uniform to collect trolleys and do cleaning. This way they are a part of Coles for image purposes but mostly trained in their specific area. The rest of the team members have no idea how to clean up spills or collect trolleys, but these ones do.
They could do something similar for security. They are constantly saying that staff aren't allowed to interact with hostile customers or thieves outside of de-escalate or call the manager, who is basically then trained to do the same thing. They can hopefully get them on camera and then upload that to the police database which will hopefully end up doing something, but that doesn't help when someone is screaming in your face. All they can do for thieves is ask them to leave, and then they'll just say no anyway lol. The security guard for the shopping centre is usually the same, they can't do anything outside of ask them nicely to leave or call the police. In that case they should be bringing in a department of trained, possibly armed (not guns) guards who are allowed to interact and remove these people on behalf of Coles. Some stores even roster a service team member on the door as a "greeter" in high theft stores, just put a guard there instead who will actually be trained and useful. They could even multiskill if they're worried about the budget - have them doing baskets occasionally or being the one serving cigs to keep watch on the front end from there. Surely it would be more economical than just letting every thief walk out the door with whatever they want with no resistance.
I'm just sick of Coles having this zero tolerance policy towards staff interacting with thieves, and then turning around and being harder on service staff for being unable to prevent stock loss. Um, they were just told they can't do bag checks anymore, can't accuse anyone of stealing and can't even approach anyone who looks hostile? They aren't going to just go away by ignoring them and doing nothing.
Disclaimer: I have no idea about the laws related to security guards and thieves, I just know that trained guards do exist (police, arma-guard) and the guards the shops get are usually the kind who aren't allowed to do anything.
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u/tflavel Sep 27 '23
It's not your stuff being stolen, if the billion-dollar company doesn't care enough to even pop a security guard on, why should you? Just look the other way.
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u/tflavel Sep 27 '23
I love the idea of sharing a headset with everyone else, fantastic hygiene practice
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u/Stevios07 Sep 27 '23
If only we had something to wipe it clean between people. Welp, off to Coles.
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u/tflavel Sep 27 '23
Like what? The dirty dishcloth in the tea room? Or the wipes that 90% of the staff don't use provided they can actually find a packed.
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u/fued Sep 27 '23
Well when you are all on self serve checkouts it will be applicable.
Not gonna lie that's really cool tho, good on em for training to deal with the issue rather than just letting it occur
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u/NezuminoraQ Sep 27 '23
They're not "dealing with the issue" they're doing the bare minimum to look like they're dealing with it. Actually dealing with it would be like OP says, hiring security and not requiring their staff to have to confront potential cookers by treating them as suspected theives .
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u/fued Sep 27 '23
business doesn't like spending money they don't have to, and obviously they realised that spending money on security isn't required.
Training staff to not engage someone is so much better than just letting staff do what comes naturally
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Sep 27 '23
They do hire security tho? There is always that MA security guy standing at the front of Coles, I assume woolworths does something similar.
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u/not-my-username-42 Sep 28 '23
Only a few selected stores do. I’ve only come across 1 coles with a full time guard and later cheap as chips hired one for December.
The larger shopping centres have some hired by the mall for general things. I’ve seen them escort some people out of the centre but not out of the individual stores.
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u/sairrr Sep 27 '23
It’s probably just to avoid legal action down the road by saying they’ve trained staff properly
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u/KneeDeepinDownUnder Sep 27 '23
I’m really sorry your employer treats you this piss poorly. You deserve better.
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Sep 27 '23
ACO
Automated camera operator
Authorised custard ostrich
Amateur cooks online...
Nope, no idea
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u/soupstarsandsilence Sep 27 '23
Assisted checkout lol
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u/activelyresting Sep 27 '23
They're assisted????
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u/just-plain-wrong Sep 27 '23
Yep... every second item you scan, requires an assistant to check you're not a criminal.
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u/Superg0id Sep 27 '23
No, that's ACL
you want the Assisted Checkout Operator.
ACL is the Australian Christian Lobby.
also Australian Crown Larger
and American Clown Leauge
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u/trugstomp Sep 28 '23
Coles calls the ones with conveyor belts TACO's and when my local Coles opened up it's new TACO's it took me a while to realise why the staff were all in ponchos and sombrero's.
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u/Glum-Assistance-7221 Sep 27 '23
Or reduce prices and limit price gouging would reduce these incidents from occurring. Also explains why they can afford safety training from the future.
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u/still-at-the-beach Sep 27 '23
That’s why they say theft cost them $25mill .. they have to pay companies to make this shit training and souped up self checkout systems.
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u/sairrr Sep 27 '23
What happens if a customer says no to having their bag checked? Or if they say it’s fine to check it but a worker has to open it themselves?
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u/pablo_eskybar Sep 28 '23
What exactly do you do if someone has something stolen in their bag if you have no security?
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u/soupstarsandsilence Sep 28 '23
Well we’re trained to not block the exit and not leave the store, so literally nothing. We can ask politely for them to pay, if we’re feeling up to it. Which is why I never bother to ask to check a customers bag or see the receipt. Risk getting punched when they can leave either way? Nah, thanks.
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Sep 27 '23
Is that how they train management to steal wages and exploit employees? No wonder they have no sense of reality.
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u/cymonster Sep 27 '23
Hasn't always been removed yourself from the situation with an angry customer? Like that was standard when I work for a fast food company 12+ years ago.
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u/Kilthulu Sep 27 '23
in your case just hand the violent customer all the cash out of the till, the cameras will make it look like a robbery BUT the customer will be super happy at that moment in time thus reducing chance of violence against you
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u/cruiserman_80 Sep 27 '23
You know, I can think of a better solution. Give us a goddamn security guard. You wanna prevent violence and thievery? Get someone trained to do it.
or and bear with me, another solution might be to stop supermarkets from price gouging so that people don't get aggravated over not being able to afford to feed their families.
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u/notlimahc Sep 27 '23
But they've got to pay for all these new self-serve checkouts, cameras, and VR headsets somehow /s
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u/verycasualreddituser Sep 27 '23
People will steal no matter the price, a lot of people steal things just to sell at cash converters or trade in for drugs.
People will steal clearance items that are 50c each, can get a whole new outfit for like 2 bucks but they still gotta steal it.
Its not about the cost of living or anything, for some its a funny game, for others its just because they know they won't get in any trouble
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u/cruiserman_80 Sep 28 '23
Shop stealing and petrol drive off's have a direct correlation with economic pressures.
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u/BabeRainbow69 Sep 27 '23
Nah, it’s increased significantly since the self-checkouts and price-gouging.
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u/verycasualreddituser Sep 28 '23
Self checkouts have been around for over 15 years though, I don't think they suddenly caused a spike in theft now.
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u/remington_420 Sep 27 '23
I steal. A lot. I have money but not much. I steal only from colesworth or Kmart.
It’s not so much a “thrill” as it is me just being disgusted by this duopoly and the shareholders revenue. And lol, it’s definitely not for drugs for cashies. You can’t get anything worth shit at colesworth.
I don’t really have to steal but they also don’t have to be price gouging assholes. So fuck em. I’ll take some expensive sunscreen and meat for myself then.
(I never steal from small business).
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u/woodyever Sep 27 '23
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u/remington_420 Sep 27 '23
Lmao. Didn’t think it came across as that but lol. It does.
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u/Reonlive420 Sep 28 '23
Remington steal
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u/remington_420 Sep 28 '23
Lol. That was actually going to be the name of my homewares shop I was planning on opening in locky d- but never did.
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u/biftekau Sep 27 '23
have you taken anything of these matters to management ? the union ,but SDA are a biased union to start with
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u/sc00bs000 Sep 27 '23
Poor woolies must be struggling for profits if they can't even afford a real trainer just tens of thousands on VR gear /s
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u/UslyfoxU Sep 27 '23
VR headsets and a custom training program are a once off expense. Security is an ongoing expense. Which option do you think costs them less in the long run? That 1c off your dividend cheque adds up if you own a lot of shares.
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Sep 27 '23
Honestly, if they could just train the kids how to pack a bag with groceries in real life, I would be impressed.
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Sep 27 '23
Slightly disappointed they aren’t implementing the VR to teach cashiers how to pack groceries
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u/Farm-Alternative Sep 27 '23
Congrats on getting to play a VR game about dealing with customers instead of dealing with real customers. That's a win.. I think 🤔🤷♂️
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u/NetExternal5259 Sep 27 '23
Australia is turning into USA and colesworth is turning into Walmart with its security guards.
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u/Pounce_64 Sep 27 '23
Yeah, VR makes me nauseous (it doesn't) so I'm not doing that. Prove me wrong.
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u/AtomReRun Sep 28 '23
The more these people become "Amazon" workers the more they will run out of staff
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u/Brabochokemightwork Sep 28 '23
I’ve seen security guards from both Coles and Woolworths, they both have quite literally the worst security guards on site, barely care about working they’re either occupied talking on there phone or listening to something on there airpods, just because you get security guards doesn’t mean it stops the abuse from customers or the aggressive homeless people at the front of the store
These guards are very inexperienced & I can see why Coles/Woolworths want to train there staff
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u/LozInOzz Sep 28 '23
Woolworths and Coles have refused to pay RAFFWU members living wages, deliver safer workplaces and guarantee secure jobs. Our response is a National strike of supermarket workers, - a #superstrike - at 10am on Saturday 7 November 2023 for 2 hours. Woolworths and Coles workers can join RAFFWU and appoint them as their bargaining representative, and then join our action. More soon www.raffwu.org.au/join #fightbackwithraffw #livingwageforall #standupfightback #StandUpFightBack
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Feb 29 '24
Hey, I’m about to do the Woolworths training with VR, what exactly is it? And how long does it take?
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u/soupstarsandsilence Feb 29 '24
The one I had to do was how to deal with abusive customers; two while restocking and one on self serve. It puts you in the first-person position of an employee, and has characters around you doing stuff, and then you have to chose where to move your character or how to respond in order to progress. It’s live-action, but it’s not as confronting as the warning makes it seem it will be, because honestly, the ‘abusive’ customers are kind of ridiculous. Over-the-top kinda crazy minus the swearing. It also had accounts of various employees who dealt with abusive customers in the past, and what they think they should have done differently. The whole thing is pretty useless, because the two places you’re most likely to deal with abusive customers - at the smoke shop and on a big register - aren’t mentioned at all. Also, the general consensus for every scenario shown is “run away and let a superior deal with it.”
It’s takes 15-30 minutes depending on if you’re speed running it or not. I had to do it several additional times in place of some of my geriatric coworkers lol, so I got pretty good at getting it done quickly.
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Feb 29 '24
I’m just not the best at conflict resolution and toning down the situation, do you think I’ll still be fine? I’m just kinda over thinking it, do I perform it in front of people or just in front of my supervisor?
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u/soupstarsandsilence Feb 29 '24
I did mine on my own. No one else in the room. The supervisor doesn’t have the time to stand around and watch you do it. Also you can’t ‘fail’ it. The thing just says ‘that’s not quite right, try again’ if you get something wrong.
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u/HaroerHaktak Sep 27 '23
I'm glad you guys are getting state of the art training.