Vendor Rights

Never let it be said that once a person has finished school and enters the job market that they will never again experience school life again. For that matter being treated like a student. A while ago I was working at a grocery store known as ‘Your Neighborhood Market’ where a meeting was taking place with all the wine and beer vendors. I wasn’t part of the meeting being held in the back room but I was able to overhear a large portion of that meeting. A meeting being held by a store associate still in her 20’s while all the other vendors in the meeting have ages ranging between upper 30’s to mid 50’s.

This store associate, to be as nice as I can type it, treated these vendors like Henry the 8th at a dating service. She treated them with little to no respect to the point other vendors overhearing this meeting wanted to listen in just for the absurdity of this store’s associates missing the point. But at the end there was a happy ending. But during this meeting she was talking down to them like they were in Kindergarten.

Points from the meeting were like this.
• Clean your shelf space.
• Put all your trash in the trash can.
• Keep everything in your space.
• Do not bother other space outside of your area.
• If you need help, ask a store associate.
• Don’t steal shelf space from the area next to you.
• Be on time, don’t come late.

It got to the point that the Wine and Beer vendors were starting to ask her if this was really relating to them; especially to the way she was talking down to them. She fired back about if they do not follow store policy they would not be allowed back into the store and possible faces lose of display space in the store. By then the Store Manage came to attend the meeting to where the vendors began asking him about the importance of this meeting. Ignoring the store associate who was there. She was ‘pissed beyond belief’.

The Store Manage, who is after all a nice guy. No one there has any problems with him because he is basically like the Sheriff of Mayberry (famous TV show), laid back with little to no stress. He stated that there were problems being reported that a vendor was taking space from other vendors and leaving a mess around his shelf space and his back stock. He then said he wanted to speak to him personally about the matter and ask for him by name.

Everyone looked around but eventually all eyes fell on the female associate who was giving the meeting. The vendor who was causing all these problems in that store was off on that day. The store associate who was giving the meeting knew that but continued to have the meeting. One beer vendor asked the Store Manager why we were talked down like little Kindergartners by someone who was almost half their age when the one vendor who needed to be talked to wasn’t even there.

The Manager said that it was store policy to talk with all the vendors. The one vendor in question will be spoken to about this matter when he comes back to work. By that point the meeting was over whether the female store’s associate giving the meeting liked it or not. She even raised her voice and demanded that they returned to the meeting or face severe consequences. No one listened to her as she continued to talk until the Manager told her to her face that this meeting shouldn’t even have taken place if the vendor in question was not there.

And throughout the next few days that was one of the stories the wine and beer vendors were telling other vendors and associates in other stores about that meeting. Eventually the vendor in question was talked to but not in the manner that all the other vendors were. And I can be honest in saying that a lot of vendors refuse to shop in certain grocery or department stores because of the way they are treated as vendors in those stores. Even I have a few grocery stores I will never shop in due to the way I was treated there. As a vendor told me years ago, “Why do I want to support a place that treats me like crap?”