For the future should this happen again… have your DM’s number in your phone. Call them. They will get your manager up or if there are other stores nearby they will find you another partner to help open. At the very least the DM will turn of mobils until the next partner comes in. A lot of SMs have their phones on DO Not Disturb but usually have the DMs number allowed to go through.

It sucks hard to have to rush to open when the opener is late!!! I’ve had this happen many times. Once when I worked at a cafe store (more than 15 years ago) I had to wait until the 6am partner came in (it was a Sunday). I did not have a cell phone back then. I sat on the patio apologizing to customers.

This has happened over five times to me in the last month alone. Longest I had to wait was over an hour :) Im not even a shift. Im the barista waiting for the shifts or the manager. I am SO done. Being paid to sit in the car does not make up for the fact that we have to rush and struggle for the rest of the day since we end up opening at peak pretty much.

I really hate this new trend of SM and DM telling everyone to not contact them because they want to enjoy their work-life balance.

I get reamed when I don’t respond to messages or don’t answer my phone when people call. Pity we don’t get to enjoy a work-life balance.

This happened once but it was the shift who was AN HOUR AND A HALF LATE

This happened to one of my shifts, but instead of her open partner not showing up, there was nobody scheduled to open with her. Huge oversight, and she had to wait in her car for half an hour until one of us got there to open up

Some days you have to try to focus on just one or two tasks at a time rather than getting overwhelmed by the bigger picture.

Here is a pro tip for you (although not sure it would have helped in your particular situation): Mobile order time is estimated based on if the ticket was pulled then it is essentially "done". Try not to pull more than 2-3 tickets at a time, not only do they look overwhelming they actually "fool" the mobile order system into thinkin you are an absolute machine and will continue to feed the machine until it detects a "backup" in the assembly line. If you figure out DPM on your store iPad you can actually see this in action. You can also bump up people as they show up in DPM - but it can take you away from your current task so it's a double edged sword there.

I cringe when I see partners pull 20 tickets on warming when we only have 2 ovens... I get they are trying to look for batch cooking opportunities or maybe non warmed food they can take care of while waiting on an oven but in the end it actually makes things worse. 2 ovens should have 4 -5 tickets MAX pulled.

As long as you feel like you are doing a good job in the moment - everything will eventually get taken care of. Don't sacrifice your health or safety over a busy shift.

Good Luck and hope your day and week get better!

Me, a kiosk barista who knew how to get in the locked grocery store at 4:30am by myself with only 8 stockers who couldn’t hear me knock: 😎😎

If you’re instructed not to reach out to your DM, just get some of their cards and leave them on the handoff area. They always have a ton and ours leaves them at our store, if they refuse to give you some honestly this sounds like a PCC issue. You’re gonna get paid for that half hour waiting too!

Goodness. Diving through comments has been rough.

First your in the right here. Sit in your car and wait. Put the time you were supposed to start in the book. Get paid for your time.

Calling your SM and any other opening SSV you can is correct. Please don’t call the DM at 3-4am. They aren’t up. Their phone isn’t on. And they have no other way to reach your SM besides what your doing.

If this is more then a weird one time thing then yes do report it to your dm. Their phone # and email has to be posted by the schedule. If not complain.

Also you are correct to never go in alone. If you are an SSV and must enter alone for safety reasons call your DM and SM in that order as you enter the store. Not after. And report the safety reason for which you must enter alone.

That happened to us one day, our SM called out the night before and we couldn’t open till 8am & we’re suppose to open at 5:30🥲 we also had to close 2 hours early because of no closing SM

I open and there are usually three of us, myself, another partner and the SSV. We had the second partner call out a couple weeks ago, so my SM turned off MO and Delivery until 7 when we had close to full staff. Lobby stayed closed until then as well. Made it easier to get through with 2 of us for the first 45 minutes, then 3 of us until 7


I've also had my SSV show up like 40 minutes late. I got strict instructions from my SM to call if a SSV is ever more than 2 minutes late.

first off, so sorry this happened to you. It is super shitty to have to deal with ALL of that.


had an issue where someone was late a few times a week and always made opening hard. ALWAYS jump over the manager if they don't do anything if it happens again. Nothing happens with the DM? JUMP over their head to the corporate number and let them rain shit down on reginal to dm to sm till it gets FIXED. Shit will get done SO fast if your bosses bosses boss has to have a conversation about something like safety and customers.

This happened to me. I was in the parking lot at 4 for our 415 open and waited until the 6 am partner showed up bc no one answered their phones. I had to walk up to customers cars to tell them their mobile orders weren't going to be ready. It was so stressful. 2 person open is hard.

This happened to me within the first week of opening. I arrive at the store 15 minutes before opening and have to stand out in the cold (this was early February) and here I am trying to get hold of my manager. When I finally DO get hold of him he says to contact one of the supervisors who's meant to be opening. So I do that, turns out he overslept. Dude turns up 40 minutes late while I'm practically freezing to death.

If you want to feel better this happened to me and couldn't get of any store managers (tried 3) and I was waiting for 4 HOURS .. because it was 15 degrees out car battery died and I left early cause of when the AAA came my manager said it was fine and was shocked I stayed

Was my store today

Because of this, I had to start just going in alone if someone wasn’t there right at the time we were supposed to be there. I couldn’t wait around for everyone to show up. Had to call the DM every other morning at 5:00 to shut off mobile due to call offs, short product, or broken machines. I left after 15 years last March. Now I’m with Marriott and tbh it’s not much better if at all.