General Managers' Report                                                                       7/26/07

● Summertime is now in full swing.  Our sales have been looking awesome for the July weeks, and every weekend brings many new faces into the store.  The seasonal scheduling template that we created to get us through our busiest time of year is serving us well.  In spite of the usual unforeseen absences, such as illnesses and family emergencies, overall store staffing has been quite adequate.  The deli has seen a few rough patches this month, with one staff member abruptly giving notice and another needing to take an extended medical leave, but the team over there is pulling together to get through it while we search for new staff members to bring on board. 

● Before we know it, we will be facing another seasonal staffing turnover as many of our trusted college-age crew members head back to school in the fall.  We have openings in many departments and are currently soliciting applicants to hopefully seamlessly fill these shifts as they become available.  Our quest remains to attract applicants that come to employ here with their Co-op values already intact.  We are posting signage in the store with a list of our available positions. Please encourage co-operative folks to apply.

● Monthly membership report:  we've welcomed three more individuals into membership through the Equity Assistance fund, bringing the total number of recipients to 10.  Funding remains in place to welcome another 13.  We also welcomed 29 new shareholders in the past month, bringing our membership total to 2,540 owners.

● The summer stresses are starting to take a bit of a toll on our positive and co-operative outlook. HR jokes that “her door is always open,” but lately it has been closed a lot of the time. Breakdowns in communication, inter-personal conflicts amongst staff, the planning for Customer Appreciation Day, and trying to counteract a contagious feeling of negativity have been keeping the GMT busy with tasks of smoothing furrowed brows, encouraging, and researching ways of busting negativity in the workplace.  Our EAP program has provided excellent training for this more unpleasant side of management, as well as been a tool that we can direct staff towards for info that will empower them to combat stress and to deepen their abilities to be forces for positive change.  We hope that as our work culture grows towards fostering more independence, that more staff will exhibit the initiative to take advantage of this great and useful tool. 

● We've moved into our new cooler!  Yay!  It is such a relief to have this project behind us and to have our wide dairy aisle restored.  Many of our staff members have put in long hours to get us moved into the cooler and bring it into a state of organization.  We are grateful for their hard work and co-operative commitments.  The cooler is a work of art and we've heard nothing but great things from our customers and members.  The Enviro committee has more to report on this process, no doubt.

● The GMT called a deli meeting to encourage more co-operative communication and to inspire a deeper sense of teamwork in deli staff members.  Stressing the co-operative advantage appeared to produce a positive change in attitude, and we left the meeting feeling like our mission was accomplished.

● We are working on building a deeper relationship with another community organization involved in protecting our local food supply.  Food for Maine's Future is trying to get a gleaning project off of the ground and we are participating by collecting donations of canning jars for community canning bees, being a hosting site for a fall community meal prepared from gleaned produce, and possibly looking at trying to find some space in the store for winter storage of gleaned goods.  We are also trying to co-ordinate with the Game Loft, another participating organization, to provide them with healthy snacks gleaned from our Produce department.