I spent 4 months here after spending 2 years at Dollar General. Same company with different names and different product.
Company culture is very poor. Initiative and critical thinking are negative traits. It's not that they're not valued - its literally seen as a negative. Heavily discouraged. Do exactly what they tell you to do and nothing more. Otherwise at the very least you set yourself up for frustration and disappointment. At the worst you'll get fussed at for not doing exactly what was asked. Keep in mind there is no above and beyond here, it is hard enough to even do everything that you're tasked with you'll almost never be able to do more. If you try to have a conversation with your manager about any issues they don't listen, simply revert to talking points. My district manager was very hostile and if she didn't like you - you were out.
They treated employees very poorly during the pandemic. I tested positive and was told I would have to stay out unpaid or could use my PTO. As a salaried employee I was told my check would be docked for time not worked. They did nothing for hourly employees - no bonuses or temporary raises like almost every other company did during this time. We were doing at least 50% over last years sales on any given day. We were making money hand over foot and there wasn't even a thought to take care of employees. They are expendable and nobody cared if they quit or went to work somewhere else - sometimes it seemed like that's what corporate wanted. We had several positive cases at our store and they didn't close or adjust hours. Literally had one salaried manager and a cashier most of the time and again nobody cared. There was no cleaning crew or any measures taken to put anybody at ease and if you didn't like that you could quit. The messaging was very clear.
Low Labor Model - It doesn't work. Our store was doing well over 1M a month in sales and yet we only had payroll of about 50-70k a month. To say it was inadequate is a severe understatement. Store was constantly dirty and disorganized because there simply wasn't enough hands to do everything that needed to be done. Upper management simply didn't care and insisted store conditions were a result of everybody not working hard enough. They wanted store to be set to standards but weren't realistic. We had a 150,000 sqft store with 6M in inventory on hand and expected the store to look even halfway decent when we only had 3-5 people closing at night.
Turnover was a huge problem that nobody every cared about or addressed. I never heard upper management talk about it or come up with any ways or ideas to improve it. Very often we would hire people who would only stay for days before quitting. Training was terrible and there was no orientation or real onboarding process. Store director tried to take steps to change that but with no company organization it's a hard thing to implement by yourself. There was also no full time positions except for hourly supervisors which were severely underpaid. Advancement was almost nonexistent due to politicized management and limited positions available.
Technology was abysmal. They had 6 scanners per store that everyone was supposed to share. We were instructed to have anyone who ran freight to use one, the merchandisers to use one, anyone who put returns away to use one and there just were never enough. The inventory management was a joke the registers constantly had issues and would go down and need to be restarted. IT support was hostile always insisting that you didn't know what you were talking about or doing.
Workload was so heavy and labor so low that salaried managers were constantly working freight, setting displays, or even running the register. We didn't actually get the opportunity to manage the store. Sacrificing time off was not even acknowledged because it still didn't get you where they wanted you to be. If you felt like you worked super hard you would be disappointed to hear that you still didn't do enough. My manager made it very clear that they could not care about the hard work put in if it doesn't get results because nobody above them cared about it.
Product was cheap yet expensive. We'd buy something at 20 dollar cost and turn around and sell it for 199 regularly. Almost all product was damaged and we discounted things all day long and still made a ton. Lots of cheap furniture that was pressboard and paint and would get scratched if you breathed on it wrong. Couches and chairs were notoriusly bad quality and would break when someone plopped down. Almost all had weight limits of 275 or lower. How are 2-3 people supposed to sit on a couch with a weight limit of 275? I was literally embarrassed and felt like I was swindling people who purchasing it.
There are much more cons way more so then pros. Reading all of the reviews I didn't find a single con that seemed unfair or inaccurate. Read through the other reviews and please distance yourself. If you have not taken the offer - don't. If you do in the current culture do so only long enough to use it as a resume builder and move on. Hopefully you'll be able to make it long enough for that.
