Pros
-Customers seem nicer on average than other places I have worked. I've received some compliments from customers on my work which is always nice. -Pay is okay, could be better. -Lower management and most coworkers are great, very kind and usually willing to go out of their way to help you. There honestly isn't a single person in my department I don't like. My managers are pretty great. -E-shop specifically is pretty straightforward, scanning and bagging products can be kind of fun in a way. -The mandatory meetings can be fun, you usually get something for going to them. -Employee appreciation week is quite nice. They could do more but the food, treats, and other things were great. -They do make efforts towards inclusion. You're not allowed to have your own pins (which is dumb) but they do provide pronoun pins if requested. -You are allowed to have tattoos, piercings, and dyed hair, at least at the brickyard location. The wording in the dress code is a little vague (Probably so it can be enforced differently in different stores) but I haven't had any problems with my tattoos and piercings. -The quality of the food in the store is great and even though the employee discount is low it's still nice to have the convenience and small discount of shopping there. -They are usually pretty good about unavailability and vacation time. -The interview was easy.
Cons
-The employee discount is only 10%, which is lower than most other retail stores. -I was told I would be getting a raise after six months but did not, I believe this is because it's supposed to be nine months for part time employees. I was hired as part time so it seems like that was just a lie, I'm not sure if she was aware of that or not. -Upper management is out-of-touch with the employees and cheap. We already have trouble getting our orders finished on time especially on the weekends and they cut our hours. The e-shop fee charged to customers who place orders is 5$ for pickup and 15$ for delivery, you'd think they would have the money to leave our hours in a good spot. They really focus on this idea of going above and beyond for the customers but leave us no time to do it in. Running around trying to do several orders at once, sometimes while also needing to go take out orders to customers, leaves no time for really making sure the customer is satisfied. And obviously it's exhausting for us. Corrine (store director) also made one of the delivery drivers drive in a blizzard because god forbid we have to ask one of the customers to pick it up or delay the order. -They want you to be working 100% of the time which I think is just unrealistic. Everyone deserves some down time at work. It's not enough to finish the orders for the day, you need to do orders for tomorrow, clean the department, and ask the other departments if they have any work for you to do. (I've never seen the other departments ask us if we need help.) Right before our hours got cut one of the upper managers saw that someone was sitting around (because we were out of work) and the hours getting cut felt retaliatory to me. -The customers can be terrible. Pretty standard for retail but I sometimes feel like some people can be meaner over texting than they would be in person. People love to get mad because you don't carry whatever non-food item they're looking for, (it's not a supermarket) or if you're out of something and they don't like your suggested substitution. We don't have any sort of compensation for the switch like smiths does and I genuinely feel bad charging the nice customers extra because we only had two smaller packages instead of one big one. It's not a lot of the customers that are mean but a lot of the mean customers are pretty over-the-top and inappropriate. -The texting system for substitutions is good to make sure the customers get what they want but there are downsides. People love to try and add like ten items to their order especially when you're already super busy. People will just straight up not read what you send them and ask questions you already answered. (Like I'll say we're out of all brown eggs and they'll ask if there's a different brand of brown eggs) Customers will also not respond, in which case you need to call them, which can be a pain especially when you end up doing it multiple times a day. -We don't have any kind of tech support help when customers call for help with the website. I don't know why they call us especially because we aren't trained to be able to help them with it. -I have heard stories from female coworkers about getting sexually harassed by other employees. I don't think any of them have made a formal complaint but it's still not great. -Sometimes it does feel like e-shop is treated more unfairly by upper management and some people in other departments. We have to get some of the items from other departments and there are a few employees who don't seem to like that we need to ask them for things. It's not a lot of people and it has improved in the time I've been there but it's not great. And it really feels like upper management doesn't like our department at all. Also we don't have our manager's picture up with all the other managers pictures and I think we're the only department who doesn't. -Always being asked to come in on our days off but not given any incentives besides more hours at the same pay rate. I don't blame our direct managers for this but I just have no motivation to come in personally. -Holidays are horrible. Weekends can be pretty bad. We will have so much work and it can be incredibly hard to walk around the store when it's so incredibly crowded not to mention having any space for your cart. We do get extra pay on holidays but they're cheap about which days count. I worked new years and only realized after that it didn't count. Often the busier day is the day before the holiday but you don't get paid extra for that. There is also sunday pay but it's only 2/hr more and I often don't feel like it's worth it for how busy it gets on sundays. -They are incredibly strict about calling out especially during the holiday season. They want you to call your manager and not text them because they want your manager to be able to guilt trip you into coming in. During the holiday season you are not allowed to call out unless you find someone to cover for you. You're also not supposed to call out within four hours of when your shift starts. We also had one day where there was a blizzard and we were told we weren't allowed to call out. -Took a while to have any consistency with my schedule. It's very annoying to close and then open which has happened a few times. Their system also maybe doesn't alert them when they try to schedule you at a time you've indicated you aren't available? I've had to remind my manager about my availability a few times when I've been scheduled at times I'm not available. -I think this is the only place I've worked where you have to pay for your uniform. Another way they are cheap with employees. I don't want to keep the ugly shirt when I leave so it's annoying.