Pros
The job itself is not difficult and you don't have to deal with customers. coworkers are nice and will lend a hand if you have a spill sacrificing their rate. The pay is pretty good if you work in the cold departments, and there is lots of overtime available. Once in a blue moon (maybe twice a year) we get free lunches as a way for the company to show their appreciation for our productivity or having no lost time accidents in a certain amount of time. The pay is superb for this kind of job, and if you stay awhile you could easily make 40000 dollars+ a year (automatic raises every 800 hours). You start at 12.59 per hour in the cold areas. Paid Vacation and holidays after a year of working there (some holidays are sooner). They promote from within quite a bit. . Safety is preached weekly but still an ongoing issue.
Cons
Work conditions can be dangerous and people get hurt at least once a month.. usually it is the fault of the worker, but there is very limited space in our dept and we ship out a lot of cases... so sometimes things get out of hand and someone gets hurt.. Meijer views employees as merely a cost of doing business, they don't look at their employees as assets that they need to invest in to be more profitable, rather they look at them as a burden. nothing matters to them except the bottom line. Management is snobby and talks down to their workers, who are busting their butts every day to make rate or better (rate is 95% but I have seen some people pull up to 130% in a week).. If you ever hear the phrase "good job",than you have just experienced a miracle, because even if you are accurate and pull rate every week, you will almost never feel appreciated, in fact the supervisors will find something that you are doing wrong and point you for that instead. Managers at Meijer are extremely inconsistent and it drives most people crazy to the point of quitting.The supervisors in my unit play favorites and don't care about seniority when it comes to job classes, they do what they want and the union lets them do it. If they like someone, they will give them an easier job (aka hilo instead of selection) than someone they don't like that has higher seniority, and they violate the contract all the time with this. The union does nothing about it. The union just takes money out of your check and gets some of the crappy workers their jobs back, that's all they really do. If you are a hard worker, be ready to stand up for yourself because the union sure isn't. The point system seems designed to get you fired as soon as a real life crises happens. Schedules are different every week. Getting vacation days is almost impossible and you don't know your schedule until 2 days before the next pay period starts (You get it on Friday and the next pay period starts on Sunday). If you take a vacation, you won't get word that your days were approved off until right before the pay period starts so good luck making ANY plans that involves buying things like hotel rooms or plane tickets. My advice? Get full time as soon as possible and work in the cold department if you are going to work there, at least than you will have money since they pay the people in the warm departments closer to minimum wage and still view their workers as trash. Also, if possible, you may need to get FMLA to get a day off without getting a point closer to being fired!