NEVER ever ever ever get a job with King Soopers
Pros
Very Good benefits after one year. Weekly pay.
Cons
King Soopers DEMANDS loyalty, but offers none, you will NOT do anything here but ruin your life. I cannot overstate how crucial it is that you never get a job here. I have worked for King Soopers since 2008 and in this time it has gone from a fun, productive (if strict) workplace to one that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies. LET ME BE CLEAR, this is not the rantings of someone who just got in trouble, is upset that they didn't get their birthday off, or who likes to spread negativity, on the contrary, I only hope that by posting this I can save you my fate. What is being done at King Soopers at present is definitely criminal and if anything, the company is headed for (another) class action suit rather than any commendation. There are a variety of reasons that King Soopers is the most miserable, unforgiving place you could ever work, however we will stick to those that affect the greatest amount of people for the sake of brevity. King Soopers will tell you ANYTHING they have to to get you to sign on, they will promise you time off, promotions, discounts, etc..., etc... because there is absolutely NOBODY applying at their stores at present. For instance, when I worked at the Kings on 30th and Arapahoe in Boulder it was not uncommon for us to get 3 apps a week... for the entire county. Why? Because King Soopers is a depraved hellhole. Let's walk through what will happen to you if you manage to pass King Soopers often faulty drug and background tests... Your first two days will be all "rah rah", "you will be somebody" type talk, you will do training on a computer program. You should disregard all this training as it is patently wrong (except for food safety). After this, you will get your first schedule. You will be promised that King Soopers follows the "select-a-shift" process. Rest assured that you have zero control over your schedule. The originial idea of this is genius, the manager writes the schedule, then everyone in the department selects their shifts by seniority from top to bottom. This is unlikely to happen, and if it does, Kings reserves the right to change the schedule until NOON ON SATURDAY as in 12 hours before the new week starts (Kings runs Sunday to Saturday schedules). No matter how much or little notice you receive you are expected to show up when they want or face suspension and docked pay. Moms with kids? Forget it. Grandma is dying of cancer? You can go see her next week. (If she dies you're entitled to two days off). Can't find a babysitter for the midnight shift? One day without pay. Wedding you requested off 5 months ago? Needs of the business. Olympic tickets they want you to cancel? Think of your "career"... This is all for 10 an hour. Read that again, 10 an hour. Unless you have relevant experience you will start at 10 an hour. What Kings thinks is relevant experience is... it had to have happened at a grocery store in the last year or two. You may have been a master floral designer, published cake decorator, or skilled butcher, but if you didn't do any of this at S*feway, Spr*uts, or Wh*le Paycheck, well you will not get paid one cent extra for your experience (KS clerks top out at 18 an hour). For your 10 an hour you can go ahead and assume you have zero rights to ask for days off (you're better off saying you have a doctor's appointment than your daughter's birthday, because believe me if they think they can coerce you into coming in... they will). Once you get there, it only gets worse. King Soopers has mastered the art of wringing every last ounce and teaspoon of physical effort out of you you can possibly handle, every task that could ever take place in a grocery store (stocking shelves, throwing trash, using the bathroom, talking to customers) has been measured by them as to how long it takes an average person to do them, this number is the base number for the amount of hours your department is allotted (remember this, it's important later). The hours are dispensed by a program called ELMS. The expectation of King Soopers management is that there is never even a tenth of an hour of overtime. Yes, in a store staffed by 140 to 230 people, they expect there to be not even a tenth of an hour of overtime paid. Seems simple right? Leave when they tell you... WRONG. It doesn't matter if you are down 3 people, someone calls in sick, or someone literally dies. NO overtime. I was recently part of a week long project that was supposed to be staffed by 8 people for three days. We had 4, 4, and 2 people on the team on each of the three days we were supposed to do this project. What was the expectation? ZERO overtime, but those of us who bothered to show up for work were expected to achieve the same results as the original 8 person team or face discipline. Let me clarify. You are expected to achieve the same results as 8 people working even if there are 4 or 2 of you. This is so common in the Kings workplace that it isn't even worth mentioning. That is on top of the fact that all the measured tasks must have been done by super humans because the amount of allotted hours never matches reality in the first place. When I was Produce Manager at Kings in Lafayette, we were the number one store in sales of packaged corn. Packaging corn takes a while. Roughly 45 minutes to convert 4 cases of regular corn into shucked, packaged corn. We sold about 80 packages a day. 48 ears per case divided by 5 ears per pack equals about 6.5 hours of work, per day. The system generated 2 hours a day for this. BUT WAIT they expect 200 packages on display at all times whether they will sell or not... you do the math. The newest torture is called the "standards walk" wherein you can be written up for DUST on the shelf, one missing sign in your entire department (4500+ items in the department). You won't have time to fix this because they will not hire baggers, they expect that they can page you and you drop what you're doing to bag groceries or ELSE. (this is not in ELMS) This isn't even getting into the sadly jacked up side of management, trust me it's only worse from there and people are quitting like crazy. Seriously, take it from a "lifer"... get a different job.
