Kowalski's Markets reviews

This company will do everything they can to pay you less than a livable wage. Even though prices are inflating and rent is increasing, management will claim that learning about how to be "civic" makes up for not getting paid enough. At the time of writing this, Union contract negotiations are still happening and, although Union members are bargaining for an additional dollar raise each year, Kowalski's wants to keep employees at their current rates as much as possible. The "civic business" model is a big selling point for new hires but most people in leadership positions do not practice what they preach. I've worked at all of the 11 locations at one point or another and I've witnessed "leaders" berate their employees to the point of tears due to personal or political beliefs. Those unprofessional people are still "leaders" in the company to this day. Despite the message being that "everyone has equal voice in decisions" there's also still a corporate hierarchy and you'll be expected to carry out the decisions of people "above" you. There's not truly equity if there's also a hierarchy. There's a considerable amount of employees who speak English as a second language and yet the company still wants them to learn the overly complicated "civic" language in order to be deemed a good enough employee. However, they don't provide their learning documents related to civics in any language other than English. That's one very easy way to provide equal opportunity to groups of diverse employees and give them the proper tools to succeed... and they don't do it. A majority of the people who move up in this company are straight, cisgender white men despite being a woman-owned company. Nepotism plays a huge factor in choosing people to promote. Candidates from outside the company are often chosen over current employees who have put in the work and have the qualifications. Stores do not have an HR person and even the technical "HR" department cannot be relied on to help employees in situations. Transgender employees have been discriminated against numerous times by their peers and no effort has been put into changing the workplace to be a more inclusive and accepting environment despite entire campaigns from employees asking for said action. Customers are extremely privileged. Employees have been verbally and literally physically abused by customers. Employees have also been sexually harassed by customers and leadership dismisses requests for help when these cases are brought to their attention. There's a lot more that could be said, but I digress.

I would strongly caution anyone looking to work here. I was at the Grand Ave location, and I cannot speak to other stores. I did like the store when I initially started. However, things changed over my time there. Poor management is the main issue. They have no idea what it is like to work on the front end, and do not listen to staff at all. It is not a huge store, and it would not be difficult to manager to take a few minutes to experience what cashiers face and understand the issues we brought up. For example, I was once chastised by a manager for not using a walkie-talkie to resolve a customer's issue without leaving my register. Cashiers do not have walkie-talkies, since there are not enough of them. There were also issues that the staff repeatedly raised with management. For example, we had some carts with brakes, and some without. Since our parking lot is on a hill, carts without braks must be held with one hand constantly. We repeatedly asked for only carts with brakes. Instead of listening to this completely logical request, management decided to replace all the carts with brakes with ones without brakes. Management also claimed the didn't tolerate poor customer behavior. This is absolutely false. I was snapped at, yelled at, and insulted, and nothing was done. On one occasion a man grabbed my arm. I was terrified I would be written up if he complained about me telling him not to touch me. Customer complaints are taken as the gospel truth, even when there is absolutely zero proof that the event actually occurred. At other grocery stores I worked at, there was always a confidential HR dept. outside the store, where employees were allowed to appeal unfair disciplinary decisions, without fearing retaliation from their managers. Kowalski's has no such process. This speaks to how little they value their employees. The Kowalski's company believes in rotating managers between the different stores, which meant I had multiple store managers and department managers over a few years. The issue of this comes when different managers decide to change rules, but with no notice to the staff it affects. For example, one rule was that all front end staff must be available one weekend day. However, one manager defines the weekend as Fri, Sat, and Sun, then the next one defines it as just Sat, Sun. This change was not communicated in any way. Staff were expected to simply read the new manager's mind. Another issue with this same rule was that it was applied unfairly. Certain employees in the department were ordered to change their availability to comply with this rule. At the same time, other employees in the same department, and with the same level of seniority were allowed to have every single weekend day off. Finally, when I refer to management, I mean the top 1 or 2 people in the store, and certain department managers. I do not mean any of the managers on duty. They are generally very in tune with staff issues and willing to help out wherever needed. This is a union workplace, and I didn't notice any particular benefits or downsides to this fact. However, don't let this fool you into thinking you will be paid better than other grocery stores. It takes several years to reach a point in the pay scale where you would even make the average for cashiers in the Twin Cities. Overall, this can be a very good, flexible, short term job. However, dealing with consistent, entrenched, issues can be wearisome in the long-run. I would recommend be very cautious if you are looking for a job you can be in for longer than a year or so.