Safeway reviews

Working in the store, the general feel is that you're going to get stuck there. Most of the people that I encountered there had started working there as a temporary thing, but then stared earning too much money to go elsewhere. Most of the other courtesy clerks really didn't care about their job at all - at the end of the day, it didn't matter if you actually did your job or not. People who put in more effort didn't actually get rewarded for much at all. When I first started working at the store, it was required for one person to sweep the entire store every fifteen minutes. Such a task was only really possible if everything went right and the store wasn't busy. By the time I left, they had relaxed the rule, but then also said that if you didn't complete the sweep exactly as they wanted it then you'd get fired. Management at my store varied. I only liked one of my three managers (there was one store manager and two assistant managers). One of my assistant managers sat in his car on his lunch break watching me put away carts. Even though the person before me didn't put away any of the carts (leaving me with a bunch of carts to put back, which I wasn't sure I'd be able to do in an hour), he called the store to speak to one of the checkers to pull me away from my job to tell me that I wasn't putting away the groups of carts in the order that he wanted them to be put away. The second assistant manager - the one I liked - actually thanked me for doing my job and did what he could to make my experience there better. He was literally the only one there to consistently make sure people who did there jobs were appreciated in some small way. The manager himself was terrible at scheduling, more than once didn't follow union rules about hours, and wasn't very good at communication. The shops are a joke - for one, it's possible to complete the spirit of the shop without following it to the letter, but you'll still get penalized if you do. Basically, their mystery shopper system serves as an incentive for courtesy clerks to avoid customers like the plague. If you actually want to follow Safeway's rules, it means that you won't get to know any of your co-workers (unless you work in one of the departments). Additionally, the three-cart "loose" cart maximum in the parking lots is an unrealistic joke. I rarely ever see a Safeway on shop when it comes to carts. Lastly, the union is terrible. They asked me to sign a document saying I had read a piece of information they'd never given to me - and then threatened my job because they were taking too long to give me the necessary information to *legally* sign everything. Unions in opt-in states may be better run, but the one I had to be a part of was terrible.

THE PAY. Oh, dear lord, the pay is a nightmare. I would definitely say the majority of the employees in the store live with their parents, even if they're married or have kids. I can hardly get by on the pay. I only pay half my rent and still putting down rent money each week taps me out until next week. We only eat pasta and cereal. I try really hard not to gain or lose weight because I can't buy clothes. The union dues are pretty expensive and you don't have a choice. I don't use any of the benefits but I still have to pay. The managers drive me nuts. Do they ever stop? Somehow, they have plenty of time to hassle us at every turn. They hover over us daily. They revise our department manager's schedule, cut dozens of hours, and then complain that we aren't keeping up. I can't count the times I've been talked to about the dress code, mostly because I wore a white shirt with no scarf. Khaki shirt with no scarf is okay, but white shirt with no scarf gets you written up. Are you joking? Is this really worth spending time on, and grating on a good employee's last nerve? The work is really stressful because there's no help. Sometimes, the schedule is so bad that just one of us is alone on the counter for an hour to three hours, even at lunch time. Even though they told me when I was hired that I would always start at 7am, I've been starting at 4am 3-5 times a week for months and I'm dying. Managers encourage volunteer work but get all whiny if you request time off to do so. I can't even stand how many times a week random people in suits come from corporate to harrass us. Just how many of you are there!? Every other day, first thing, it's "Hey, so and so from wherever is coming so work harder than you ever have before!" Every other day!!