Safeway reviews

Micromanagement, six day work week, numerous policies, difficult to get full-time status especially when hours are always being cut, much is expected of dept managers while all other employees have zero responsibility, weak workers union (confusing union contracts), lack of back up personnel, "Floaters" instead of proper staffing (meat), stores are run on minimum help, "old timers" remain with a can't do attitude who resist change, pay stinks if you're starting out with no experience, store managers are so wrapped up dealing with tasks set forth by upper management via email or conference call that they have little time for their employees or customers to run the store properly, can't seem to get rid of poor employees or demote them.

After a few new contracts in the last 6-7 years, the pay and benefits have gotten pretty bad. The worst is the salary raise, which turned into a longer tiered system. In other words, newer employees or newly promoted ones would take longer to get to maximum pay. This particularly affected being a casher, since that position is one of highest paid. The union is utterly useless and most employees despise being forced to paying a monthly union membership. Promotions are usually based on seniority, but i've witnessed many cases where someone ( attractive female) was easily promoted within a few months of work. Management is a varying experience. Over time different managers/supervisors come and go, therefore, sometimes you get ones who are difficult to work with. The customer service they had us do got irritating after a while. Most of it was doable such as greeting with a smile and thanking them for their patronage. Mostly everyone hated thanking a customer by their last name and I really thought it was unnecessary. 99% of customers never really gave a crap about being thanked by their last name anyway. Age old equipment at the cashier counters. They changed those electronic payment (credit card) kiosks with different models twice during my time there and they would always malfunction. I actually got a chance to talk to one of the company reps who supplied safeway with them and they said were using the cheapest ones. You get what you paid for. Training was really lacking in certain areas, especially with alcohol and tobacco. The company never gave anyone any kind of formal training on spotting fake id's. Just check the date of birth and that was it. Same thing goes for people using stolen credit cards.