Pros
You get paid each week rather than bi-weekly. That's pretty nice.
Cons
Where do I even start? Let me grab a pen and some paper. You may want to go ahead and have a seat. Salary: terrible (you make like $4 less an hour than the employees who do the exact same thing than you but on a more relaxed scale at the other grocery chains nearby) Scheduling: terrible Benefits: terrible Requesting time off: terrible Working around a student's school schedule: terrible The way the "on call" system runs: terrible I'm hoping my own experience working for the company was specific to the store I worked at. Imagine that you're trying to put yourself through college, or a part time job in high school, so you decide that a grocery store seems like a laid back, solid choice. All you have to do is scan and slide peoples' groceries. Communicate with customers. Keep things clean and have to memorize some numbers for some fruits n veggies. No big deal. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Imagine that, during the hiring process, you make very clear that you can only work on certain days during the week because on the others you have classes nearly all day, and that Friday-Sunday is clear. On all of these available days, it is agreed that you can work between the hours of 10 AM and 6 PM. You are a part time employee, and these are the hours of availability put into the official system. This should be simple. Think again. You check your schedule for the first time for your first week of work and it has you scheduled at both times and days that were NOT under the agreed availability. You're told it's just a glitch. Okay, right. Just a glitch that doesn't get fixed after at least two months of me bringing it to your attention on a weekly basis. Right. Even after the official schedule gets sorted out, things are still a mess. For example: you can NEVER leave on time. No one shows up to take over your register for you half of the time because they hate their job as much as you, but just have less resolve to actually show up I guess. You were only scheduled until 5 PM and have been there since 10 or 11 AM and STILL haven't had a break- you're still on register, half dead, and it's just about 6 PM. But you're the only one even on a register. Will you leave without getting permission, with 8 increasingly impatient customers still in line? After all, when you mentioned a half an hour ago that you were only scheduled until 5 and are supposed to meet up with a group for a class project at 7, and that you live 35 minutes away and that you really need to go, you're told that sometimes you need to stay longer than your shift as needed. Nice. This would be completely understandable if it occurred every now and then, not every single time I work. The place was so understaffed it's insane. Being the only cashier - or if you're lucky, 1 of 2 cashiers- working at like 4 PM a Sunday is a real workout, but it gets old when it happens nearly every week. Apparently, coworkers often don't even know they scheduled a doctor's appointment for that very day until it's 20 minutes into their shift and someone calls asking where they are. No one gets any kind of reprimand because it's already so understaffed that if we lost any more people nothing would be able to function. Additionally, since there are hardly enough cashiers and clerks, you're doing everything yourself. Pulling items out of the cart, scanning, typing in codes, bagging, conversing with the customer, checking your surroundings, answering questions - literally everything at once. It seems like everyone in your line has heaping carts with hundreds of dollars worth of groceries in them. and you're having to scan and bag it all yourself using the two measly sets of bags in front of you. If someone requests paper bags or pulls out a binder full of coupons, the other people in your line will start talking to each other in hushed whispers and glare at you. Could things possibly get any worse? Yes, of course they can. Now something isn't scanning, whether it be an item or a coupon. You have no idea of the price because it's a new item, and the customer doesn't know either because they didn't think they'd have to know. Typing in the number to the bar code also amounts to nothing. If you have to wait for an override, good luck. No one will ever come. They're as swamped at the front desk as you. Bursting into tears or essentially screaming into the void as soon as I clock out and get into my car and shut the door is routine. If you're out of an item a customer wants, prepare to have an actual grown man customer start yelling in your face about how he promised his kids that specific kind of ice cream that night and now he can't get it for them because we're out of stock of that particular brand and flavor and it's all your fault. After working at the store for a while, most of the regular customers made it a point to come to my specific line. Most said that they liked the way I bagged the groceries. Apparently getting home and finding their cold foods together in a bag and a bottle of wine *not* crushing their bread is a luxury. Some thought I was the most friendly and liked talking to me. One elderly customer even said to me once that they were glad I was working that day, and that they liked coming to my line because I was the only one who acted like they didn't hate their job. I smiled at her, because little did she know... - I'm going to wrap things up, because I can feel my blood pressure rising. It was a difficult decision, picking out the biggest con, because there were so many good contenders to choose from. But I've narrowed it down to 2. Drum roll, please... The "on call" system, and self-checkout. Back to our imaginary scenario. It's come to the point that working for this complete wreck of a grocery store has started to take a toll on your academic life. It's difficult to make any solid plans to work on certain assignments or with group projects or be in clubs on campus because you never know where and when you'll be at any given time. The "on call" system is great in theory. If the store was run properly, the system would serve as a safety net. Someone call out? Have no fear! Someone will be calling in soon at their designated time, and they can come in to make up for the lacking manpower. The employee scheduled on call that day has a specific time they're supposed to call in, and once a superior at the store told you whether you needed to come in or not, that's the end of it. They can't change their mind later. Instead, here's how it actually went: when you saw on call on your schedule, it was probably designated at the earliest time your availability allowed. This doesn't even make sense. If you have to call in at 10 AM, how are they to know the person who is set to come in at noon won't call out? What happened to me on more than one occasion is something like this: It's a Saturday, and all of my friends are going out to eat to celebrate a birthday or something. If I was scheduled for work that day, that would be the end of it; I would just have to tell them I couldn't make it. But instead, I tell them that I'm on call, so I won't know if I work or not until that morning. I usually get called in, so I'm not optimistic. But when I call bright and early and they answer saying they don't need me that day, I'm thrilled. In disbelief, I even make it a point to ask if they're sure. I'm told yes, they're sure, I won't be needed. I excitedly message everyone that I'll actually be able to make it. What luck! I'm in the bathroom getting ready 2 hours later when they call back to tell me they need me to come in, because a cashier went home early. I would usually accept my fate and submit, but this time I point out that they already told me I 100% did not have to come in, so I was about to leave to go out soon for the first time in a while. I'm told that I'm the one on call that day, so I'm the one who has to go in- so I shouldn't have made any plans. Since everything is so uncertain, I changed my availability to just weekends (Friday-Sundays) so that I would have stable and guaranteed days to do school work. Despite this, I would often still get a call during the week at like 8 AM telling me I needed to come in that day. On a day that was not in my availability. During a time they knew I had class. Finally, on to the last bit: self-checkouts are pure evil. Remember the scenario where you're the only person on a cash register with a line full of angry customers who probably hate you and think you're a human/sloth hybrid? Yeah, we're back in that scenario. Now, what if I told you, that while you're responsible for scanning and bagging everything as quickly as possible, typing things in, interacting with the customer in front of you, answering the questions of the customers that walk up to you even though they see you're busy but they couldn't find any other associate in the entire store to ask.....while you're doing all of these things, you're also responsible FOR THE SELF CHECKOUT. Yes, you heard that right. You could be on register #3 because no one had time to count the tills for 1 or 2 yet, and you have to be doing everything else I mentioned PLUS listening for all 4 of the self checkout machines to say "help is on the way!" Help is never on the way. The customer thinks help is on the way, but trust me, it isn't. Sometimes, I would hear the familiar voice call to me, "ID check required," "help is on the way,"- but I would turn to look behind me and no one would be there. Just a lone tumbleweed blowing through the aisle of self checkout machines. I don't know if my store knew this, but someone was supposed to STAND AT THE PODIUM near the self checkout machines. If a customer tried to buy alcohol or something didn't scan right or they had a coupon or anything, someone was supposed to be there to help. But you know who had to help them at MY store? At "MY HARRIS TEETER"~? ME. Or whatever other poor cashier was working that day. And the "help is on the way" or "ID check required" message that the machines alerted any issues with was hardly loud enough to hear if you were standing in front of it, much less if you were standing 20 feet away at your register. SO, you have all these customers in your line who hate you, but you also have 4 people at the self checkout who hate you too because they came in to buy 1 thing and have been standing there for 10 minutes because no one's come over yet to scan their id. Do you lock your register and dash over to maniacally mash the touch screens on the self checkouts as fast as possible, which makes the customer in front of you angry? Or do you stay at your register and tell the customer at U-Scan that someone will be with them shortly before turning back around, alert the clerk/customer service over the PA to make their way to self checkout, and feel the eyes of the angry customers there burning into the back of your skull? At this point, don't even catch the gaze of the customers at self checkout in your peripheral vision, because any eye contact and then they'll just squawk at you "DOES ANYONE WORK HERE?" I wish I didn't. I'm glad I don't anymore.