H‑E‑B is definitely a place I work. I really didn’t enjoy the experience much. The people who make it great are really amazing and kind and the people who didn’t… well, there’s a reason I’m looking to no longer work there. For the record, I work as a “Curbie” which means I work in curbside. Completely different management and completely different people. I basically collected items in orders from big carts and then took them out to the right car. My main issue is I get blamed for basically anything, even if it wasn’t my fault. For instance, if my order had bread that was smashed and I didn’t notice it during collection, and the customer noticed and complained, I’d be in trouble. As well as if I DO notice it, I’d have to get new bread and that would make my “retrieve time” longer. Both you get penalized for. If your retrieval time is longer, you don’t really get punished, but you definitely get shamed. Every day they’d put up a printed out time sheet that shows if you “met expectations” or not. It was painfully obvious if you didn’t because they would highlight it in different colors depending on if you did or not. I, being generally slow and getting various complications almost every day always got 3 minutes or more, which was considered “needing improvement”. Not to mention the “top Curbies” which had the shortest (AKA “best”) time would get on a slideshow that would go on a large tv display to “reward” them. That being said, personally I didn’t find it to be very “rewarding” as you would not get a bonus or anything other than your name on a screen. Word of any issues management had with you also got around very quickly. I got in trouble for a small thing, which I will not list as to stay anonymous, but all my coworkers knew before I did. I don’t know how they found out but it was pretty embarrassing. Not to mention they put up the reviews you get at the end of the day and everyone can look up who got the negative reviews or not using the app. Speaking of the app, it SUCKS. The app curbside uses is called “Curbside”, and it’s constantly glitching and making things a lot harder than it needed to be. Some other various complaints: pay is low compared to other, similar stores You’d have 3 managers at once, and they’d have very poor communication between themselves. This ended in me getting in trouble for things because one said one thing and the other manager said the other thing. They’re so desperate for employees due to the new store tripling the amount of people needed that many people just… don’t do anything. And don’t get fired because they’re too needed. If the managers don’t nag these people constantly you’d be doing double the work to try to make up for it. We are always constantly overstaffed or understaffed, no in between. Either we will have 5 people just standing around at once or we’ll have not enough people and everyone will be rushing constantly. Communication was very poor. If you’re the one to report any problems (such as water being on the floor, needing to be mopped up or anything like that) you’d basically be assumed you were the one who did it. The way things are on the order line is that every person has a scheduled window. Well, people wouldn’t come in that window and come late. This caused a lot of random rush times where every parking slot was filled and there was 5 people working. Good luck if you’re transgender, your name is required to be your legal name in the system so no matter what people will know your dead name. People misgender my trans coworker(s) often, despite one of them even having a pronoun accessory on their badge. Sometimes in front of their face. This included management, unfortunately. If you put in scheduled hours they 100% will put you for those scheduled hours. So you might be working 5 days in a row if you put a wide availability. That being said I managed to get it worked out and I got it down to a more manageable level. Some of the people there are generally unpleasant to work with and would seemingly have issues with me/others for no reason. Having autism or any kind of disability also is usually not very welcome. One of my co-workers is very obviously autistic and they get treated differently. They often get ignored and treated as “other”, and is often treated as a child, almost. I try my best to be friendly to them and treat them as I would any other coworker, as I know what it’s like to be othered. Overall, I would say I recommend H‑E‑B as an employer IF you’re an average person who doesn’t have disabilities or is trans, etc. however I would say that the main store is a LOT more well-managed than curbside. But that makes sense because curbside is pretty new.
