- Pay isn't enough for the amount of stress induced
- Payroll crunches are a near daily occurrence
- Tremendous level of backtracking, inconsistency and unnecessary micromanagement from corporate office
- Those in corporate are dramatically out of touch with the consequences their decisions have on the stores
- Upper management is a revolving door (currently on 5th president in as many years)
- Operations specialists are not so much out to help you as they are to tell you what you're doing wrong (as much as they'd like to say otherwise), and there is seldom a mention of what you're doing well
- In position to (through their own poor decision making) squander the windfall that came their way after Dominick's went out of business
I was paid in the low to mid $40K/year range. Considering the amount of sales I managed in a given week, they could have afforded more and everyone knows that. When coupled with the amount of stress being put on managers these days, talent retention is going to be abysmal. People are leaving left and right these days and it's hard to blame them.
In recent memory, it is very common (in fact almost a daily or weekly occurrence) for a district manager to call the store director, tell him that $2000 needs to be cut from the week's labor by the end of the day (which is, for the record, a violation of union contract rules - once a schedule is posted, it's set in stone unless permission is granted by the employee to have that shift cut). Then, upon a visit from said DM or an operaitons specialist, the store will be berated because the place isn't properly faced, not well stocked, not enough checkouts open, etc... HELLO??? People don't work for free and the cans don't magically appear on the shelves! People put them there and you need to pay them!!!
The merchandising team is constantly backtracking on how displays must be built. Having "wraps" around pallet displays is OK one week, but then the next it needs to go back to no wraps, just "clean drop displays". Then, they changed their mind again on that. I left right after they backtracked on this issue for the fourth (!) time. Also, store directors and department managers are berated for not changing things RIGHT AWAY when a decision comes down from the office. Long story short here - a consistent message would be vastly helpful to associates, managers, and most importantly the customer base.
Corporate office doesn't seem to realize the consequences of the crunches they are putting on the stores. My location's payroll had been decreased by 20% since arriving there over the course of just a few months. When we got visited, the DM said that the store looked terrible in so many ways. NO, REALLY??? Cut out all the help and that tends to happen!
The company is about to be on president #5 in the past 5 years. With each regime change comes new ways to do things and new visions, which is a huge contributor to the aforementioned backtracking/inconsistencies and lack of understanding the corporate office shows. One vision and set of methods doesn't even have the chance to settle in before it is uprooted and replaced. Hopefully for the company's (and employee's) sake, some stability sets in soon.
If the company keeps going on the track it's headed, it will wreck itself. Prices are going up, yet there is no help to be found in the stores and out of stocks are more and more common as a result. If Jewel continues down this track, all the new competition in the area will destroy them. It is scary to say this, but the same mistakes that Supervalu's ownership made are being repeated. Considering that Supervalu nearly destroyed the chain, I got out at just the right time.
