Zero communication, Managers are clueless, Everything is inefficient
Pros
The job itself was satisfying in that I really enjoy merchandising and I was basically given creative freedom to do whatever I wanted in the department from day one. I worked quicker and harder than anyone else in the department and made everything look so much nicer and more shoppable, and I took great pride in that. The customers are always so sweet and wonderful and I loved chatting with them and helping them navigate the store.
Cons
Managers were nowhere to be seen the majority of the time. I had started a job I wasn't familiar with, and almost never had a manager nearby to help with issues. I was left totally by myself much of the time. My job was to stock the food department, so I had to cut open boxes the majority of the time, but the mandatory gloves they gave me were way too big and I had to buy my own. Not only that, but instead of emptying the box and placing the product on the shelf, I had to cut a window in the dirty cardboard box and put the whole thing on the shelf, which not only wasted a ton of time, but the boxes were dusty and smelly and very unsanitary and difficult to shop out of. It looked awful and wasted a ton of space. Planograms looked like they hadn't been re-done in years, and they insisted I cannot flex anything into a planogram even if it had been left empty for weeks, so aisles were often empty and unappealing. And of course when I cut my finger very badly while dealing with a glued up box, no one offered me a bandage or showed me where the first aid kit was, I just got written up while I bled on the floor. If I finished stocking what product was on the floor, I wasn't allowed to use a pallet jack and get more product, I was forced to wander around the store to find a sleepy manager to bring more product out for me even though I could do it faster myself. The store was also filthy from top to bottom, floor had probably never been washed since opening day, and fixtures were impossible find because they weren't organized anywhere. Just a completely mismanaged mess, which makes the customer and employee suffer. For minimum wage, there are much nicer places to work if you work hard, hustle hard, and want to be loyal to a company that's loyal to you.
