I worked at two different locations in the same city. At the first one, the mates and captains were kind, funny, chill, and amiable. At the second one, the mates and captain were awkward, fake, and rude. There's generally comraderie amongst the crew regardless of the mates and captains, but if yours were horrendous like mine were, they may make it so you can hardly talk to your coworkers without getting in trouble. My advice is to shop at the location you wish to work for and ask the crew that's ringing you up if this is a good location to work at; avoid asking older employees because they've most likely been there for 10-15 years and have no plans to move up or leave the company and are extremely loyal to people who genuinely just see them as work horses. Ask young people. The younger the better.
We had our captain and mates bragging about sales during a PANDEMIC while we, the crew, were the ones interacting with customers, soothing their panic, trying to gently tell them to give us 6ft distance, and more. Like, of course sales were good, it's a grocery store operating during a pandemic where people are scared for their health, their lives, their jobs, and their futures. Not really the time to be gloating.
We also were told we couldn't wear GLOVES, let alone masks, until well into the pandemic. We were told we couldn't come in if we wanted to wear masks or gloves, and this is information you can look up. They also tried to suppress information about employees getting COVID until they couldn't anymore (AKA, until it was too obvious to ignore how many crew members were missing/out sick).
Also, for women, watch out for male upper management who want to, uh, blur the lines between what's appropriate and what's inappropriate in work relationships.
