Poor communication between supervisors. Frequent sexual harassment from male customers, poor response from store captain about concerns. Captain refuses to ban a customer who is known to sexually harass every woman who works there.
The opportunity to take on more responsibility in the store does not come with a raise in pay. Not very motivating. Someone who is a section leader is paid the same as a slacker person.
TJ's makes a big deal about how often it promotes from within, however when crew members are promoted to mates, they only get a $1 raise (at least in NYC). The only real pay increase they get is from the increased hours, but they are doing so much more work and taking on so much stress. Meanwhile, when they hire mates from outside of TJ's, they are able to negotiate their salary and are able to start at a much higher salary, a salary that you would have to work at TJ's for at least a decade to be able to earn through raises. Most mates seem perpetually exhausted and stressed to the max. This is not the way to hold onto quality people! It is demoralizing to know that your peer is making more money than you ever will for the same exact job, when they actually start the job with much less knowledge of our products, customers, and culture. If you don't compensate them more fairly, they will leave as soon as they can to get another job with their new management experience. I am not a mate, but this strikes me as wildly unfair and also an unwise management policy. I have known many mates who stepped down and went back to being a crew member because the insane stress was not worth the measly increase in pay.
