Vons reviews

Where to start? The pay for the amount of tasks and stress is very very unnerving. I work 40 hours a week for this company only to be constantly late on bills and can never save a dime. Its always pay check to paycheck. I am a manager that made less than 20,000 dollars for the year of 2013. That is just sick. Management informs you of changes made AFTER you get in trouble for it, example cashing out a lotto ticket for more than 40$ I have done this for years pending I have the amount in my till and not exceeding and astronomical amounts. Store managers are run to the ground, In the five years I have worked for vons i have had five or more store managers two of which have had medical break downs, and one involving death. To say the least Im not saying vons sent this person to the grave but they do add a monstrous amount of stress on every level. There is never enough hours to go around so your store and fuel sites are horridly unmanned. for example a fuel station should have at least two people closing for SAFETY REASONS. This case works for some sites cause of their size. But most stores and stations are run with what I would like to call a skeleton crew. How can you make the customers happy if 9 out of 10 employees are truly and utterly unhappy about their jobs and themselves. I am 30 years old and I have been to the hospital for stress and heart problems racking my head around why we take this stress and why we keep coming back. I can only speak for myself and I have arrived at this conclusion. I am told everyday that something is wrong there is no end to the stacking problems that range from HORRIBLE I.T. issues (these include daily system crashes) lack of moral, motivation and scare tactics. I will admit some employees just are bad at working and probably should just develop better working skills but I have one employee who works to the bone, they make 9.75 for almost ten years of work. What is right about that. What because they work in fuel (which generates good numbers for the stores they are attached to) they dont deserve to make a decent wage, and what i mean by decent is the ability to support yourself. Which I cant even at my manager rate which is not much higher than my highest paid employee. No one takes responsibility the trend i see is VONS/Safeway is taking a giant leap into their own demise. Most employees i talk to barley feel good about themselves. Also corporate makes us do this world class customer service and whats sad when they are in our stores ripping us a new one they cant even say hi to employees if the employees say hi to them. I have experienced this with district managers and the division president. Doubt they ever even worked in a retail store at all. Its rude and disheartening to have your corporate leaders look at you like your the plague. Dont work here unless you are a glutton for punishment and mental battery.

No employee discount (there's a coupon once you spend $500, but that's really not very exciting), the union dues make your salary negligible, the absurdly fancy uniform (tie, white shirt, black non-slip leather shoes...and the alternative, hideous-brown, Vons shirt is an obnoxious option because they make you buy it from them), the fact that being employed "part time" (even if you work 40 hours a week) gives them an excuse to give you a highly irregular schedule (posted weekly), the work can be extremely strenuous (heavy lifting, running around trying to get tasks done on a tight schedule, with demanding supervisors and customers often asking you for conflicting things), and the mind-numbing monotony. There's too much focus on paperwork and keeping up to standards (for mystery shoppers, out-of-stock audits, safety observations of fellow employees), and it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you're there to provide a service for a customer, not just to prove you're being productive for the company. It's alienating, soul-crushing work. You're a number for a corporate system, and they track your hours by having you punch that number into a clock, watching you on their cameras with a distrust that's merited because they treat you like such a commodity as a worker that of course you're going to want to defy them by untucking your shirt or taking a sample, asserting your humanity in whatever tiny way you can manage. They can fire you for no reason within your first two months of work (a "probation period" everyone faces), and don't pay you any more for working holidays or weekends (until you've worked for the company for a year, at which point you get time-and-a-half and a *whole week* of paid vacation). The 401K option is crap (no employer matching), and so is the healthcare (as far as I can tell, from having elected to not even bother). Customers can be rude and scary, and I've been grabbed, yelled at, and "accidentally" brushed against in an inappropriate manner. I have burns and scrapes and a perpetually sore back from the heavy lifting and from dealing with hot and heavy pans and sharp plastic edges of packages (also, I'm just clumsy), but I know if I tell a supervisor about any of these things I'll just create more hassle and paperwork and waste time for little or no compensation, probably just creating a new set of safety regulations that everyone will ignore (like they already ignore many of the things about how to safely lift heavy objects and when to wear mesh cutting gloves).