- The manager at the store I worked at confided that for every employee hour scheduled, the department had to make an ideal $400. He let me know this when I asked for time to get ahead in the department. That is simply unjust.
- Low pay (minimum wage or a few cents above)
- Extremely corporate, with dead-eyed, brainless corporate promotions for employees such as "smile-and-greet" week.
- Raises based on seniority rather than performance
- Employees constantly stressed due to a bare-bones staffing/scheduling paradigm.
- Operates on a strict "points system"--If you're sick, you receive points, which can lead to discharge even if you have a doctor's note.
- Massive amounts of waste (I've seen so much food get thrown away in my short time there that it became difficult to go to work).
- Poor management
Winco has grown because it operates on a skeleton-crew basis--most employees have to do the work of several people, and due to management you're never truly "caught up"--every day is stressful due to this.
Lately Winco has been putting an effort into upping their "customer service" in order to compete and tidy up their image, but they do not want to pay for the extra effort. As someone with a strict and uncompromising service attitude, I found it extremely difficult to offer exceptional service and do the jobs of several people while working there.
Waste is on an industrial scale with this company--why compost/donate/recycle when its so much easier to throw it in the trash? Outside of some cardboard and plastic, everything is just tossed without a care.
Many of the people I knew while there were actively looking for other jobs. A depressing amount were on food stamps, despite being employed.
Winco is vehemently anti-union, for good reason. Many of the employee issues that occur at places like Walmart are happening at Winco, but it's not recognized because the company is not as large.
