I love my job. Working for this company "D i e r b e r g s" is like night and day from working for Gerbes/Kroger.
D i e r b e r g s is this a "High End" privately owned grocery store chain. From day one every single manager 3 or 4 came up to all of us in orientation and introduced themselves and said how happy they were to have all of us. I was started out at $3.00 dollars more an hour than what Gerbes in Camdenton was paying me and from my very first day at work every single employee came up and introduced themselves and shook my hand and couldn't have been more helpful and nice.
The management treats you with respect and they will actually come up to you and tell you how much they appreciate you and thank you for coming to work. Every night before they leave they will walk up and tell everybody goodnight and to have a good one. I see management bagging groceries and sometimes pitching in to check people out and they never act like they are better than anybody else. It is honestly the very best place I have ever worked.
Gerbes in Camdenton on the other hand is the very worst place I have ever worked, from day one co-workers were rude and snotty and if you had a problem or question while checking somebody out they acted like they were all put out to help you deal with it. The management from the very top to Mid Dept managers always treated you like you were beneath them and like you were a piece of dog crap on the bottom of their shoe. In all my 50 some years I have never seen anything like this in a company until Gerbes.
Nobody ever talked to you like a human being, you never got your breaks on time and they worked the snot out of you doing multiple jobs and menial tasks like washing windows ect.. "Which would have been fine if I were hired on as a window washer" Can you say, Company to cheap to hire a maintenance person? you were even asked to do management tasks for minimum wage because some lazy manager didn't feel like doing their job. Example~calling every Tom, Dick and Harry to get a shift covered when somebody called in sick in surrounding departments because the department manager was to lazy to manage their own department.
I absolutely hated and dreaded going to this job everyday. At Gerbes in Camdenton I worked at the customer service desk, I was a cashier and courtesy clerk and if you were caught standing around for 2 seconds you were a stocker just long enough for you to get a box open and to figure out where said contents of box went and then you were paged to check again and you better be johnny on the spot about it. You never had 2 seconds to catch your breath. Through out the whole work day it was stress, despair and chaos ping-ponging from service desk to cashier to courtesy clerk to stocker to service desk again, what a joke! run, run, run, do this and do that. OMFG!
Long shifts from morning to dark, Always split days off and never 2 days off in a row unless you requested it and always working 11 and 12 days in a row without a day off. You were never allowed you to have a bottle of water at your check stand so good luck staying hydrated throughout the day on a 8 hour shift and forget it if you had to use the restroom after working 6 hours with no break and if you don't scan at least 21 to 25 items per minute you were threatened with termination. I constantly felt used and abused there and never appreciated, pretty much just a number.
There were countless and endless time wasting til audits because nobody ever had one til to themselves throughout the day, I.E. they constantly moved cashiers to different check-stands throughout the day. Makes zero sense! and way poor management skills there.
You better be quick learning when being trained to do something because they show you one freaking time and you better get it because all the sudden you are now in charge and closing up the store, with no manager in site!
I have one job at D i e r b e r g s and that is a cashier, period end of story! I do a lot of standing around waiting for a customers to check out but I am not complaining. I have time to actually breath, catch my breath and help, greet and interact with customers walking by and since I have my very own check-stand and til from start of shift to end of shift there is no such thing as a til audit, I am the only one accountable for my til at the end of the day when I turn it in. I drink at least 3 or 4 bottles of water per shift to which I am allowed to have at my check-stand and if I have to use the bathroom I just go and use it and come back. No threat of termination if you are not scanning 21 to 25 items per item here because they don't even keep track of that nonsense.
I usually have a couple days off in a row and then another day off later in the week. I can actually have a home life and a job. Did I mention, I LOVE THIS PLACE!
Oh and the customers are a total different class of customers, they rarely complain about anything they just want to get their shop on and hit their condos and second homes and enjoy a weekend at the Lake. I have been here over a month and still haven't processed one single WIC check.
I could go on and on about why Gerbes sucks and why D i e r b e r g s is awesome but bottom line it is the management.
Bad management always trickles down and Good management always trickles down. Gerbes=Bad and D i e r b e r g s=Good.
Thanks for your post. I am really happy for you! The problems you describe are way too common at Kroger stores everywhere........and you are SO right..........bad management trickles down, as does good management.
Dierbergs are everywhere here...and I am thinking about applying for one. I heard they don't run their departments on a skeleton crew like Kroger does. They also pay better.
There are only three Kroger stores in this state, and I am pretty sure the reason being is the fierce competition from other local chains. One of them even does the mega event sales like we do. Pretty sure at some point there won't be any Kroger stores here at all.
