I've read so many posts on here of people's bad experiences working for kroger. I'm not enjoying my job lately. What has been your experience working for other retailers? Better or worse? I'm thinking of getting a job somewhere else. I'm not happy here & don't think I ever will be. at the end of the day, that is more important to me than pay (I'm making 13.50/hr now)
I've read so many posts on here of people's bad experiences working for kroger. I'm not enjoying my job lately. What has been your experience working for other retailers? Better or worse? I'm thinking of getting a job somewhere else. I'm not happy here & don't think I ever will be. at the end of the day, that is more important to me than pay (I'm making 13.50/hr now)
I am very happy with my job. I am paid well and treated well by my store management team. I am disappointed in how often my coworkers call in.
There is no other job that will even start me close to what I make now as a Department Manager. So, just walking out is out of the question.
Frankly, I should be getting paid a buck more per hour, but my overall Kroger experience has been positive majority of the time.
As far as other retail goes, this is the only grocery store I've ever worked in so I don't know if Wal-mart is better (aside from the wage) but whatever you do NEVER get into clothing retail (See my thread "Jobs You've Had that are WORSE than Kroger." For elaboration as to why.
I actually like working for Kroger. I've been there almost 7 months and can see that management does notice the hard work I do. They do have good benefits if you work there long enough and apply for the benefits when available. Sure I wish I got paid more, who doesn't? Right now I'm getting 40 hours a week and hope it stays that way. Some of the people I work with is another story. I just wish they had the same work ethic I do. It's not the company, it's the people they hire.
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Get to your department, get off your phone, and do your job!
I actually like working for Kroger. I've been there almost 7 months and can see that management does notice the hard work I do. They do have good benefits if you work there long enough and apply for the benefits when available. Sure I wish I got paid more, who doesn't? Right now I'm getting 40 hours a week and hope it stays that way. Some of the people I work with is another story. I just wish they had the same work ethic I do. It's not the company, it's the people they hire.
That comes down to the company, though? They could place in filters to acquire better people. When I used to work Deli, they hired in some guy in his late 70s that could barely handle cleaning a slicer without getting muscle spasms, AND they expected him to close. They hire younger people who really don't care about work ethic, and why? Because that's all they got with what they offer. There is no incentive to have a great work ethic at this company, besides maybe pulling more hours and not because they're rewarding you, but because its simply good for business to have the better people with more hours (from a department head's perspective).
As for being a department manager, that is a decent career path if that's what you want. From my experience, they don't even hire leads or department heads anymore (in my division), they want department clerks taking over those duties. I've seen many great people with ambition get lured into running departments without actually getting the benefits of it. Promises of promotion never happening (only areas that have assistants are front end and grocery, with regular clerks working back up everywhere else).
Strictly benefits and pay, every company I've been to or have researched, have everything Kroger offers and usually more, but by far the biggest thing I've seen is how much labor other companies offer to stores. An example, our store will have 3 Deli clerks working prime time (hello big lines, grab a ticket!), compared to Walmart down the street having 5 and they do about 1/5th of the amount of slicing and way less in sales. Same goes for their produce, for the amount of money Kroger invests in produce, they don't invest the labor (and Walmart's produce is about a quarter of the size, and a horrible plain wet rack). We'd have 1 clerk working from 4pm to 10pm, having to work all tables, wet rack, any cao, cleaning by himself. Meanwhile our local Walmarts have overnight produce workers.
My point being, why work for this company (unless you're already management or have invested years already for benefits), when you can work at any other retailer for similar pay/benefits but with more labor help and less stress because of it? I worked for Kroger for almost 2 years. After a few months, I was asked if I wanted to be Deli back up (obviously yes, because that'd jump me from 9.95 to 14.85 and full time but that didn't matter since I was already pulling 40 from being an exceptional worker.) After a year, and many talks with management and my head (the constant, oh its happening at X time) the stringing along was enough for me. I was going to quit, but then I was offered to be produce back up from the produce head and store manager. So I jumped on that, did that for 6 months, I caught on quickly from prior manager experience so all I had to learn was produce tendencies and and common forecasts of sales. After a couple months I was good to go, I was running things easily without the head (even on vacation and being short on walk outs) But the same stringing was occurring, so I left. Now I'm happy working management for another retailer making almost 3x I was making before, and the job is easier.
I enjoy the Kroger I work at, I think my store manager is a bit of a flake but I don't have too many problems and it is a lot better than when I worked at Wal-Mart where nothing was ever good enough.
it's been sucky for me lately. we're very short staffed on my crew which forces us to go beyond our normal pace. i'm full time so i get 40 hours, but our lead has been making us stay an hour or 2 over nearly every day for the past couple weeks. the money is alright, but i value my free time more. i feel like i'm being run ragged. working six days in a row and then getting a single day off only to return to working 4 days in a row isn't nearly enough recuperation time. i feel like i don't get the proper respect i deserve even though i work very hard. i feel like my boss and management are always giving me the run around whenever i need them to do something for me. i want to do a good job and make my bosses happy, but the workload is so much with so few people that i'm highly considering quitting very soon.
It's getting exponentially worse every day now. The unrealistic expectations are growing day by day. Currently we have remnants from 4 loads sitting in the backroom equaling to about 6-7 pallets and that's with "adequate staffing". Yes there are lazy workers, but what can you expect from minimum wage workers? For regular clerks, it's about the same, but for department heads to be having expectations increased all the time and less and less getting done, falling further and further behind, and having to be the ones to answer to the customer why you're out of half the store, the stress levels are at an all time high. I get approached at least 5 times a year about joining management, but with all the downsides(changing schedules, not having weekends off, changing stores all the time) it's not in my field of options. I am about 18 months from completing my degree and will be out the door when I get it. If I can find something that pays enough prior to that, I will be leaving sooner. The value the few of us overachievers provide far outweighs our compensation and treatment.
Constantly you hear from higherups "you have time for this" but any attempts to reason are like talking to a brick wall. Primarily because their job is to do what their bosses say, not actually be realistic about anything. The company is eating itself from the inside out by not serving the customer. Unless something changes, they will continue to lose the best people they have by not fostering new talent and refusing to acknowledge their shortcomings.
