Kroger

I just got a job at Kroger working the Deli. Hows that compare to bagging/pushing carts? I'll be making sandwiches and cooking some of the food and keeping the area clean etc.

It's infinitely better. I mean, it's shit work. Hard work. You still have to deal with obnoxious people and incompetent coworkers. But at least you don't have to exercise the patience that cashiers do when it comes to slow and/or rude customers. And you don't have to be on cart duty. Of all the possible jobs in the grocery, the one you got is pretty decent.

Cool, I figured it beats doing produce or something.

I've got two places of employment near me most convenient to work at and within my skill level...

A working class super market and a burger king

Which should I go for? Keep in mind that although I'm not a sperg, I'd prefer not to talk with anybody.

security

3rd shift stock if at all possible
even better if they close the store at like 12 or whatever

Kroger's are some of the best grocery stores I've been in. Could be much worse. You could be working at Meijer.

meat>seafood>produce>frozen>bakery>damn near everything else>deli

When I was a assistant manager at Walmart in division 24 (meat, deli, lunchmeat, seafood) I always felt horrible every time I hired someone to work in the deli. I wouldn't work full time in the deli for the salary I made let alone the $9/hr I was paying them.

same
the "loaves" of """meat""" packed off to customers puttering around in mobility scooters is far too depressing

>americans will eat this

It's trrrible, it'd the worst, customers are lined up all day and you are doing the same shitty thing for hours on end, sweating and dealing with ass hole customers. Good luck

Walmart =/= Kroger famalam

Kroger is worse because more people buy deli meat from kroger

Shitty deli work is all the same. Floors like an ice rink by closing time, day shift comes into a clean kitchen and leaves it trashed for seconds to clean up, hot ass fryers, make sandwiches when you've barely got the time, cleaning and sanitizing slicers every hour even though you're too busy to stop but it's gotta be done, put the truck up with only one other person working, make more sandwiches, stock the presliced stuff, billions of party trays on holidays, make more sandwiches, stock the fancy cheese even though you should be cleaning, price changes, seriously who is eating all these fucking sandwiches, check the log and throw the chicken out, fry more chicken, grease burn, hands have jungle rot from gloves, WE'RE OUT OF SANDWICHES AGAIN WHAT THE FUCK STEVE, stickers ran out in the scale but no time to deal with that, "Can I get a deli tray right now?", "Hey, no one is in the bakery can you take a cake order for me?", fuck these sandwiches I give up, oh there's a delivery here, when is the last time this fryer was cleaned properly this chicken looks like shit, fucking greasy hot ass rotisserie chickens, stir the salads, no one wants to buy the presliced meat because they think it's been there for a week even though we slice it every morning, what's that smell in the cold case? make seconds clean the case, oh the new guy didn't know to change the expiration on every single weighed item to it's proper date and customers are bitching, we haven't ordered sanitizer in months which means it's not being used, the sanitizer strips are wet and ruined again, where's the thermometer calibration log?, what's sticky on this binder?

Not that I'm jaded though.

Tell them bring back the burritos and corn dogs.

I never worked carts, but Deli is hard fucking work. You deal with people being snobs about food. You get loaded with extra shit to do and management just looks at you and tells you "well it has to get done" even if you are short-handed. If you just started you will be closing and working nights & depending on the location will leave at 10-11pm.

It is a secure as fuck job, and if you have nothing else you do, it's great. If you have a half a brain and realize that deli is the bottom of the drain that has to deal with shit from nearby areas(Bakery will leave dishes for you, chicken shop won't help half the time) it can suck. If you can just let shit roll off your back and just work, it's all right.

I left even though I got a pay downgrade because my hours weren't stuck at 10 hours a week. You will get shit hours and then get called in all the fucking time, since because lolunion you have to share a set # of hours with all your coworkers. And, being the newest, you get the shit end of the stick very time.

Do your best to learn your measurements because you will get people bringing you random shit(I need a 2 5oz blocks of x cheese) and you will have to eyeball weight that shit on a scale and it will gum up everything. Or you'll have someone bring you a summer sausage and except you to unwrap it and slice it for them(you're not supposed to but somehow it happens anyway and god forbid you don't do it). Union dictates everything, including how and when you get a pay raise. So if you start at a higher pay, you have to way a long fucking time to get a pay raise again. (Ex: I started at a higher then min wage, and I'd have to wait over a year to get any sort of pay raise due to the pay rate scheduling).

I worked at a Kroger deli for ~4months, through the holiday season. I'll stick around in the thread if you have any specific questions.

also this guy is absolutely correct

I just got off my welcome shift (4hrs). Wasn't allowed to use any of the slicers so that kind of sucked since I was fairly useless half the time. Wasn't much for me to clean as well. I'm only hired on part time so if I get fucked with hours it won't be too horrible, I'll only be scheduled for the weekends during the fall.

Doesn't seem too horrible, I don't think it'll be worse than my last job at the city's biggest movie theater. That was terrible.

Was your meat cabinet (the display case you pull the meat out from) all disorganized and messy? It would make things 10x faster if everything in that was organized and faster to find. I'm thinking I'll try to organize it somehow.

Our meat cabinet was somewhat organized. One section for kroger brand meats, then kroger brand cheese, other sections for boar's head meat/cheese and another section for other shit. We had enough counterspace to basically do this
[Boars head Roast beef>Boars head ham](same case, just different sides/doors), [Boars head Salamis>Chickens/Turkeys], [Boars head cheese](entire case for this), [Kroger Brand Salami/Ham>Kroger Chicken/Turkey], [Kroger Cheese>nasty cheapo brand shit]
You still had to dig through bagged meats/cheeses but at least they were easy to find once you remembered. REALLY focus on memorizing your input numbers, and look at how the meat/cheeses look so you can at a glance recognize it and take it out instead of flipping it around looking for a label.

We also were bossed around by the Boar's head people because if you don't bend over backwards for them they'll fuck off and not let you carry their shit. So they also dictated why our display case looked the way it did.

The only thing is that certain things we only got some of and were almost always out of stock, so eventually other things would get shoved in that spot. Then the original thing would come back and you'd wonder where it was supposed to go. But that was mostly a problem when someone was filling up the front of the case(what customers see)
Also we had no way of seeing sale prices because they were stuck on the glass on the other side of the counter. If a customer would come up to me asking if X was on sale I'd have to throw something on a scale and print out a sticker to see if it was because it took too long to go around the counter and check. That, and it's much easier to say "well the system said it is" then to look for a sales sticker that may or may not be there.

Good luck trying to get it organized. Unless management is on board with you, people will bitch and change it back to how it was because that's how they remembered it.

Don't be the brand new guy that tries to change things. Be the gray man.

worked meat & seafood dept of Kroger for a year.
It was alright, didn't want to die but its far from a "good" job. From what I witnessed, it was faaar better than deli. Meat dept was smaller with only like 8 employees, all dudes, mostly kinda "redneck" but not full-blown. Deli was line 20 employees, almost all of which were super gossipy dramatic high-school girls and middle aged women. Cant say whether my store was representative in general tho.

as grocery chains go kroger is no worse than the others. which means its still pretty shit. The management will fuck over employees in any way possible so long as the customer is happy. Long hours, hard work, short breaks and very little in the way of legal, sanctioned perks (10% off Kroger brand groceries! wow, this really makes up for spending an hour cleaning fat out of the drains every night!).

I did learn a bit about meat and fish, which cut is good for what, how to part out a chicken very quickly, how to quickly sharpen knives, etc. But theres very little "butchery" going on, almost everything the depts receive in Kroger is already more or less ready for the customer.

This. Good intentions aside-- being the cunt that comes in and doesn't know shit but has lots of 'changes' in mind is annoying as fuck. Focus on learning quickly and not fucking up. After your trained then go about that reorganization task or whatever

Flash backs to my first job. Well done. This is all exactly right.

I work in Kroger Deli/Chicken Shop, been here for about a year.

It blows.

If you're in Deli and they ask if you would want to work chicken shop, don't. Avoid it like the plague.

This is one of the worst jobs I've worked at and I've worked quite a lot of jobs.

Just like one user said, the old morning shift hags will come in and leave a mess/fuck you over for the night. Most of the time on an 8 hour shift I don't even take the breaks that I'm allowed just because of all the shit I have to do.

Be prepared to have everyone of your co-workers call in all the time, so if you want more hours then it'll be good for you. I've stopped answering my phone because I'm tired of covering their asses on my days off so they can have an extra day off.

Some management is ok but most of them are assholes who don't care about how understaffed you are and things like that.

Do stocking or meat/seafood if possible.

I did this for a little over a year. Our store was a high-sale store. July 4th yielded a million dollars from our store alone. I lost a lot of weight taking that job because it was fast paced work.

The deli is a lot more work. I never worked at Kroger, I worked at Key Food and Stop and Shop. With the deli you have to clean the slicers, sweep, mop, do the salads. With bagging/cashier all you do is bag and check people out.

kroger has some issues. most of it having to do with lax leadership and terrible coworkers. some departments get over time some don't. i worked in the bakery, we only had one cake decorator and all of the overtime went to her.
heaven help you if you work closing. you will be doing everyone else's unfinished work.
my stay at kroger was eventful to say the least.

Produce is the best department to work in.

T. Experienced grocery cuck

Also deli sucks. You have all the same work and side jobs as any other departments but your expected to stop what your doing and serve customers on top of that. If you try and finish your work a line of pissy customers quickly forms. So then you spend all day serving them and management chews your ass out because none of the other work has been done and he/she thinks you've been slacking off all day.

I worked at HyVee in the food service departments.

This man speaks the truth.

Shelf stock. Work early morning, don't socialize.

Some people suggest doing stock.

Don't.

The job itself is OK, although starting work at 5:00 already sucks and you will carry heavy loads day in and out. If you can zone out then great but it is not a job that really gets easier.

The real issue with stocking is that you are permanently stuck at the very bottom of the totem pole. There is really no room for advancement. Even deli is higher then you in the pecking order. And even if you advance within the department, you will still be stuck unloading trucks at 5:00 am. At least you can look forward to easier shifts in other departments and have a chance of making management if you start at the bottom elsewhere.

tl:dr If you enjoy stocking great, because that is all you will ever do. Go elsewhere if you at least want a chance at a career.

>any retail position
>career

As others have hinted at it is a real slog at the beginning. That is the whole point. But if you stick with it it gets easier and you get paid more. It is one of the few ways to have the potential to get "middle class" without college.

Produce managers that i work with have always been pretty based.

I make 20 an hour being a produce clerk right now too

Cart pushing is absolute hell on Earth personified.
Who gives a shit about the baggers. You can't scratch a car bagging food.

>20 an hour

How? Did you have a job that payed comparably before that or what?

We have those at my store

So one of the guys that got hired on with me got put in produce and said he might want to trade positions. Should I do it or is produce a meme?