I'm a grocery store employee

Would you say it's worth pursuing this type of career

If you stay at the bottom then no. I actually only started working at this place to pay my college tuition fees years ago, I never qualified for financial aid from the government. When I got my degree in accounting my boss told me that I can move high up with that so I did. I was actually just gonna get one of those cushy office jobs, sit on my ass all day with a computer and make money. With my current position and seniority (and with the worker union backing me) I am actually making enough to live probably more comfortably than I would have if I left the store to pursue another job.
I'm doing accounting at the store so my degree and education are being wasted, but I also have to do shit like stocking, cashier, and tagging products. The worst is facing, that's where we go down every single aisle and make the products "face" forward and up front so like when you see all those soup cans on the shelf all nice like that's me and people like me doing that. All these extra tasks is why I get paid well, I actually only work 35 hour weeks and I still make enough money to support a housewife and a kid if I ever get hitched.
Work is still a bitch though since it's a standing job, especially when you're bagging because then you get all the grunt work like bringing in carts from the parking lot. Plus from a financial point grocery stores like this make a sliver of profit after all the cash is sorted through expenses so I've had this dread in the back of my mind that the store will close down if we ever dip in the red too long.
Fun Fact: if you steal a 2-liter of like Pepsi from a store, it takes the store at least three more to make back the money lost on that.

I do inventory for grocery stores like you guys. The international/spice section can get pretty tough.

Soo... 10 years ahead, where will you be?

Dead, hopefully.
Then my wife can support her own son.

I meant to say that "my degree and education aren't being wasted". I'll throw another free story out there because of that typo.
>Years ago, still a bag boy
>One of the cashiers calls for "security, O.M.E." over the intercom, which meant that a shoplifter was about to get away
>Spot two thug-looking guys walking out the door with three bags of frozen shrimp, one wearing a red baseball cap
>Shadow them out the door. Two other baggers are right at the entrance and they're just shooting the shit they don't even notice
>Look at them while pointing at the shrimp guys, trying to silently tell them that they're shoplifting. At that point one of the thugs turns around and sees that I noticed them
>They book for it and, because I was a hotheaded 18 year old, I chase them across the entire parking lot when store policy states that we're supposed to use "non-aggressive, hands-off methods" to combat shoplifting
>Start catching up to them, halfway through almost got the red hat by the collar but can't close the gap
>Yell out "THE FUCK YOU RUNNIN' FOR?" in frustration at him, and either because it scared the shit out of him or to try to throw me off he dropped one of the shrimp bags he was holding onto
>They're almost out the parking lot and some dude that came out of Popeye's stops me from chasing them across the freeway, letting the shoplifters get away
>Apparently this guy is part of the undercover shrink prevention unit that's supposed to stop shoplifters at our store, and even though he was on a lunch break he was pissed at how I handled the situation
>He brings me back to the store and tells my boss what happened, and the only thing my boss had to say was "was it worth risking your job for some shrimp?"

How quickly did you lose sympaty for poor people using EBT?

I almost landed an assistant manager position last year at another location, it was for a metropolitan city and the store was at least four times bigger than this one I'm at so I would have been given an equally bigger wage. I never got it though, instead what happened was that a sister store owned by the parent company closed down so they just moved the management staff from there. I don't know more about it than that.
I probably will just replace my boss or the assistant manager here in the future just like how I replaced the accountant, it could happen. Like I said before though, this job pays well so I don't feel a need to move out of this.

Why do you think you're relevant? All you do is stack shelves. You are interchangeable.
Shit, I work in a warehouse, and my job is more crucial to things running smoothly than yours, shelf-stacker.

Have you tried doing your job properly? Putting things where they're meant to be? Not kicking things around? Not fucking the stock up?

Have you not learned to check before closing doors to cold storage areas?

Qfc?

EBT users I don't really have anything against. They buy their groceries and get their free brown paper bags, and then they either pay the remainder or they take what's left of their EBT cash back. Yeah most of them are black but at least these guys aren't stealing or holding us up.
It's when we get WiC users is when I get miffed. They always get the wrong shit and then they hold up the line trying to argue about it. A couple months back this one guy tried buying fucking almond milk when his WiC states "One Gallon Brand X or Brand Y 1% Milk" and he was completely adamant about getting the almond milk. I made the bagger help out another checkout while I spent at least 10 minutes with this guy until he left with only his WiC.

Yeah I know I was in a hurry because I wanted to get the last of the invoices done so I could go home early. Still, I didn't think there'd be anybody in there, I wasn't thinking worst case scenario at the time.

You didn't read the thread at all.

I'm not allowed to say either way, the parent company actually employs people to monitor social media sites to see if employees are talking about their jobs in-depth so they can then fire their asses.

>Getting this mad over a thread about grocery stores

How do you deal with the sleep schedule? Just roll with it?

For those of you who don't know, taking your clothes off is common for people suffering from hypothermia. It makes you feel really hot once you start freezing to death.

You work for a Kroger company don't you

I like to think of Kroger sifting through Veeky Forums threads and tracing IPs to fire disgruntled cashiers

you need some counseling bruh

When I'm walking down an aisle and i happen to see an item that isnt facing forward i always correct them. I know that job is traumatizing so i try to make it easier for you guys.

you work at kroger. i recognize those fucking tags.

We had those at qfc, too. They are one of Kroger's regional chains, which leads me to believe he works at one. Especially since he's such a paranoid fuck about Kroger doxxing him, considering qfc mostly exists just the state of Washington.

Imagine what it must be like to be a low class wage slave. The very thought makes me shudder

who hurt you?

>employs people to monitor social media sites to see if employees are talking about their jobs in-depth so they can then fire their asses.

talk about a dream job. just read shitposts all day and every now and then you get to fire someone

>being this mad about a grocery worker

First you'd have to imagine not having daddy's money.

In other words, you are located on the west coast USA, and you work for either Food 4 Less or Smith's Food & Drug

Can't believe it's over. The last episode didn't have enough kanna

>The international/spice section can get pretty tough.

If you are a dumb fuck who keeps neglecting those sections. I work those exact sections at my store overnights and they have gotten nothing but compliments from the big bosses who walk through our store during their visits. They always make comments like "this is by far the best bake aisle we have visited in this district so far". And these assholes are picky as shit and find any little flaw to point out. So getting a good compliment from them must be worth a damn.

Hijacking thread with a funny story from when I used to work at a grocery store

>be me
>peak degeneracy
>just got arrested for felony drug possession, drug distribution, DUI, etc...
>court case takes 2 years to get resolved so in the meantime I just work part time jobs while everything is getting figured out
>get hired at a decently 'upscale' grocery store called the Big Y (new englanders will know this. i used to work at shaws which is comparatively pleb status)
>they like me, get hired as a bread clerk
>bread clerk has a retarded amount of responsibilities but I had no idea going into it
>have to manage the entire bread inventory, manage orders, stocking, displays, etc...
>mfw have to manage vendors too who are all on meme liberal operated cut throat outsourced routes because bread companies are too cheap to do it in-house
>using a ton of ketamine at this point in time
>have to come in 4am every morning to keep track of inventory and put in orders
>dont even have the energy to simply count so i just make estimates instead or random numbers completely
>massively over-order bread we dont need
>manager tells me we are having a sale on english muffins this week so order a lot
>order 250 bagels
>manager asks me what the fuck are we going to do with all these bagels
>mfw he doesnt know i ordered a shit ton of other bread too
>customers coming in asking where are the english muffins, they saw an ad that it was on sale for $0.99 cents
>grocery manager asks me whats going on
>tell him dunno
>meanwhile im just doing more ketamine in the bathroom and at home waiting for this to all go away
>one day i finally man up and decide to just pull the store manager in a room and tell him im going to prison for drug trafficking and have to quit
>he confusingly mutters 'o-okay' and i quit

always wondered what those fuckers thought of me after I had left.

Hello OP, fellow grocery wage cuck here. Do you take pictures of the odd things you encounter in your job as well? Just about everybody I work with pull out their phones to take pictures of messes customers leave behind and I've collected a few myself. Can you share a few?

Imagine being such a deluded poorfag you think being wealthy is a detriment lmao

This could be a good Veeky Forums version of 'user works IT' if you padded it a bit.
>hide the extra bread in the ceiling
>put bar code stickers for bread over the codes on random products to spread the losses around

OP, you must have shit the bed during college, or this grocery store pays really well.

My friend is graduating, she's got a 60k a year job guaranteed on graduation.

Are you making a comparable sum?

I had to throw away all of the expired bread which was pretty painful. Every day, I would take two carts filled with bread to the garbage chute in the back and chuck them all away. The job itself wasn't even that bad but I was just miserable because of how poor I was doing. I remember there was one week in particular where I actually threw away more bread than we sold during that 7 day stretch.

the only person who could get in trouble would be the one who left it unlocked for the hobo to get in, was that you?

Have an upvote my good sir. The world needs more people like you.

Op def works for kroger. We spooked him outta here.

I went to sleep and forgot the tripcode I was using, so it may have changed but I'm still the same OP. I got today off so I'll answer some more posts while I'm doing laundry and cooking.

I'm not gonna lie, I get really pissed at the assistant manager whenever I get a schedule that has me closing on one day and then has me working in the morning the next.

Again, I'm not allowed to say what store I work for. That picture I used for the OP was just taken off the internet.

What tips do you have for product salemen I

We changed the store layout this year and the highest complaints we receive is about the Asian and Hispanic sections being merged together. They got merged in order to save shelf space and downsize the selection to the products that people actually buy, but apparently many of our regulars think it was a bad move on our part.

I actually don't do this because I feel that it would make me look like a slacker on the job. Plus over here we already got our share of hobos and other crazies running about fucking things up so for me it's more of a normal occurrence.

It really does pay well, I make around that much these years, but again this money I'm making is also coming from the seniority I have from working for the company for so long. If I chose to have a STEM degree instead of a business one I probably would have gotten a job that pays high right out the gate rather than stick it here.

It wasn't me, I just stumbled onto it. Vendors usually do their unloading in the morning so it was either my boss, the assistant manager, or whoever was the key master then who unlocked it for the beer vendor. I told my boss about it though so he's probably sorting it out at the store right now.
Vendors, by the way, are people employed by product companies to drive those bigass trucks around and ship and stock the products in stores like mine as well as others like McDonald's and 7-11. Those guys do some labor intensive work, they're even issued heavily-padded kneepads because they have to kneel down a lot while stocking.

I wouldn't know anything since I'm not involved in picking what items get sold in the store, I just order more of what runs out and reclaim what we don't want.

well fuck.

I'd have just killed myself.

>I work in a warehouse

talk about the Pot calling the kettle black.

I used to work for Kroger (King Soopers in my area) and this thread is making me a bit nostalgic for a job that I'm actually glad not to have anymore. I worked as a meat/seafood clerk and it was a pretty decent job most of the time, the worst parts were the dumb things that corporate-level bean counters told us we needed to do without actually understanding how stores actually get the work done. When I left they literally had us filling out forms to verify that we'd logged into a computerized tracking system that was supposed to verify another form that was a backup for the automated inventory system...

The best part about working in meat/seafood (and produce, from my understanding) is that there's minimal opportunities for negative customer interactions, and people will you respect you as being the person with THE KNOWLEDGE if you can explain how to prepare and cook the things you sell. The worst part is cleaning seafood cases (they get nasty if the cleaning gets put off too long or the person who was supposed to do it last was a lazy faggot who did a crappy job, leaving a bigger mess for somebody else) or the meat cutting room after a day when the bandsaw has seen heavy use (using a power washer to blast crud away is great, having to mop and squeegee all the water off a huge cutting room floor is tedious and annoying because you're just walking around in the cold for 20-30 minutes - and if you get your socks wet it really sucks).

Well, you said you can't say what it isn't, yet you said it wasn't safeway. So just spill it.

I work at a grocery store, where I have to unload the truckload of stuff my department gets from the warehouse daily, and let me tell you those fucking warehouse monkeys fuck it up almost every single day. I don't know what kind of dumbfuck oxygen thieves they employ there, but they constantly do stupid shit like putting really small, light boxes on the bottom of the pallet, and then loading a ton of heavy boxes on top of them.
Every time I come into some deformed jenga tower of destroyed product I get a strong urge to bomb the warehouse.

One time when I worked at Walgreens we received a split case where in the tote they packed two glass jars of pasta sauce and a dozen and a half large cans of soup

I'll let you guess what happened

You work at Fred Meyer.

the glass jars crushed the soup cans?

Yes, shards of metal everywhere

>warehouse shelf stacker talks down to grocery shelf stacker

B-but you can't see posters ips. And if you could you still wouldn't be able to trace the person unless you got a court order

Savemart?

>enough to support a housewife and a kid
So, what is that 50k? 75k?

One time I was unloading a truck and found a recliner stacked on a display pallet of light bulbs.
I almost got killed when taking down a pallet of clearance from the top shelf of the freight room, where the idiot who stacked it put plates and other glassware on top of FUCKING TOWELS.

I used to work at QCF, that place fucking blows. The upper management doesn't give a fuck about the night shift employees even tho without them nothing would ever get stocked.

>unionized grocery store
>Not safeway

We all know you work at Kroger, OP.

I'm sure that guy was just pissed that the shoplifters didn't get away totally unnoticed because then he wouldn't have to report that a bunch of shit got stolen because he was eating fucking popeye's

I dunno how much that guy makes, but I make 62k a year being the dry goods team leader (the """team""" is a friend of mine and his brother) at a pretty small grocery store (revenue is about 9 million a year). luckily I live in whitesville and everyone is nice. The worst people to deal with is the obligatory headwound guy who tries to steal beer and teens trying to shoplift.

>unionized

As opposed to an ionized grocery store ??

>Be working the Christmas trees, just getting off break.
>Look like a hobo in a ten year old Carhart that is frayed to shit.
>Hear my name hush whispered and see LP signaling to me and pointing at a guy making a move for the door.
>One other employee and LP's manager are also on the hunt.
>Tail him out of the store and surround him, LP pulls a $400 pair of headphones from his pocket, ask him to come with us.
>He is escorted to the office and told to sit, I sit near the door.
>As the LP manager is processing everything he looks at me.
>"user, is that a duck call in your jacket pocket?"
>Not thinking I look and grab at the item in my chest pocket, pulling a linoleum knife I use to cut the cords on the trees.
>'Nope, just carry this to take care of problems.'
>Shoplifter is shitting himself.

Hey guys, redditor here feel free to AMA

Imagine being so lazy you think doing nothing with your life is a good thing.

>tfw bag boy for kroger in bum fuck nowhere
I don't really mind it, but I would like to get higher if I could
any tips op

Are you me?

these anions will bond to anything!

I'm a support manager at Walmart, lol fucking trash employee do your job and do your returns.

>not conducting an inspection of a cold storage area for kids, bums, prior to locking it up.

Totally your fault, dumb ass.

What if that had been a kid instead of a bum?

I'd have taken all that shit out of your pay, if not just outright fire you for negligence.

>grocery stores like this make a sliver of profit
>Fun Fact: if you steal a 2-liter of like Pepsi from a store, it takes the store at least three more to make back the money lost on that.

This is why there are no major grocery store chains in nigger ghetto lands.

You work at HEB, don't you?

I've been trying to assemble this ikea furniture by myself for the past couple hours, frustrating shit that only has pictures in the manual so I ended up putting a few pieces backwards.

I'm still not allowed to say, if I wasn't currently employed by the store I would tell you guys but right now I'm still under the company rules and union bylaws.

I made 60k last year before taxes, which is incredibly high considering my workweek is 35 hours on average. I can actually have a healthy retirement once I hit 60 years, not many people on here can say that.

You'd be surprised by how many stores actually have unions backing the workers. We even get free dental, that was a huge bonus for me because my father's dental coverage stopped including me a year into college, that shit is important to me.

Nah there's still Walmarts and the like in places like Oakland and NYC, those places just increase their security measures based on the amount of crime going on.

He said pre dinner rush.

According to OP, don't be a a tool and get a degree. Also try to avoid locking bums in freezers

What's the best times to shop?

For one you need to be able to do more than just what your job description tells you to. I actually used to take new baggers around when they're training and show them how to operate non-general facilities like the helium tanks for blowing up balloons or even the forklift if they're old enough and can drive. This lets them specialize in as many services as possible so they can help out both in front and behind the scenes, of course this is going to depend on what your store's policy is on what you're allowed to do.
You should also have strong work ethic and have it show at all times at the workplace, even if you aren't on the clock. In my opinion this will mainly be in how you speak and converse with customers, get to know them even if it's just their name or what car they drive in. If you're helping somebody to their car, offer to push the grocery cart for them and then strike up some small talk while you're walking by their side. When you're returning unwanted items to their shelves, arrange them and the surrounding items neatly as if you were tasked with facing them, and during any time you're walking through the store greet the customers and offer your services to them as needed.
Above all, you need to show your higher ups that you aren't just some work monkey that can only do what they tell you to do. I got to move up the chain because of my education, but at least over here you can actually graduate from bagger to cashier if you're able to show the initiative.

Lol you must live in a tiny town

I would actually say early in the morning, just as the store opens. That's when you're guaranteed to get as few competing shoppers as possible, and most of them will probably be elderly people because seniors have this thing where they start their day at like 5AM.

150k population isn't small, but what I say about customer courtesy is still true. The vast majority of people only ever do their grocery shopping at one or two stores because they get familiar with them and don't want to juggle between different layouts and prices and whatnot. These people are also doing their grocery shopping every week so even if you were working in a huge city like San Francisco it won't be as if these faces stay unknown to you.

I go to the grocery store right when it opens at 7. I'm scared of people and it is most comfy then. Yeah, it's all other robots and old people. Best time.

Man that sounds great, I'd love it, that or parking guard.

Fining people for being to dumb to read signs.

So you have issues with social workers lertting lose their herd of retards and going for a 3 hour coffee break?

Or is that not a thing o'er yonder?

Onionized

Yeah, but no wal-marts in NYC.

>Get canned for some bullshit reason.
>Ask for my vacation compensation.
>The manager hesitates when he sees how many hours I have.
>Well over 200 hrs.
>Takes them two months to print out my check and give it to me.
>Over 10k.
>Later find out they replaced one of the managers.

this is why a lot of places won't let you accrue vacation time over 80 hours or so. it's either use it or lose it so people end up taking a week off and just sit at home watching TV and drinking beer the whole time

Which is why it felt so goddamn good making them hand me that check.

What does this even mean? I don't really know what kind of conversation you are trying to lead into with this.

My father was a mailman for USPS and he had almost 1500 hours of paid vacation time under his belt. He never once took an unscheduled day off and he was always working overtime. When we combined his vacation compensation with the life insurance he took out my mom couldn't stop crying because this was exactly what he was planning before he died.

>tfw where I work we shut down for a work week between christmas and new years, and once in the summer for a work week.
i'm a wageslave in the worst way

>Work at a Kroger store
>Notice two stacks of totes on pallets in the bull pen.
>Shit is stacked like 6 feet.
>Ask about it, boss says the store director stores the hazmat there to save money.
>Even when we have a budget for hazmat.
>Some of the totes have been eroded to the point of leaking caustic slews of death.
>EPA gets an anonymous call, store gets fined 20k.
>Can smell the chemicals from 50 yards as they are trying to clean it up.