They spilt beer on Jesus... ([info]ragman) wrote in [info]grocery_hell,
@ 2009-01-06 02:08:00
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Current mood: cranky

Grocery hell is...
being a dairy manager at an Albertsons who makes 8.65 an hour, only gets 29 hours a week, and pays 66 dollars in union dues each month. (If you do the math, that comes out to about 8.08 an hour, 1 cent above the washington state minimum wage)

and for reasons far more aggravating and stress inducing than wage could ever hope to be:

Grocery hell is...
running the dairy at your local friendly Albertsons on 29 hours a week (a 40 hour position just a year and a half ago).

Grocery hell is...
being justly aggravated for long enough to put in your two weeks notice, only to be all but begged to stay after precisely 1 week and six days of joy and relief (spanning the days surrounding Christmas, i might add), with the promise of a merit raise that will soon be denied to you (new years day).

Grocery hell is...
preparing for a store remodel (in a store remodeled just 8 years ago) while your fellow coworkers get their hours slashed (receiving from 40 to 30, frozen from 40 to 30, 5th key person position removed, starbucks temporarily laid off during entirety of store remodel).

Grocery hell is...
listening to store directors explain that they are fighting for you.

Grocery hell is...
well at least i have health and dental......

edit:our 2007-2008 union contract bumped dept heads to 12.50, but our 2008-2009 contract does not. It's definitely not a crap positon. Our old ASD bumped our old dairy manager to 16 something when he hired him. When we got a new ASD they started scaling back the old dairy manager's hours until he had 29, and quit to go work for our old ASD at another store.

A lot of people in my store speculate that I was hired BECAUSE my wage would be so low, as I beat out 17 other applicants, including our service deli head (of 6 years), a 5th from another store, and a few other department heads from different stores. I applied not having known the new contract was so shitty, and that the job was so demanding. They nabbed me right out of customer service with absolutely zero actual grocery experience.

They literally gave me one day to train with our old dairy head, after which I was trained by our lovable but otherwise inept 3rd. I distinctly remember our 3rd handing me an order guide on my -second day-, with instructions that would have me following wildly inaccurate build up numbers and attempting to order 5+ cases of each eggbeaters and 50+ casses of unsalted butter before thinking something was amiss. Afterwards he informed me to just wing it and order off the shelf. My complete lack of experience and any managerial direction eventually lead to a month+-long downward spiral of gigantic loads(less time), unmanageable back stock(harder to write orders), and out of control shrink(angry ASD).

blech. just thought i'd clarify/horrify.


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[info]obi_wan_fett
2009-01-06 12:50 pm UTC (link)
I'm a dairy manager. Nice to see another one. I can barely keep everything up and running with 40 hours, there is no way I could do it all in 29 hours. I often stay a half hour late because of how far behind I am. If you can do it in 29 that's really good. Course in your store is dairy treated like garbage? Where the only people in the whole store who are lower ranked than you are the baggers? Where if newbie checker whatshername calls you up to check you have two choices: Go up and check or get suspended, it doesn't matter if the FEM and the CSM and the bagger who knows how to check and the bookkeeper are standing around doing nothing and only one person needs checking out anyway. So that's where a lot of my time goes. If they left me alone and let me do my job I could get it done in 29 hours probably.

But the whole thing with how little you're being paid is insane. When I took over dairy I jumped up from 8 or 9/hr and moved up to 12.50. Now I'm at 13.10.

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[info]xo_kizzy_xo
2009-01-06 01:26 pm UTC (link)
I was just going to say the same thing about the OP's pay -- THAT IS INSANE. I've never heard of a management position paying so little. That's criminal, seriously :shaking head: All our managers are salaried, while the assistants, for the most part, make probably just as much as a longtime FT person.

And who the hell can run a department on 29 hours a week?!?

:head exploding:

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[info]anyanka323
2009-01-06 02:32 pm UTC (link)
The OP's pay is insane but that what the department heads who haven't been at my store 25+ years get paid. Closing managers both up front and in the back get paid at most $8.65 per hour and only three out of the six are full time and eligible for benefits. Department heads don't get paid much more than regular stockers and cashiers and we're held to a justifiably higher standard than they are. One department head was making less than $8 per hour after being there almost 3 years so he decided to slack off on his stuff for a couple of weeks because he "wasn't being paid to do that". He got a write up but also a raise up to $8, something that will probably not get him an annual raise in April.

The personnel who have been there 25+ years get paid good money and with one exception they work very hard. The head manager gets paid around $60 grand per year but doesn't do much actual work except consistently screw up the schedule. The assistant manager who has as much experience and gets paid less does more work while working 60+ hour weeks most of the year.

That's what happens when seniority is the only basis for hourly pay.

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[info]xo_kizzy_xo
2009-01-06 03:05 pm UTC (link)
:shaking head: Maybe it depends on where you live. It has to be. There's a very high cost of living where I am, which, in turn, demands higher pay. Even then, though...if you were brought on as an assistant manager, say, within the past year you'd easily be making more than $12/hour. I'm not sure how the managers' rate is scaled, but it's probably closer to the $18-20 range, depending on experience. We have a lot of longtime managers and FT non-management in my store, though, so their salaries are probably higher than that.

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[info]ragman
2009-01-06 05:16 pm UTC (link)
Luckily they don't make me check. my buddy in frozen is pretty much always in a checkstand. They call me up to bag and do carry outs (yeah, really. insane, no?) quite a bit, but no hour long check sessions while our FEMs screw off in the safe room. Either way I a hard time running things on 34 hours a week until about a month ago when my hours got cut.

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[info]mottled_kitten
2009-01-06 03:46 pm UTC (link)
I agree with those other people--that is a very strange amount of money to be making as a manager, especially when the minimum wage is so high in your state. If there's a union, you need to talk to them about this--especially since you're paying some high dues (I mean my god, we only have to pay $10 a week, and it's optional--you don't have to be in the union... I'd rather keep my $520 a year, thank you!).

Just as a lowly deli worker, I was making $9.35, in a state where the minimum wage is only $7 something. Seriously--talk to someone IMPORTANT about this.

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[info]bshai
2009-01-06 04:16 pm UTC (link)
agreed to nearly what everyone else said, my union dues are only TWICE what I make per hour... so not even $30 a month and you pay WHAT and are paid HOW MUCH?? just incredible.

....as for a manager with that pay scale, I'd be a bit more disturbed if you were dept head and were getting that, it wouldn't happen at my store. However, I've been a FEM/CSM ("manager" to some customers) for nearly 5 yrs and the only thing that came with the position is more headaches/stress, the only reason I'm getting paid the $$ is b/c I've been there so long.... so hence any slacky with my amount of time put in would be paid the same amount.

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[info]dewprisms
2009-01-06 10:51 pm UTC (link)
Ever since we went SUPERVALU everything has been fucked to hell. Seriously, our companies are going to total shit thanks to SUPERVALU.

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[info]ragman
2009-01-07 03:49 am UTC (link)
Really. The distribution center also seemed to go to hell as soon as supervalu took that over as well. All my product comes in with such horrible dates. It's not uncommon for them to send me shit I didn't order that goes out in 7 days. I once got 6 unsolicited cases of low acid minute maid (read: does not sell) dated 10 days from when I recieved them. Even after marking them down to 2 for 6, then 2 for 3, then 10 for 10 for the last two days, I still ending up losing 4 cases (about 75 bucks). Fucking Supervalu.

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[info]dewprisms
2009-01-07 03:58 am UTC (link)
They're total douchebags. They send us distro that we do not order for us to sell... And they send tons of it. And it's always shit that doesn't even sell! Meanwhile the stuff that DOES sell is going on progressively crappier and crappier "sale" prices.

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[info]dewprisms
2009-01-07 03:59 am UTC (link)
Oh, and don't get me started on how they're dicking us around for our insurance now, and they've decided to take away the fact that we chose PPO and now refuse to cover things that are not "in network", making me have to travel over 20 miles to the nearest in network clinic!

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