I am posting this as I actually worked for them earlier this year. Many of you are right, they get paid peanuts, but it actually isn’t anything to do with Loblaws. the store in Fernie is Union, and as such they have set wages that only increase over time, which, yes, definitely adds to the problem of the staff not caring. I came to that store with previous working knowledge of Extra Foods, having been a manager and key-holder at a location in AB. I was hired as the loading dock reciever, basically I was first to the store, at 5 in the morning, to unload everything. Despite the fact that there was no training required, and that I had previous experience not only in this exact position, but also running an entire 50% of a store, I was started out at full-time hours and minimum wage. I can honestly say that along was enough to make me care even less, but I did my job to the best of my abilities. The current Store Manager is really the root of most of the issues there. She insists on pushing employees to do more, no matter how hard they work, or what they get done. I ended up being fired, with one of the reasons being that I did not do enough throughout the day (despite me constantly rushing everything and trying to get as much done as possible. I did more work than some of the managers. Take that for whatever it’s worth.)
Another thing she mentioned to me during the process of letting me go was that I apparently spent too much time helping people. Now, I’ll admit, I wasn’t the most enthusiastic person on the floor, mainly because of how little I was making for all my time and work, but I did my best to help customers find what they were looking for. The manager told me that I should not spend time in the receiving bay looking for items, and I should not go to personally help customers find the product they were looking for. A sense of urgency she called it. Essentially, she wanted me to fling out the quickest response possible just to get the customers to go away as fast as possible, whether or not I helped at all.
Another behind-the-scenes issue that affected staff morale, was when the company formally decided to acknowledge that we were going into the recession. The cutbacks consumers were showing in their spending habits were apparently not caused by people being more frugal with their cash, but by us, once again, not working hard enough. Needless to say, I wasn’t the only person who found that rediculous.
All in all, the store in general suffers from being too complacent. The regular employees (cashiers, grocery, bakery and general merchandise clerks) were constantly being ridden for never reaching some unatainable level of productivity set by the management, and for not recieving fair compensation for their work, while the management of some departments basically did not care, and worked nowhere near as hard as their lower-level employees did. At one point, I persoally witnessed mice/rats (I don’t know enough to make out the difference between the two) in the loading dock, and instead of reporting to the shipping bays and making a thorough search of the receiving bay, they basically kept it quiet and it was never mentioned after that day.
Now, of course, it is completely up to all of you reading this whether to believe me or not, after all, I was fired for rediculous reasons, and as such could very well appear biased. But I too am a customer instead of an employee, and have myself witnessed fisthand all the various issues that the store has. Take t for what you will.
