If you are thinking about applying for a job here, especially as a deli clerk, listen to me right now and don't do it. If you need the money, then fine, take the job, but not in the deli. Ask to be a courtesy clerk. You'll be scrubbing toilets and putting up with a lot of crap (literal and figurative; even though management is required to clean up human waste, I've seen them push it on courtesy clerks so many times. Don't let them abuse their power -- report them), but at least you'll be able to move on in time. I've seen courtesy clerks get promoted within six months. They're checkers now, or they're chilling in the produce department. Me? Two years and I'm still in the deli. Everyone I started with in the deli, who hasn't quit or gotten fired, is still in the deli. Getting promoted out of the deli is impossible, and I'll tell you why right now: because it's a miserable, greasy, hot, busy, understaffed dump, which makes turnover rate absurdly high.
You're basically on your own in this nightmare. I usually cook in the morning, but I've been asked to walk away from my kitchen to help the never ending lines of customers. Seriously, who shows up at 7 am looking for fried food? Do yourself a favor and stop that garbage before it kills you. I'll get people showing up DEMANDING food before we're even open, and I'm not allowed to tell them (in polite terms, of course) "no, we're not open yet, it's 6 am, and you're an idiot for expecting fried chicken at 6 am," because then they'll run off and complain about it to my store manager, whose sole response to these irrational people is to just nod his head endlessly and bend over until they're satisfied. Then he forces me to give them whatever they want for free, because his spine is nonexistent and that is how he deals with confrontation. When this ordeal has finished, I return to my cooking at long last only to discover that everything's burned, and it'll be even longer before I can declare my station open for business.
Meanwhile, my department manager refuses to help lighten the customer service load, because she's busy doing paperwork and delegating her duties onto other people. Those "other people," my co-workers, are all just as busy trying to open their respective stations, and they're so afraid of not finishing their work and being reprimanded that they will -literally keep their heads down while they work, to avoid inadvertently locking eyes with some customer and consequently having to drop what they're doing and help them-. That is how bad it is. You know that scene in the recent adaptation of Les Miserables, where the condemnded prisoners are wading around in freezing water and chanting "look down, look down, don't look them in the eye"? It's just like that. What a demeaning, nerve racking experience.
All they need to do is hire just one guy to stand in the front and help the people who show up in the morning so we can finish opening the department. If they're not willing to do that (and they aren't; the whole aforementioned routine usually continues for three grueling hours before another person shows up, and that's only to relieve someone else for lunch, meaning it'll be another hour before we're well staffed again), then all they need to do is give us a sign that says "sorry, we're closed" until we're actually open for business, but they won't do that either because that would require an OK from management, and management just can't stop saying yes to even the worst people. As if that isn't bad enough, corporate decided that we should sell people breakfast at 6 am, so now -- in addition to cooking all the fried foods that you unhealthy people can't stop shoveling, and making all the salads that you people think is healthy and fresh but really just comes to us in a box, and cutting all the meat which is advertised as preservative free but actually contains sodium nitrates just like the oscar mayer stuff -- we get to drop what we're doing to make breakfast for a bunch of people who can't seem to do it themselves. It would make sense to dedicate this task to a single person, since breakfast sales are our biggest hitters in the morning, but they won't do that. Even though our menu says that we start serving breakfast at 6 am, our dedicated sandwich person doesn't show up until 8 am (a relic of a time without breakfast, that has yet to change despite me telling management repeatedly), and on most days the schedule puts him in the department as late as noon. Some days, there isn't anyone scheduled for that task at all.
I read complaints on here about receiving too few hours. My case is the exact opposite. I want less. I signed up for this job with the expectation of part-time work, but every week I get 40 hours because I have this nasty habit of showing up to work on time and doing my job. I have two days off, but they're not even in a row. It's like, I'll work eight days straight (strategically separated over the course of two working weeks, so the company doesn't have to pay me any overtime), and then I'll get one day off to rest, run errands, and live my life. Then I'll work another five days before I get another day off. And then it's back to working eight more days in a row, with fluctuating hours. This is exhausting. My pay is so low that all the hours I work aren't even reflected in the amount of money I bring home. I want less hours. I don't want to have to be in that place every day, because every day -- every single day -- is a bad day. I haven't had a good day in the deli in years. Every day someone calls in sick because they just can't handle a ninth day in a row of this abuse, and instead of calling in a replacement worker, management just rolls with it and expects us (i.e., me, since there is no one else now that the only other person called in sick) to pick up the slack. That same manager will then -leave the department without even offering to help-, which demonstrates a clear apathy and makes me wonder why I even bother caring, myself. Management hides in their offices all day long, probably touching themselves to some sick s&m fetishist blog, while employees get stuck dealing with the fallout of managerial incompetence, and we're expected to bend over backwards for them? It happens every day, and I'm sick of it.
I've tried so many times to simply leave the department, because other departments have it better. It's not a lot better, but anything is better than the deli. Nobody wants to work in the deli, or help the deli, for a reason. Floral department needs help prepping for their Valentine's Day bonanza, and half the store's lining up to help them. You'll see managers rolling up their sleeves to go help the flower department. But deli needs help on Thanksgiving, and suddenly everyone's vanished until they want a sandwich for lunch. But I digress -- if you're even remotely competent in the deli department, then your chances of leaving, and any shot at a higher salary and a modicum of respect, are gone. They will literally find -any- excuse to keep you planted in the armpit of the store, because they know that they can't find anyone else willing to put up with all this BS. To add insult to injury, they'll let incompetent employees leave the department like it's nothing. This isn't bitterness talking; I've seen this with my own eyes, heard it straight from my department manager, even. When one of our long time department openers failed to do her job on multiple occasions due to the management approved short staffing I mentioned earlier, my department manager placed the blame squarely on the employee, and let her transfer to another department simply because she was "tired of dealing with [employee name]'s (expletive)." So that employee transferred, and now she works on the other side of the store, and everyone who works with her in that department says she's a great worker. She's much happier, and she has confirmed on multiple occasions that her current job is much better than the deli. Meanwhile, people who are reliable and hard working in the deli just get saddled with more work until they can't do it anymore, and then they're criticized by incompetent managers.
We get new employees and half of them quit in a week. Of the remaining half, most of those are gone by the second week. We go through people like a hospital goes through disposable gloves. Instead of recognizing these as signs of a dysfunctional workplace, management often ignores our appalling turnover rate and simply -stops hiring new people to our department- because our rate is so high. Their logic is "deli will just lose anyone we hire, so let's just hire nobody." Meanwhile, half our staff is out on some form of leave and we've been in dire need of help for half a year, but nobody cares. I'm telling you -- nobody cares about the deli. Don't join the deli.
