order picker

seasonal associate

shift leader

puller

management trainee

ABC Fine Wine and Spirits

A typical day at ABC is always about customer service and really helping people out and being extremely polite and helpful. You have hours from morning to night so the shifts can vary. They prefer everyone to be a key holder which is a shift manager. You are always focusing on inventory and customer service. It can be fun and it works as a job but the career opportunity is very very limited. There are store managers all over as well as many shift managers and assistant store managers so the chances of ever becoming a store manager will take years. The regional manager said he waited 6 years before an opening came for a store manager. If you're looking for a decent paying job it works and it can be fun if you have a good team. However, most of the people's morale's are a bit on the negative side or just typical of a corporation at the store level. It is a liquor store afterall with limited growth. McDonald's would offer better growth honestly. $10 an hour is the base pay and you get vacation after 6 months (a week) then another week at your year. This could change like anything else.25% off of their DTY products is nice if you drink or know someone who does. The store is really nice looking inside and there are a lot of wines as well as food and retail items so it's not just s shabby liquor store. I will say that HR is on the side of upper management so if you ever face problems then transferring or quitting is your best bet. Aside from register you will be fronting and stocking constantly. They have high standards so loafing is not really an option. The culture feels more like a corporation where thinking for yourself is not exactly present. However, it is family owned so it feels like a small business in some aspects too. There are some very interesting people who work there and you'll meet lots of interesting customers too. Breaks are another aspect you'll want to consider. You technically get two 15 minute breaks but it's not really smiled upon and your hardly have time to have a break except to eat. You pretty much need to say you're taking your break and stand your ground as it is guaranteed but you'll be wanting to keep busy so you can leave on time. You'll be on your feet all day and lifting a lot. It's good exercise and you'll probably lose a bit of weight. Overall I would recommend not woking here for long. Part time is not really a thing. 30hours  a week is considered full time and that's generally the minimum anyways. No fixed schedule most likely so yeah I don't really recommend working here for long unless you are a parent and need some work or just want a job and aren't looking for growth. They offer insurance and 401K and such so it works. They also educate people by sending them to classes often. Usually 2 hour classes and a few every quarter that you are paid for. It's okay but it's educating on their products and the industry and such. Not that transferable. Over time does happen for key holders so do seek promotion there. It's a doable job and can be fun. You have to pay for your uniforms too. They give you two free shirts and you pay for any more.

Worked as a shift manager. Store I worked for had a bunch of slackers that made it difficult to enjoy any part of the day and when I told upper management they blew it off since we always needed a "warm body" to come in.

Typical day: Open store (or close at night), count the money (which always seemed to be off) and see what items were low and stock them accordingly. Sometimes we had early morning trucks (4am-6am) with 300-600 cases that would be unloaded by yourself and 1 other person. After the unload was done, you would then have to try and put away most of it before store opened. Morning shifts expect only you and 1 other person there. Gets frustrating when you have vendors coming and going and needing to scan in everything, while trying to keep store clean, watch for customers, ring up customers, watch for shoplifters and putting away the truck order.

Typical night: Close store, count the money and front the store. Employees always came up with excuses on why they wanted to leave early and since it was only 1 other person, they wouldn't be able to. This made them not want to work with you the next time they were there and they wouldn't. Again, nothing was done by management.

Company is  family-owned. They only have stores in Florida. Rising in the ranks is almost a no go since the higher management is usually a family member (brother, sister, in law, etc.) The company doesn't have their own vision. They take bits and pieces of other similar establishments and try to incorporate them into their stores, usually with terrible results. Their commission system there is completely broken. We used to have single commission sales, but, then they switched to store incentive sales. This means that in the past, you could have made an extra $100-250 a week, then when they switched and "pooled" all commissions, everyone got a share - even the ones that hardly worked. So that extra $100-250 you would have seen on a paycheck would then be split between everyone. So if they weren't selling the ABC products (in this case called DTY - or- Direct to You), you wouldn't make much more on your paycheck than base pay.

Just some added info: Store is open everyday of the year except Christmas and Thanksgiving. If you are family oriented, this may not be the job for you.

Dead end job and wished that it wouldn't have taken so long for me to leave.

A typical day at work is your average retail job, 8 hours of pretending you care.  For those who do care, they are unrewarded for their enthusiasm.

The year of 2019 saw many budget cuts that took away many incentives to stay.  They took classes employees could take for extra pay away, they severely limited bottles employees can open for tastings that are held monthly and now the customers are bored and have stopped attending them mostly.  They restructured the bonus incentives so that it is nearly impossible to pay out monthly, which means just less money in the employee's hands even though the store has been performing excellently.

In the event of workers comp, as soon as you need a specialist they will work their hardest to find a technicality to not pay out.  They boast that they want ABC to be recognized as a place you'd want to work at, and that they are a family.  Over the course of 2019 they've worked their hardest to make their workers feel as validated as Walmart employees.

The management is incompetent and patronizing.  A schedule sometimes doesn't come out for the following week until you're wondering when you need to work tomorrow.  You will never have a weekend off at the Fernandina location because the manager doesn't want you to have two days off in a row more than once every two months.  The same manager will also never approve your PTO requests, even if they are months out, because she can not possibly plan ahead.

In one event, I asked for time off and it was approved.  I had bought plane tickets.  A week before the date of my flight, I was told that I can not have the time off, they had changed their minds because they've made a new "rule," which they often come up with, that's not in the employee handbook.  Flights are non-refundable.  They would not offer to pay for the flight, they basically asked me to work for free for that weekend.  I went anyway.  I was terminated from this location after working for a year and a half.  You are not valued here.

Horrible company that doesn't even obey its own basic rules like employee confidentiality.The CEO’s and management only care for itself and don't keep personal information, problems, questions, or concerns strictly between HR/manager and the employee. 

No training is provided to new employees by management or supervisors and you're expected to know how to do everything in the store on your own, perfectly, without it.

The store manager often hides when needed or leaves randomly without informing employees or providing any explanation even if the store is busy – A store manager should be the last person to leave early or call out and always be there to help customers and employees. 

As a cashier you’re not allowed to move from your position in front of the register even if the position is covered by another cashier and the store is slow at the moment or completely empty besides employees to do anything regardless of what it may be. 

The cash registers are also horribly outdated and often lock up or provide the wrong information, refuse to apply coupons or discounts, and shut down when it rains. Basic fixes and corrections on the register are impossible without the store manager’s key such as undoing a double scan or a customer changing his or her mind on an item last minute. Which slows down the lines and creates extra work for both employees. 

Other general Cons about this job:
-You receive no breaks unless you’re a wine consultant or store manager 
-there isn't anywhere to store belongings or even a room to place them in. 
-You may be forced to unload an entire semi-truck of liquor at three AM with only one other ABC employee assisting you. 
-Outdated registers cause lots of PSV (post sales voids) which may lead to problems and conflicts with manager and customers.

The environment of the job is not bad, it can be fun at times to work at ABC because of the customers and learning about spirits and wine. The staff for the most part is very understanding, friendly and extremely helpful especially when I started working. However the pay isn’t for full time like I had expected and isn’t enough to support me or others that I live with. Showing customer service here can seem a bit exaggerated and can make a customer look uncomfortable with the way we have to be pushy in order to get certain benefits. It can be easy but other times it’s not. There also isn’t a lot of communication that goes on at work and most times are expected to know right off the bay with something even when you’re unaware of it. It happened after awhile of me working here and is still so with so much more to learn from this company. And the management is good and also nit so good, the assistant managers are much more reliable, kinder and understanding then the store manager at my location. The store manager seems to show passive aggressive behavior towards me more then anyone else I’ve seen so far. And at times treats and says things to me work related as if I’m a child. I’m new to working at a liqueur store and have no idea about the little things that go on in the store. The things I do and don’t realize it I get anonymously outed for not knowing when it wasn’t mentioned to me before. And when I ask questions to make sure there Aren’t mistakes, I feel judged by the store manager for asking a question that “should be known”. It makes me feel small and insignificant to the company.

A typical day of work was to answer phone calls or receive e-mails from customers inquiring or ordering their favorite wines or spirits. I would research the product through the internet and find a distributor within Florida State that could carry it. I would run the Special Order Department by myself and process about 45 to 60 orders per day.

I learned how wine, spirits, and beers are processed, the content of the ingredients and the time it takes to be on their highest point before they are ready to be bottles and distributed to the market.

I also learned how to manage time, to provide follow up while the order was in transit being transferred to the closest ABC Store to customer's home or work place and to inquire a feedback from customers of how well our service was.

The relationship with co-workers were excellent, very friendly as each one of them would do their own job. I was working at the Executive Area in the Purchasing Dept and my job consisted in finding products that the company did not carry in the warehouse nor stores.

The hardest part was dealing with angry customers because they received the wrong vintage or they ordered something 2 or 3 days before their event and the delivery would take more time if they lived far from the warehouse. The ABC trucks would go around the State once a week making deliveries to 155 stores, so a special order might take minimum a week.

The most enjoyable part would be celebrating birthdays once a month, company's lunch events, like 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Recognition of "Employ of the Month" and "Employ of the Year".

I worked at ABC in the southern region for over 3 and a half years. I was hired as a retail shift manager trainee and eventually left the establishment as retail assistant manager. In regards to myself, they were flexible with my schedule because I am currently in graduate school and also with personal and family problems. It was great having health insurance and many other benefits as well.

Depending on the location and its turnover/team member absences or call outs, over time is definitely used. There were many times I received overtime during any time of the year, but of course by the discretion of upper management. For the area that it's currently in, the starting wage was more than the majority of retail establishments in the area. 

One major complaint I have is upper management and HR handling certain employees that have consistently violated policies. The chain of command, in my personal opinion, has failed in multiple instances to let go of employees that have been or continue to hurt the whole function of the store in more ways than one. This complaint does not have to do with me personally, but several other employees I have worked with over the years. These employees are still employed with ABC for reasons I will never fully understand. 

Overall, this company is great to work for in terms of advancement, benefits, above minimum wage pay, and overall work environment. The majority of management is pleasant to work with as well as regular employees. I had main great memories with coworkers and management.

They will tell you that you are able to make as much commission as you want as part of your job. You have to worry about coworkers stealing your commission. There is a lot of pressure to hit certain goals, then you get threatened to be removed or replaced if you do not hit expectations. The senior managers are micro-managers. They hire the cheapest form of labor they can find(minimum wage). The regular store managers company wide should have never gotten their jobs. They never fire anybody unless somebody steals from them because instead of disciplining any body they just transfer you around until you quit(good for the lame-duck employee). The company provided benefits suck and are extremely expensive. There is no employee discount or any other perks, unless you are a wine consultant and then it is few a far between. You have to go to required training throughout the year with no compensation for gas or expenses. There is no room to advance, except to store manager or wine consultant, then it is done. Most of the clerks are no good and do not care or have a good work ethic. Then there is the potential for the store to get robbed, which mine did. The hardest part of the job is all of the morons that you have to work with. The most enjoyable parts of the job are some good customers you get and going home. The one good thing was that I learned a lot about the industry.

Don’t let them tell you this is a sales associate job or a managers job. Everyone is a cashier and mostly a stock clerk.  6 out of 7 days you will get large deliveries that you have to put away. Managers once per week have to be there for the warehouse delivery by 4am. They will push you and train you to sell sell sell their high profit margin products which are exclusive brand names that most customers never heard of and don’t want and yet with all the classes on Zoom and computer training about selling these products, the company keeps bombing the stores and displays and advertising of the brand name products as they are most probably getting a kickback Freon those brands. So your biggest obstacle to achieving success for the store or your monthly bonuses is ABC themselves cause you are competing with the low end brands that customers are asking for. How in the world do they expect you to recommend a spirit or wine that people don’t ask for when there are huge displays advertising the drug store brands that you are trying to sway customers away from ? Short answer is YOU CANNOT!! That’s why the company averages across the state is 7% only if all the products sold are those exclusives. It’s a big joke 

The hourly wage versus the physical grunt work you will be doing is a bad ratio. Stay away from his company 

Loved my store manager, but ABC management as a whole is horrendous. Multiple issues in stores with staff harassing customers and coworkers, singling people out, and trying to make them quit. HR was always informed but nothing ever happened. It was as if HR and ABC knew about these issues but couldn’t be bothered to actually do anything about it. I guess they’d rather have staff walking into work with their stomach in knots than to actually address staff safety concerns. Many people within this organization, corporate and store level, need to be fired, but that won’t happen. 
Working through COVID was the worst experience; not only we’re we screamed at by customers for months, there were no bonuses or incentives for employees. These stores should not have remained open, but corporate doesn’t care about their employees health and safety, just their bottom line. I have never worked for a company that bounced people around so much; don’t get used to your area manager because he/she will probably be someone new the next week. ABC needs to take a serious look in the mirror and reflect on how they treat their staff; if everyone hates working there because of how corporate handles every single situation, are you really a family oriented, neighborhood store, or not? Sure doesn’t feel like a family environment. 
Oh, and the pay sucks. Like, horrible. If you plan on paying bills, don’t work here.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Order picker 10 salaries reported	$2,100 per week
Seasonal associate 6 salaries reported	$15.58 per hour
Shift leader 4 salaries reported	$26,000 per year
Puller 2 salaries reported	$35.00 per hour
Management trainee 2 salaries reported	$15.50 per hour

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