truck driver

warehouse worker

store manager

order picker

sales associate

Dollar General

Your typical day at work would consist of running the register, assisting customers, stocking shelves, recovering the store, being security depending on area and if your a high shrink store or not ( I was ) bank runs, cleaning of the building and parking lot. Setting planograms, dealing with vendors, and these are just the basics. Because while all the above is going on 9 out of 10 your doing this by yourself due to "lack of payroll hours" . I was a high volume store for my area. I was under the impression your store's hours was based on volume but that is not the case. You will be consistently be put in situations that I call a catch 22. You are expected to do and say certain things but if corp was around it's a total different story. Anyone who has been with this company or knows someone who was or is with this company knows sometimes things will not always be able to be gone by the book. You will or you will know someone who will work off the clock to finish their job, you will or will know someone who is working the stocking shift and will get a soda or a drink and pay for it when the store opens vs as soon as they drink it. These things happen due to being concerned about getting the job done as best as possible. 
This is my entire experience with the company. 
 At first I loved my job because I truly don't mind fast paced hard work. I started out as a part time cashier getting 4 hrs a week at my home store, I went to any other dg that would let me pick up hrs to work because let's face it 4 hrs a week is gas money for that day, and who works for gas money. After 3 months I was promoted to a 3rd keyholder, at 6 months I was offered Assistant Manager at a different location. I took it due to wanting to excel and thus far my employment had been enjoyable, I had a great store manager who taught me a lot, I had moved up due to being diligent and hard working. I was surrounded by a great team. As soon as I took Asst things got a bit hectic. I had my position about 2 months when the store manager decided to throw her keys on the desk and walk out saying she was done. So I was left to run the store until they got a new manager to fill the spot, I was approached by the dm and asked if I would like to become a store manager. He liked that I was able to maintain the store in absence of a manager so I agreed. They placed a new manager there after about 3 weeks. Due to me agreeing to go to school and be a manager I was placed in 4 other stores to run them until they got managers placed into them. That continued to happen until 4 weeks prior to me going to school. I was placed at a store supposedly to train prior to school, because what they fail to tell you is that you are not supposed to be rushed on taking your cbl's during that time nor are you to be used as a fill in cashier. Well the woman they placed me with was doing just that, I had to take 16 cbl's in a matter of 7 hrs. If you have ever had to do them you know that is only possible if you skip through the video and go straight to the questions, She would use me for 4 hr shifts as a cashier not even management. when I approached her and explained to her that I was under the impression that I was supposed to be learning from her and i'm not (mind you I was very respectful when explaining my feelings on that) things got worse. I was having to work 3 different locations (all 45 mins from my house or more) 
 6 days a week to sometimes not even get 40 hrs a week. I wasn't getting paid extra to do this, I didn't get reimburse for gas or anything I chalked it up to learning experience to make me a better store manager. I was keeping the bigger picture in mind, I will have my own store soon. So I pushed through it kept working. I called my dm to tell him that I was having to jump through hoops to get my hours and to get my things done that needed to be done prior to leaving for school, so he spoke with her about it. It was aweful with her after that. She literally threatened my job and told me there was nothing I could do about it "my job was in her hands" oh and let's not forget the hand motions of in her hands while saying it. I spoke to the dm about that and he brushed it off as she's having a bad day. A few horrible weeks go by and I go to school, very excited about it to be honest. It was great, you learn a lot of helpful information. I get back from school and I am placed in an impacted store to help the store manager out until they have a store available for me. So I try my best to do that the store manager disagreed with everything I was doing, told the employee's to not listen to me, and was just never really around. He was rude with everyone, and had refused to do things a different way. He was 7 weeks being on planograms and the store was a mess. He was in negative on comp sales. The back room was so packed you could not walk in it, they was receiving truck and it was having to be left on the floor to be worked because you couldn't get it in the back. All this is going on during dg's busiest time of year in regards to setting to mag. So the dm comes in and finds out that he is in fact impacted and was just doing nothing so they let him go. I was offered the store, ok I looked at it like this; I was going to have to do it anyways until they got a new store manager. so why not take it and start getting paid for all the work I was doing. Up until this point I had been through and had to work with very rude and degrading people who had not one ounce of concern for the people that are working with them. I have to work under people who cussed you out, stole from the company, made people work off the clock and nothing was ever said or done to these people I was tired of having to go through all that so I made what I thought at the time was a good decision to take the store. 
Things was rocky at the beginning because as I said the store was impacted so it was a lot of work that had to be done after a few months I had gotten a great team together and we was caught up, getting the store cleaned up and getting sales up. By the 4th month of it being my store I was ahead of mag set's, I was up 30 % in sales, my customer rating had grown over 65% Things was going good. I was almost at the point of having a work life balance. Then my dm's changed. The moment the dm's changed it was hectic all over again, the new dm wouldn't give me more hrs like the previous one would. So that meant me being there even more ( my schedule was 6am-5pm mon -thrus, 5am-5pm fri and sat. off sundays). So I was a little upset but ok i'll deal.  The new dm hosts a meeting to tell all the new people in his district his expectations, ok not a problem as long as you give me the means to make it happen right. well not the case here. To me I was getting the feeling of new dm has something to prove, or an alternant motive to be acting this way. My previous dm understood that store managers needed help, whether it be hours or people coming to help you he understood that things aren't always going to go by the book. The new dm wasn't having it, basically you fend for yourself. So I was making it work the best I could. I was told that the new dm as well as the regional manager and our loss prevention guy was coming by to host a meeting about suggestions to prevent theft due to being a high shrink store. We agreed on a date and confirmed it on 3 separate occasions. Well 2 days prior to the meeting the new dm and loss prevention show up and say the meeting is for today. Basically I was being hit with an audit, and during the audit they seen that myself and my employees on stock days would get a drink and pay upon opening. As well as using coupons, yes coupons the same ones we are made to take from our customers. Yes technically the drinking before paying is against the company policy, so me and my entire team was suspended and 3 days later fired. due to violation of policy. 
I was just devastated, I had never been written up nor reprimanded for anything at this job, I had done nothing but excel at my job. All the things I had done extra to try and go above and beyond for the company, all the places i went, everything i had done for them was was just tossed aside. All the people whom I seen violate policy and be reported for it and nothing happen and i got fired. I was thinking I would get demoted or written up or something not fired and then to think of my employee's and their families it was hard to swallow.
 As I stated prior things don't always go by the book, I did what I 
was allotted to do when I was a stocker. I would let my stockers 
and myself get a drink ( we come in at 5 am the store opens at 8 am )  and we all would pay for it upon opening we never did not pay for our drinks. Never. As far as the coupons, like really they where the same ones we are enforced to accept from our customers. What made it so bad that we use the same ones and receive a discount, because you dont get a discount from the company that often.
 I don't feel as if we did anything worth losing our jobs over. Maybe a write up, demotions or probationary period something not termination. Now they are currently trying to deny any unemployment.

The job started out ok. You dont get more than a few cents over minimum wage if you even get that.

None of this is the managers fault. Two of mine have been great and deserve to be paid more, allowed more pay roll, and allowed to order more things to suit the demand of the area. It seems corporate is the bigger issue with these stores. They are very anti union and it seems to be so they can take advantage of the lowest level workers/management.

Dollar General did horrible during the corona outbreak, was one of the last stores to start limiting people buying TP and other items, the stores were jammed full right as it happened, hours for staff were cut, and it took them months to get any sneeze guards or PEP for employees to use. They also were one of the first stores to lift the limits on items. It seems they cared more about profits rather than making sure the community they serve, which many only have that store within walking distance, would have supplies.

Their "bonuses" were just a lump sum based on if you were full time or part time. Full time got a 300$ bonus and part time just got 1$ an hour extra in a check. They didn't start the 1$ an hour extra until later into the out break and then stopped it fairly early.
They gave out a 30% coupon for employees, but this was just 10% over the 20% they already gave. They also made it only use able at their TOGO terminals, which not all stores have, so many employees couldn't even use it. It wasn't until recently they made it a real coupon for employees to use. With the TOGO discount of 10% on top of 30%, it was great while it lasted. That alone was the only reason why i even considered to continue to work there. 

Then they gave out an extra 100$ bonus to all their employees after it seems people complained that the largest amount of their workers, part time, kinda got thrown to the side. While the bonuses were nice, we got over 29% taken out in taxes from it. Giving everyone a temp dollar an hour more would of been great and less taxes, but i think this was a way for them to make themselves look good to the public/share holders.

9/10 times if you are hired you are going to just be stuck at a register. The key carriers have to do all the floor work which is great for them but not for you. Any void requires a key carrier and there will be tons of voids. Not all key carriers are nice about it. It really ruins the work environment when the key carried gets annoyed you call them for a void/refund/line and act as if you made the issue. That being said some of them are great and it is awesome working with them. 

Scheduling is a nightmare. Many people say they cant work x days and are forced to work on x day even after given notice weeks ago. Turn over isn't high at my location but hiring people in the area takes for ever. It is because it is just minimum wage and so many have already worked there and know better than to work there. We have a few employees working 50-60 hour weeks between DG and their other jobs. Most of them pulling 5-8hour shifts at DG while doing 6-10 hour shifts on their other job right after/before. They will also have you close a store and then come in at 8am-9am. Having to work 11-18 hours in one day on a day you said you cant work because of your other job isnt right or fair. It is not healthy either to do this. The money they pay isn't worth the wear on your body and being tired, leading to you making mistakes/bad decisions/bad mood. Also if they forget someone requested a day off, expect them to just throw it on someone else without even asking them first.

The way Dollar General handles their cash is backwards. It is the only place that doesn't let employees count down their register to the till amount and note the amount of deposits and cash left over. The key carriers/managers will count down your register. This is not the correct way to handle money at any location i have ever seen. It leaves the low level cashiers open to bad managers/key carriers. Luckily i haven't encountered any in my experience, but there were stores i heard about where the manager and multiple people were in on ripping off all the workers and the store. The low level workers also lost their jobs when they rolled the management even tho they had nothing to do with their registers being off. 

Two of the mangers I have were great. One of them shouldn't be a manager of the store, he should be a district manager. It seems they are keeping him down bellow because he is a working manager. He is there there before 6am stocking up the store because we don't get extra people in the afternoon to help stock or anything. Both of them were doing this at two locations so this is obviously by design of Dollar General. But one of them really goes above and beyond and he doesn't deserve to stay in low level management at all.

Some of the guests are great and some are a nightmare. People really don't like to be carded when they are well past 50 years old and are all grey. This causes some guests in line to become aggressive to the cashiers saying we are "harassing" old ladies. When you refuse a sale because of no ID, if you are not a key carrier you have to hold up the whole entire line while you call someone up after they just walk out of the store in anger at you.

Dollar General has a lot of traffic and people drop things off in bad locations. This causes people to bring up items they think are a dollar, and obviously are not, and become upset they found it in a dollar slot. 
Dont forget when someone is upset about the price you need to call someone up to do anything about it, many times they will change the price. 

If you do a price check on your register because they don't leave you an HHT, which they don't most of the time, it is held agaisnt you. If an item is missing a tag, but you know the exact amount the item is, you are not allowed to enter a generic sku for said item. You must hold up the whole line and send either the customer or yourself back to find one with it. 
They also seem to do almost all their refunds/returns on their main low level cashiers. This isn't right and they should be doing these on their own registers, often times returns/refunds being done on the main register causes a large line to form. At other jobs this is held agaisnt the register holder and they often get nasty notes about having too many refunds and voids so i assume this is done here too at some point.

Not all key carriers care about proactively keeping a line down but often get mad if a line forms if you don't call them. This causes cashiers to not want to call the key carrier because they are going to be upset either way. Can not stress enough that if they key carrier is a grumpy person, you are going to have a very bad time.

The bane of everyone's existence is their digital coupons. Just only do coupons in the store that are automatic like many of the weekly flyer ones. So many voids and canceled items are because of the coupons. You cant even tell people to read things because it isn't the proper way, you are just supposed to apologize and push their app they want you to give personal information for their marketing purposes. Not to mention this causes lines to form as some people rust to try to download the app to save money or just want to cancel whole order, which needs you to call up someone to do it making the line longer and grumpier.

It is a decent hold me over job, but dont let a minimum wage job stop you from getting a better job. Even if you get promoted to a key carrier, which is just more work at almost the same amount of pay while touching multiple peoples registers, it doesn't seem to be worth it. 

What i have learned since working here is they run their store too bare bones. They rake in tons of money and pay their floors employees and managers very little. So many things are vendor controlled it causes issues where they blindly send you tons of products you don't even need and few that you do need. Most of their stores locations candy is covered in dust and dirt at the checkouts. Many of it will be expired too as most do not rotate their candies.  It is pretty gross and the cleanliness of most locations is very low. When truck day comes they don't even put help on in the afternoon to put the stuff up and get the store ready because they give the managers so little payroll. Leading to their managers coming in early to do it themselves. 

If they paid people better and gave them time to actually clean/stock without having to take guests things would be much better for all parties.

So I've worked in retail for 16 years now, never been wrote up until DG and the context of the write up screams this particular manager wanted me gone. Some context my first job when I turned 16 back in the day was actually DG and I have returned a few times over the years as a part time job when times were rough, been a Salaried Store Manager for the Competition as well so I know the policies etc. So when I recently moved to a new town I applied and got a job as an Assistant Manager at a new store that was opening Great Right? The month I trained at another location it was apparent I knew what I was doing I received nothing but praise from multiple Store Managers that visited and I thought to myself this is it I'm here for good and will make this a career. The whole time I was training I was never assigned a job code so I never got paid as an Assistant until the 1st week the new store was open and never got retroactively paid either I mean 8.00 an hour compared to the 12 I was supposed to be making eh didnt bother me a whole lot. So when we started to stock the new store for opening I'm the Assistant and DG has a new store opening schedule and shows who is supposed to be there on what days it starts at Day 0 then 1-7 Day 0 Store Manager and Merchandiser meet at the store etc. Day 1 Assistant Manager is supposed to be brought into the mix was I the answer is no. Day 2 I show up albeit I was 20 minutes late because I was told by my Manager to be there at 10 and she never told me it changed to 7 but we started stocking. My Store Manager spent a majority of the day in the backroom directing traffic jumping on my case to work faster. I took only Grocery Rolltainers while 6 other employees worked on 2 rolltainers over in seasonal etc. I still finished 4 rolltainers before they finished their 2 meanwhile I was being asked where stuff goes and taking it upon myself to teach employees how to look at the location on the shipping labels and where to stock stuff...so I was slightly peeved that day. Day 3 much the same as Day 2 except I focused on just stocking because I had been chewed out over needing to lead by example and work faster (Funny she wanted me to lead by example I spent 8 years in the National Guard, went to basic at Ft Knox I've known and forgotten more about leadership than she will ever know if she lives to be 200) So I was focused on stocking ignored other employees pleas for assistance and then I still had to go behind them and fix stuff when it was placed in the wrong location, Brought it up to the Store Manager and was told "Lets just worry about getting the store stocked and opened we can fix those issues later." NO you fix those issues at the start or you begin an entire culture of "Somebody else will fix it and there are no repercussions" Meanwhile employees were getting added to the system to use the scanners but from where I wasnt transferred to the store in the System I couldnt be entered into the stores computer to use the handheld we were open 3 days before I could use the handheld the Assistant Manager was literally the last person to be added into the stores system. So I had to use the handheld default setting number and password. Which was changed twice over the week and I was never told until I had to go beg my Store Manager at one point I actually started going to the merchandiser for questions. Anyways Fast Forward to the 2nd night I closed the store. We had been busy and I was given the task of recovering the entire store under the threat of being written up if it wasnt completed. We were swamped that day so I worked through my 1st break, Committed the Cardinal work sin of clocking out for lunch and still working through my lunch but I got it done. The next day I get a verbal reprimand because my Store Manager said I have a productivity issue because I had sat down on camera that previous night for 5 minutes. I'm sorry I dont smoke and worked through all of my breaks I even let my cashier leave the store and go home which was a block away for her hour lunch while being swamped I believe I'm entitled to a 5 minute break. When I told her that she said "Well your lunch was from 5-6 why did you need to sit down at 7." Yeah so I used the open door policy and went around the district I'm in is small quite a few stores so I went to other Store Managers and told them what was going on and honestly was going to trying to transfer to stay with the company but you know the gossip mill so the next time I worked with my Store Manager I was given a written "Final Notice" write up we just skipped some steps because thats what we do right.Over 3 different points apparently talking to other store managers about what she wrote me up for and why I wanted to transfer "Defaming her character" She said I had talked to other employees and not members of management about the issue so thats what justified the write up for that. I never talked to regular employees about what I was reprimanded for however I had multiple employees including 1 who only worked 1 day a week who overheard the store manager a key holder and a regular employee who was off the clock talking about me. The 2nd point I honestly cannot remember it because it was just as asinine and the 3rd point was the best. "I made other employees feel uncomfortable because they felt like I was staring at them." I work with all females and I'm gay been that way since I was 12 I'm not feminine but trust me there was nothing that made me want to stare at any employee at all. So I told the Store Manager. "You know what every day I work it's something else I'm reprimanded for so you know I'm just going to put my 2 week notice in and be done with it." Her exact response was "Ok I just need you to sign this write up here" And she smiled so yeah I was slightly angry I signed the write up and started to go back to work but I'm my own worst enemy mentally so I stewed about it for about 5 minutes before I took my keys off my key ring went into the office sat them on the desk then walked out the front door." I tried calling the DM about 20 mins later because I had to go to another store to get his number because it was not posted in our store yet. The store manager had beat me to calling him and all I got from him was "Well if you would have called me before you left the store I could have helped but there's nothing I can do for you now." The bad thing is I really wanted to stay with the company with about 3 more stores in the area in development other Managers in the area were talking me up and encouraging me to be a Store Manager and take one of them and honestly if I had the option to come back to the company I still would because aside from the bad experience I had this time it's a good company. Anyways I put this review hoping the DG higher ups see this and maybe idk look into it I called the ERC and the DM's boss was supposed to call but I missed his call because I had to get out of cell service for awhile. When I tried to call him back I got no answer.

When I worked at Dollar General they were hiring at federal minimum wage, which at the time was around $7.50. This was my first job, and it was overwhelming at first, having very little formal training and more "sink or swim" style training where I'd have to pick things up as I go along and ask a lot of questions.

 When I was hired on as a standard cashier I was expected to straighten all items, stock whatever was left from the day's truck, return all un-purchased merchandise, deal with stolen\broken merchandise, and cash out/assist customers within the entire front half of the store, all within a 4 hour shift (and if you're closing you're also expected to sweep and mop the entire store.) They would not schedule me at more than 30hrs a week, although I was routinely called in to cover callout shifts and then later spoken to about how I shouldn't be going over 35hrs/wk. 

 The pay was very low, but I did help turn the store around and keep it tidy, as well as learning what I could through observation and keeping things running smoothly, and was promoted to shift lead within a year of being hired, which brought me up to around $9.50, while by then minimum wage had also raised to around $8.50. 

The pay was not proportionate to the workload as a shift lead, with only 2 employees often scheduled on days where we'd receive 2 trucks, so we'd have one shift lead desperately trying to clear room for a second trailer's worth of product, but we were also a very high volume store for our area, so we'd often have to have those two employees on the registers for long stretches of time, which did not help with the pushing of product. On non-truck days I would be assigned a workload that would take the entire shift to complete in-between customers, and then expected to recover and face every item in the store as well. This probably varies by store, but my manager was very strict about the tidiness of the shelves. Often I would take my lunch break, only to be called back onto the register while off the clock, and as a shift lead, breaks longer than 5-10 minutes were unheard of because every action on the register besides a standard sale would require the turn of a key or a customer would require a manager to tell them the same thing that the cashier told them.

The customer base will be the most entitled people you will ever meet. Shortly after I started working here I began keeping around $3 in loose change in my pocket because you will, multiple times a day, encounter customers with expired 25-cent-off or 50-cent-off coupons that will ask to speak to your manager if you don't redeem it, let alone whether the register will let you scan it or not, and after a while it becomes easier to just personally give them the 50 cents and move on with your day. 

The hardest part of the job for me was acclimating to the impossible sense of time management that is required of you, I am a famously bad multitasker and this job will require you to wear 4 different hats at once, whether that be stocker, cashier, manager, vendor, janitor, or customer service.

The best part of the job for me personally is tied between two aspects, one being the sense of satisfaction on the days where the stars aligned and somehow everything got done on time, and the other being my regular customers. My store was located smack in front of three different apartment complexes, so I had quite a few regulars that I had a rapport with. If they saw a customer giving me a hard time and knew I couldn't say anything about it without risking my job, they would actually step in and talk to the customer themselves, not that I condone that necessarily, but it was nice to have a sense of comradery with my regulars. 

Dollar General is open on most major holidays where other retailers are closed, and I worked most of the undesirable shifts, so on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas my regulars would actually bring me a plate of food, knowing that I'd be there until 10:30pm/11pm. 

Overall though, this job did fast-track a lot of skills that I didn't previously have, including time management, training new employees, leadership, customer service, efficiency, and sociability (I was an extremely antisocial person when I started and if you can make it through the first month at Dollar General as your first job, you can make it anywhere). 

 As for the work culture, everyone that I worked with was pretty miserable. I had worked at a few different stores when they were short-staffed, and no matter where I went, the mood was always passive aggressive, or upset about what had to be done that day or what was left by the previous shift, or just generally negative. Very emotionally draining environment. However, my coworkers were generally nice people, although the turnover rate was very high, with me being the longest standing employee in my store at 2 1/2 years.

 One of the positives was that if a bag of chips (or snacks otherwise) was cut during stocking it would be damaged out and "forgotten" on the breakroom table, so that was nice. 

I will say that when I was offered a new job that paid $14/hr at 40hrs/wk I did tell my manager first and asked if they could match anywhere near that pay and they laughed at me and asked where they could apply. 

Let me just start off by saying there is no way of knowing when you start if you’re gonna last or not, the reason for that being this warehouse is very very much a clique. The management there from day One decided they did not like me for whatever reason even though I was always kind respectful and polite and they did everything they could to try and fire me even though I was doing my job and doing the best I could the issue is they have ways of manipulating and adjusting the production system to make your percentage worse and to give you gap time which is the easiest way to get you fired is by gap time or safety. There were many times where my gap time for the week Should’ve been at most three or four hours and they were saying it was eight hours or something like that. They are not afraid to manipulate the system and change things to make you look bad to fire you, and don’t worry about going to HR because all they do is back the management and sweep it under the rug.  I even tried getting into contact with corporate sitting down and talking with them in person to person and that didn’t work and I ended up losing my job by then manipulating the system again the next week before I went into work the compensation is pretty decent in the benefits are pretty decent, but it is not worth the stress nor the amount of work they have you put in the lie to you about what your minimum percentage is an goals are supposed to be when you read into the company policy you were only supposed to hit the minimum of 85% and I am mostly referring to full case picking which is what most people will be started as. They tell you 85% is not the minimum goal and it’s actually 100% but that is a complete another lie you can look on the website and such for the company policy they will say whatever they can to make their story, sound like the right story even when it’s lies, they play favorites like crazy. I knew people who did nothing but talk to management and get all buddy buddy with them and those people were given the easy jobs consistently about every day or as people like me or expect to do the hard job and we’re punished for working hard and trying to do our best. This company does not care if you try to go above and beyond and do extra things my job got threatened on the spot for doing something that was “not in my job description“ and I was trying to help the company and yet I was threatened to be fired on the spot. I have never worked for a company that is this ridiculous with their management, and the fact that it is like this, and I have heard horror stories of people who have worked here for years, telling me that the previous management wasn’t any better tells me that this company is incompetent when it comes to hiring good management and leadership. The day I got fired. HR lady was so rude and obnoxious to me when I was simply asking questions and trying to understand they never handed me a termination paper. I haven’t even gotten an email or received one in the mail either. They don’t take the proper steps necessary. They don’t take their jobs seriously unless it comes to bullying the employees and it baffles me because of course we are what makes the company run and makes the money so I would not ever record this job the shifts are run by incapable and egotistical idiots who don’t know what they’re doing. I have never been a manager for production, but I could tell you that I could run it far better than they don’t really care about running the shifts properly all they care about is making money but they use and abuse employees to make that a reality. The more cases you pick in a year the more money you make on the end of your bonus and the more money they make on the end of your bonus that’s why they tell you to pick 100% and they try to get you fired if you’re not or that’s one of the reasons the issue is they don’t compensate you fairly for how hard it is to get a good amount of cases out they tell you you’re supposed to pick 2600 cases a day that is a lie you cannot consistently pick 2600 cases a day, especially depending on the zone you’re in. You’re actually supposed to pick 1800 cases a day. That’s an example of them lying. I know people who were ghost picking, which is essentially you call the product out as picked, but you don’t put it in your rolltainer which cost the company money and I reported that and those people get rewarded constantly but I get threatened to lose my job when I’m picking the right way and doing my job the right way, but they are breaking rules and cheating and costing the company money, but it looks good on paper what they’re doing so I get fired and terminated. I just finish off by saying this company is not worth your time. If they try to hire you want as a full case picker don’t do it it is not worth it it is not worth how hard you work you will be picking up water, dog, food and bleach all day. The majority of the time there are certain zones that it is impossible to hit 100% in but they hold you accountable and they don’t care they don’t work with you want anything they talk a big game but then when you start working you’ll realize that none of it is real. It is all just lies. Do not work here. 

When I first started I was brought on very quickly and was just thrown in without ever even being told I had gotten the job. I hardly got any training and when I did eventually someone would tell me that it was wrong and have me do it a different way. I would get praise about something one day and then corrected the next. I never felt comfortable with any of the managers because, even though you need them for most cash register issues beyond just ringing things up, they would act as if you were trying to inconvenience them. I was never properly trained, I just followed someone around one day and then set free to do what needed to be done the next with no additional help. This may be normal, but that isn't how I learn so I would frequently forget to do something and then instead of talking to me about it I would get passive aggressive comments about it where they would say they continuously noticed it but didn't bother to say anything to me. 
A typical day for me, I was a closer so I knew for the most part, what I was supposed to do since it was a pretty set schedule. When I was scheduled to work mornings, however, the store manager would get annoyed that I didn't know what I should be doing, even though I was only trained for closing shift. There were a few instances when I was yelled at by the manager, in front of customers, for asking what needed to be done. 
I barely learned anything. There were so many components of this job that were never explained but were expected of me to know. The only time I learned anything was when I did the training videos on the computer, and when I was taught how to use the register. This was my first job and had no experience but no guidance whatsoever even though this was known. 
Management is always very stressed and frustrated and it didn't promote a good working relationship with any workers who did not gossip or share in their frustration. I kept a distance because the only way to get close was to complain with them, it seemed. They weren't very professional to customers as well and this made me quite uncomfortable. 
Workplace culture, everyone hated it there. There was no one there that ever seemed to be in a good mood, even when trying to be professional. They would talk to customers just like they would talk to coworkers, which wasn't very nice. We all know workers don't act the way they act with customers normally, but they made no attempt to hide their disdain with them unless they knew the customer personally. 
They would make it a point to tell customers how I was bad at my job, trying to bully or humiliate me to customers when I was just trying to do what I was supposed to do. This was while I ran the register which was one of the things I was confident with doing at my job. I was harassed for not talking enough, even when the customer made it apparent they didn't want to talk. These comments from the manager made customers very visibly uncomfortable, as they weren't there to critique my job, just to buy their groceries. 
This isn't to say all of the store managers were bad, but a lot of them were. It seemed as if the longer a manager worked there the worse they treated people around them. 
The hardest part of the job was the fact that I didn't know what I was doing, and the management were basically unapproachable. I was constantly under high stress because of this. 
It was also quite frustrating only having two people work at a time. As an associate you are constantly running back and forth to make sure no one is at the register, and there is no way of knowing unless you check taking time away from the tasks at hand. I think the store would greatly benefit from a bell or some other way of letting the workers know that there is someone in line. Visiting the location a while after I left they had put a dog toy for customers to squeak when they were ready to check out. If I hadn't quit before this it would have sent me over the edge. It is so distasteful and dehumanizing to force a worker to respond like a dog to a squeaky toy, but I digress.
The most enjoyable part of the job was when I didn't have to interact with management. When the store was about to close and I was alone to do cleaning was relaxing, and of course it was nice knowing I would get to leave soon. My favorite part of the job was when I quit.

This, of course, doesn't represent all Dollar General's but it is what I went through. Most of the issues were with management and inadequate training, which may be different elsewhere. All that being said, I would never consider getting a job at any other locations, considering how badly this location was run and how awful I was treated by the management.

DG encourages its employees to manage a store alone in the morning, while also expecting an employee to maintain customers, stock, do planograms, and check in vendors. Etc. It relies on the idea that the night shift can pull the weight with 2 people. From my personal experience, I've had to manage a store alone or had to go home early because we don't have the hours. 

It talks about guaranteed hours for ASM or Key holders, but none of that is upheld, at least not in smaller stores, if that's even still a thing. On that note, the managers are forced to cut hours to make due with the minimal hours given, despite the large task load of work they want you to do. If a store is unable to get a truck done within the following days of delivery, too bad, you'll continue to work on that truck until another one shows up.

Store maintenance starts to go down around this point, making tasks harder to do when you're catching up on 2 or 3 weeks of trucks piling in your backroom. It's stressful, and you often have to make the choice of doing a planogram for new merch, to discount old merch, or just push through the product and try and deal with that later. In either case, time is spent and sacrifices are made, and no help is given. I've watched our store and others struggle with no help until it's in a crisis mode, where people are angry about rolltainers in the aisles, or products have been out for weeks. Etc. 

It's a daunting task to repeat the same thing to a customer over and over again about not being able to have something they want, or explaining that the store doesn't have the help it needs to get things done promptly. Not to mention the inflow of seasonal items that have to be sorted and done on time for selling points before they're out the door and onto the next holiday.

As far as employees go, the hours are cut, and managers are expected to work the extra hours that they don't want to give to the employees who do want to work. I've seen managers have to pull in around 60 hours a week with a single day off, trying to catch up at the store. This leaves no time for family, no personal life, and a single day to try and mentally prepare yourself while running errands before going back in to do it all over again. I do not like the way they treat their managers; they force all that work on them due to salary pay because it's "easier" than just giving us the hours needed to work the store to get things done. 

It then comes down to a district manager getting onto the manager who then vents it out on the employees, trying to explain how things need to be done within so many days or they'll get in trouble, or in some cases, threatened with being fired. I've watched a decent manager get off many calls being told if they didn't do this or that they could or would be fired, and watch them melt down trying to get all that work done with minimal staffing/HRS given. It's awful. 

I understand that companies have a way that they work, and how they want to do things is fine, but pushing everything on someone like that is just awful. I've also had to watch as managers change every year that I was there because they couldn't deal with the stress that came with the job. This also includes times were managers wanted to fire someone else or me, for not having open availability despite our loyalty to the store, just because we couldn't work certain hours. Even though we would do our best to rearrange and work the hours asked, it didn't matter.

In my own experience with raises, I received none for more than 2 years and was later told that I was supposed to be given a yearly raise that never happened because my managers were quitting so often that this newer manager finally noticed and gave me the pay raise I needed. It was a situation I was not even aware of. Despite this, I still enjoyed staying at the job for the people who came and went. Overall, most people who join are not just out to steal or cause trouble; they are genuinely good people who also get pushed too far and end up quitting. 

Those days were the most enjoyable because we all connected and did our best to work as a team to get the task done that was pushed on us weekly. The best part of working was most, if not a majority of the customer base, who were more than understanding at times, too; they were sweet and appreciated the help we could give them when possible. 

Ending comments? It's not a great workplace. I'm sure I had more to say, but I think this covers my overall experience while I worked there.

I have worked for this company for many, many years.

Your typical day at DG as a cashier is:
- Checking people out at the register and handling peoples' frustrations
- If you aren't busy, you will be checking to see if cigarettes are stocked and putting away supplies from gray totes. 
- If you stock, you are expected to put away around 3 to 4 entire rolltainers a day to keep up pace (if the store is busy).
- You are constantly pressured to tell people about the survey on the receipts and other promotions, which you never get around to doing if you don't want to hold up long lines. This is only situational though as all stores aren't busy.

If you work night shift, which is where a majority of the work is at because more people get off work around then, you're in for a treat.

Responsibilities include:
- Checking out customers with a higher volume compared to day shift.
- Cleaning up day shift's mess.
- Putting away gray tote items if you have the time (which you usually don't if store is under staffed). 
- Straightening the store shelves while juggling between that and register. Sometimes you don't even get to leave the register for more than 10 seconds before someone else comes.
- Troubleshooting PC and pinpad errors which are from the 90's. They are old IBMs where the company doesn't bother investing in one of the most CORE features a store should have - their technology.
- Straightening the coolers and freezers.
- The MOD (manager on duty) is usually your back up on the floor if it gets to hectic with customers. They are responsible for straightening everything that isn't food and other manager duties such as closing/opening the store.
- The associate that isn't a MOD also has to stock beer every night.
- Occasionally you are assigned to create displays and put them on the sales floor.
- You usually only have two people working every night and depending on the amount of customer traffic, you may not ever get the above work done or have to rush to get it done.
- Taking out the trash every night and making sure the store is swept and mopped when time is available.

Some stores are very trashy looking. The company uses very cheap bags and depending on the store location, the company has a policy where you must ID everyone for alcohol and tobacco products. Even if they're your mother or 100 years old. This makes many people very angry and you get to deal with that when they forget their ID.

Scheduling is done weekly for the next week/2 weeks and you don't usually get to choose the days you work. You can choose your shift but if you're a MOD you have to work a night and day shift back to back often. As a MOD you are given many more responsibilities and in comparison to a cashier, you are only paid a few $ more and get a lot more b-ing from upper management.

Also depending on the store location, working Saturday nights is the worst. In additional to (usually) having only two people on shift during nights, every Saturday associates put up sales tags which can get tedious between juggling customers and the rest of the work you have to do. Saturdays are also the busiest day of the week because of their $5 of $25 deal and it's the start of the weekend. You will end up with a lot of merchandise to put away which were in the wrong place on these days too, but that just sums up every day here.

If you have experience working at a store like Aldi's you will find the experience similar except Aldi's has way better pay and benefits. DG offers little health benefits and you have to apply to them in a limited time window every year if you do bother to do it.

If this company spent less money on building more stores across the country and stopped filling their pockets, they would...
- Be able to invest more in company infrastructure
- Store security (seriously, no beer cooler cameras?)
- Better computers
- More efficient store layout. There is no gate near the registers to quickly go to and from them. You must walk around all of them to get back.

Worked as a store manager. They need to figure out logistics of truck vs hours given to work it. Had two leads have nervous break down from stress. As store manager I was top 10 percent in customer service and sales in a high volume store. I kept my backroom and store, neat, clean, organized and effecient. And was proud of it. I  loved my customers, my team & my store. Prior to getting my store I would go to stores that had problems due to poor training or mismanagement and turn them around.  At my store I had a solid team and good relationship. But once covid hit it felt like as a company they were reacting, instead of being proactive. Put a lot of needless stress on workers.  Over a year trying to get a handle on when truck deliveries said they would deliver vs  actually delivering  days later or delivering days earlier without notice  and hours being cut with constant pressure from corporate, and very little communication on if they would get that and total payroll hours corrected for delivery days or would provide any help or understanding with what the teams were dealing with at store level.  Added to that there were several new program roll outs that exacerbated issues at store level  and didn't help situation with stores with huge overflow of  impacted backrooms.  That had additonal issue of extra bulk products  that we had to take extra time out to figure  where we could even put that product or the next truck wouldnt have any room in the back. This wasted time we didnt have, especially due to payroll hours being cut- It also had a severe negative impact on moral.  Lost a lot of good solid employees that  were passionate about their work ethic and and I finally put in my resignation after I ended up going on a week vacation to move to my new house and came back to two of my leads having a nervous breakdown due to the way my D.M. handled things while i was gone.   When your staff is dropping like flies ,and  now you have constant team that needs to be trained with no training hours, unscheduled trucks, backrooms that had massive amount of product completly filling the backroom and salesfloor, not enough team to work loads effeciently and recover the salesfloor, no support from corporate and your D.M. because you find out all the stores are having the same issue, no work life balance, just constantly stocking to try to medigate some of the damage , no more work life balance and everything was becoming a constant drain... its a sign to leave.   During covid they gave out some bonuses to staff  to placate all the customers complaining on social media that D.G. was not doing enough for employees during the pandemic, which I think effected store payroll hours even if they didnt say it would.  Why cut hours when sales are up? Makes no sense. I even went back and compared sales from previous years to see if I was not correct. I realized I had less hours during holidays then during my slowest months in previous years. My D.M. did say there were issues with the amount of payroll hours given to the stores to work the trucks but it never got fixed. How does a huge corporation not know to give correct hours. Do I think think they could still be a better company? Ofcourse.  They had been making improvements and changes since i first started with the. But it comes down to fixing their logistical issues. From store level that impacts everything and would save them money in the long run with the company if they could. Better appreciation and getting high their turn over rate down with employees would help as well. But in the meantime... You just endure until you don't.  
 At my new employement I have the respect,  appreciation and have a much better work life balance. And I love that they appreciate all their employees  no matter their rank. I also have weekends and holidays off.  I won't say dont work at DG.  I would say if you want to make money short term and move onto something better than DG is fine. Just dont make them feel you are less for being a cashier or that you have to work your fingers to the bone because you are a store manager. Dont ever settle or think your worth is tied to your job. It never is. 

Let me be relatively transparent but also respectfully direct. 

No matter where you work, you will face problems. You will have wretched employees past and present and you will have the finest workers you'll ever know. It does not matter what company you work for. Humans, make Human errors. Stop expecting employers to get it right, every time, for the abundantly various employees they employee. If you read news headlines, you may develop an opinion on the company as a whole that is not reflective of their true colors. 

I can only speak on behalf of personal experience and I will do my best to be honest, respectively. I have only worked at 1 location, ever. We are a new store (open less than 1 year). We are on our 2nd manager. Not because of poor company anything, truly, they are not to blame. They happened to hire a bad apple who spoiled its self and the company did what they should do and disposed of said bad apple. 

I do think stores should be given a few more hours weekly for scheduling purposes. However what is given is still manageable with the right crew. The complaints from other locations I have found come from the inability to find the right employees to hire. Not due to anything less than the entitlement culture found common in the work force today. Employees are demanding higher wages for less work and that's simply not how a profitable business remains just that, a profitable business. 

I'm not saying I wouldn't like a raise. Who wouldn't? However my pay is the same as I made after TEN YEARS working in Healthcare. My workload is only a lot if my team is not up to par in pulling their own weight as well. My DM is very straight forward. He does not play games, he does not give run around and he is not up to hearing excuses for inexcusable acts. This is only off putting if your mindset is following a victim culture heavily pushed on the work force today.  

If you actually want to know some really incredible things Dollar General does for the employees who are, in my opinion, worthy, in a more technical term I suppose would be, qualified by eligible criteria, here are things dollar general offers that is not common in employers (let it be noted that again, there is an eligibility criteria and these are not promised to all employees and should not be used as anything more than insight to the potential opportunities within employment with the company):
*Paid maternity leave (up to 6 weeks with eligible criteria)
*Paid paternity leave (up to 2 weeks with eligible criteria) 
*Employee emergency services (I.e, loss of home due to a fire or natural disaster - things that are of the force majore essence - assistance is available for eligible circumstances via a program ran by donations from other employees/vendors etc.) 
*Tuition assistance/Reimbursement (Including but not limited to reimbursement for employees who advance their education by pursuing a GED or high-school equivalent. Simply because they want their employees to succeed.)
*The literacy foundation (which is actually a really cool program to help those who are in need access the basic human right to an education founded in honor of the founder of the dollar general who was in fact, illiterate.)
*Adoption assistance (Yeah. Certain criteria allows employees to receive assistance in adopting a child. Including but not limited to reimbursement of actual adoption and attorney fees.) 
The benefits are there. The foundation of this company is rather solid in fact. However your experience is going to vary directly in part to the location of the store and the Staff that are employed. It starts from the ground up. Right now management everywhere is struggling to progress the company above its current status because their workers are refusing to work and instead of self accountability, they find it easier for them to simply shift blame on the ones above their pay grade. To the employee who doesn't care and feels "disposable", matter of the fact is, you are. Like any company, irregardless of the size, they fight to keep who makes themselves indisposable. You are the value to a company if you make yourself valuable. You don't do that by not doing your job because of irrelevant excuses. 



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