merchandiser

retail merchandiser

retail supervisor

district manager

project manager

Driveline Retail Merchandising

I have worked for Driveline for several years and have a small territory of Dollar General and Family Dollars stores with occasional additions of other retail establishments. The pay is less than the living wage at 9.00 an hour and you are expected to complete tasks that you are not paid for and additional responsibilities seem to be added daily. Since Driveline is not a full time position the hours are supposedly flexible to give the employee the opportunity to work around their real job's hours. However, there are many restrictions to work time, including a short 4 day work window. In the past we were allowed to move around jobs on our board to create a work schedule. This is no longer the case (at least with my GM.)  All jobs, regardless of when they are due are put on the schedule to be completed in the first four days it is issued (many jobs have a 2 -3 week window) and if it is moved you will be sent a harassing email to not touch your dashboard. In many cases this leads to driving to stores to complete a 15 minute job that could have been coupled with a job at that location on the following week. 

The amount of printing is unnecessary. Not only are the directions poorly written and redundant, they span 3 to 4 pages with useless information and color pictures - you are NOT reimbursed for printing. The work orders are poorly set up and usually require two pages - you are NOT reimbursed for printing. The jobs require you to also print POGs and letters of authorization that you are to leave with the store managers - you are NOT reimbursed for printing.  

If you cannot find components after searching the store for 15 minutes you have to call your GM. In some instances your GM will ask to speak to the manager giving the impression that your word is not taken as truth. After 15 minutes of determining that the project is not in the store, you are told to contact support to request materials. Support is a term we will use loosely. The call lines are usually busy and you will experience a wait - after they are answered by someone who is usually asks why you are calling in a effort to show that your call is unimportant and disrupting their work. When all is said and done, you have spent a good 45 minutes in the store, you have printed countess paperwork, you have driven to and from the store (Drive time &  Mileage are not paid for your attempt), you are asked to take pictures, you have to fill out a report and upload images - you are only paid for 9 - 15 minutes maximum for this job. The work is not over, then you are expected to email and discuss the job with your GM, in some instances you are told to call the store and see if the components have arrived - all of this is unpaid administrative work. The job will be rescheduled and you will have to repeat all of the above (because there is no way the components have arrived yet and you are not allowed to move the job to another time to accommodate shipping times.)

GM is unavailable after 6 pm and on weekends. If you email the GM during this time you are sent an automated response stating that they are not available. After, a mass mailing will go out to the entire team full of exclamation marks and capital letters informing everyone again of the GM's office hours. Since Driveline is a second job, most employees are just getting home and trying to submit reports around this hour. So if you have a report error you will not get help at this time. If you leave the report unfinished you go on the naughty list. This is not a list you want to be on and you are penalized. You CAN however expect to receive phone calls and emails from the GM after 6 pm that you are expected to read right that second, and send a response stating that you read the email. If you do not answer your emails on the weekends you will get a nasty email telling you not to let this happen again- again, all unpaid office work. 

Some jobs simply cannot be done in the amount of time they are slotted. In some case time will be added for you to complete the work, however continuity work will not be compensated. You are told to stop the second you reach your time limit. The problem with not scheduling enough time to do these weekly jobs is that the section you are working will never look refreshed and management does take notice of this. If you ask Driveline for time to complete this task (ie only 30-45 minutes to stock new shipments, organize, build holiday endcaps, add helium to balloons, refresh and entire aisle of greeting cards, take photos and enter a report on the computer) you are told the company will only pay that amount. Driveline does NOT go to bat for the employees.

Employees are taken advantage of and they are quick to let you know just how far down the totem pole you are situated. Recently they implemented a way to find duplicate images that are uploaded. If you upload an incorrect image - there is NO way to remove it and you have to contact your GM (this more than likely accounts for all the after 6 pm emails to the GM). Noting on the comments that the wrong image was uploaded is not sufficient (I have come to believe any comment left on a report in any of the comment areas is simply not read.) An automated response will be sent to your email accusing you of committing fraud and directing you to talk to your GM so they can review your history of fraud with the company. Apparently the second time this happens you are fired and since they use the work "fraud" it is likely to include legal implications and costly lawyers. You will have many many images to filter through once you get home to upload to the different reports, same sets but different stores. Accidents will happen so be careful. You are NOT paid for any of this administrative time. Entering reports, depending on the number of stores you have, will account for about an hour of unpaid work. 

Basically the job is demanding of your time and does not hesitate to require work you will not be compensated for. Employees are insignificant and do not expect to be treated otherwise after the "honeymoon" period. You will be expected to go out of your way and do more than you are being paid to do. This job does not pay a living wage and the company does not give out raises. I know one merchandiser who has been with the company for close to 10 years and she is still making less than a living wage and has only received a few raises during her time with the company - she is the token "good girl" and does way more work than she is required to do. Don't expect any holidays - in fact expect weekend work to appear on your dashboard with no way to turn it down, especially during the holidays. A holiday during the week only shortens your week from 4 days to 3 days to get all work completed. Do not expect holiday bonuses. Do not expect any perks. Do not expect kudos for jobs well done. Just do your work, keep your head down and stay under the radar and you will get your tiny check in two weeks. Do expect emails demanding you give more than you are being paid to give.

I wouldn't recommend this job unless the stores you are promised are very close to where you live or you are already in the area. Even then stores can be removed and given to other employees that are added to the team with no notice. If you are a merchandiser for your area it is good to supplement work, otherwise you are working for free once you add in the expenses of the job. Dead end job.

Projects (work to complete) are assigned to you by your district manager or auto-assigned through an app. You confirm which projects you will do. You are expected to complete the work, take photos and answer audit questions about the work you did. Each project has a set number of hours OR minutes  to complete work by. If you go over this number, you do not get paid for the overage. Projects that I have done include resetting products to specific plan-o-gram (POG) on shelves, pegs, wire racks, endcaps, side wings (sides of end caps); replacing pricing strips with updated strips; updating price tags; or putting sticky security labels on products. You need to be a detail-oriented person, have great interpersonal skills to talk to store employees and customers, enjoy organization, and have a great attitude about the work.  Moving products during resets can be tedious, especially if you have to move every product in a row down one space or one peg so that a new product can be put in the now empty spot or peg (this is called a cut-in).  I enjoy this type of work because I am a detailed person, like organizing the products, making the store look more organized and cleaner looking (assuming the POG changes make the store be more organized with same brands, same products per brand, same flavors/fragrances/package sizes/fluid ounces/quantity per package/etc. be together on the shelves or pegs).  There is cleaning involved of the shelves, racks, etc. as needed. The store employees have been very helpful in finding fixtures and answering my questions. They are happy to have you there too (at least in my short experience)!

The hardest part is getting the work done in the allotted number of minutes. I enjoy the work but I do not like the low pay of $10/hr (in my region) for all the physical work done, and I do not like working for free (not being paid for going over allotted minutes). The allotted minutes is supposed to cover the pre-work and clean-up work, but it does not. I am getting faster at the work but I still end up driving 40-50 miles one way to a store from my home, pay my own gas, do the work, drive to the next store if assigned to more than one store during the day OR drive home. I am supposed to be paid mileage, but I haven't received any money for mileage yet, so there must be a trick in being paid mileage that my supervisor hasn't told me yet. I like the work but I don't like to work or drive for free. 

This is my first time working for a merchandising company so I am still learning, but I really do not like companies that have not been upfront with their employees or during interviews (no mention of allotted minutes per project, of not being paid if you go over allotted minutes, no mention of how to be paid mileage, no supervisor has been proactive in telling me how to get paid mileage, and if a rep accepts a project in another state or region with higher pay rate, the rep gets paid the rate where he/she lives versus being paid the rate of the other state/region).

Work-life balance
Great job work by your self mostly, very flexible hours. Only thing is I feel that pay for all we are asked to do is a little low. You have to use your own car and phone for work.

Pay & benefits
You are paid very low for all your asked to do, You are to use ur personal car and cell phones for your work with no reimbursement, you have to travel to your assigned stories where ever they may be with no milage payments. There are no guaranteed hours so you may work 2 or 3 days a week but only like 3-5 hours then you might go a week or weeks without any work. O and my favorite part is if your check gets lost in mail if they mail it to you, they act like it's your fault make you wait 2 weeks before they will even begin to get you a new check so then you wait another 2-4 days for it to be reissued to you, o and the best part is the charge you $35 dollars out of your check for it to be replaced.

Job security and advancement
Well there is district manager positions but seems hard to get the position. Not much one on one training, I was trained for one day and then  was on my own, so I recommend having back ground in merchandising, knowing how to read Planograms and retail experience

Management
Really Don't know the CEO but I have a district manager over me and she is ok but sometimes I  feel like she is not very  helpful when stuff is missing from projects that I have to do. She will say that it was delivered with this  or that and clearly it wasn't and gives me help on how to get what I need to Finish projects and if she does try to it takes so long to ever receive it

Culture
You work on your own assigned stores, mostly DGs. You usually work alone but sometimes  with bigger projects partners. You are give so many minutes for each work task. Sometimes it takes longer but you only  get paid for however many minutes they say it should  take you, but with other projects you might take you not as long so evens out most of the time. You do have deadlines that projects have to be done by. But very flexible work. You can move projects to different days as long as they  are done by certain days. So if u need a day off for something you can move projects. But don't get paid a set number of hours a week just by how many  minutes a job is at $10 an hour. No guaranteed hours a week.

Overall
Good Company but like ever job lots of pros and cons. Should  get paid more for all we do. Especially when your not guaranteed so many hours a week. Also we get paid bi weekly and I feel weekly would be better cause you might work a lot one week then not at all the next, makes it harder to budget money cause  your paycheck varies depending on how much work you will have. It's great for single moms or moms  with families because of how much flexibility you can have. If you need to leave for something you can and come  back that day or move it to another day just as long as it's done by the deadline you are given.  You need to have experience in retail and how to read planograms.  You need a smartphone to do all work on the app. Need reliable transportation cause you use your own car but no milage is paid to you no matter how far you travel.

low anxiety, flexible schedule, no in-person boss, no drama and no desk were my top priorities. Driveline delivered. No real surprises. 
PROs: 
flex: day to day, minute by minute, hour by hour (hidden con: unless you take DL's word for how long the assignments take and save 360 minutes for one day)
no traffic jams (you choose arrival/departure times)
punctuality: you are never late as long as you arrive within store hours
travel: interesting when not a hardship & then you just say no.
no boss (in person): no one is breathing down your neck
no interpersonal staff politics: you work alone most of the time and your performance is your business. 
Dollar General (DG) staff were kind & helpful. The reason I stayed as long as I did. They desperately needed help under DG's management strategy & it's a small community & they treated me like superman (lady).
Customers: fascinating and refreshing, after remote work
My District Manager: the best! She provided informal in-person training day so I didn't quit after the audio training. (eventual con: DM went MIA)
Experience: if you have trouble following instructions, this is excellent practice. The instructions are precise and detailed. Help is a phone call away.
CONS: 
Drive Line (DL) training. Their group audio training design is an insult.
Strategically under-budgeted time allowances: it was impossible for me to complete most resets within the time allotted even under perfect store conditions. I noticed other reps solving this by cutting corners. It's hard to do a decent job AND make the minimum wage rate you're paid.
DL issues: most situations have been thought-out and accounted for and there is a check-box you can press in your smart phone portal to resolve with no drama.
DG store is your problem: DG's strategic cost-savings on labor ensures imperfect conditions. This is why you are there, so DL is aware and accounts for most of the issues so they do not affect you unless/until they get extreme. Except one: customer inquiries by default come to you because the one or two staff members are usually straddling register, unloading, providing customer service and shelving. Store customer service is not within the scope of your role. It is however your human role. Fielding customer inquiries makes it unlikely you will complete jobs within minutes budgeted. Depending on your community, deflecting or ignoring inquiries is alienating behavior. Many if not most of DG regular customers I noticed being served are elderly, alone and lonely. Your decision. You pay for it either way. 
Easy to quit: I was out of options when I took the job. DL assumes its workforce is comprised of saints or out of options to be working there and at every level, treated accordingly. In response to pandemic, they added $5 to a single paycheck to pay for rubber gloves. I think this is weird but kind of nice. They didn't have to do that. If you agree, this job will work out for you.

Driveline might not be for everyone, but I certainly dig it. Keep in mind I am single, no children. The way my teams worked is week one, a project in one city; week two, a different project in a different city; week three, I was off. Lather, rinse, repeat. With 12-hour days, weeks spanning five or six days (Sunday through Thursday or Friday), the overtime added up to the extent that I was making pretty good money. If you go to work for Driveline, know that it is work. Time is of the essence on the projects, but I never felt stressed about it. While it's impossible for me to have come even close to being everywhere Driveline goes, I can say the people I worked with were super cool, team leaders knew just what to do right off the bat and upper management folks who often dropped by the stores were very much the more down-to-earth types, with one in particular having a tendency to get to work alongside us. I wrote all of that in past tense because right now is that time of year when the steady work isn't happening. I just have to make it through this six weeks, taking opportunities here and there from Driveline as they come (solo the last time), until the regular work year fires back up. So three takeaways: it is work, and if you show up and do it with strong ethic and a positive attitude, everyone from management to coworkers have your back; take good care of your automobile because you will be driving plenty; and plan for a financially lean period of six weeks that begins toward the end of November. If I don't fall into some other well-paying, full-time employment that I think completely suits me between now and January, I'll go back to a Driveline team, hit the road, knock out the projects, and be pretty happy about it. And if it happens that I do get a new job, that just means I'll work some of the time for Driveline (I think they'll let me), doing projects mostly within reasonable commuting distance.

At Driveline, there are many Cons(not just the Pro Vs type of Cons).
 As with any job, they expect you to finish certain tasks(aka projects) within a certain time frame. The CON: you MUST finish the project and cannot leave any component incomplete, but there is no extra time paid if you don't finish within the project's allotted minutes. 
You work remotely, relying on your phone for all project instructions and it is your way to reach out for help.  The CON: you are not provided a company phone or device, you have to provide your own cell service and device, even though it is an integral tool for completing your job.
You get to travel to different stores. The CON: You don't receive even half of your hourly wage(about $4.00/hour if your hourly is $10) & it is calculated by how long GOOGLE says it takes, not by actual travel time. Hope there's no construction!
The employee portal shows your annual income, but it is based on a formula that calculates 40 hours per week. The CON: you almost NEVER get 40 hours per week, infact right before Thanksgiving through New Years, you will be lucky to get 5-10 hours per pay period(2 weeks).
They start you at a pay rate much higher than minimum wage. The CON: Just shy of 2 years working for Driveline, I still only make $10/hour, my starting base wage.
They have you train new hires, which makes you feel valued. The CON: you and that new hire will split the project's allotted time, even though you will do most of the work and you will probably not complete the work within the allotted minutes.
I have learned that the best benefit to this job is being able to rearrange your schedule to suit your needs.
You may receive a project that is up to 8-10 hours, Great! The CON: you are not permitted to purchase any product from the store you are performing work at. No food or drinks from Dollar General!
There is NO workplace culture. Management is either available and helpful or nonexistent. They may or may not communicate with you. As you are the liaison between Driveline and the client, store management will expect things that are out of your control.
However, making your own schedule, deciding when to work the projects assigned is a HUGE PRO!

Driveline reminds me of something my grandfather used to say - they can pinch a nickel so tight you can see the Indian riding the buffalo. I have been covering an area that averages a 60 mile round trip from my house under the premise that they were reimbursing me after 30 miles. I took that to mean total but they pay .30 after 30 in each direction. There is no way to recoup those costs and HR took almost 2 months to respond to my inquiries. After another DM stepped in to help mine out is when I finally got a response to my travel questions. The thing that made the least sense with this company is shuffling jobs around at the last minute. I always completed what was on my schedule and frequently picked up work that others hadn't completed traveling well out of my home area. The same day that the other DM called me about some jobs that I was actually driving to, my DM moved half of it to another person. I went to the furthest one first, knocked out that and another town, and when I was getting ready to do the last town, the jobs were no longer on my schedule!! When I called to find out what was going on I was asked, didn't you get my email? I sent it right after you hung up. Why on earth would you move a job to someone else when it was reiterated 4 times that I was on my way there and they weren't late? That would deserve a phone call. Two days later I get a call about something happening in 2 weeks. That would've been fine in an email. If it were an isolated incident I wouldn't be writing this. That was last week. This week I went to my stores - 26 to 38 miles away - to do some things that required receipt of materials for a return. Things don't always show up when they're marked as pending receipt. I got them, went and when I went to one of my stores it wasn't on my schedule any more. The job was moved to someone who doesn't have the necessary forms to complete this. 
They say their system automatically calculates your mileage based on Google Maps. I guess they don't know where I live because their calculation is 5 miles off and I've looked at Google Maps. There is no way to get reimbursed for things like bridge tolls and parking so don't do that for them unless you have advanced knowledge of how you're going to get paid. Another thing is that you can't always report work dates correctly so there's no way their mileage thing works.

They start you out at $9.50 or $10.00 an hour. They claim to pay up to $11.50 but I have yet to meet another Driveline merchandiser who makes that much. The best part of the job is you are able to make your own hours for the most part. You can shuffle jobs around on your schedule as long as they are done by the due date. They pay for mileage from store to store. My DM is pretty reliable and good with answering any questions. Most of the work is centered on Dollar Generals but you may also work at a few other stores here and there, not very often. The cons about this job are the low pay, jobs are assigned rather than claimed (believe me there are quite a few I would have turned down), there are no bonuses, and half the jobs the time they give you to complete the job is not enough. There is also a lot of time spent entering questions into the mobile app after completing the job, printing paperwork, taking and uploading photos, this is administrative time and you should be paid for it but you are not. There are also some rude DG managers out there who like to nit pick and expect you to deep clean everything (they are too lazy to do it themselves so it stays that way all year until Driveline does it again) and put out all of their new product when you hardly have enough time to complete the job as it is. Jobs range from 30 minutes to 7 hours. Any more than that and they will assign you a team member to complete the project. Hours are at their peak in the spring. After that there will be some weeks you get less than 10 hours. I would highly advise you to supplement this job with other work unless you can absorb the financial blow during the slow times. What has kept me with the company is the flexible schedule but if some of the store managers do not let up I may be quitting soon.

Job would not be a primary income job. Job works on "flextime" which basically means you get a list of available work in the area with deadlines. Most of the time the jobs are an hour. Bigger sets are usually 4 to 8.  The majority being an hour. You are paid by the minute; you are given a work order with a time to complete it in and are paid for those minutes. 

There are no set or guaranteed hours. This job is not for someone who needs sustainable income and set hours. Sometimes you can have 40 plus hours a week, sometimes you go 2 or 3 weeks with nothing. Job is much harder living rural as the travel to and from the job location often exceeds the income from the job.

Staff and manager turn over is huge with this company. I've had 4 manager switches in 4 months 

Also living rural the benefits program through perk spot is useless. I don't even consider that to be a job perk as the businesses on it are not even in a reasonable driving distance. There is employee benefit programs however you have to be able to get enough hours to pay for them which is an issue. They do offer Vision insurance, Dental insurance and Telehealth, note telehealth is not health insurance therefore you can not go to your own provider or facility to be seen, you speak to one of their providers by phone or chat only.

One of the primary stores of driveline is Dollar General. Keep that in mind, that is the environment you will primarily be working in. 

Other people who have no commitments at home such as children are able to make more working for the company as they are available to travel to other areas even other states depending on need. Driveline does offer paid expenses, I personally can not do this as I can not travel so I'm not entirely sure about the rules and how it works to be reimbursed for traveling jobs. 


a typical day at work includes possibly showing up to a store that refuses you as their rep, meeting a manager who yells at you, or not being able to locate a single one of your team members who are scheduled to work with you that day or any of the planograms you need to do your jobs.
I believe I learned that I don't enjoy this job anymore. If you like going to a store and not knowing what's going to happen most days, an inconsistent work schedule and hours, and possibly working overtime with a manager who doesn't like or refuses you to work it or claim it this job is for you. 
The only benefits I have found in this job is the fact that I can go to work anytime between 8am and 10pm. I can take as many breaks as needed and I can set my schedule to my needs. if my kids sick I can easily move my schedule around. The dental benefits are great and the vision is amazing. If your start this job please understand they will not train you for every single thing you are required to know. Dollar general hires new people so much that after working for this company for 2 years I know more than most managers. You should not ever expect a raise. I know people who have worked for this company 8+ years and never received a pay raise or promotion. I know some who have gotten a raise and worked for the company 10+ years and make on 11 an hour. Dollar general employees start out at a higher wage in my area for less. must have reliable transportation and a brain that takes information in easily and quickly.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Merchandiser 33548 salaries reported	$11.85 per hour
Retail merchandiser 865 salaries reported	$14.46 per hour
Retail supervisor 1048 salaries reported	$49,062 per year
District manager 287 salaries reported	$44,444 per year
Project manager 119 salaries reported	$46,492 per year

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