pharmacy technician

barista

deli associate

certified pharmacy technician

retail sales associate

Safeway

I was an outside hire that came in from another industry, so for someone who 'came up' through retail or Safeway your experience might be much different.

I was sold a job with Safeway as a growth opportunity and as a classic, white collar management job.  It isn't.  I spent fully half of most days either a) checking customers out or b) stocking product onto the shelves.  There was a lot of opportunity to lead and manage, but it's hard to get buy-in from associates that are making minimum wage, and more importantly, in a union environment, it's really hard to hold people accountable.  But most importantly, it's impossible to take the time to hold people truly accountable - store operations and various random dumb tasks will consume most of the rest of your day.  Also, as the Store Manager, you are the only person that 'they' at corporate or your division headquarters, trust.  So you'll get a lot of dumb requirements - 'personally verify this signage is posted in the breakroom', 'tell us how many of this UPC item you have on the shelf', 'watch this video title through the satellite feed', 'conference call on these days', 'verify all new hires have completed documentation', 'make sure everyone in your facility has signed off on new policy X', 'complete this checklist for an upcoming holiday', 'make sure this list of employees has completed this computer-based training', 'complete this checklist for limiting "Shrink"', etc.  There was a lot of micromanagement and knee-jerk reactions from management based on whatever the latest numbers were.

And although everyone makes a big deal out of how they are there to support stores and store management, they aren't.  Period.  When you ask for help, you usually won't get it, and if you do, it won't be the kind of help you want.  Field Merchandisers (specialists in different departments within the store that work for the District Manager) don't want to train employees or fix bad habits, they want to hold associates accountable to a standard that the employee may never have learned.

I started off working 80 hour weeks and dialed it back to the minimum 50-60 hour weeks because I found that those extra twenty hours were being wasted - I wasn't able to use that time to 'get ahead' on tasks, or to research how I could run the business better - if you're in the building, you will be told that you should be 'operating' the store, i.e. stocking or checking, depending on how many customers are there.  You will also be told repeatedly that you should delegate these tasks to your employees, or 'put systems in place', but your schedule will be so tight because of the labor model that one person 'calling out' will inevitably result in you stocking or checking more.  If you schedule extra help in case someone 'calls out' you will not make your salary requirements.  This will happen every week. You will never be able to hold an employee accountable for not showing up because they know exactly how far they can push the union contract, and as long as they can get a doctor's note, they can show up or not pretty much without concern for you.

The good news is that the pay (for store managers, anyway) is pretty good and the job stability is actually excellent - it's almost impossible to get fired as a store manager, no matter how bad your performance.  This applies to all level of employees throughout the organization - problem employees are typically shuffled off for a 'fresh start' in another store rather than terminated.  Most manager-level employees that were terminated during my time were due to very specific misconduct - i.e. they might have been struggling in other areas, but they were fired for tampering with pay or work hour records, and they were all fired on the first offense, including those with very good performance.  It was strange how many problem employees I saw shuffled off but how many 'instant firings' there were amongst management.

Also, although no one will ever admit it at Safeway, the customer is not the person that the company is focused on, nor the employees.  They're focused on shareholders and Wall Street (got to hit that profit target this quarter) and consumer-packaged goods companies (selling 40 different varieties of Oreos because Nabisco paid for that shelf space, not because we want to serve our customers what they want).  So in management you will execute short term focused strategies that are bad for the business and the customer experience and hurt the long-term prospects of the company because it's easier to cut your way to profitability than it is to actually grow by treating customers well.  Ask a store manager about 'Shrink' or 'Salary OR' and you'll hear a lot about how Safeway is starving the business in order to be more profitable.

Despite being sold on the growth potential within the company, out of about 100 Store Managers that I knew, in two years TWO were promoted and a third was 'put on project.'  None of them had an increase in pay - all of them had an increase in responsibilities and expectations.  None of their promotions were permanent, though i.e. the company could revoke their status whenever it liked.

On the plus side - you get to see the real inner-workings of a business, including profitability and how different factors (some controllable, some not) have an impact on that profitability.  It's a great primer for the world of business - you learn a lot about everything from human resources to marketing to logistics and inventory management.  It's almost (but not quite because you don't spend enough time talking about the important things) an MBA experience in terms of getting a grasp on a microeconomic business in all its aspects, and if you have an entrepreneurial bone in your body, you will a) do well and b) have a great base to expand in to whatever other business you'd like afterwards.

They have a high starting wage with bonus incentives if you reach production standards but thats to trick new people threw the door. They are constantly hiring due to people coming in and working 5 minutes and leaving. The management likes to pretend its lazy people but its much more than that. Safety is a huge problem here that they refuse to address because all they care about is speed which will make more sense as you read on. Everything is stacked too high due to limited space and to much product. You will be lifting up to 85lbs in the produce section tossing it on a stack 7ft tall, you will be grabing fairly heavy pallets that are stacked about 7ft high down to the growned. Being management they dont manage much of anything, labels that you need to call out into a headset to pick your order are all peeling off and faded and they refuse to fix it, even the headsets have issues like randomly shutting off then it takes 5 min to log back in, your on the clock always so if you take even a few seconds to read the label your going to be rushing to get 100% on the order which you will fail to do so to the majority of your orders, and if you fail at reading the label 3 rimes your locked out and have to run to the office to get back on all while the clock for the order is still ticking. The headset will even periodically ask you to split boards but if you do it will count against you and slow you down because the preset clock is counting from the moment you start your first order and stop at the end of the day on your last order. Your time is even going when your on break it just adds 15 or 30 min for lunch thats it it doesnt account for anything other than start and end of day. Even when your done picking your still wasting time trying to rush to a door that could be on the opposite side of the building and on occasion especially around new people who are trying to learn which is always there will be people backing up the trailer entrance all while you should be on your next order counting down but you have to load your pallet. Everyone is constantly in your way slowing you down. Due to managment failing to address anything and not being able to keep workers, or properly organizing the warehouse, the people that are there are forced to make up where they're lacking, which is why everyone is on such a strict time crunch. So much so you dont have enough time to even run to the bathroom, pick up a pallet, or even tie a shoe lace, if you even as much as sneeze your going to be rushing to make time, which sadly is not an exaggeration even in the slightest. You will have 6 months of what they call a training period but only 3 days with a so called trainer who just follows you around and periodically will throw in a, hey try putting that here the rest is on you, the trainers het a bonus pay if the person they trained makes it past 6months but have a 95% fail rate. If they where more organized and everyone didnt have to learn there own TRICKS and straight up run to beat the clock there would be more of a training program. Even when you tell them your concerns and ways to fix it nothing happens, they are unorganized and sloppy, if they just focused on that one thing, production would skyrocket. They still find a way to be behind so they are constantly calling for help due to excessive amounts of overtime and instead of planning ahead they wait to almost the last second to get extra help in, so you will be working an extra 5+ hrs because you cant leave till all work is done. You dont have a life away from work, your either working or practically on call which you are required to go in. Theres no set schedules, every week can and will more often than not be different. Which means you can be set for, sat sun tue wed fri being one week then work sat-wed the next all while being called in for overtime on your split days off. Though they have recently started trying to make split days less of a thing but it still happens. They try to come off as if there is a scheduke and they can work with people who can only work a few days a week but in a few weeks they will fire you if you cant work around there ridiculous schedule which again is always working. Everyone here is pretty nice but they need real leaders, the people in charge just tell you there in charge and know better than you. The benefits they offer you can pretty much forget about because to get it you have to go to a website no one can get access to because like everything else they wont look into it, once agian they will throw on you to try and figure it out. And people have also been scammed out of there hard earned money because your paystub is conveniently on the same platform. And this is just a few examples of the problems you will face on a daily basis and it doesnt even scratch the surface.

A typical day at work involves unloading grocery pallets that are brought in either before or after you clock in. On bad days these can range to several hours late, which usually means its impossible to complete your task. When breaking the load you spot, stock, and face the aisles with grocery product, which is the main part of the job. If you enjoy consistent tasks everyday, this aspect is true for Night Crew, however there are complications. 

An additional task of Night Crew is to manage the registers for two hours, one before closing and one after opening. This part can tie up a team member from a few minutes to the full hour depending on customer density that day. This is one less person working on the load and often they often take up time traveling to and from the register. You often spot looters coming in to the store and by the company policy you have to still ring them up and can not confront them. 

Loads vary in size based on who ordered it. Typically the Night Crew manager makes an order during the night during specific time constraints where they are busy for the duration. One less breaking the load and stocking the shelves. Their orders have to be submitted by a specific time and its contents are typically delivered from the warehouse the next night. If the load or customers constrain them time wise their order can easily be disproportionate to what is needed. Sometimes you get a light load (400-500 items), some times your load exceeds reasonable capabilities of your team (800+). Based on who is doing the order and how many team members you have at your disposal, a job can temper between doable and impossible.

When a job becomes leaning towards impossible the manager must put together a plan to re-palletize the remaining load and put that in the backroom. Based on the size and the management of the day receiver, the backroom may or may not be able to fit your load. There is no clear answer to how to deal with this, which is a major contributor to frustration in the Night Crew. This presents a snowball effect that can occur. If a bad load isn't able to be put in the backroom, the person making the next order has to compensate organizationally either through smaller load or tight re-palletizing. Both solutions requires some sacrifice to either make more holes in the store, flood the backroom, or produce another bad load. When you are working in this spiral, if the manager doesn't make further sacrifices team moral and cooperation can break down, leading to bitter resentment that each time could be an impossible task. 

This is a minimum wage job for me, $12.60 previously, now $13.60 with the state increase, including $.60 increase for working overnight at Safeway. Working nights is a difficult physical and mental experience that requires sleeping discipline and mental fortitude to what is initially a gloomy outlook if communication is already weak among the team. The highlight is consistent 8 hour shifts in retail with the job itself, when paced appropriately, not very physically taxing. 

The way management described this job to me is that it takes the best of their workers to do Night Crew and they often ask a lot. This is definitely true. Typically throughout the week a manager will leave a passive note for us, detailing extra focuses for the night, which usually are out of reach of completing to the letter. Usually we are not commemorated for our hard work and are the object of scorn if organization breaks down. To do this job requires you to bite your pride a bit. 

Ultimately, the secret to this job is that you can't get everything done. There will always be a task undone or gaps in what you can reasonably achieve. If you can embrace this, as a Night Crew worker all you need to worry about is managing your sleep and mentally preparing to ignore bitter coworkers. The work itself is straight forward and if you are a coffee lover or a night owl, this might be a good calling, at least for a little while. Learn what you can, training can often fall through the cracks in this fast paced job, and hold yourself to a standard. This is a good starting experience for someone looking to get into a job that encourages self-reliance and work ethic. Dedicate a few months to this. It will naturally encourage you to look for a new job, and be better prepared for it.

With my spring semester at college coming to an end I needed to find a job to work during the summer. I applied at Safeway to work as a Courtesy Clerk since I had experience from a previous job. I went in for an interview, passed my drug test and was hired on. I was offered a position as a Night Clerk instead of working as a Courtesy Clerk. I decided to give it a shot and accepted. 

The first few days were a bit rocky as I was getting used to working a night shift and understanding what I was doing. My training up to this point was only watching a few videos on how to handle customers and treat my workplace. The rest of my training was learned through osmosis as I would learn on the fly by constantly asking where things went and what I should be doing. I never truly felt like I had a full grasp of my job. Constant questioning would only lead to short term solutions and I would often wonder what I was to be doing after I finished my work.  

A typical day at my job would start when I would show up early before my shift and wait to clock in. After clocking in I would head to the rear of the store to wait for someone to show up and move the first pallet into place. After this, everyone would break down the pallet and move produce onto carts which would then be taken to the aisles the produce went to. The produce would be then taken off the cart and placed relatively near the area the stock would be on the shelf. This process would be repeated until all the pallets were offloaded and moved to their proper aisles. From here I would wait until someone would tell me where to go next. Usually, I would be sent to help out on the water aisle where all the night crew would work together to stock and face the aisle. However, sometimes I would be instructed to work by myself on another aisle. From there we would stock all the shelves and put any boxes in a bailer to be crushed. If we did this quickly enough we would get a 15-minute break. Then we would set to face our designated aisles and make them look good. After that, we would take any go backs we would find in the aisles and place them up front for the courtesy clerks the in the morning. 

I learned how to operate an electric power jack, and how to break down pallets. I felt like I was also taught how to stock aisles, but I was usually on my own and wasn't instructed on how to stock any aisles except for the water aisle which was a shared effort between the team*. 

Management was a mixed bag. Over time, I noticed that I was getting less and less hours. Management did not give me a reason for this until I asked and I was told because I was new I wouldn't be given as many hours as other workers. This was a problem. Without the proper amount of hours, I wouldn't make enough money to make ends meet. I went from 24 hours to 16 hours and then finally 8 hours. I had many managers to talk to and some were better than others.* 

Co-workers were nice for the most part and I felt like they understood what they were doing. There was some distrust between a few of them and it seemed like management was not viewed in the most positive of lights.

The hardest part of the job where the expectations put on me with little training. One manager, who I didn't know even worked with the night crew, was angry that I didn't know where everything went and didn't know how to properly stock the water aisle by myself. As stated before, this was usually something that everyone would do together, but apparently  I was suppose to be able to do it all by myself. I was also told by that manager that I should be able to stock half of the store by myself and would be timed to see if I could do it fast enough. This was odd as it seemed that every day I would come in and be separated from the other workers who would go work on another part of the store together. I never saw any of the other new workers have to do this. It may have only been part of specialized training for me on those nights, but I was never told anything besides what to do.

I enjoyed the times I got to work together with my other co-workers even though most of the night I was by myself stocking half of the store.

Typical Week consisted of a Monday through Friday 5am to 2pm
Daily work week. Daily processes consisted of the following. Print daily invoices of purchases and daily sales report from previous day. Each are given to the department manager to review and report back to me with any issues or opportunites. Visually received and checked all direct delivery merchandise into store and out of store (credits) Communicated with different Direct Delivery Sales persons and district managers of current and coming soon sale advertisements of company and issued sales floor space for their products. Over sought main backroom and Department Manager adherence to maintain proper backroom standards of product organization.Over sought the Direct scan out process of unrecoverable and store recoverable merchandise done by each Department Manager's team and main backroom team. Produced and Consolidated A daily Direct Delivery purchase and credits report.
Discussed and consolidated with each department manager on daily report of purchases billed versus product received coupled with previous day sales and took appropriate action to prevent any controllable loss.Daily communication with Store management about store inventory issues, Department Manager opportunities and direct delivery vendor opportunities.
On Mondays, Managers meeting discussing preparation of current week events and opportunities, senior management expectations of new company goals and plans, and main weekly objectives and within store sales plan.
On Tuesdays, Intense supervision of proper handling of direct delivery community adherence to sales space allocation and directives given.
On Wednesdays,Produced and distributed weekly sales and purchases report for previous sales ad period. Any issues or discrepancies had to be reported to me by the end of the week with a reason or opportunity missed. On Thursdays 3 weekly reports needed to be consolidated by end of the week(friday) First report was on the store billing report from corporate that needed to be consolidated with actual daily direct delivery invoice reports scanned in and out for the previous week. 2nd report was a report of each department inventory levels that needed to be consolidated by review of all purchases and sales from previous week justifying reported inventory levels. I was personally responsible for consolidating 3 departments with department manager assistance. While 8 other department managers were solely responsible and had to report any issues to to me and why.3rd report was a consolidation report of other vendor community companies allowed to bring product in without direct scan in process with the store direct delivery billing report (report 1)Various other miscellaneous tasks are too lengthy in number and insignificant to individually explain.
Key things learned were on how to manage store operations at both a macro and micro level, working in large teamwork environments. Employees overall were respected and appreciated what I brought to the team. The hardest part of the job was the amount of tasks in the time allocated made for daily challenges and forced me to learn multitasking to a whole new level for which I am very grateful for having to deal with now. The most enjoyable part of the job was the real feeling of making a difference in the operation and efficiency throughout all parts of the store.

Pros:

Geographically desirable (close to home).
Enjoyed the creative aspect of working in the floral department.
Enjoyed helping customers. 
Busy.
Decent training.
Career growth possibilities.

Cons:

No guaranteed hours so no guaranteed benefits. If employees work less than 20 hours per week they do not qualify for benefits like health insurance, and they have no control over the hours worked.

Management's main objective is to keep employee hours as low as possible, so the store was always working understaffed. 

Punitive, fear based culture. Management uses fear tactics to ensure compliance, i.e. Fear of being written up for the smallest infraction (like your shirttail coming out, or working over your schedule even if you are helping customers); fear of loss of benefits; fear of loss of job; constant reminders that you are being watched at all times; huge department and store penalties if an accident occurs that requires an accident report; etc.

Low pay for skilled labor. Really terrible pay and virtually no benefits for part-time employees. And everyone was part-time except management. Safeway should be ashamed of the way it compensates it's hard working employees. Floral Clerks have the same job responsibilities and required skills as Floral Designers, plus cash, customer service, inventory, merchandizing, stock control, product maintenance and department maintenance responsibilities, but they are paid only slightly over minimum wage, with no guaranteed hours or guaranteed benefits.

Management has conflicting priorities and unrealistic expectations  - priorities change daily and they are not well communicated; i.e. reducing employee hours to avoid paying benefits and overtime, yet expecting all tasks to be completed in less time by fewer employees, while maintaining gold standard customer service and 5% - 10% increases in sales every day. 

Written communications between employees and department managers are forbidden to ensure that there is no paper trail for complaints or suggestions.

Low employee morale. Few smiling faces in the break room. Employee complaints and suggestions not tolerated. 

Favoritism and nepotism abound when it comes to scheduling, hours and task allocation.

Poor work/life balance. No regular schedule - shifts can change daily.

Poor inventory control and discounting practices. 

Higher prices than the competition (and there is less competition as a result of the recent merger). Poor employee discount program. Most clerks cannot afford to shop at the stores that they work in.

Customers are highly valued, but employees are not. Management does not seem to realize that employees are customers too. 

Advice to the management:

Realize that employees are customers too, and treat them with the same respect and consideration.

Increase the pay rate SIGNIFICANTLY for skilled labor.

Provide health insurance benefits for all employees, regardless of the number of hours worked.

Provide better communications and management training for department managers.

Allocate hours and tasks fairly, based on competence, work ethic, skill, attitude and results, not favoritism or nepotism.

Improve inventory control and pricing.

Change the punitive, fear-based culture.

Worked the deli. Also worked as a night stocker for a bit. Mostly worked the deli though. 

Salary was about a dollar above minimum wage. Thanks to the union at the time, we were guaranteed 24 hours a week minimum. The actual health benefits were pretty good. Hence the two stars.

We never had adequate staffing. Our department was the busiest in the store, with lines out the door and constant brutal sales pushed by corporate, but then we'd only have two (2) people  on staff at a given time to handle a department with four sections (sandwiches, hot case, cold case, cold cuts) and a back section where things had to be cooked and prepped. At minimum this department should have had six people running it total, but they always wanted to run a skeleton crew, which was exhausting for everyone and led to burnout/high quitting rates. They'd gaslight us and say the low staffing was because we weren't hitting sales goals, like we couldn't see for ourselves how busy we were 24/7. They'd get new hires and put them on as baggers or toss their favorite people into departments that didn't require constant hands-on customer service like produce or the bakery, while leaving the deli to rot. And if you wanted to promote out of the department, it was impossible; no matter how long you worked there, or how well you worked, they'd just find an excuse to deny your promotion application because "we can't afford to lose you in the deli." Do not start in the deli. It is a trap. It is a dead end. 

We were never given the tools we needed to do our jobs: I had to beg them for months for just a standard box cutter, and I was nearly written up for bringing in my own when they wouldn't provide one; I also bought my own kneepads from Home Depot when I started stocking shelves because they took forever to supply these. Other employees were kneeling on flattened cardboard boxes to avoid hurting themselves. People would actually hoard supplies because of this. When I quit, I gave away all the supplies I'd managed to get over the years and people were very grateful to get their hands on box cutters and aprons because we sure weren't getting them from the people in charge at our branch; not in a timely manner, at least. Months for a box cutter. They gave me a blue plastic Fisher Price looking safety cutter until then and expected me to just roll with it. Then they got upset when I brought a normal box cutter from home. I was on nights, stocking. All I did for 8 hours was open boxes, and they couldn't get me a box cutter, and then freaked out on me when I brought my own. That's the kind of people they are.

The people in charge almost never helped with any hands-on day to day stuff. I can count on one hand the amount of managers who actually came out and helped when we were busy. Most of them hid in their office. 

Training was abysmal. It was computerized. I sat in a cold room while trying to pay attention to this dry presentation that amounted to an ad for their meat/cheese supplier. Once I got out on the sales floor, I quickly realized that none of that training was relevant; I had to learn everything on the job or from my coworkers when they had time to explain things. In the future, I regularly trained other employees because our management were too useless to bother with it. 

All in all, work here if you have no other choice. They will literally hire anyone. I walked in off the street, no job experience, had applied online the night before, and asked if they were hiring at that branch. They brought me on and I was doing the computerized training a week later. 

The store management is so disconnected with the employees and departments that when production is not running properly, instead of trying to help the situation and figure out what the issue is, they just complain and tell you whats not getting done instead of giving you helpful instruction on how to go about fixing issues. There is virtually ZERO training. Everybody has their own jobs and nobody works as a team. The cake decorator is responsible for ALL pastries, cake orders, consultations, and production. the store is open for 7 days a week 6:00am to 1:00am and only one person responsible for all desserts and can only work 40 hours 5 days a week. NO OVERTIME!!!! You get in trouble for not getting all your work done but if you try to stay a little late and catch up, you get in trouble for overtime. Then they tell you that you have to take walk-in cake orders and custom orders yet never considers the extra time it takes to stop what your doing to do that or how long it takes to do custom orders when the details are up to the guest. This could completely throw off the production of the day if people are allowed to constantly come whenever they want and stop production because they aren't prepared. This is the whole reason why there are predecorated cakes available. Its one thing if you have time but 99% of the time you don't.   
On top of everything you have to do, there are $5 friday deals where u have to make one item in abundance. This is a great deal for guests and I understand the necessity of it but ever since albertsons has taken over,  $5 fridays are now $5 weekend sales (3 times as much product) plus they add 2 weekly sale items on top of that during the week. After already not having time to complete your regular duties, stopping production for last minute guests, custom orders, and constant sales, you are completely incapable of performing your job duties efficiently. You are constantly unable to achieve your goals or ever able to get control of production. No management is willing to get their hands dirty or willing to learn anything to help with the department. You are constantly set up for failure and constantly blamed for all production flaws regardless of the situation. I have spent more time outside of work producing reports and logs covering my own butt then actually working. Everybody is constantly trying to find someone to blame. I had to write down every day what i did and how much i produced in the hours i worked so when they started pointing fingers i could show them proof. there are 341 bakery items the cake decorator is responsible for, excluding sale items. If that's not enough they are now running out an entire fondant program... the people training don't even have half the experience they should to be running this program. I have been working with fondant for over 6 years. I participate in competitions and shows for this type of cake decorating and i still have trouble with the medium. Then putting this on cake decorators in a grocery store setting, where they only have minutes at a time to do anything? Fondant is a very sensitive medium and requires time, patience and practice.  without the adequate training and time needed, you are going to lose the quality aspect. They are telling people to spray the fondant with Pam and grease the table before you roll out the fondant. GROSS!!!! Every bite you take your eating a mouth full of Pam spay....

    I believe they need more in depth training of the register system as I found it somewhat confusing at times when problems arise regularly. Not too much in person training given, in my opinion. Coworkers and management are nice and hardworking, but I feel some employees and managers seem overworked and stressed a lot, and too busy to help their employees at times when necessary, or teach them more in depth. They try very hard and are usually very busy so I can’t blame them for not having much time to explain.

    Pay could be improved a lot considering the often fast pace and work load, when compared to other chains. Can be high stress and busy when problems come up with the register not working, or what to do not being clear. Was not shown how to use intercom much at all, expected to learn very quickly despite no experience. Would be nice to be able to pick my schedule more often (flexible scheduling was advertised at job fair). Only one fifteen minute break about every five and a half hours, I believe. Dress code more strict. Most customers are lovely. High-paced most of the time (may vary by location though).

     Breaks now and then, felt breaks could be a little longer considering schedule, friendly people and customers, some very long term employees (one stayed thirty years), break room is usually pretty messy and disorganized but rest of store is clean, given your own locker and there’s a fridge in the break room to store your lunch, caring and helpful employees (when I needed it, because of less training, and also when I was a customer), some paid holidays—was told this was the first year employees had Christmas Day off to spend with families, stress delighting the customer which is always important and do their best to help customers with questions or issues, no security or safety issues that I found with this location.

     Some employees seem depressed regularly (not sure if that’s work related—but a bit concerning), sometimes masks are stressed by some of the managers so hopefully that’s not an issue for you or you don’t have breathing problems or are not health conscious, very long training videos the first few days which often glitch, and a lot less in person training even with no prior experience, it seems most work weekends as well here and that is expected even part time along with full schedules during the week, sometimes the building is very cold but hard to find anything to wear on top that meets dress code. A lot of times it is very busy but that may have to do with it being the holiday season as well. You may want to take notes about the software system when there’s issues with it but too busy to; have to get to next customer and just try to memorize everything shown.

     Would be nice to have a big guide I could take home and look at so I didn’t have to ask for help as much as I’m learning still. I feel they value the customer a bit more than the employee. Happier employees would mean happier customers and more money; lower turnover rate—remember that some employees may have been frequent customers at one point as well and may still be. Standing for hours at a time with almost no break can be very hard on the feet (there is cushioning on the floor however). There’s sometimes a lot of gossip in the break room, if that bothers you (overall they are nice). 

To start from the beginning, a typical day at work tends to involve hasty, and fast-pace service to all customers. With this being a major goal within the company, treatment of employees is not always top tier. Having worked for Safeway for almost two strong years, I recognized that their statement involving schedule flexibility is not entirely true. With being a part time worker, and balancing my academics with my labor time, I found it difficult to tell management of my inability to make it to occasional shifts and shame most commonly would be casted upon you for not being able to make it in. Even when it was out of my hands and I had no other choice but to contact the workplace and inform them of my absence, the majority of the time I had to fear for their thoughts on me, and how they saw me as a person in the end. Although on the other hand, some beautiful connections were made between both the customers, and I. This goes for other co-workers I shared my time with. I was the light of the room, and my enthusiasm filled the downer customers with joy after they left through the front doors of the store with their groceries. The good times outnumber the bad, but I definitely only recommend this job for students planning to stay for a little over six months if you plan on achieving significant academic grades. Moving forward,  I confidently can say I learned the importance of customer communication, kindness towards peers, patience, respect, empathy, and understanding qualities if I want to successfully thrive in a workplace involving heavy human interaction. I learned to always have a smile on my face, and make SURE every customer gets what they need as soon as possible for the best service you can offer.
Management of course will always have its treatment and work flaws, but unfortunately what I noticed midst working there is that there is some undercover pedophilia from some people. I believe a deeper background check is needed before working, with as many minors as the company is hiring for Courtesy Clerks. While working for this company I experienced more than three separate exposures to minor-preying co-workers, many being part of management. Two of my ex-managers would prey on pretty younger girls typically just months before they turn 18, with un-consensual behavior of force on other coworkers of mine as well. 
Though closing off with my last two pointers, the culture of Safeway’s workplace is strong and positive. Their goal is to ensure the satisfaction of all customers in the store, and the safety of all entering. Trashes are never to be over-flowing, floors are to be kept clean and dry, sweeps, carts, and bagging is an absolute, and anything a customer ever needs will be provided to them if on hand. With this being the company’s main focus, the employees are moving non-stop, and this has got to be the most difficult part of the entire job if you are not used to it quite yet. 
Finally, I will truly miss the friends that I made along the way. Although not all of my memories with this company of course are flawless, I built friendships and relationships I hope to never lose.

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