deli associate

produce clerk

cashier

courtesy associate

meat cutter

Smiths Food and Drug

Btw if you are looking at these reviews in hopes of working at a smith in Las Vegas, NV pay is $7.25 just a fair warning. I just got hired as a courtesy clerk about 3 weeks ago. I applied and got a call the next day for a phone interview. Then was scheduled for an in person interview for the following day. Got a call fairly quickly after interview. During interview I let the interviewer that this was to be my "second part time" job as I have a business that is my primary job. She mentioned that was no problem but to hire me she would have to put my sch. down as open. But that later when I got hired I could change my availability. I thought that was fair, so I agreed. First day was great was just a lot of paper work (which I didn't get paid for the hour I was there) and drug test. Second day it was a walk around the store, basically seeing all the different things I'd be doing, meeting people etc. Then I was scheduled for offsite training. It was 3 days long, Orientation, Winning the Customer, and finally Bagging skills. In between these you have to do WBL's (web base learning?) it was roughly around 5 hours worth of online training you had to do in the training center and it had to be done BEFORE you could do your last day of training otherwise you'd have to reschedule your last day. Lots of people said it took them 5 hours to do, it took me all of 2 hours to finish really easy common sense questions passed all the quiz's with 100%. Anyway once I did training I went as instructed to my store to see if they had put me on the sch. They had, just 2 days of the week but I was ok with that. The next day I go into work I was told that sch's may have changed and to see if mine did. I checked and saw I was sch for a day I had something planned for my business. I ended up trying to figure out if someone from my family could take care of it for me so I could go into work as I hadn't had the chance to set up my real availability but no one was available. I didn't know what to do so the next day (day of event) I called in the morning (Hours before I was due at work) to try to explain what was the issue and see if I could get someone to cover my shift. Before I could explain why I was trying to call out. I got told by manager that since I was on my 90 day probation she could fire me for any reason and if I call off she will. So she said so will I see you at 3pm? I reluctantly said yes and she hung up. I ended up going to work with the paper work to try to explain to her that I wasn't calling off because I didn't want to work but because I was supposed to be at an event for my business which I paid $250 for a booth and would loose that money I paid plus I'd have to also pay a $20 fee for not showing up. She asked a ton of questions and made me feel like I was in the wrong. I hadn't been scheduled for that day, and If I had been called to see if that day was ok to be scheduled for I would have said no I am not available or tried to figure something out instead of just being put on and expected to show up regardless. During work I felt very rushed and like they didn't want to help me learn how to do the job right. Expected to clean bathrooms (3 in my store) in less than 20 mins. Expected to do Lot (gather up grocery carts 8 at a time) every 15-30 mins while also doing my job and bag groceries and do price check's and help customers out and do the sweep every 30 mins and check the bathrooms every hour. I feel like if they were to set a specific person for the cleaning, and the store sweeps it would be more efficient. And would make it an equal working field for everyone. Over all I wouldn't recommend working at Smith's if you aren't looking to stay in one position forever. I wish it would have worked out for me, unfortunately it just wasn't worth it in the end for me.

Managers: Expect upper managers to come into your store and find something/anything that isn't 100% to spec and then get ripped up one side down the other for it.  Expect that you really can't take time off even though you're supposed to because there is just too much to do and you're responsible to get it done.  Expect to work up to 12 hours a day most times even though they say only 10.  Work/life balance?  None!  Expect to deal with a lot of broken family life because you're never home.  The store is expected to be your priority but we will say differently.  Expect to swim or drown, there is no real training.  Move at lightening speed and pick things up on the fly.  The culture is 80% seriously broken very few stores have it down right.  And they keep cutting hours every year in each department.  your beginning to get skeleton crews that get barely the hours they need, but are still required to get everything 100% completed before going home.  If something doesn't get done, you are the relief/back up help that gets to finish what others can't or don't because your salary.  Most of the office upper management is so out of touch with what it takes to manage a store, because they have been out far too long.  It's so different now than when they were in the store.  They couldn't do today what they used to do yesterday, but they will beat you up big time if you don't perform.  Many will talk nice to your face, but when they get on the plane to fly back to the main office, oh boy will they talk dirty about you and slam you down as a failure that they have to deal with.  Why do I know this?  I've been on the plane listening to it many times.  I hear the stories that they have told amongst each other in private settings.  I have heard the talk not the fake stuff.  I have sat in trainings where the company had professionals there to teach district staff how to coach and treat their employees with respect, only to watch half of them on their phones during the entire training time and they couldn't remember that they even went to a training or what it was even about.  I have watched them chew out an assistant manager so hard that the assistant wanted to quit, for something that should have been a simple discussion and they did it out on the sales floor in front of customers who called in to complain.  But nothing ever happens.  This is more common than you think it is and I am not just telling bad stories.  In fact after 10 years I could say a ton of things that are broken.  The funny thing is that the staff doesn't think that they are part of the problem?  In fact this review might shock many of them to read because they don't think that it them?  Everyone likes to point fingers at someone else.  To be fair; I also know many employees that do a great job and do enjoy their work and would say that Smith's is a good place to work.  But when the majority of assistant managers tell you privately to stay out of promoting up and tell you many stories that I will not repeat here, you can tell that there is something wrong.  So my question to you is this....  This is the type of career that you want to be a part of?  Believe me, you will find a lot of this out when you get on the inside.  There are plenty of other places that offer the same things that might be better for you.

For me Smiths was an interesting experience. It has been my first introduction into retail and it's shown me just how difficult it can be. Customer's are very polite nine times out of ten but occasionally there are those one's who make a big problem out of nothing, however the customer's are usually awesome! Most of the managers are very nice. There are three CSM's (customer service manager) and each of them are very hard working and caring towards the staff. The schedule can be a bit random depending on your availability but its pretty flexible if I'm honest.   Mostly everyone is very kind including the night stockers (they deserve so much credit). The only people that I found rude and very demanding are a couple of the higher ups. One in particular is very tough on the courtesy clerks but they don't appear often so it isn't the biggest deal. The main negative that I have with Smiths and why I've decided to leave is the little pay for so much work. I understand that this might be a common complaint but I'm making under minimum wage here in this state. The union that is apart of Smiths out here (and maybe everywhere else) has the power to take a dollar off per hour just so you get paid breaks. Ten minute breaks in fact, which is honeslty nothing If I'm being real. The benefits are transparent and joining the union isn't worth it, even though they already take a dollar off per hour before you even begin you time there. The main things courtesy clerks have to do is Bagging, getting carts, doing go-backs, sweeps, cleaning, answering questions, carrying out for customers etc. Sure it isn't the hardest job and some parts are fun but it's constant with no time to think at all and your always on the move. In this state there's the disadvantage of the summer time were its 100°F constantly. This doesn't even include closing tasks as that adds getting liquor gates, clearing most trashes, putting away liquor caps, and taking out reclamation and making sure that gobacks are complete, and that carts are put back. For under minimum wage it just isn't worth it, and that's just what has pushed me to leave. To summarize this long review, the job is alright as it's cool for maybe a summer job for a teen or for someone who's still in high school who wants to make an extra buck or two. However it's never enough to make a living and it's not worth it if your over 18 and there's more opportunities out there. The benefits and pay are just so lacking and it makes me think that I could aim higher, I feel as it's the bottom of the barrel. At times even if your over 18 they still like to treat you as a kid who doesn't know better because the job is designed for those under 18 to be quite truthful. Being over 18 its a waste of time. In the end the culture and management (including the store owner) are mostly good but the pay and benefits are not worth it for the tasks that you have to do. If you actually read this whole review then your actually pretty awesome and have a lot of time on your hands.

I was hired for $9 and found out my second day that everyone else in my department was hired for $12. I had to fight for weeks to be paid equally. They will tell you not to discuss your pay with others, which is illegal - you ARE allowed to discuss it and you SHOULD since they're definitely not paying people equally for equal work. After that I also had to fight for hours - working in 2 departments scheduled by the store director who would only schedule me in 1. Then I had to contact Dept. 2's manager, ask for hours in Dept 2, and she would contact the store director who made the schedule in the first place to ask about hours for me. He could have just scheduled me but apparently liked making 2 employees run around unnecessarily every week.

You will be expected to work alone very quickly and with almost no training. Management does not do training, just the other people at your same level. It is nowhere near adequate. They barely give you the basics, then managers get frustrated when you ask questions or yell at you when you don't know something. Like all other retail jobs, they will give you the work of 3 people then yell at you when you're only able to do the work of 2. I rarely took my (federally mandated) breaks the entire time I worked at Smith's bc if I did I couldn't get enough done and the 1/2 hour of rest didn't seem worth it if I was going to get yelled at later for not doing enough.

Managers play favorites and treat the staff like children. If one of us made our manager mad, our hours would be slashed on the next schedule to punish us. I was told that's not supposed to happen, but guess what, it did all the time.

Write down what hours you work every single shift because there are so many payroll errors - always in the company's favor. Then you have to go through a whole process to straighten out what you should be paid. You had to go through your check really carefully every single week. I probably wasn't paid for all the hours I worked, or at least was paid less than I should have been for some of it, but it's the employees responsibility to spend unpaid time checking the payroll department's work.

Don't be fooled by Smith's employees having a union, either. The union has no power and does nothing about what goes on in the stores, and if it's found out that you went to the union, management will start treating you even worse. It won't help you a bit to contact the union.

I heard a lot from employees who had been there for a long time - between 15-30 years - who told me before Smith's was bought out by Kroger it was a great place to work. After Kroger bought Smith's, benefits went out the window and the store conditions for workers got worse and worse. A lot of them were really sad about it. Smith's once took really good care of and appreciated its employees, now it's just another corporate behemoth paying millions to the top brass, tossing crumbs to hardworking store clerks, and hiring white Chads just out of college who never worked grocery retail in their lives for corporate positions that people at store level are more qualified for but will never get due to their gender, color, or lack of family connections.

Management in each store is like a revolving door. In 5 years I had 7 different store directors and that's not including the THREE Assistant Directors who kept getting moved.  Each management team expects something different.  My starting time went from 6am to 5am and then a new director insisted on me coming in at 4am. They preach that family is first but when I explained my family responsibilities prevented me from starting at 4am I was forced to either transfer or step down from my position.  They claim to have policies that have to be followed to the letter to only let the store managers do whatever they want that is the direct opposite of the policies. Also don't bother trying to file a report about bad conditions in your store with their "ETHICS" hotline or website.  It is a waste of time AND management will spread all the information in the store about your complaint to all the a** kisser employees  -- you know some I'm sure. Rumors started flying in my store about me, by management, HR people in store AND the ones who kiss up to management.  The more they kiss up, the better they have it getting their privileged treatment!  Yup - sure it happens everywhere but at Smith's it is in HIGH GEAR!!!  Forcing employees to transfer because another one doesn't want to work with the new manager that is coming to her store - better hours for certain people, etc, etc., etc....Corporate does nothing to help you and neither does UFCW Union.  Their hands are tied on MANY issues you will have with this company. Camaraderie is nonexistent, no positive enforcement, employee bonuses were taken away, Christmas Party was taken away,  Company picnics/get-togethers were taken away.  This company does not make you feel valued at all.   5 year employees were supposed to get a pizza party at the store level and THAT didn't happen!!!  Their attitude is there are many people out there who will do your job, so they could care less if you are there or not!  That is why I QUIT after 6 years!  Continually declined and is declining more. If you don't believe me - ask a current employee that you see if they are totally happy with their job and the company they work for especially.  The morale in every store I go to is in the toilet!  Unfortunately people stay because if they're making $18.00 (top out for only certain employees) and don't have any other skills, and are single mom's or just single in general - they can't go anywhere else with no skills to get that pay.  So they are trapped - and that's a word I got directly from many of my coworkers...they hate the company but they are trapped in order to pay bills and survive. That is sad to me. Life is too short to be miserable with something you have to do every week of your life. The company makes enough money to give bonuses in the MILLIONS of DOLLARS to the Top Brass in The Corporation and then 1 month later announced to its employees that the quarterly bonuses are being taken away from US!!! Pathetic excuse for a Company.

It's dependent on management, cus they will cut hours and short staff departments. It creates a fragile ecosystem where calling out can very well set a department behind for a week. This makes everyone stressed out as one person calling out shifts the responsibility of a whole department onto one person. The pto system incentives everyone to hoard it till the end of the year and use it all at once, resulting in months where several people are missing for a week with no one to fill their shifts, shifting the responsibility of a whole department onto fewer people for longer. Further compounding onto all of the stress any one person can be dealing with. Management enforces rules selectively and communicate poorly amongst themselves and employees. They don't seem to have an actual idea of what's happening in the store and are more interested in the appearance of the store as apposed to the health of the store. Understaffed departments means the vital task that must be done get done less often, creating a backup of different issues that eventually take hours to fix. Properly counting stock, rotating stock, basic cleaning, deep cleaning, and even stocking all suffer because there isn't enough people on any given day to get everything done. They have a lack of haste when it comes to fixing anything. The rolling door in the receiving bay has been broken for months, but we still had to use it as that was the receiving bay. This could kill someone. This could hurt someone. This should have been fixed the next day because this door gets used sever times a day, by several different people including venders who dont work for Kroger. Several pallet jacks are in very poor condition, resulting in everyone fighting over two or three jacks. People hide the good jacks, creating an artificial shortage and wasting everyones time because we now have to search for a jack. Equipment such as the Zebra scanner and the printer that goes with it are in short supply and some of those don't work. This results in people taking other departments equipment and not giving it back. Again this waste time. 
The same managers then will also complain about the state of the departments and store, adding more stress to the one person who's been struggling to keep it together. 
There isn't much accomodation for physical injuries as far as I'm aware. With my experience, despite visible limping, twisted ankles, a sprained wrist, and torn rotator cuffs, I got little to no help in my department during my shift to help prevent further injury or to allow the injury to heal correctly. You have the choice of working hard to keep the department from falling behind at the cost of your physical well-being, or you can accommodate for your injury you're self and deal with the repercussions of the department falling behind. 
If Smith's staffed store's appropriately then it would be well worth your time with decent pay and good benefits, but these benefits come at the cost of your physical and mental well-being which ultimately makes the job not worth it in the end

This was my first job so I didn't expect much when it came to pay or hours, but I also did not expect the workload for being in highschool currently and often being the only courtesy clerk scheduled for my shifts. As a courtesy clerk your job consists of bagging groceries, getting carts, and then doing closing tasks which consist of taking out the inside and outside trashes, rolling up the produce rugs, cleaning the bathrooms, wiping up the break room, taking out recyclables, and maybe more as sometimes I would be asked(no fault of the supervisors) to do a task I was never trained on or heard of. The bagging is easy so not much to note there; however, the carts can be really hard to do and even dangerous if in bad weather conditions. You will be, on paper, expected to retrieve carts outside no matter the weather, if it's scorching outside they'll have you come in for water breaks and supply water, if it's freezing cold they have gloves to offer but some are ripped and there isn't a variation in size, carts are extremely difficult when it comes to dragging them through the snow and I've been outside on a misty day  in which I was genuinely concerned about my safety in the parking lot. The closing tasks are mainly just pains, you are on paper expected to do the majority of them by yourselves and they take a decent chunk of time while you're expected to also have carts cleared by the end of your shift. The positives are most coworkers and supervisors are nice and would offer to help you with these things or let you take a rest, however I do feel as if I'm walking on thin ice whenever the supervisors are in a bad mood(which could happen even on relatively non-busy/stress free days) or when the store managers are around. I was often scheduled till late in the night when I would often be the only courtesy clerk at that point and often did all of the closing tasks myself. The main problems are really the pay and the lack of people, even just the cashiers are paid at least around $22 an hour while we're paid only $17(used to be $16) an hour and there is way more of them to the point that on some days it's mostly them bagging and the courtesy clerks doing other tasks. If they offered a better pay like closer to 19 - 21 dollars an hour it would bring in more people which would solve most of these problems(also I would feel the need to write a petty 2441 character review before I even find a replacement job).

This job was so stressful and tiring. The other employees treated the Courtesy Clerks like they were less than them. Courtesy Clerks do so much more and get paid so much less than any of the other departments. Management was okay but the store managers were so bad. They did not care about their clerks. The typical day for a clerk included three main positions, sweeps, prime bagger, or just clerk. Each clerk's name would be on the wall so you can see what your duties for the day were gonna be like. If you were on sweeps, you would most likely be on "fresh at five" depending on what schedule you were in for. 6am-2pm shifts were the openers and they had to clean the bathrooms and take out the trash. After that they just had to put go backs away for the remaining of their shift with their occasional sweeps of the entire store. Fresh at five was the shifts that started at 2pm and most likely ended at 6pm. You had to clean the bathroom and take out the trash while completing your sweeps and doing go backs. You had to be done with cleaning and trash by five. The other sweeps schedule was closers from 6pm-11:15pm. Same thing again except your main priority this time was putting all go backs away for the night. So yes, if the previous two shifts didn't put most of the gobacks away, you were going to have a long night. Prime time bagger duties were exaclty that. You had to stay up in the front bagging for all of the cashiers your entire shift. You could not be caught doing anything but bagging if you were prime time bagger or they would get on your head.  The most basic duty was just a regular clerk. You had to bag and go on lot and push carts for your shift. There was a schedule with the names of the clerks that would switch on lot. You would bag for 30 minutes while someone would be outside and then after you guys would switch. Now it was your turn to go out on lot. You mainly did this for the whole shift with occasionaly helping elderlies take their groceries to their cars. This may seem easy but trust me, it was frustrating all the things they would make you do even when they knew you were already busy with something else. 

I loved working at Smiths , overall it was a very beneficial job. I was welcomed and trained from the moment I started till my last day there. Learning new skills everyday was an amazing opportunities for me. A typical day at work would be for me to go in with a smile on my face and greet wonderful customers and strike up conversations with them while preparing their orders, keeping and maintaining the work areas clean while making sure all the other employees were happy and didn't have a hard time with anything (asking if they needed help ) , I'd prepare whole chicken for the oven every hour and thirty minutes or so following the cooking guidelines , I'd also keep the dishes washed and hot case filled with fresh items for the customers. We'd sometimes have samples to pass out on the hour for more up front and personal sales. Management was good, everyone knew what needed to be done and what needed to be fixed and that's what amazed me most. With all that we had to do as is the ladies kept up on sales and kept on their numbers and I even learned and asked questions on why certain things were done the way they were and understood more clearly by asking. I was never afraid to ask anything about the department and I enjoyed that. overall I knew what to do , because I was trained and guided correctly. Which gave me confidence with customers even more. The hardest part of the job was to remain calm even throughout busy days such as holidays or beginning of the month etc. This job taught me how to keep my cool under pressure and that's something that I will forever be thankful for. Keeping calm is highly important because you don't want to loose that professionalism in front of customers ; that would result in loosing customers and loyal customers as well. The most enjoyable part of my job role was just walking in and seeing new faces, regular faces, and building relationships with the customers and helping them. I love people and I love helping people as well so that was my favorite .

I and many others have very mixed feelings about retail employment. The expectations and standards of work are, at times, almost unreachable. The corporate bosses who set the expectations have only one thing in mind, how to do more sales and, in turn, put a bigger bonus into their own pockets. They will cut every corner they can to lower the costs of operation, that means we never have up to date equipment, never have enough people to do the job we need to do because they refuse to give more labor hours, so the few people there is to do a job end up being stressed out and overworked at times (thankfully not ALWAYS). You are able to take vacations fairly regularly, and you can generally work a fairly agreeable schedule. But it’s absolutely not a M-F 9 - 5. Don’t ever expect that either. But that is most of the bad stuff. There is some good too. If I look at it in the whole grand scheme of things, they pay fair wages as compared to other jobs in the same industry, if not slightly better. But with the ever constant rising cost of living, it never feels like it will be enough. You do make some friends that are life long for sure. You work very closely with others and develop lasting relationships. The benefits offered are quite good too, you get the full array of medical, dental, vision insurances, over your tenure you will acquire 3 separate types of time off including vacation, personal, and sick. You only have to work more than 30 hours per week to have access to the full suite of benefits. In the end my recommendation would be that if you need to have a job and feel like your skills aren’t quite where they need to be for more career oriented individuals, then you may prosper here. But if you expect to make a lot of money, work whenever you want, or make your own decisions, this will never be for you.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Deli associate 22 salaries reported	$15.20 per hour
Produce clerk 8 salaries reported	$15.92 per hour
Cashier 15 salaries reported	$16.59 per hour
Courtesy associate 9 salaries reported	$12.31 per hour
Meat cutter 5 salaries reported	$16.26 per hour

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