cake decorator

manager

respiratory therapist

bakery clerk

loss prevention director

Strack and Van Til

This is the kind of place you apply for when you need some sort of income quick or while you search for a job elsewhere. The SvT union is not there to help you they offer no benefits low wages and high union dues the only purpose of this union is so the company makes some of the money it pays to its employees back. If you apply here chances are you will get hired they are very lenient with their hiring process and with employees constantly coming and going there are always openings but there is a reason for this. This is not somewhere you should work at for more than 7 months and definitely not more than a year (which is how long it takes before you're eligible for vacation and holiday pay) there is no room for improvement there are people there who have been working there for 10+years and still make less than if they were to get a job at one of the competing stores. The management is poor they take anyone who is fresh out of business school and make them into a manager even though none of them quite know what they're doing. The managers rarely leave their offices so they don't know how hard their employees actually work. How hard you work doesn't matter this company is 100% seniority driven if the new guy is reliable and hard working they would rather give a promotion to the guy who drags his feet barely doing anything around the store because hes been there for 10 years and has no ambition but has seniority so he gets the position. Also if the shelves are poorly stocked and the department looks bad he/she will sooner put all the blame on the newest guy than the employees with seniority who were actually doing nothing leaving the new guy to pick up the slack. Over all its a good temporary job but seek further employment elsewhere while you work.

I clock in at midnight and usually spend time sorting the incoming load for the day until about 2am. Then we gang stock whichever aisles do not have an assigned stocker, go on break, and begin work in our assigned aisles. During this process we also order everything that goes in the aisles, unload trucks, sign bills for vendors, and pick items from the warehouse.

What I learned is how to operate a forklift, powerjack, use multiple ordering machines, and plan ahead so as not to run out of stock.

The management as a whole is horribly inefficient and dishonest. The new CEO is actually looking to replace most if not all of the management because they are causing stores to hemorrhage money.

My coworkers are some of the toughest, most loyal, and dedicated workers I have ever seen. Injuries, sickness, deaths in the family, holidays, and homelessness have not stopped these guys from showing up to work and getting the job done as close to on-time as humanly possible every day.

The hardest part of my job is working with very little information presented. I've never been told something before the fact but instead after the poor outcome has already occurred.

The most enjoyable part of the job is the conversation, closeness, and loyalty of my coworkers. I would recommend these guys to anybody they are the best bunch of people I have ever worked with and I hate to leave them. 

 I would also like to include that when I refer to "Management" I am by no means referring to my direct supervisor because he is in the trenches with us every day and can work circles around most of us.

You'll usually start your eight-hour shift at Stracks between eight A.M and two P.M and be there anywhere between four P.M and ten P.M. As you walk in, you are expected to clock in perfectly on the minute of your scheduled time to come in, and if you are more than 3 minutes late, you have to fill out a time sheet so they can make absolutely sure that you're not being paid for the time you weren't there. You then go around to the break room which is "cleaned" by a lazy bagger daily, to set your things down. After that, you begin your shift. The duties you are expected to fulfill are as follows: stock the water section and front wall every few hours, help in the front end when it is needed, carry out any tasks that any manager asks you to do, breakdown and stock all loads that come in, and when there's downtime, you re-shop(re-stocking things you already have in the back), markdown(putting items on clearance), and face the aisles. As you leave, make sure to clock out early or on the minute of your scheduled time because they don't play around with overtime hours, it's very hard to get them at this store unless you happen to be in a struggling department that needs you to work those hours. If they don't need you, but you need the hours/money, you get the cold shoulder until someone quits out of the blue. 

A typical day at work begins with touching base with my supervisors on what my tasks are for the beginning of my shift. Afterwords, I would do a store walk which consists of making notes throughout the entire store on what needs to be done. When my list is complete, I get it signed off by a manager then I begin working on the list. The list takes up the majority of my shift, but I usually have time to help out with other tasks for a few hours. Before my shift ends, I have a few closing tasks that must be completed, such as facing the end-caps, shadowboxes, and front displays, cleaning the backroom and also crushing any cardboard that I may have. Right before I leave, I have a small talk with my manager about the day and what is happening for tomorrow morning.

    The management could be better at my location. I currently receive no benefits or discounts. I have worked at this position for 2.5 years and there is little to no room to move up in the company. There is no sense of appreciation for our work. Most of my co-workers agree, and are unhappy with how we employees are treated.

    'Challenging' would not be the best word to describe this job. The hardest part of the job is memorizing the location of all the products. The most enjoyable part of the job is meeting a lot of new people, whether they're a customer or a co-worker.

At Strack & Van Til, it is difficult to be payed a livable wage - especially if you are a loyal employee. The amount of work you are expected to do does not equal the low amount of money you make. When asking for a raise or an accommodation of any sort, you are told that management will look into it and nothing ever happens. Instead, most of their effort is put into making the new hires happy and often times they get hired making more than existing staff. In addition to this, there is very little communication between managers, departments, and the other staff. When you have an issue, it typically does not make it's way to higher-ups or anybody in the corporate office. It is likely to be dismissed and never spoken of again. Also, there is a fair amount of nepotism happening within. Managers have wives, husbands, children, friends, or other relatives working with/for them. Along with this comes many problems with favoritism and those people not having to follow the same guidelines as everybody else. This is not to say all managers here are terrible. In the department I personally worked in, my manager was absolutely fantastic. She did her best to accommodate my requests and worked just as hard as me on a daily basis. However, this is a rare exception in the company. All in all, the pay is pretty low, loyal employees don't seem to be appreciated, and management is not great.

This company hired a store manager who had no experience with retail prior to this company . And the reason she was hired is because she was a psyciatry major. Who had the ability to manipulate people who were entry level and people who did try to take the company seriously with subtrafuge and chicanary and use them as stepping stones to make her/his store look better . Often times under the guise of customer service superseeds all. To the best of my knowledge they around the same time of year do a cleanse of all the people theyve hired (espesially the ones who seem less estetically popular. ie,< women>and people that they just dont like personally, by attaching bogus time punches and when the people cant prove the exsistance of such time discrepencies because they were so far back in time into their employment that they cannot remeber there only choice of action is to sign the paperwork or go home without pay until the union handles the matter. I did not realize that a company could be at the throats of its employees and its union so much before this company.

My experience with stracks was a love hate relationship. While I was a part time employee the benefits offered to full time coworkers were great and included everything from paid sick and vacation days to health insurance. With all the different departments the option of moving around the store was always available, and annual or bi-annual pay raises were guaranteed. Hours were great and the schedule was always consistent as well. 

However, my opinion of the management is vastly different. Keep in mind Im not the type of person who causes problems and my relationship with the management was always courgial, however the lack of common sense that I witnessed was glaring and frequently caused a stressful work environment within my department. As a counter clerk I was always assigned too much work to do in the time frame of my shift, and for the amount of people working (usually me and one other clerk.) I also found that management was often aggressive and more critical of my other female coworkers, and prone to scrutinizing our work more than our male counterparts.

I was only trained for about 2 days on their entire cash register system and knowing the store itself. I was a senior in high school, and had zero cash register experience prior to that so it was very difficult for me to catch on, but I got it down by the end of the week. The youthful people working there are fantastic and were great to be around. The elders that worked there, on the other hand, were not fun to be around. The cashier manager was especially unpleasant, and I ended up breaking down in the bathroom a couple of times from how I was mistreated. I definitely felt that I was targeted, and for reasons unknown. On top of that, the customers were generally unpleasant as well. Overall, this job drained me, and I eventually just walked out. Very little pay for almost no reward. Not a great experience to say the least. They really need to improve management, work on being less biased, and educate the employees on work place bullying. HR definitely needs to step in and take action on the bullying that occurs.

I dont recommend working here. Especially for teens just starting their first jobs, this will give them a bad first impression of jobs and adulthood. I've had more than 10 people quit in a couple month span- couldn't tell you the full number for my full length there as it was more than a year. The work environment is very stressful and you're often left to work on your own because of schedule conflicts- which was every week. I worked more hours than the FR MG and there was more than 3 store directors I had by the time I had left. NO department was better. Every sales associate that tried to move ended up going back to their original position once they realized the whole store was the same. They explained that ALL departments seemingly had more issues than the last of you tried to move positions because of conflict. The place was a revolving door of employees. There have been so many hard working genuine people who have left because of poor treatment and management.

Working in the bakery was easy. A typical day consisted of slicing bread, filling the sales floor, baking product, or decorating cakes. I learned a lot about baking- time, temperature, the science of food, very interesting! The management is what made the job one of the worst I have ever had. Management did not listen to my concerns or troubles, did not care if I was happy or unhappy, did not care if I needed anything or had anything to say. Management, of all titles (Bakery manager, store manager, assistant managers, and merchandiser) were all horrible. My co-workers were typical women, we would fight and argue but got along for the most part. We all did our jobs to the best of our abilities, however, it never seemed enough for the company. The hardest part of my job was the way we were treated as workers. It seemed as though our personal concerns did not matter. Our daily happiness was not an issue, it did not matter how we were feeling. The most enjoyable part of my job was seeing the satisfaction on the customers faces.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Cake decorator 3 salaries reported	$14.00 per hour
Manager 11 salaries reported	$30,000 per year
Respiratory therapist 6 salaries reported	$16.08 per hour
Bakery clerk 3 salaries reported	$12.28 per hour
Loss prevention director 1 salary reported	$16.00 per hour

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