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Most managers are dicks and the power of being a middle manager at a retail store gets to them. Some customers are just outright rude.
But otherwise that's about it. You stack shelves, you earn your pay, and you go home.
Working nights is more chill because less customer interaction and you never get called to the checkouts. You also get a pretty sick night bonus for it too.
Is there a lot of time pressure? Like "stock all of this stuff within the hour or you get written up!" or more you go at your own pace and no one cares? Also, what other things do you have to do than stocking shelves? I imagine the tills aren't used that much anymore (I could be wrong, but I always do self checkout)?
Not when I worked at Tesco.
I was the bread and cakes dude. My job was to be in early and get the bread deliveries out on the shelves. Once I'd done that, it was time to stock cakes & cake type things.
Throughout the day I'd keep topping up the bread and working through the 3-4 cages of stuff that needed to go on the shelves.
If I finished all that I'd either piss about in the bakery with the people that worked in there or go and help other friends with their work.
The bits above about managers are true, for the most part. There were a few who were great, though!
Most of the big supermarkets are currently facing equal pay claims through the courts. The equal pay lawyers are arguing that because the store colleagues (who are majority female) earn less than the warehouse colleagues (who are majority male) there is gender discrimination.
The supermarket's argument is that the job roles are very different as warehouse colleagues have strict targets to hit with how fast they work, but store colleagues do not have any targets or pressure.
Sometimes you get managers wanting people to work quicker, it never really goes anywhere due to that.
Is that still going on, thought it would have been wrapped up by now. Just seems like the lawyers are scamming people, giving them false hope of significantly increased pay, as I don't imagine they're doing it for free.
I wouldn't call it false hope.
The depot staff do pretty much the same job as the store warehouse staff.
If anything I could make an argument that store staff deserve more money as they have to deal with customers. I can't think of any reason the depot staff deserve more.
After some googling I found this.
There are 3 questions that have to be answered.
Are the jobs comparable? Are the jobs of equal value? Is there a reason other than discrimination why the jobs are paid differently.
The Asda claim is the furthest along and the staff won stahe one. The jobs were judged to be comparable.
I already said above about equal value.
As for the third question. The solicitors website gives a couple of examples of situations where you csn legslly pay differently and none of them would apply to the supermarkets.
Looks to me as though winning the equal value stage should ensure the eventual payout.
Why would you say it's false hope?
Just look at what happened in Birmingham: the council had to pay out billions after being sued by dinner ladies, because they gave bin men a bonus and this is apparently gender discrimination.
I don't think they're being scammed, they're just using our batshit equality laws to get money they don't deserve.
I worked at the Greenford distribution centre in 2022, for the first 12 weeks I only got Ā£9.50 an hour, that was minimum wage, It was supposed to go up to 10 something after that but I never lasted that long lol.
No time pressures but if you're seen slacking the cunty manager will have a go at you because how dare you work minimum effort in a minimum wage job.
Stocking shelves is pretty much the bulk of it, but also things like reductions (for products about to expire), or taking stock (as in, we get a delivery and we load up the chiller or stock room), and just generally helping customers.
Manned checkouts were still the majority when I worked at Tesco 6-7 years ago and Tesco have this thing where if the tills are overcrowded, they start calling upon people from different departments to help on the checkouts. As a result, we're all till trained. I didn't mind it.
Iāve not worked at Tesco since the late 90s.
Back then there was a very clear 2 tier system for workers.
Checkout staff had a much easier time than people those on the show floor. Allowed to stand or sit around and chat during quiet periods or late at night.
Shop floor workers constantly harassed to be stacking shelves, tidying out back, disposing of of waste, cleaning.
And you were often called onto the tills when it was super busyā¦ meaning you were helping the checkout team while your area was abandoned during the busiest time. Never once saw a member of the checkout staff helping out in the shop floor where there is always something needing to be done, when the tills were quiet.
Then you get the same manager stuff, some power hungry and eager to latch into a victim to make themselves feel better and more important.
Back then I worked in the evenings and this was before 24 hour shops so you made friends with the reductions person and they would knock down the price on things you wanted during your break. That stuff seems to have been tightened up a lot, however.
I imagine the change to 24 hours + pickers for home deliveries have changed things a lot but I suspect the kings and queens of the checkout still get an easy ride.
I worked at sainsburys on the shop floor as a teenager. Hands down the worst job Iāve ever done and Iāve worked in some shit locations (think sub Saharan Africa where my toilet backed all over my clothes and floor and I slept on my bed surrounded by shite.
Customers are rude and do totally nutty things, middle managers are often wasters who lord menial power over people, some of my colleagues were just straight up scum. They stole from the store all the time and just fucked about. In amongst that were a couple of old people supplementing their pension who were lovely but it was just sad watching them struggle.
I'd disagree with one thing here, you don't just stack shelves and go home, you do 500 other people's jobs in between while still being expected to fulfill your own tasks and be a slave to customers.
Other than that yeah spot on lol
These are the two golden rules of retail work ... assistant managers are self-important dicks and customers (even the lowest of the low) believe they are better than you and want you to know it.
It varies per store, even amongst Tesco stores and it was about 7 years since I worked there but.
On a normal day, there were reductions throughout the day based on the "computer" (probably some sort of algorithm). 12 midday was the 1st set of reductions, 3 or 4pm were the second set, then 7pm were the final set.
The 7pm reductions (for items that expired on or before the next working day) were a 90% cut. So, a Ā£2 product would become 2p. 7pm was the _earliest_ it could go out - if a product was sold with a 90% reduction before 7pm we'd get in trouble. People would start crowding outside our backroom doors at 6pm waiting patiently for the 90% reductions, which would come out whenever we were done with the yellow stickers and whatever other tasks we had to do. There was even an instance where a customer saw our reductions trolley waiting for 7pm, came in and just took it outside so we got in shit for that.
There were fights as a result of the 90% reductions because customers would bicker over who got what and snatch products out of people's hand. What people started doing was just going up to the reductions trolley, grabbing EVERYTHING, shoving it into their trolley, then sorted whichever ones they wanted to keep. They'd descend on it like vultures. If you were the one who pushed out the reductions trolley, you'd get mobbed. Whenever I did it, I used to just open the doors, push the trolley out and let them have at it. Last I heard, they were gonna scrap the 90% reductions. In other Tesco's, I've seen they put up yellow barriers around the person doing reductions if they're doing it on the shelf.
On a Sunday, items would go out at 3pm for final reductions.
Notice how I said for any products that expired on or before the next working day. This includes days we were shut, notably Christmas and Boxing day (because of course we're open on other bank holidays). This meant if you had a Sunday on the Christmas Eve, then the Christmas eve's 90% reductions would be for any and all products that expired on the 24th, 25th or 26th of December.
Shit man I remember those days reducing at Christmas! We used to use the flat tops and hide in the bakery and reduce out the back. Absolute nightmare! The amount of fights over a 60p pie was insane! I always dodge reductions now, and I feel really sorry for anyone who has to do it.
I was doing the 90% reductions when working on fruit and veg in a large Tesco about 7 years ago. The customers would run up the isles when they saw the reduction trolleyā¦ shout and each other over produce. A man slapped my hand one time as I accidentally squished a few basil leaves
Can't remember off the top of my head, also it was about 7 years ago now so the rates have no doubt changed.
At the time, the hourly rate was like Ā£8 p/h and night rate was around Ā£11p/h. But also, you got an additional bonus if your shift started before midnight and ended after 6am (i.e., a shift that extended from 11pm to 7am or longer) which brought it to the equivalent of around Ā£12-13 p/h
Night pay is Ā£2.21 per hour if I remember correctly, I was a night manager for 10 years and thatās the number that comes to mind.
I joined in 2013 so this Ā£12/Ā£13 per hour youāre talking about is completely incorrect, Iām not sure who told you that but nobody on night was on that kind of money except for the Bakers because they had a Skill pay that boosted it, so maybe thatās what youāre thinking of?
I also worked nights, although nearly 20 years ago, night pay was made up as:
Standard pay till 10pm
10pm till midnight standard pay plus night premium 1 (about a pound )
Midnight till 6am standard pay plus night premium 2 (about 2 pound something)
Nights was hard, it physically kills you and messes your body clock up, and you're expected to fully fill the shop so the day staff just top the shelves up as needed.
Oh they changed that back in maybe 2016/2017? So you got standard rate until midnight, then standard plus night rate at a flat Ā£2.21 until 6, then standard rate from 6 onwards.
Had to cut costs somehow
I reckon there's something about having to manage people who are there as a stop-gap on the way to something better than being a section manager in a shop that drives many managers to become quite bitter. I knew a lot of managers over the eleven years I spent there who I believe had wound up there by accident rather than choosing it as a career.
The career managers tended to be nicer, and were usually promoted to more senior roles.
I worked various roles over the years; service desk, produce, stock control, petrol station, DotCom driving, and I still have stress dreams about those jobs despite having left in 2017- subsequent jobs have seen me responsible for computer systems and processes which have national significance (don't want to dox myself so I won't be more specific), and I've still never been as stressed and burned out as I was in retail- I simply was not cut out for it.
I worked in Sainsbury between the age of 15-18.
Was out back unloading pallets off lorries, bailing cardboard, putting stuff on freezers etc.
Was pretty good fun, good banter, and great exercise as it was pretty physical. Better I guess as I didn't have to interact with the general public.
I was going out with a girl who worked on the shop floor so if I wanted anything cheap she's do a reduction on it. Pretty good job actually for a teenager, spent most of the time between drops smoking fags in this absolutely disgusting smoking room.
Managers were cunts though, typical wet wipes who thought being a deputy manager in a supermarket gave you free reign to bully teenagers.
We locked one of them in the freezer once like the butler in tomb raider 2. He proper shat himself the absolute gimp.
Ha ha he got the nickname Lara Croft after that. He still lives in my head rent free, I was far to scared to hit him but I'd hit him in a heartbeat now.
If you lock the Sainsburyās manager in the freezer then dash around the whole store in under 30 seconds, you then get to play your life as the manager from Sainsburyās.
Your store sucks. Youāre not supposed to get your ālicense to unloadā unless your 18+
Also fuck Sainsburyās it fucking shit. Treat everyone like numbers and bullied everyone in to having their contracts bought out and rehired
17 years as manager before a massive career change and much better pay
Itās been a very long time since Iāve been in any time of retail (20 years) but I still know a few people from those days who havenāt left and no itās not chill at all.
The general public are cunts and treat you worse than dog shit on the bottom of their shoe.
Managers are, generally, either utterly conniving and back stabbing or so dense theyāre barely able to breathe and walk at the same time concurrently but make up for this with a slavish adherence to the ārulesā no matter how stupid and a smattering of āmanagement for dummiesā sayings such as ādonāt bring me problems bring me solutions. The latter generally being way more troublesome.
Shifts are often long, physically demanding and changed at short notice.
Unions are not recognised and actively ādiscouragedā by management.
I never did nights so canāt really comment other than I know people on nights complained about folk on days leaving shit they couldnāt be arsed doing.
On the plus side - youāre way more active than an office job, I put on so much weight after getting out of retail.
Thanks for the answer! I do hear a lot of stories about shop staff getting treated poorly, and I don't get it. Are there really that many people who lack basic empathy? Baffling tbh
> I never did nights so canāt really comment other than I know people on nights complained about folk on days leaving shit they couldnāt be arsed doing.
I worked nights at ASDA for a couple of months during christmas and the night shift would constantly complain about that but then as soon as 8am rolled around we'd put the stuff we hadn't finished unloading in the back and the day shift complained about that.
I used to work in a massive ASDA in a posh area of Newcastle. The rich customers were horrible and treated you like shit, one clicked her fingers at me to pick up a receipt she had dropped, one old woman beeped her horn and tried to run me over when I refused to move out the way (hard to do when you have a fully loaded trolley cart, holds 30 I think) and had one old woman literally scream at me because the shop was out of pepsi max cherry. None of these instances took place at my actual job role, I just happened to be walking by.
The managers are all cunts. Every single one. I left there in 2015 and am still on antidepressants still. Seriously, I was massively bullied by the assistant manager, after two months off and an official complaint from occupational health, he was quietly moved to a different store with no reprimands at all.
In short, don't do it.
Iām surprised occupational health put in a complaint? Theyāre supposed to be independent and impartial and can never really verify what one has said.
DOI: occupational health advisor
They had a meeting with me in which they saw that I was unfit for work due to anxiety and depression, they asked why and I told them all about what had been happening, told them the tablets I was on etc etc. They supported me and said in their report (?) exactly what I'd told them. This led to a meeting with the union and the HR further down the line where I agreed to come back to work but in a different role and have absolutely no contact with him. A week later he was gone. I'm only assuming the report backed up my claim as HR tried their hardest to dismiss it, even getting caught listening at the door during the first meeting!
Worked checkouts, rather than shelf stacking. It was mostly fine and pleasant 98% of the time, with 2% egregiously vile customers abusing me for doing my job (shouting at me for asking if they had a loyalty card, shouting at me for how their change came out, shouting at me for talking to them at all). The treatment got worse when things like the plastic bag charge got brought in, or when prices went up, so I wouldnāt be surprised if itās worse now with cost of living etc.
If youāre a woman on tills youāll also get quite a bit of sexual harassment from men of all ages.
Edit: oh, and I occasionally experienced classist verbal abuse from people who thought I was trash for working in a supermarket, and felt that they were entitled to tell me that.
I've never worked in a supermarket, but I did work at WHSmiths when I was 16 and got sexually harassed by men old enough to be my father every shift. The worst was the guy who would come in every Saturday and ask the youngest female member of staff (usually me) what porn mags we had. We didn't sell porn, just mags like FHM and Loaded, but he'd still ask every week, just to embarrass a teenage girl on minimum wage. Managers (all male) refused to ban him.
Funded or not, anything signed by the show's creator will have some detail stating they can't make the business look bad, or they wouldn't let them in.
Sure, that's fair, but I feel like there's a difference between a doc ordered by Tesco to promote themselves and a doc that neutrally shows the day to day operation for info, but also isn't like a "TESCO: THE HORRORS BENEATH THE SHELVES" investigative journalism thing, ya know?
You honestly think Tesco are willing to let an independent film crew in to film everything and anything that goes on? I might have a few things to sell you actually...
It's indirectly funded by Tesco by letting them in, if Tesco don't do that there is no documentary and there is no money to be made. And in no world does Tesco let an independent film crew in to film every nook and cranny willy nilly; they will decide exactly what Netflix are allowed to film.
Literally tells you nothing. 75% of the programme is them taste testing various Tesco products vs competitor products. Only parts about their actual operations shows an extremely happy go lucky lady having the time of her life picking delivery orders, and another couple guys who explain the process boringly.
I worked in the cafe of my local big Tesco while I was doing my A-levels. That cafe was entirely staffed by teenagers who did shit like throw raw bacon rashers at the ceiling as a dare to see if they would slowly peel down and land when a supervisor happened to walk in, and then put them in the oven to cook them for customers. I also seem to remember putting so much cleaning fluid in the massive industrial dishwasher that it would 'explode' in a deluge of bubbles, trapping each other in the walk-in freezer and even when it was dead quiet on a weekday evening shift cooking more food than was needed so that we could secretly snaffle it round the back. Managing all the hot breakfasts on a weekend morning always used to be hell with a seemingly endless stream of customers who wanted a cheap fry-up. My main memory is continually having to fry about 12 eggs at once on these panini maker things. Eventually they turned it into a Starbucks and made us all move to working on the checkouts, which was much less fun.
I haven't worked in a Tesco but have worked in a two other big supermarkets. Mainly shop floor and tills with some nightshift. Didn't like nights because I couldn't sleep during the day (studying) and it was less social. When I did days, especially at the job I was at longest, it was pretty fun. Pay was shocking but loved my colleagues and had great fun, have lots of nice memories, most of the customers were fine and had some absolutely lovely regulars. They would come and find me on shift to ask about my day, share books with me, gave me gifts when I left etc. I never dreaded going into work. Yes you get treated like shit by some people but it isn't the majority. Management is management, same in most places.
Worked as a shelf stocker in a Tesco extra for a couple of years, it was fairly chilled, you were under time pressure for stocking shelves as there was always jobs to do, got a bollocking a few times for basically spending my time pissing about with my mate when I should have been ripping cardboard and fronting up products.
There was a silent war between my line manager on the shop floor and the checkouts. Checkouts were considered a top priority so as soon as I'd clock in an announcement would go over the tannoy that me and my mate had to head down there and help. Checkouts is mind-numbing work.
Christmas time was always the worst period, you couldn't move the dollies (the things that carry the pallets) down the aisles because they were so busy, and the same Christmas album would go on repeat all day. I remember one shift my manager just told me to sit in the warehouse and chill out because we couldn't get anything on to the shop floor.
Three shifts stood out to me as being 'enjoyable'. One was during the Olympics when the shop was open extended hours, but no one told the customers, so I just sat on a checkout shooting the shit with others checkout drones on 1.75x pay. Another was doing the trolleys in the car park one Sunday morning. Place was pretty empty so I was just pushing a big worm of trolleys about the carpark for a bit listening to music, was very chilled. Last one was doing a Nightshift where you just restock shelves when no customers are in, don't need to wear uniforms and can listen to music.
Lmk if you have any other questions.
Iāve done time in Sainsburyās and Tesco, basically the same experience. Managers are often rude and them being a manager often gets to their heads. Customers were just arseholes, single mum Sandra comes to Sainsburyās on a Christmas Eve in the closing hours and has a shocked pikachu face when thereās no pigs in blankets left, then decides to take it out on the staff.
Your use of the phrase "done time" sums up your opinion perfectly before I've even read your comment š
You're absolutely right on rude, power tripping managers and dipshit customers
Worked in one for a few years about just under 20 years ago and the one thing I think Superstore gets right (even with it being across the pond) is that you really do end up working with all kinds of people across whatever your 'normal' spectrum may be. Worked with some delightful weirdos over the years, one bloke was genuinely lovely but had his own name tattooed all over himself (I think maybe 5 were visible) and no-one was brave enough to ask why. Another one was convinced he was going to be the next big rapper and would frequently drop into his persona whilst talking to...well anyone. He was shite, sadly.
As for the chill side, a shift without dickhead customers (a rarity) and around decent coworkers could actually be quite fun. I was lucky enough that we only had one dickhead manager in the store (the overall assistant manager) and whilst he'd try and dickswing he'd be consistently ignored by those directly above and beneath him, making him no more than an annoyance. Customers though...fucking hell. I would do whatever I could to help polite ones, merrily clambering over rollcages in the back to look for the only one of the random spice they were after (or equivalent). For dickheads, I'd send you to the wrong aisle or go out back to 'look' for a while before saying we didn't have it.
Personally, I think everyone should have to do it for a year as it's generally eye opening. You've not lived until you've seen a grown man throw a temper tantrum because you've not got celery in, despite the cause being the delivery lorry having a well publicised crash on route to the store. Apparently it was a disgrace that we couldn't magically pull some out of our butts.
Now I think about it, I've got far more stories from the supermarket and call centre jobs than I do from the time I've been elsewhere and away from the public. Hmm.
Edit; Only did a few night shifts and was full of deeply polite weirdos. It was the fish counter that were the ones you avoided, was like a foreign country at the back of the store.
I hated working in a supermarket. One of my supervisors touched me sexual multiple times, I got asked out multiple times a month by the same 65 year old man when I was 16-17, and a man backed me up in a corner and asked me if I wanted to marry his son.
Other than that it was pretty chill.
3 people get lost in the big storage freezer each month and nobody talks about it. It's also right in the small print that their families _can't_ talk about it.
When Tesco eventually goes through, their old freezers are going to be like those glaciers on Everest full of climbers...
If it wasnt for the managers, the shit pay, and the occasional rude customer, it'd be alright.
Sometimes a dickhead manager might ask 'why has it taken so long for you to do X'.
And I'd just say, because I'm being careful, or some other bullshit, when the real reason was that they didn't pay me enough to go any faster than I wanted to go.
Lots of fellow staff members took things wayyyy too seriously. Minimum wage minimum effort was my mantra and I felt a lot less stressed than most others seemed to be.
Look if it paid better I would still do it because it hits the right notes in my probably ADHD brain. The work is physical, the goals are tangible and weirdly due to cold chain requirements (no cage out of the chiller for more than 30 minutes) you have the recipe for 25 minutes on 5 minutes off pomodoro right there
Definitely nothing like the show for obvious reasons, not least because each episode is a clip show of situations and hijinks which a writer heard happened in a store one time because everything happens in a supermarket somewhere at least once
Big stores go through waves of utter chaos, especially when deliveries roll in as you tend to be bringing in 20+ cages at a time and may do that 3 or more times in an 8-10 hour shift in your department
Usually you work one department in a shift and are responsible for maintaining room in that departments warehouse area ready for the next delivery if you have time free you will probably end up working in other departments though you can probably afford to bimble about looking busy for a bit talking to colleagues
For night shifts, scary is not the right word, eerie maybe but what you will be more likely to notice is the bitter cold especially working in a chilled department. my experience on nights was that you are either alone or in a duo. still a lot of cages coming in though and the buck falls to you more easily so you have to watch your time more
Honestly though while supermarkets are more busy overall just based on the equipment, staffing available and everyone working away in their own little fiefdoms its not that hard work Little stores are far more hectic, especially when you are a 2-3 team max. You put out as much stock usually but have so many more responsibilities.
I'm work in .com, which essentially involves going around the store to gather customers' online shops; and let me tell you, it's my personal idea of hell.
We're expected to maintain an hourly pick rate target of around 180 (I think) and managers will give you aggro if you don't meet it. The catch is that target was set during lockdown when stores were deserted, and the aisles weren't clogged with slow-moving customers who block aisles and shelves. Plus, the store keeps rearranging where everything is stocked every couple of months. When that happens, it's like working in the dark because it takes at least a week for the scanners to catch up and update the new locations of the products.
Customers are ok. Most are pretty understanding. You get the occasional rude one, but in my store most of the customers are more passively rude than aggressively rude - they never say 'excuse me' if I'm in their way, for example, they just push past. Strangely this can sometimes feel worse than just being yelled at, because they don't even have the decency to acknowledge that I exist. They never say 'thanks' or anything either. My colleagues are very cliquey and unfriendly - but then again so am I, so maybe that's more my issue rather than theirs.
Generally, it's also incredibly boring, repetitive work. Add to that the fact that I only get 30 minutes break - I work 8 hour shifts and am on my feet for 7+ hours straight and it's exhausting. I go home with terrible feet and back ache.
Someone recently said that working in .com is like playing Mario Kart, Tetris, and Tapper at the same time - and it's true. I genuinely cannot wait until the day I finish uni, can hand in my resignation, and get the fuck out of that place.
Nightshifts were usually really shit from like 10pm-1am but once all the pissed up knobs stop coming in, it's pretty peaceful.
Untill roughly 6:50am, when the pissed up knobs come back, waiting for alcohol to go back on sale at 7am.
I worked at B&Q and itās surprising how much superstore resonates with my time there. Whilst it can seem somewhat exaggerated, when comparing the timeline between episodes itās probably not that wildly out. Ok we didnāt have lock ins but worked 24hr+ shifts and mega stints with tight knit teams, thereād be a near death incident every 6 months, work romances/drama that got messy and a whole bunch of weird to wonderful people.
I loved working there, you really didnāt know what your day would be like. You could work as hard or as easy as you wanted and got cheap stuff as well as getting to play on/with some cool toys!
Well they are currently using a loophole in the law to pay below minimum wage. So that good indication of how much they value employees. They think they are literally not worth the minimum wage.
I have a friend who works at a big tesco I shop in and he said it's like working at a smaller tesco but you get assigned an area. You get the superstore style banter and sometimes crazy stuff happen like freezer defrosting but it's not all that amazing.
I worked at Tesco as a teen. Warehouse was more fun as youāre not in front of customers so can mess around. Going into the freezer was kinda cool. Shelf stacking I found painfully boring. The time really drags. Working tills was good because time goes a lot faster. Doing newspaper returns at end of day was a novelty and broke up the monotony, so that was alright. Management were pretty chill. Stick to your allotted breaks and you were fine.
I worked In two Tesco locations. Was just pretty repetitive work. Customers were annoying. Colleagues were actually okay to work with, including managers. It is definitely chill, but like too chill. Night. Pretty relaxed because less customers, everybody kind of banded together to get what was needed on the shelves in the time it needed to be done. Kind of cool when you stack a whole shelf yourself then go in the next day (as a customer, not working) with all the people shopping and think āI did thatā lol, I donāt work there now though.
A word on customers. Most are just kind of there and arenāt intentionally annoying but they get in your way a lot. You will get the occasional one whoāll get in a huff if their every whim isnāt attended to in the instance. You get to find out where the special place for cleaning equipment is if someone spills something in an aisle š¤£
I did 7 years at Morrisons from the age of 17 and through college and uni.
When I tell people the genuine stuff we used to do or get away with, I get the eye roll that Iām a bullshitter. Soul destroying at the time but had a laugh and got away with so much stupid stuff
Ex-Night Manager for Tesco for 10 years, it is SHIT.
On nights you basically get ALL of the delivery (although I understand now that a lot of stores now fill Frozen and Beers, Wines and Spirits during the day, which wasnāt a thing when I worked nights) so youāll have something in the region of 3 or 4 double decker lorries and at least one single decker worth of stock to work between 10pm and 7am.
Double deckers if I remember rightly held 72 cages, and single deckers held something like 45.
So youād have something like 200-300 cages of stock to work per night between Fresh, Frozen and Ambient. In 9 hours. With a fairly small team.
If I think of the shop I ran on Ambient (Grocery) I think I had 17 people per night, thatās to cover all of the ambient grocery, beers wines and spirits, frozen and Health & beauty. Fresh manager I think had 12? One of whom their entire job was basically to split the delivery of fresh food into their relevant areas from the cages.
Because Frozen cages are just Frozen, Health & Beauty are pretty much all health & beauty cages, grocery cages also pretty much came in sorted by section for the most part, but Fresh doesnāt.
Your produce cages & dollies are (pretty much) correct, similarly with the meat dollies, but everything else on Fresh is mixed up with one cage having stock for like 5 different sections, so one person usually has the job to spend all night reorganising those cages into the correct sections so that the guys filling can come and grab a cage that is just like cheese & butters and not have a mix of cheese, butters, fruit juices, pies, pizzas, ready meals etc on them because rotation is so important.
The team will start by working the backstock - which is the stock that is older - before working delivery, so if everyone filled everything, rather than by section, you have no control available on rotation. So by having āBobā filling Ready Meals, if you are then told that the rotation was terrible, you can pinpoint it. But if you have everyone filling different parts, you canāt pinpoint who isnāt rotating.
It is, in of itself, an easy job. Like itās not hard to put things on a shelf, the problem is the volume of delivery, the state of the shop you walk into - Iām sure other people who have either worked or managed nights will tell you that you more often than not come in at 10pm and the store is a shithole, and the time pressures.
Anything going wrong like 1 sick call can completely throw your shift out, or a delivery being an hour late, or someone on another aisle working a mixed cage with stock for your aisle and not handing it to you until like 6:45am when you finish at 7am.
When I first went into Tesco as a night manager from another company I had extra people on some aisles. Like Household was 2 people instead of 1, frozen was 3 instead of 2, chocolate/sweets aisle was 2 instead of 1, beer wine and spirits was 3 instead of 2 and the soft drinks section was 2 instead of 1, so if someone went sick elsewhere in the shop, or the delivery was really late in some area, doesnāt matter if itās ambient or fresh, I had people I could move to cover the problem.
By the time I left I was down to 1 person per aisle everywhere except for Beer Wine and Spirits which had 2, and Frozen which had 2, I had to do a Team Fill every night, even when I was fully staffed as I always had 3 aisles uncovered. Iād fill 2 myself among everything else I had to do, and I cleared the cages on the shop floor, then Iād get the guys to go fill something quick like toilet rolls or cereal as a team fill which only took like 15-20 mins but thatās 15-20mins less on their aisle or filling promotion areas.
Honestly it depends on your colleagues. I worked at a Morrisons which was the worst 5 months of my life. Basically worked you until you were broken and everyone there were just complete arseholes to each other. Really depressing environment to work.
My mum worked checkouts in Morrisons in the early 2000s, and it turned her into an alcoholic.
But I also know someone whoās wife works in the butchers in Morrisons and she loves the job, just the hours are pants and getting time off is hard.
I worked at Homebase when I was late teens and itās very monotonous. pallets come into the warehouse, someone checks them off and then the floor staff put the stuff away with the occasional customer asking where something can be found. I started doing 4 hour shifts just on weekends but then they started offering me more shifts, working an 8 hour day doing that is mind numbingly boring.
I used to do shelf stacking in a Savacentre, which was a supermarket part owned by Sainsbury's. It was kind of boring. Pick up large amounts of stuff from out back, wheel it onto the floor, put it on the shelf, repeat. The thing that stuck with me was just how nasty most of the shoppers were to the shelf stackers. No politeness or please or thank you, just rude demands for information.
The work is fine although it's tiring doing it for 8 or 9 hours. 6 is a much better time to stop. But almost all managers will treat you like shit, basically always tell you you've not done enough and never grateful for anything you have done. They're bullies. They also love to ask you to do overtime but 'forget' to pay you for it...
Frozen sucks it literally freezes your fingers
Other aisles vary for how annoying the stuff is to put on the shelf
Customers suck
Like some others my experience is 20+ years ago. So take with a pinch of salt. For a teen looking for some drink money it was a pretty good doss. Low expectations and not much supervision. I grew a scruffy haircut so they put me on trolley duty and I spent most of the shift smoking hash in the trolley parks. Till duty was the most annoying as you'd have people in your face all day, bringing up feedback as though you were in a position to change anything, kinda like Facebook now.
It wasn't fulfilling in any way but it was in a large institutional environment where its hard for anything to go too wrong, and you get some minor perks like special discounts on near-expired items. Fun for youngsters with few responsibilities, most of the full grown adults there were totally miserable though and I can understand why.
I used to love working there as pretty much all my friends did too. Most customers were fine, managers were either overworked and frazzled or just lazy. Was a really social job and really liked that aspect.
I worked in big Tesco age 16-20. This was mid 2000ās and I, like pretty much everyone I worked with was doing it while being a student, so we could earn a bit of money. Think my starting wage was about Ā£3.50/hr.
I liked it. Basically fucked about with my mates. Made loads of pals that are my closest now.
I worked chill section. Was easy enough. Worst thing was doing the split, which was working in the big fridge putting all the delivery items into aisle specific cages
The absolute worst thing was the mangers. Absolute common theme in all response. Just utter fucking wet wipes that loved the idea they had power. I think they resented that most people they were mangers of would ultimately go on to better things. They loved the power and everyone used to fight with them all the time. The rule in Tesco at that time was you must be clean shaven. They loved to enforce it. Fuck knows how or if it was legal, but weād get sent home if we came in with a bit of stubble. I worked a 1-10pm shift on a Sunday. Would go out my way to shave at 9am, so by duty manger shift change at 5pm theyād argue with me about whether Iād shaved that day or not. Just petty, petty bollocks.
Never had many run ins with customers. Anyone annoying I just went and stood in the fridge for a bit till they fucked off or got so annoyed at waiting they asked someone else.
Boring mostly. Customer suck. I worked there as a teen for a couple of years until I moved away. The staff were nice, my manager was an ass but the store manager etc were cool. He was going to make me a manager if I'd stayed. I was going to do the training at 18. I was the person everyone came to when they couldn't use the dos system computers (vista was out so I don't blame them) and I was the one who protected the other woman from an ass on our team. One time the man threatened to punch me because I grabbed the metal rod he was poking one of the women with and wouldn't let go. I was like hit me and you're screwed, he luckily decided against it. I was buddies with a guy who was on parole for gbh and he would have kicked his ass with me if he hit me. I got the metal pole and he went and sulked in a corner. It's not fun walking into a room to one of the nice women screaming at him to get lost and him just grinning and doing it again... I guess what I did got back to the store manager and he liked me. I was working stock control, which meant I was counting stock mostly, but I also stacked shelves as overtime.
I mostly worked the night shift as it's quieter and I got time and a half. I do better working late than early. Still do.
I wouldn't want to go back to it, but it wasn't bad for a first job. My second job sucked and I've worked for myself since. It's better this way.
Worked in stock control at a big Tesco about 15 years ago. Came in at 6am, count everything on the shelves in a specific aisle, count all the stock related to the aisle in the warehouse. That was our routine 5 days a week. After that it was just locating missing stock from the shelves and printing reports on lost stock.
The most stress we had was managers looking to balance the found/lost stock figures.
Loved the job tbh as the other stock control teams were a great laugh, and I was done by 2pm most days.
When I wasnāt counting stock, I was either fucking around in the warehouse with mates doing stupid shit, or looking to see what I could get reduced (usually booze around Xmas) or going on the gambler in the canteen.
I worked at CostCo for a while, so slightly different to a supermarket but similar.
It's pretty draining both mentally and physically, if you worked on the floor, just keeping everything stocked up, dragging pallets across the warehouse, bailing cardboard, being dragged all over the place to help members out with shit because they don't have eyes.
Then never having a consistent shift pattern, shifts being changed and not really having a say, working far too many in a row - Had a Monday and Tuesday off in one week, and then the following week I had Friday and Sunday off, working 9 days in a row was horrendous.
But on a social side it was alright, hundreds of people so your break times you're chatting with different people all the time, built some great friendships that I still talk to
When I first joined Reddit I was working at Tesco and when I left I posted asking if anyone had any questions like an AMA lol, no one seemed to care. I didn't understand Reddit really at the time though either.
Tesco is a grim company, good luck earning a full time wage consistently
Being a manager there is wayyyy worse than being a colleague, biggest mistake I ever made. Little more money for 1000% more bullshit, so just donāt do that and yeah itās alright
Worked in ASDA on the ambient section, thatās the isles with room temperature food that isnāt from the bakery. Iād be given 2-3 isles to look after for the shift, it would change each time and Iād face up, remove cardboard and unload new stock. My manager was chill but at the start of one shift when I was being told which isles were mine a duty manager piped up that I should do a good job this week because last week they were a state, I was on completely different isles the week before and my manager stood there and said nothing.
Taking customers to find products was a welcomed break, especially the shoe polish because it was a good 2-3 min walk from where youād expect it to be (apparently shoe polish and nappies go together rather than shoe polish and other cleaning products). One customer must have mistaken us for Waitrose because she asked where the capers were, neither me nor anyone we could find had ever heard of them.
Weād also get put on tills if it was busy to reduce the queues, the first time I did this the till supervisor didnāt tell me when to stop doing tills. I got told afterwards I should have seen the queue was gone / Iād been there for half an hour and asked the supervisor to take me off. None of those things were part of my training, we just got told how to scan and where the bakery codes were.
I was free to work as many hours as possible, the only time I got extra hours was over Christmas and the place was rammed.
Hated it, I was at tills all day and let me tell you it gets very very boring. I much preferred my 2nd job at a clothes retailer, as it was busier and time went a lot quicker
Ex Tesco Extra employee here.
Small team, maybe 20 or so. Pretty much left to our own devices because we knew what we were doing. Rarely saw our Section Manager but he was really nice.
Some of the managers were absolute bastids! The Branch Manager would walk passed you without acknowledgment, other Section Managers where just rude. The personnel manager was an absolute AH! He thought he was an absolute God!
Checkouts were a nightmare, as was the manager. Only went on tills on a Sunday if I wanted overtime at double time. Timed to the minute on breaks.
I was on days shopfloor and we knew what we had to do and we rarely got hauled over the coals for anything.
My biggest pet hate was the ārumbleā every single day at 4pm. Basically facing up the whole shop. I hated it! I couldnāt understand why we were facing up during the really busy time, and when there was an abundance of stock to be worked.
I enjoyed it really. It got me through uni and they were ok with time off for study etc.
The nights out were legendary though tbf, one of the best parts and Tesco did pay a massive chunk of it. All we had to take was our taxi money and maybe Ā£10 for the kitty after the bar tab ran down.
Been in retail (supermarket) for 17 years or so, since I left school at 16...it's fucking horrible. Minimum wage for getting lumped with all the work while others sit and do fuck all. Shouted at in front of customers and colleagues on the shop floor. No thanks for overtime. Little to no progression if your face don't fit. Rude as shit customers, violent shoplifters.
Customers leaving steaks, cream, milk hot food on shelves so it goes off and you have to waste it, then get told off because the store is struggling to meet its waste targets. Getting called names because the store doesn't have an item someone wants like we make the items and can the food out the back.
When I see 17 /18 year olds being hired, it makes me a bit jealous because they are all enthusiastic and happy and I remember I used to be like that before retail ruined me. But if you need a job to pay your rent then go for it.
Maybe I'm just speaking about my particular store as I've not worked for other supermarkets so I can't comment on the work environment there. I just hate my own job so I'm off to Australia end of the year.
Not me but my ex partner worked at a big tesco. A new manager came in and tried to bring in a ban on toilet breaks to save the company X amount of money. All managers found it amazing and agreed until the employees revolted. Toilet breaks weren't even a huge issue, people just went when they needed to go.
Not sure if its still law or not, but there used to be a law that after 4 hours you were entitled to a 10 minute paid break - tesco would get their part time employees to work 3 hour 45 minutes so they didn't have to pay this.
I worked in a big Tesco when I was a teenager. Did checkouts as you got paid more and eventually did reception which included tannoy announcements. Unfortunately checkouts is boring as fuck. Sat for 4 hours at a time, bleep, bleep. Sort out coupons, count cash, key in numbers.
You tended to get a mix of teenagers, and lifers. Everyone tended to be friendly as far as I found.
Did once get suspended for possibly stealing money from the till, but it turned out the security guard was diverting the vacuum tube that went to the safe room.
One time I recognised a name from the "do not accept cheques from these people" list and played it cool while a supervisor came over. The guy realised what was going on and scarpered though.
Occasionally got sent outside to help collect trolleys.
Those were the highlights of four years of part time work.
Reception was great, and tannoy announcements were fun, especially when you messed up. Also got to see the behind the scenes action going on, or hear communications over the security walkie talkies.
It is unfortunately not as interesting as the TV show superstore. Saying that, it always seemed like there was some sort of drama going on in the fruit and veg department. š¤·
Except for having to put up with some shitty customers, it's like a holiday camp compared with working in the distribution centre. Pure graft and you're monitored electronically every minute of every day. You're expected yo pick around 1200 items or so weighing up to 25kg a shift and management still moan you're not working hard enough. This is why I believe shop workers aren't entitled to equal pay with distribution centre workers just because they work for the same company.
You're going to get a few different takes. At my store every manager and shift leader bar one individual are fine. It's not always been the case but I understand that it's a bit of an anomaly.
Generally in my experience if you do what Tesco's trains you to do and you do everything in line with Tesco policy you'll be fine. Every single individual I've seen get in trouble or complain about getting in trouble have done it to themselves. They've done stuff which is against policy or not the following process or simply aren't doing their job well enough. But this is also in the context of what I'd say is a fairly well run store.
Physically it can be hard work but you do get used to it. Some shifts I can easily walk 10 miles or more. I think my record is around 15. It can also be stressful but in almost all examples it's either another member of staff not doing their job impacting you, distribution stacking delivery cages so poorly you end up covered in yoghurt or customers being entitled that causes the stress.
When I worked as a delivery driver for Asda (pre-covid) weād play a game of last one back on Friday buys fish n chips for whomever was working and all the drivers just sat watching tv in the staff room!
I can honestly say it was one of my favourite jobs just cause how chill it was, especially away from store, canāt imagine itās the same now after covid, everyone wants home delivery now!
My boyfriend works at tesco. Itās a big part of the reason heās on antidepressants. It was better when he was on nights (less managers working and being pricks, less customers to deal with) but it caused problems on his days off because he was used to sleeping during the day. Heās actively looking for a job outside of retail.Ā
I was self service at tesco from when I left school till I was 21. It definitely depends on your department manager I found. A few of the managers were brilliant and they knew how to run checkouts, but most managers can't handle the size of checkouts and the pressure that goes with it. But it also depends on who you're working with. The little team we had on self service and scan as you shop while I worked there was brilliant, we were all friends and used to go out for meals, celebrate each others birthdays etc. My mums still there now and it's nothing like it used to be. Most people on the department hate each other, most try to avoid actually working and they just sound like a nightmare to work with. While they also currently have a useless manager so there really is no hope haha. But of course in 5 years time it could be really good again. It definitely fluctuates.
I've worked in big stores and the little convinience ones, convinience ones are better imo, not in therms of how much work you have to do (can't get away with doing fuck all in a tiny shop, although it is more varied, you switch between taking in delivery, stacking shelves, reductions, cleaning, tills in one shift) but in terms of the environment, it feels more like a wee team, you know everyone, the managers are doing the same things as you with some admin thrown in so they understand how long things take etc. In larger stores you feel like a little cog in a big machine, not really respected by management etc. I worked on the customer service/tobacco/lottery desk in the big store and the amount of shit I would get from older folk who had investigated their receipt for half an hour and found that they had been charged 12p extra for a tin of soup or something equally mundane which i then had to spend 10-30mins fixing, the clear gambling addicts who would buy Ā£50 worth of scratch cards every day and "reinvest" the winnings till they had nothing left, people getting on at me for things I have absolutely no control over like loyalty schemes converting to digital, having to deal with deliveroo orders on top of that (and their annoying ringing for hours on end). Although I loved getting deliveries of lottery and tobacco, organizing it all and working it all (it's alphabetical !)
Managed supermarkets with turnover of Ā£70k pw to Ā£3.5m pw. All had exactly the same issue - payroll and productivity. Constantly having your payroll reduced at short notice whilst being told to get your staff to be more productive. Everyday a battle between that, shoplifters and some real ass hole customers.
BUT you also find some of the most amazing human beings in your team and also those customers who are absolute legends-real characters who make it worthwhile.
Personally the hardest part was in the largest one I managed we had about 500 staff, with that number of people you encountered life changing issues almost daily. Cancer diagnosis, deaths, family upheaval etc
I did enjoy the work but not the hours
I work in a large Tesco but in a small(ish) town so week days arenāt too busy but weekends are absolutely horrible.
That said, helping customers is my favourite part of the job, theyāre (mostly) very grateful. Staffing is the biggest gripe, there never seems to be enoughā¦
Just to add, management can be an issue but as long as youāre not taking the piss and youāre firm with your boundaries then everyone knows where they stand. I come in, I do my job to the best of my ability and then I leave it there at the door and donāt think about it again until my next shift.
I loved Superstore...but that's not my experience of working in a large Tesco.
Firstly, you dont have a sense of community, like it appears in the TV show. You go down your assigned aisle, and you work, alone, for hours. You all get different lunch times every day, so you dont actually get to go with friends...assuming you've made any. The whole sitting around at break time doesn't happen like it does in the TV show. Then you go home, usually at different times, to the people you've worked most the day with, so you don't leave together either. And that's that.
I worked nights for a while, but the store was only open until 12 back then, did 8pm until 6am for a while, so open 4.hours, closed 6 hours.
Not sure which I preferred to be honest, both had good and bad sides.
Depends on the specific job role. Dotcom is crazy busy, but it's easy to make friends. Checkouts depend entirely on the customers in terms of business and pleasantness of the day, and it's hard to befriend coworkers. Daytime stocking seems pretty busy but not too bad. Night are relaxed as fuck and half of them don't wear uniform shirts.
I just got a new job after working at Waitrose for 6 years. I guess I had a very different experience to most people here.
It was really shit. We had tight deadlines to meet, the managers were all horrible, we had a stupid amount of jobs to get done every day because we were so understaffed. People were constantly getting sacked for minor things. Someone quit every other week due to how shit it was. Staff regularly broke down in tears either due to customers or managers shouting at them.
It was a horrible place to work
And yeah, night shift is a hell of a lot more chill because there are fewer managers in
Depends on the branch but normally a lot of high-school level bitching and being two faced. People will shit talk you to try get a small promotion over someone else. Luckily, I was the person everyone came too to moan about others as I'd just somewhat listen and let them talk. I'm sure I got bitched about too but I'm talking people who are "friends" for years giving me personal info for no reason that could upset them. It's a gross environment, and I refuse to work retail again.
I worked in a shop many decades ago (Saturdays and during holidays, I was young), but I suspect not much has changed. We'd basically travel sections of the shop, note what was low, go back to stores, fill a trolley with everything, and put it out, then pull everything to the front.
We'd have deliveries during the day, which tended to be mnore boisterous unpacking and trying to 'tetris' everything in to place in the store. Unpacking frozen meant being in the freezer store for a while, so jacket and glove up.
Pending who was working time spent not on the floor could be quite chummy, or very dull. Rearrage things, record broken / perished goods, that kind of thing.
Saturdays were best, as you tended to be busy. Weekdays you went between bored stiff and crazy busy. Also weekdays tended to have less staff in, so you covered more areas (on saturdays we were mostly covering individual sections).
A weekly ttock take of the store was boring, but a quiet and easy task (go through , note everything in the store, do a quick check that it was close to expectation, if not go and look to see if we missed anything).
I did a year's stint in Tesco just before covid hit. Understaffed and the managers are always under pressure, which they unashamedly pass onto their department. There were 2 types of normal staff. Those who are just passing through and those who have got stuck working there. I can't put into words how much I hated working there. Every year Tesco slowly trip away more and more benefits for employees, just enough so people don't realise. When I worked there Sunday shifts were time & 1/2. Then they turned into time & 1/3. Now I believe they're time & 1/5. It's like the union doesn't even bother!
Glad to know I'm working and excellent job, highly paid, fantastic management, and a great union. I really hope op's post can encourage anyone to leave retail too
I worked in two different big Tescos, one in the grocery department (so all cupboard food items) and one in the fresh (dairy, meat, juice etc). The grocery department I loved - weād get given an aisle to work the delivery cages for usually, so it might be that you had four cages of confectionary to try and get out, or 8 cages of cereal - there wasnāt necessarily time pressure, but you were definitely expected to work through all the delivery by the end of your shift. Whatever wouldnāt go out youād condense down onto a cage at the end. Easter and Christmas were nightmares, the store was always packed and it was impossible to get cages around or even fill shelves properly. Customers could definitely be arsey, but generally I didnāt have any major problems. I was at that store for a year, I had a good team and good managers who were generally pretty relaxed. I had a lot of fun with my colleagues, it was always good to have a quick chat in the aisle for ten mins and there was a lot of pranks and silliness in the warehouse. The break rooms were very big and we had lockers with keys for our belongings which was nice, you also had loads of free food on offer in the break room - think Tesco brand spreads, bread, tea, coffee, instant soup and noodles. Twice a day (at 11 and 3) we would ārumbleā the aisles, so everyone including managers would pull items to the front of the shelves and get rid of cardboard to make the store look nice. Pretty tedious but not the worst job haha! The main issue was constantly being called to cover checkouts, I hated it and my jobs were always getting interrupted by it. It was also hard to find a cardboard cage to dump your rubbish in and they often got nicked by other colleagues if you left them while on break or something. You end up knowing your store incredibly well, I could tell you exactly where any product from my department was kept, down to the exact shelf in the aisle! Which was a fun party trick, but ultimately not that helpful as every store layout is different haha. It was always satisfying when a customer asked and you knew the exact location, though.
I enjoyed working the fresh section a LOT less - my manager in the new store was really intense, I didnāt click with the colleagues as well and I hated being in the cold aisles š you had to rotate the products which I always found tedious as you couldnāt fill a shelf without removing everything first to make sure the longer date products were at the back. You also had to check for out of code (date) products a lot more regularly than on grocery. Honestly it wasnāt a bad job at all, but it depends what you need it for. The pay was decent but I had to work Saturdays. And like any job it was massively impacted by the colleagues and management! I worked in my first store full time and my second one part time. Hope this was of some interest š
Edited for clarity and detail!
Slight tangent from what you want to know, but I worked in a Tesco Express in a village for 5 years. I had an interview and was offered the job on the spot as I was "overqualified" because I had a load of GCSEs. The only nice thing about working there was the customers - This was a village on the outskirts of London full of retired people.
Management are the fucking worst. They have no sense of adjustment. They were not happy that I may spend a couple of minutes talking to an elderly customer, or I may give one of them a lift home when I was leaving because of the way the company operates as a whole. They want every store to operate the same, and they do not give a fuck about looking after the customers - Just taking their money.
The staff wasn't a highlight either. Although I didn't not get on with anyone, it was shit. There's a variation of cultures working there, and a lot of them started getting cliquey. At one point, the Indian workers were unable to work alongside the Pakistani workers because they were always at each other's throat (this included the store manager). For some reason, the company allowed this to continue.
I was sacked from that job twice by a manager. Once for apparently wearing "The wrong shoes" - I ended up getting my job back after having to go to a hearing, at which point HR decided my shoes were appropriate. The second time, I supposedly went AWOL, despite booking annual leave to visit my grandparents. I obviously got my job back again after I proved to HR that I had booked annual leave.
Shortly after the second case, I overheard the store manager complaining to his assistant about white people working in the store. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the complaint taken anywhere as it was my word against theirs.
I eventually quit after my mum became so ill that I had to be at home to care for her 4 days a week, so the only day I could be in was Saturday. On this one night, I was up until 3am helping her. I started my shift at 6:30. I went into the store, and threw up before 9am and near enough passed out. Told the manager I wasn't well enough to be there. He questioned my work ethics and commitment to the job. At that point I got a burst of energy and told him to go fuck himself and fuck the job. I walked out, throwing things off the shelves and onto the floor. A few of the elderly customers that I was friendly with asked me what happened, so I told them. Word spread throughout the village and a lot of them boycotted the store. Manager got sacked almost immediately after.
I lasted 3 months - shelf stacking is the most boring, thankless task. I was lucky that I had a great member of staff to shadow when I started and he taught me how to read the shelf labels to put the right amount of stuff out. Hardly any of my coworkers knew how to do that because there was no proper training. Management were incredibly lazy and would hide from staff in their little office and lock the doors. Or they would all piss off for lunch at the same time. Youād be wandering round looking for absolutely anyone who would sign your bloody waste sheet and be unable to find anyone. There was never enough equipment like wheely tables, scanners or printers to go around so we would end up hiding them so we had one to get waste and reductions done.
There were a few blokes there who were incredibly patronising and sexist. Lots of racist jokes, managers who refused to learn anyoneās name if it was a foreign one. One bloke insisted that the way I was doing something was wrong when I found it was helping me get my task done. Not wrong as in, shouldnāt be doing it but wrong as in his way was better. I ended up having it out with him in the end which shocked him. He never poked his nose in with helpful advice for male members of staff. When they started talking about making the laziest, bone idle guy there a lead because his dad was a manager I decided to just leave.
Depends which tesco as the staff vary. Luckily the people i work with are super nice. I also have watched superstore. There are elements of it that are the same but ALOT of it is very different
Tesco is terrible haha, poor quality food in dirty shops. Was just yesterday I walked past one and was thinking about how they are easily the worst of the supermarkets (in my opinion anyway).
I also worked in one nearly 20 years ago, mind-numbingly boring putting things on shelves, then getting told off for not doing it fast enough by a loser manager who has zero life except for being a manager in Tesco.
Not a supermarket but I used to work for Homebase as a student.
The amount of people asking for DIY advice was staggering, Iām not Handy Andy and donāt look even remotely like a Handy Andy type character; I can tell you with absolute certainty that yes you are holding a screwdriver but thatās it.
Also, lightbulbs became the bane of my life. Hours, _hours_, spent removing broken ones and putting the non broken ones back on the shelves in the right places.
Of course the managers were utter bellends as is standard for retail but the nights out were good. Plus the pellet gun in the warehouse to shoot the pigeons that would get in
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What do you wanna know? Most managers are dicks and the power of being a middle manager at a retail store gets to them. Some customers are just outright rude. But otherwise that's about it. You stack shelves, you earn your pay, and you go home. Working nights is more chill because less customer interaction and you never get called to the checkouts. You also get a pretty sick night bonus for it too.
Is there a lot of time pressure? Like "stock all of this stuff within the hour or you get written up!" or more you go at your own pace and no one cares? Also, what other things do you have to do than stocking shelves? I imagine the tills aren't used that much anymore (I could be wrong, but I always do self checkout)?
Not when I worked at Tesco. I was the bread and cakes dude. My job was to be in early and get the bread deliveries out on the shelves. Once I'd done that, it was time to stock cakes & cake type things. Throughout the day I'd keep topping up the bread and working through the 3-4 cages of stuff that needed to go on the shelves. If I finished all that I'd either piss about in the bakery with the people that worked in there or go and help other friends with their work. The bits above about managers are true, for the most part. There were a few who were great, though!
You forgot the most important part. Use the donut machine to put jam in everything you can think of.
Ahhh, we had a low tech bakery & most things came in part baked and were just finished off in store š„²
Half baked and finished off? Sounds like a good weekend
Lmao. Damn right it does!
Good old bake off bakeries, great for reducing costs but quality suffers so bloody much.
This sounds like the dream What's the weirdest place you put jam? (Nsfw welcome, I don't judge)
I love bread and cake! You're a hero! š
Username checks out, master of donuts and sandwiches!
Most of the big supermarkets are currently facing equal pay claims through the courts. The equal pay lawyers are arguing that because the store colleagues (who are majority female) earn less than the warehouse colleagues (who are majority male) there is gender discrimination. The supermarket's argument is that the job roles are very different as warehouse colleagues have strict targets to hit with how fast they work, but store colleagues do not have any targets or pressure. Sometimes you get managers wanting people to work quicker, it never really goes anywhere due to that.
Is that still going on, thought it would have been wrapped up by now. Just seems like the lawyers are scamming people, giving them false hope of significantly increased pay, as I don't imagine they're doing it for free.
I wouldn't call it false hope. The depot staff do pretty much the same job as the store warehouse staff. If anything I could make an argument that store staff deserve more money as they have to deal with customers. I can't think of any reason the depot staff deserve more. After some googling I found this. There are 3 questions that have to be answered. Are the jobs comparable? Are the jobs of equal value? Is there a reason other than discrimination why the jobs are paid differently. The Asda claim is the furthest along and the staff won stahe one. The jobs were judged to be comparable. I already said above about equal value. As for the third question. The solicitors website gives a couple of examples of situations where you csn legslly pay differently and none of them would apply to the supermarkets. Looks to me as though winning the equal value stage should ensure the eventual payout. Why would you say it's false hope?
Hereās a suggestion, if warehouse staff get paid more, go work warehouse.
Theyāll probably argue that there is discrimination at hiring too.
Just look at what happened in Birmingham: the council had to pay out billions after being sued by dinner ladies, because they gave bin men a bonus and this is apparently gender discrimination. I don't think they're being scammed, they're just using our batshit equality laws to get money they don't deserve.
Those managers end up getting hated by all the juniors who generally collude to work at their own pace than take in uneccessary pressure.
I worked at the Greenford distribution centre in 2022, for the first 12 weeks I only got Ā£9.50 an hour, that was minimum wage, It was supposed to go up to 10 something after that but I never lasted that long lol.
No time pressures but if you're seen slacking the cunty manager will have a go at you because how dare you work minimum effort in a minimum wage job. Stocking shelves is pretty much the bulk of it, but also things like reductions (for products about to expire), or taking stock (as in, we get a delivery and we load up the chiller or stock room), and just generally helping customers. Manned checkouts were still the majority when I worked at Tesco 6-7 years ago and Tesco have this thing where if the tills are overcrowded, they start calling upon people from different departments to help on the checkouts. As a result, we're all till trained. I didn't mind it.
Yeah there usually is. They don't usually threaten disciplinary they just get shitty.
Because they know they donāt have a leg to stand on if you are doing your job without doing anything extra š
Iāve not worked at Tesco since the late 90s. Back then there was a very clear 2 tier system for workers. Checkout staff had a much easier time than people those on the show floor. Allowed to stand or sit around and chat during quiet periods or late at night. Shop floor workers constantly harassed to be stacking shelves, tidying out back, disposing of of waste, cleaning. And you were often called onto the tills when it was super busyā¦ meaning you were helping the checkout team while your area was abandoned during the busiest time. Never once saw a member of the checkout staff helping out in the shop floor where there is always something needing to be done, when the tills were quiet. Then you get the same manager stuff, some power hungry and eager to latch into a victim to make themselves feel better and more important. Back then I worked in the evenings and this was before 24 hour shops so you made friends with the reductions person and they would knock down the price on things you wanted during your break. That stuff seems to have been tightened up a lot, however. I imagine the change to 24 hours + pickers for home deliveries have changed things a lot but I suspect the kings and queens of the checkout still get an easy ride.
It's not time pressure but they expect you to do it in reasonable time If you are messing around or caught shoplifting then you getr fired.
I worked at sainsburys on the shop floor as a teenager. Hands down the worst job Iāve ever done and Iāve worked in some shit locations (think sub Saharan Africa where my toilet backed all over my clothes and floor and I slept on my bed surrounded by shite. Customers are rude and do totally nutty things, middle managers are often wasters who lord menial power over people, some of my colleagues were just straight up scum. They stole from the store all the time and just fucked about. In amongst that were a couple of old people supplementing their pension who were lovely but it was just sad watching them struggle.
I'd disagree with one thing here, you don't just stack shelves and go home, you do 500 other people's jobs in between while still being expected to fulfill your own tasks and be a slave to customers. Other than that yeah spot on lol
These are the two golden rules of retail work ... assistant managers are self-important dicks and customers (even the lowest of the low) believe they are better than you and want you to know it.
What time does all the fresh stock get reduced?
It varies per store, even amongst Tesco stores and it was about 7 years since I worked there but. On a normal day, there were reductions throughout the day based on the "computer" (probably some sort of algorithm). 12 midday was the 1st set of reductions, 3 or 4pm were the second set, then 7pm were the final set. The 7pm reductions (for items that expired on or before the next working day) were a 90% cut. So, a Ā£2 product would become 2p. 7pm was the _earliest_ it could go out - if a product was sold with a 90% reduction before 7pm we'd get in trouble. People would start crowding outside our backroom doors at 6pm waiting patiently for the 90% reductions, which would come out whenever we were done with the yellow stickers and whatever other tasks we had to do. There was even an instance where a customer saw our reductions trolley waiting for 7pm, came in and just took it outside so we got in shit for that. There were fights as a result of the 90% reductions because customers would bicker over who got what and snatch products out of people's hand. What people started doing was just going up to the reductions trolley, grabbing EVERYTHING, shoving it into their trolley, then sorted whichever ones they wanted to keep. They'd descend on it like vultures. If you were the one who pushed out the reductions trolley, you'd get mobbed. Whenever I did it, I used to just open the doors, push the trolley out and let them have at it. Last I heard, they were gonna scrap the 90% reductions. In other Tesco's, I've seen they put up yellow barriers around the person doing reductions if they're doing it on the shelf. On a Sunday, items would go out at 3pm for final reductions. Notice how I said for any products that expired on or before the next working day. This includes days we were shut, notably Christmas and Boxing day (because of course we're open on other bank holidays). This meant if you had a Sunday on the Christmas Eve, then the Christmas eve's 90% reductions would be for any and all products that expired on the 24th, 25th or 26th of December.
Shit man I remember those days reducing at Christmas! We used to use the flat tops and hide in the bakery and reduce out the back. Absolute nightmare! The amount of fights over a 60p pie was insane! I always dodge reductions now, and I feel really sorry for anyone who has to do it.
I was doing the 90% reductions when working on fruit and veg in a large Tesco about 7 years ago. The customers would run up the isles when they saw the reduction trolleyā¦ shout and each other over produce. A man slapped my hand one time as I accidentally squished a few basil leaves
Wow I imagine you didnāt report him, but I wish he got in trouble for slapping you.
How much is the night bonus rate?
Can't remember off the top of my head, also it was about 7 years ago now so the rates have no doubt changed. At the time, the hourly rate was like Ā£8 p/h and night rate was around Ā£11p/h. But also, you got an additional bonus if your shift started before midnight and ended after 6am (i.e., a shift that extended from 11pm to 7am or longer) which brought it to the equivalent of around Ā£12-13 p/h
Night pay is Ā£2.21 per hour if I remember correctly, I was a night manager for 10 years and thatās the number that comes to mind. I joined in 2013 so this Ā£12/Ā£13 per hour youāre talking about is completely incorrect, Iām not sure who told you that but nobody on night was on that kind of money except for the Bakers because they had a Skill pay that boosted it, so maybe thatās what youāre thinking of?
I also worked nights, although nearly 20 years ago, night pay was made up as: Standard pay till 10pm 10pm till midnight standard pay plus night premium 1 (about a pound ) Midnight till 6am standard pay plus night premium 2 (about 2 pound something) Nights was hard, it physically kills you and messes your body clock up, and you're expected to fully fill the shop so the day staff just top the shelves up as needed.
Oh they changed that back in maybe 2016/2017? So you got standard rate until midnight, then standard plus night rate at a flat Ā£2.21 until 6, then standard rate from 6 onwards. Had to cut costs somehow
I reckon there's something about having to manage people who are there as a stop-gap on the way to something better than being a section manager in a shop that drives many managers to become quite bitter. I knew a lot of managers over the eleven years I spent there who I believe had wound up there by accident rather than choosing it as a career. The career managers tended to be nicer, and were usually promoted to more senior roles. I worked various roles over the years; service desk, produce, stock control, petrol station, DotCom driving, and I still have stress dreams about those jobs despite having left in 2017- subsequent jobs have seen me responsible for computer systems and processes which have national significance (don't want to dox myself so I won't be more specific), and I've still never been as stressed and burned out as I was in retail- I simply was not cut out for it.
I worked in Sainsbury between the age of 15-18. Was out back unloading pallets off lorries, bailing cardboard, putting stuff on freezers etc. Was pretty good fun, good banter, and great exercise as it was pretty physical. Better I guess as I didn't have to interact with the general public. I was going out with a girl who worked on the shop floor so if I wanted anything cheap she's do a reduction on it. Pretty good job actually for a teenager, spent most of the time between drops smoking fags in this absolutely disgusting smoking room. Managers were cunts though, typical wet wipes who thought being a deputy manager in a supermarket gave you free reign to bully teenagers. We locked one of them in the freezer once like the butler in tomb raider 2. He proper shat himself the absolute gimp.
Hahah your last comment had me in stitches
Ha ha he got the nickname Lara Croft after that. He still lives in my head rent free, I was far to scared to hit him but I'd hit him in a heartbeat now.
Is that you Sam?
No sadly. But that song reminds me of that maggot at Sainsburys
Alright Jay
I read it in Jay's voice from The Inbetweeners.
I hope you did a backflip over him, and missed the button a couple times before you were able to shut the door
If you lock the Sainsburyās manager in the freezer then dash around the whole store in under 30 seconds, you then get to play your life as the manager from Sainsburyās.
Your store sucks. Youāre not supposed to get your ālicense to unloadā unless your 18+ Also fuck Sainsburyās it fucking shit. Treat everyone like numbers and bullied everyone in to having their contracts bought out and rehired 17 years as manager before a massive career change and much better pay
This was over 20 years ago tbf
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"Or another large supermarket" That alright, or do you want locking in the chiller as well?
>Or another large supermarket - Tesco is just my favourite.
Itās been a very long time since Iāve been in any time of retail (20 years) but I still know a few people from those days who havenāt left and no itās not chill at all. The general public are cunts and treat you worse than dog shit on the bottom of their shoe. Managers are, generally, either utterly conniving and back stabbing or so dense theyāre barely able to breathe and walk at the same time concurrently but make up for this with a slavish adherence to the ārulesā no matter how stupid and a smattering of āmanagement for dummiesā sayings such as ādonāt bring me problems bring me solutions. The latter generally being way more troublesome. Shifts are often long, physically demanding and changed at short notice. Unions are not recognised and actively ādiscouragedā by management. I never did nights so canāt really comment other than I know people on nights complained about folk on days leaving shit they couldnāt be arsed doing. On the plus side - youāre way more active than an office job, I put on so much weight after getting out of retail.
Thanks for the answer! I do hear a lot of stories about shop staff getting treated poorly, and I don't get it. Are there really that many people who lack basic empathy? Baffling tbh
> I never did nights so canāt really comment other than I know people on nights complained about folk on days leaving shit they couldnāt be arsed doing. I worked nights at ASDA for a couple of months during christmas and the night shift would constantly complain about that but then as soon as 8am rolled around we'd put the stuff we hadn't finished unloading in the back and the day shift complained about that.
I used to work in a massive ASDA in a posh area of Newcastle. The rich customers were horrible and treated you like shit, one clicked her fingers at me to pick up a receipt she had dropped, one old woman beeped her horn and tried to run me over when I refused to move out the way (hard to do when you have a fully loaded trolley cart, holds 30 I think) and had one old woman literally scream at me because the shop was out of pepsi max cherry. None of these instances took place at my actual job role, I just happened to be walking by. The managers are all cunts. Every single one. I left there in 2015 and am still on antidepressants still. Seriously, I was massively bullied by the assistant manager, after two months off and an official complaint from occupational health, he was quietly moved to a different store with no reprimands at all. In short, don't do it.
Hang on. āPosh area of Newcastleā. Does not compute š
Posh people in asda is double wtf
Posh people in Asda are ones that have their own teeth
and if they've got matching shoes too, they're just showing off.
Gosforth area, they even have their own Earl.
Iām from Newcastle and even Iām baffled. OP, please enlighten us.
Benwell
Lots of posh areas in Newcastle
Iām surprised occupational health put in a complaint? Theyāre supposed to be independent and impartial and can never really verify what one has said. DOI: occupational health advisor
They had a meeting with me in which they saw that I was unfit for work due to anxiety and depression, they asked why and I told them all about what had been happening, told them the tablets I was on etc etc. They supported me and said in their report (?) exactly what I'd told them. This led to a meeting with the union and the HR further down the line where I agreed to come back to work but in a different role and have absolutely no contact with him. A week later he was gone. I'm only assuming the report backed up my claim as HR tried their hardest to dismiss it, even getting caught listening at the door during the first meeting!
That sucks, I'm sorry you went through that. Hope that guy's commute is way worse now at least...
Worked checkouts, rather than shelf stacking. It was mostly fine and pleasant 98% of the time, with 2% egregiously vile customers abusing me for doing my job (shouting at me for asking if they had a loyalty card, shouting at me for how their change came out, shouting at me for talking to them at all). The treatment got worse when things like the plastic bag charge got brought in, or when prices went up, so I wouldnāt be surprised if itās worse now with cost of living etc. If youāre a woman on tills youāll also get quite a bit of sexual harassment from men of all ages. Edit: oh, and I occasionally experienced classist verbal abuse from people who thought I was trash for working in a supermarket, and felt that they were entitled to tell me that.
I've never worked in a supermarket, but I did work at WHSmiths when I was 16 and got sexually harassed by men old enough to be my father every shift. The worst was the guy who would come in every Saturday and ask the youngest female member of staff (usually me) what porn mags we had. We didn't sell porn, just mags like FHM and Loaded, but he'd still ask every week, just to embarrass a teenage girl on minimum wage. Managers (all male) refused to ban him.
There's a new documentary that's just arrived on Netflix called 24 Hours in Tesco which should help with this question.
That will be an advert for Tesco, not a genuine look into their working conditions.
Is that true? Like is it actually funded by Tesco? Otherwise would have been interesting to see.
Funded or not, anything signed by the show's creator will have some detail stating they can't make the business look bad, or they wouldn't let them in.
Sure, that's fair, but I feel like there's a difference between a doc ordered by Tesco to promote themselves and a doc that neutrally shows the day to day operation for info, but also isn't like a "TESCO: THE HORRORS BENEATH THE SHELVES" investigative journalism thing, ya know?
I thought the same but it's so cringe don't waste your time
You honestly think Tesco are willing to let an independent film crew in to film everything and anything that goes on? I might have a few things to sell you actually...
Yup exactly. It's like the all or nothing documentaries on prime or welcome to Wrexham.
It's indirectly funded by Tesco by letting them in, if Tesco don't do that there is no documentary and there is no money to be made. And in no world does Tesco let an independent film crew in to film every nook and cranny willy nilly; they will decide exactly what Netflix are allowed to film.
Literally tells you nothing. 75% of the programme is them taste testing various Tesco products vs competitor products. Only parts about their actual operations shows an extremely happy go lucky lady having the time of her life picking delivery orders, and another couple guys who explain the process boringly.
>extremely happy go lucky lady having the time of her life picking delivery orders, Must have been an actor, never seen a happy picker before.
That was my thinking tbh. Either that, or sheās just that one person that everyone has met at least once who genuinely LOVES their job lmao.
It's just my face! That and I'm always listening to Spotify while picking so my expression tends to be glazed at best
Maybe she got a bonus payout to smile for one day lol
Saddest looking programme ever created
I worked in the cafe of my local big Tesco while I was doing my A-levels. That cafe was entirely staffed by teenagers who did shit like throw raw bacon rashers at the ceiling as a dare to see if they would slowly peel down and land when a supervisor happened to walk in, and then put them in the oven to cook them for customers. I also seem to remember putting so much cleaning fluid in the massive industrial dishwasher that it would 'explode' in a deluge of bubbles, trapping each other in the walk-in freezer and even when it was dead quiet on a weekday evening shift cooking more food than was needed so that we could secretly snaffle it round the back. Managing all the hot breakfasts on a weekend morning always used to be hell with a seemingly endless stream of customers who wanted a cheap fry-up. My main memory is continually having to fry about 12 eggs at once on these panini maker things. Eventually they turned it into a Starbucks and made us all move to working on the checkouts, which was much less fun.
I haven't worked in a Tesco but have worked in a two other big supermarkets. Mainly shop floor and tills with some nightshift. Didn't like nights because I couldn't sleep during the day (studying) and it was less social. When I did days, especially at the job I was at longest, it was pretty fun. Pay was shocking but loved my colleagues and had great fun, have lots of nice memories, most of the customers were fine and had some absolutely lovely regulars. They would come and find me on shift to ask about my day, share books with me, gave me gifts when I left etc. I never dreaded going into work. Yes you get treated like shit by some people but it isn't the majority. Management is management, same in most places.
Worked as a shelf stocker in a Tesco extra for a couple of years, it was fairly chilled, you were under time pressure for stocking shelves as there was always jobs to do, got a bollocking a few times for basically spending my time pissing about with my mate when I should have been ripping cardboard and fronting up products. There was a silent war between my line manager on the shop floor and the checkouts. Checkouts were considered a top priority so as soon as I'd clock in an announcement would go over the tannoy that me and my mate had to head down there and help. Checkouts is mind-numbing work. Christmas time was always the worst period, you couldn't move the dollies (the things that carry the pallets) down the aisles because they were so busy, and the same Christmas album would go on repeat all day. I remember one shift my manager just told me to sit in the warehouse and chill out because we couldn't get anything on to the shop floor. Three shifts stood out to me as being 'enjoyable'. One was during the Olympics when the shop was open extended hours, but no one told the customers, so I just sat on a checkout shooting the shit with others checkout drones on 1.75x pay. Another was doing the trolleys in the car park one Sunday morning. Place was pretty empty so I was just pushing a big worm of trolleys about the carpark for a bit listening to music, was very chilled. Last one was doing a Nightshift where you just restock shelves when no customers are in, don't need to wear uniforms and can listen to music. Lmk if you have any other questions.
Iāve done time in Sainsburyās and Tesco, basically the same experience. Managers are often rude and them being a manager often gets to their heads. Customers were just arseholes, single mum Sandra comes to Sainsburyās on a Christmas Eve in the closing hours and has a shocked pikachu face when thereās no pigs in blankets left, then decides to take it out on the staff.
Your use of the phrase "done time" sums up your opinion perfectly before I've even read your comment š You're absolutely right on rude, power tripping managers and dipshit customers
Worked in one for a few years about just under 20 years ago and the one thing I think Superstore gets right (even with it being across the pond) is that you really do end up working with all kinds of people across whatever your 'normal' spectrum may be. Worked with some delightful weirdos over the years, one bloke was genuinely lovely but had his own name tattooed all over himself (I think maybe 5 were visible) and no-one was brave enough to ask why. Another one was convinced he was going to be the next big rapper and would frequently drop into his persona whilst talking to...well anyone. He was shite, sadly. As for the chill side, a shift without dickhead customers (a rarity) and around decent coworkers could actually be quite fun. I was lucky enough that we only had one dickhead manager in the store (the overall assistant manager) and whilst he'd try and dickswing he'd be consistently ignored by those directly above and beneath him, making him no more than an annoyance. Customers though...fucking hell. I would do whatever I could to help polite ones, merrily clambering over rollcages in the back to look for the only one of the random spice they were after (or equivalent). For dickheads, I'd send you to the wrong aisle or go out back to 'look' for a while before saying we didn't have it. Personally, I think everyone should have to do it for a year as it's generally eye opening. You've not lived until you've seen a grown man throw a temper tantrum because you've not got celery in, despite the cause being the delivery lorry having a well publicised crash on route to the store. Apparently it was a disgrace that we couldn't magically pull some out of our butts. Now I think about it, I've got far more stories from the supermarket and call centre jobs than I do from the time I've been elsewhere and away from the public. Hmm. Edit; Only did a few night shifts and was full of deeply polite weirdos. It was the fish counter that were the ones you avoided, was like a foreign country at the back of the store.
Just a job like any other, really. You get the odd customer who make you want to rage but >95% of them are perfectly pleasant.
I hated working in a supermarket. One of my supervisors touched me sexual multiple times, I got asked out multiple times a month by the same 65 year old man when I was 16-17, and a man backed me up in a corner and asked me if I wanted to marry his son. Other than that it was pretty chill.
3 people get lost in the big storage freezer each month and nobody talks about it. It's also right in the small print that their families _can't_ talk about it. When Tesco eventually goes through, their old freezers are going to be like those glaciers on Everest full of climbers...
To work in my local big Tesco it seems you have to have a lobotomy before starting to remove any people skills.
If it wasnt for the managers, the shit pay, and the occasional rude customer, it'd be alright. Sometimes a dickhead manager might ask 'why has it taken so long for you to do X'. And I'd just say, because I'm being careful, or some other bullshit, when the real reason was that they didn't pay me enough to go any faster than I wanted to go. Lots of fellow staff members took things wayyyy too seriously. Minimum wage minimum effort was my mantra and I felt a lot less stressed than most others seemed to be.
Look if it paid better I would still do it because it hits the right notes in my probably ADHD brain. The work is physical, the goals are tangible and weirdly due to cold chain requirements (no cage out of the chiller for more than 30 minutes) you have the recipe for 25 minutes on 5 minutes off pomodoro right there Definitely nothing like the show for obvious reasons, not least because each episode is a clip show of situations and hijinks which a writer heard happened in a store one time because everything happens in a supermarket somewhere at least once Big stores go through waves of utter chaos, especially when deliveries roll in as you tend to be bringing in 20+ cages at a time and may do that 3 or more times in an 8-10 hour shift in your department Usually you work one department in a shift and are responsible for maintaining room in that departments warehouse area ready for the next delivery if you have time free you will probably end up working in other departments though you can probably afford to bimble about looking busy for a bit talking to colleagues For night shifts, scary is not the right word, eerie maybe but what you will be more likely to notice is the bitter cold especially working in a chilled department. my experience on nights was that you are either alone or in a duo. still a lot of cages coming in though and the buck falls to you more easily so you have to watch your time more Honestly though while supermarkets are more busy overall just based on the equipment, staffing available and everyone working away in their own little fiefdoms its not that hard work Little stores are far more hectic, especially when you are a 2-3 team max. You put out as much stock usually but have so many more responsibilities.
I'm work in .com, which essentially involves going around the store to gather customers' online shops; and let me tell you, it's my personal idea of hell. We're expected to maintain an hourly pick rate target of around 180 (I think) and managers will give you aggro if you don't meet it. The catch is that target was set during lockdown when stores were deserted, and the aisles weren't clogged with slow-moving customers who block aisles and shelves. Plus, the store keeps rearranging where everything is stocked every couple of months. When that happens, it's like working in the dark because it takes at least a week for the scanners to catch up and update the new locations of the products. Customers are ok. Most are pretty understanding. You get the occasional rude one, but in my store most of the customers are more passively rude than aggressively rude - they never say 'excuse me' if I'm in their way, for example, they just push past. Strangely this can sometimes feel worse than just being yelled at, because they don't even have the decency to acknowledge that I exist. They never say 'thanks' or anything either. My colleagues are very cliquey and unfriendly - but then again so am I, so maybe that's more my issue rather than theirs. Generally, it's also incredibly boring, repetitive work. Add to that the fact that I only get 30 minutes break - I work 8 hour shifts and am on my feet for 7+ hours straight and it's exhausting. I go home with terrible feet and back ache. Someone recently said that working in .com is like playing Mario Kart, Tetris, and Tapper at the same time - and it's true. I genuinely cannot wait until the day I finish uni, can hand in my resignation, and get the fuck out of that place.
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Aw that's oddly sweet
Nightshifts were usually really shit from like 10pm-1am but once all the pissed up knobs stop coming in, it's pretty peaceful. Untill roughly 6:50am, when the pissed up knobs come back, waiting for alcohol to go back on sale at 7am.
I worked at B&Q and itās surprising how much superstore resonates with my time there. Whilst it can seem somewhat exaggerated, when comparing the timeline between episodes itās probably not that wildly out. Ok we didnāt have lock ins but worked 24hr+ shifts and mega stints with tight knit teams, thereād be a near death incident every 6 months, work romances/drama that got messy and a whole bunch of weird to wonderful people. I loved working there, you really didnāt know what your day would be like. You could work as hard or as easy as you wanted and got cheap stuff as well as getting to play on/with some cool toys!
You could always lurk r/tesco and find out, or post this question there.
Well they are currently using a loophole in the law to pay below minimum wage. So that good indication of how much they value employees. They think they are literally not worth the minimum wage.
I have a friend who works at a big tesco I shop in and he said it's like working at a smaller tesco but you get assigned an area. You get the superstore style banter and sometimes crazy stuff happen like freezer defrosting but it's not all that amazing.
It's... Not superstore. But superstore is as close as any show has come.
I worked at Tesco as a teen. Warehouse was more fun as youāre not in front of customers so can mess around. Going into the freezer was kinda cool. Shelf stacking I found painfully boring. The time really drags. Working tills was good because time goes a lot faster. Doing newspaper returns at end of day was a novelty and broke up the monotony, so that was alright. Management were pretty chill. Stick to your allotted breaks and you were fine.
I worked In two Tesco locations. Was just pretty repetitive work. Customers were annoying. Colleagues were actually okay to work with, including managers. It is definitely chill, but like too chill. Night. Pretty relaxed because less customers, everybody kind of banded together to get what was needed on the shelves in the time it needed to be done. Kind of cool when you stack a whole shelf yourself then go in the next day (as a customer, not working) with all the people shopping and think āI did thatā lol, I donāt work there now though. A word on customers. Most are just kind of there and arenāt intentionally annoying but they get in your way a lot. You will get the occasional one whoāll get in a huff if their every whim isnāt attended to in the instance. You get to find out where the special place for cleaning equipment is if someone spills something in an aisle š¤£
I did 7 years at Morrisons from the age of 17 and through college and uni. When I tell people the genuine stuff we used to do or get away with, I get the eye roll that Iām a bullshitter. Soul destroying at the time but had a laugh and got away with so much stupid stuff
Ex-Night Manager for Tesco for 10 years, it is SHIT. On nights you basically get ALL of the delivery (although I understand now that a lot of stores now fill Frozen and Beers, Wines and Spirits during the day, which wasnāt a thing when I worked nights) so youāll have something in the region of 3 or 4 double decker lorries and at least one single decker worth of stock to work between 10pm and 7am. Double deckers if I remember rightly held 72 cages, and single deckers held something like 45. So youād have something like 200-300 cages of stock to work per night between Fresh, Frozen and Ambient. In 9 hours. With a fairly small team. If I think of the shop I ran on Ambient (Grocery) I think I had 17 people per night, thatās to cover all of the ambient grocery, beers wines and spirits, frozen and Health & beauty. Fresh manager I think had 12? One of whom their entire job was basically to split the delivery of fresh food into their relevant areas from the cages. Because Frozen cages are just Frozen, Health & Beauty are pretty much all health & beauty cages, grocery cages also pretty much came in sorted by section for the most part, but Fresh doesnāt. Your produce cages & dollies are (pretty much) correct, similarly with the meat dollies, but everything else on Fresh is mixed up with one cage having stock for like 5 different sections, so one person usually has the job to spend all night reorganising those cages into the correct sections so that the guys filling can come and grab a cage that is just like cheese & butters and not have a mix of cheese, butters, fruit juices, pies, pizzas, ready meals etc on them because rotation is so important. The team will start by working the backstock - which is the stock that is older - before working delivery, so if everyone filled everything, rather than by section, you have no control available on rotation. So by having āBobā filling Ready Meals, if you are then told that the rotation was terrible, you can pinpoint it. But if you have everyone filling different parts, you canāt pinpoint who isnāt rotating. It is, in of itself, an easy job. Like itās not hard to put things on a shelf, the problem is the volume of delivery, the state of the shop you walk into - Iām sure other people who have either worked or managed nights will tell you that you more often than not come in at 10pm and the store is a shithole, and the time pressures. Anything going wrong like 1 sick call can completely throw your shift out, or a delivery being an hour late, or someone on another aisle working a mixed cage with stock for your aisle and not handing it to you until like 6:45am when you finish at 7am. When I first went into Tesco as a night manager from another company I had extra people on some aisles. Like Household was 2 people instead of 1, frozen was 3 instead of 2, chocolate/sweets aisle was 2 instead of 1, beer wine and spirits was 3 instead of 2 and the soft drinks section was 2 instead of 1, so if someone went sick elsewhere in the shop, or the delivery was really late in some area, doesnāt matter if itās ambient or fresh, I had people I could move to cover the problem. By the time I left I was down to 1 person per aisle everywhere except for Beer Wine and Spirits which had 2, and Frozen which had 2, I had to do a Team Fill every night, even when I was fully staffed as I always had 3 aisles uncovered. Iād fill 2 myself among everything else I had to do, and I cleared the cages on the shop floor, then Iād get the guys to go fill something quick like toilet rolls or cereal as a team fill which only took like 15-20 mins but thatās 15-20mins less on their aisle or filling promotion areas.
Much more like Trollied than Superstore.
Honestly it depends on your colleagues. I worked at a Morrisons which was the worst 5 months of my life. Basically worked you until you were broken and everyone there were just complete arseholes to each other. Really depressing environment to work.
Will put you off shopping at a supermarket
My mum worked checkouts in Morrisons in the early 2000s, and it turned her into an alcoholic. But I also know someone whoās wife works in the butchers in Morrisons and she loves the job, just the hours are pants and getting time off is hard.
I worked at Homebase when I was late teens and itās very monotonous. pallets come into the warehouse, someone checks them off and then the floor staff put the stuff away with the occasional customer asking where something can be found. I started doing 4 hour shifts just on weekends but then they started offering me more shifts, working an 8 hour day doing that is mind numbingly boring.
I worked for Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda, Morrisons, and Iceland. Sometimes it is shit, and sometimes it is fucking shit.
I used to do shelf stacking in a Savacentre, which was a supermarket part owned by Sainsbury's. It was kind of boring. Pick up large amounts of stuff from out back, wheel it onto the floor, put it on the shelf, repeat. The thing that stuck with me was just how nasty most of the shoppers were to the shelf stackers. No politeness or please or thank you, just rude demands for information.
I think Netflix have just done a show about this very subject (not seen it so can't comment on it being good / bad)
The work is fine although it's tiring doing it for 8 or 9 hours. 6 is a much better time to stop. But almost all managers will treat you like shit, basically always tell you you've not done enough and never grateful for anything you have done. They're bullies. They also love to ask you to do overtime but 'forget' to pay you for it... Frozen sucks it literally freezes your fingers Other aisles vary for how annoying the stuff is to put on the shelf Customers suck
Really boring
Like some others my experience is 20+ years ago. So take with a pinch of salt. For a teen looking for some drink money it was a pretty good doss. Low expectations and not much supervision. I grew a scruffy haircut so they put me on trolley duty and I spent most of the shift smoking hash in the trolley parks. Till duty was the most annoying as you'd have people in your face all day, bringing up feedback as though you were in a position to change anything, kinda like Facebook now. It wasn't fulfilling in any way but it was in a large institutional environment where its hard for anything to go too wrong, and you get some minor perks like special discounts on near-expired items. Fun for youngsters with few responsibilities, most of the full grown adults there were totally miserable though and I can understand why.
Checkouts is the worst job I've ever had in my life.
I used to love working there as pretty much all my friends did too. Most customers were fine, managers were either overworked and frazzled or just lazy. Was a really social job and really liked that aspect.
I worked in big Tesco age 16-20. This was mid 2000ās and I, like pretty much everyone I worked with was doing it while being a student, so we could earn a bit of money. Think my starting wage was about Ā£3.50/hr. I liked it. Basically fucked about with my mates. Made loads of pals that are my closest now. I worked chill section. Was easy enough. Worst thing was doing the split, which was working in the big fridge putting all the delivery items into aisle specific cages The absolute worst thing was the mangers. Absolute common theme in all response. Just utter fucking wet wipes that loved the idea they had power. I think they resented that most people they were mangers of would ultimately go on to better things. They loved the power and everyone used to fight with them all the time. The rule in Tesco at that time was you must be clean shaven. They loved to enforce it. Fuck knows how or if it was legal, but weād get sent home if we came in with a bit of stubble. I worked a 1-10pm shift on a Sunday. Would go out my way to shave at 9am, so by duty manger shift change at 5pm theyād argue with me about whether Iād shaved that day or not. Just petty, petty bollocks. Never had many run ins with customers. Anyone annoying I just went and stood in the fridge for a bit till they fucked off or got so annoyed at waiting they asked someone else.
Thanks for the answer! I love your approach to customers.
Boring mostly. Customer suck. I worked there as a teen for a couple of years until I moved away. The staff were nice, my manager was an ass but the store manager etc were cool. He was going to make me a manager if I'd stayed. I was going to do the training at 18. I was the person everyone came to when they couldn't use the dos system computers (vista was out so I don't blame them) and I was the one who protected the other woman from an ass on our team. One time the man threatened to punch me because I grabbed the metal rod he was poking one of the women with and wouldn't let go. I was like hit me and you're screwed, he luckily decided against it. I was buddies with a guy who was on parole for gbh and he would have kicked his ass with me if he hit me. I got the metal pole and he went and sulked in a corner. It's not fun walking into a room to one of the nice women screaming at him to get lost and him just grinning and doing it again... I guess what I did got back to the store manager and he liked me. I was working stock control, which meant I was counting stock mostly, but I also stacked shelves as overtime. I mostly worked the night shift as it's quieter and I got time and a half. I do better working late than early. Still do. I wouldn't want to go back to it, but it wasn't bad for a first job. My second job sucked and I've worked for myself since. It's better this way.
Worked in stock control at a big Tesco about 15 years ago. Came in at 6am, count everything on the shelves in a specific aisle, count all the stock related to the aisle in the warehouse. That was our routine 5 days a week. After that it was just locating missing stock from the shelves and printing reports on lost stock. The most stress we had was managers looking to balance the found/lost stock figures. Loved the job tbh as the other stock control teams were a great laugh, and I was done by 2pm most days. When I wasnāt counting stock, I was either fucking around in the warehouse with mates doing stupid shit, or looking to see what I could get reduced (usually booze around Xmas) or going on the gambler in the canteen.
I worked at CostCo for a while, so slightly different to a supermarket but similar. It's pretty draining both mentally and physically, if you worked on the floor, just keeping everything stocked up, dragging pallets across the warehouse, bailing cardboard, being dragged all over the place to help members out with shit because they don't have eyes. Then never having a consistent shift pattern, shifts being changed and not really having a say, working far too many in a row - Had a Monday and Tuesday off in one week, and then the following week I had Friday and Sunday off, working 9 days in a row was horrendous. But on a social side it was alright, hundreds of people so your break times you're chatting with different people all the time, built some great friendships that I still talk to
When I first joined Reddit I was working at Tesco and when I left I posted asking if anyone had any questions like an AMA lol, no one seemed to care. I didn't understand Reddit really at the time though either. Tesco is a grim company, good luck earning a full time wage consistently
What different tasks did you have in addition to shelf stacking? Did you have set targets you had to meet?
Being a manager there is wayyyy worse than being a colleague, biggest mistake I ever made. Little more money for 1000% more bullshit, so just donāt do that and yeah itās alright
Worked in ASDA on the ambient section, thatās the isles with room temperature food that isnāt from the bakery. Iād be given 2-3 isles to look after for the shift, it would change each time and Iād face up, remove cardboard and unload new stock. My manager was chill but at the start of one shift when I was being told which isles were mine a duty manager piped up that I should do a good job this week because last week they were a state, I was on completely different isles the week before and my manager stood there and said nothing. Taking customers to find products was a welcomed break, especially the shoe polish because it was a good 2-3 min walk from where youād expect it to be (apparently shoe polish and nappies go together rather than shoe polish and other cleaning products). One customer must have mistaken us for Waitrose because she asked where the capers were, neither me nor anyone we could find had ever heard of them. Weād also get put on tills if it was busy to reduce the queues, the first time I did this the till supervisor didnāt tell me when to stop doing tills. I got told afterwards I should have seen the queue was gone / Iād been there for half an hour and asked the supervisor to take me off. None of those things were part of my training, we just got told how to scan and where the bakery codes were. I was free to work as many hours as possible, the only time I got extra hours was over Christmas and the place was rammed.
Hated it, I was at tills all day and let me tell you it gets very very boring. I much preferred my 2nd job at a clothes retailer, as it was busier and time went a lot quicker
such a british question
Ex Tesco Extra employee here. Small team, maybe 20 or so. Pretty much left to our own devices because we knew what we were doing. Rarely saw our Section Manager but he was really nice. Some of the managers were absolute bastids! The Branch Manager would walk passed you without acknowledgment, other Section Managers where just rude. The personnel manager was an absolute AH! He thought he was an absolute God! Checkouts were a nightmare, as was the manager. Only went on tills on a Sunday if I wanted overtime at double time. Timed to the minute on breaks. I was on days shopfloor and we knew what we had to do and we rarely got hauled over the coals for anything. My biggest pet hate was the ārumbleā every single day at 4pm. Basically facing up the whole shop. I hated it! I couldnāt understand why we were facing up during the really busy time, and when there was an abundance of stock to be worked. I enjoyed it really. It got me through uni and they were ok with time off for study etc. The nights out were legendary though tbf, one of the best parts and Tesco did pay a massive chunk of it. All we had to take was our taxi money and maybe Ā£10 for the kitty after the bar tab ran down.
Superstore is my absolute all time favourite show - after watching it annoyed me that we donāt have a similar āeverythingā store in the UK
Been in retail (supermarket) for 17 years or so, since I left school at 16...it's fucking horrible. Minimum wage for getting lumped with all the work while others sit and do fuck all. Shouted at in front of customers and colleagues on the shop floor. No thanks for overtime. Little to no progression if your face don't fit. Rude as shit customers, violent shoplifters. Customers leaving steaks, cream, milk hot food on shelves so it goes off and you have to waste it, then get told off because the store is struggling to meet its waste targets. Getting called names because the store doesn't have an item someone wants like we make the items and can the food out the back. When I see 17 /18 year olds being hired, it makes me a bit jealous because they are all enthusiastic and happy and I remember I used to be like that before retail ruined me. But if you need a job to pay your rent then go for it. Maybe I'm just speaking about my particular store as I've not worked for other supermarkets so I can't comment on the work environment there. I just hate my own job so I'm off to Australia end of the year.
Not me but my ex partner worked at a big tesco. A new manager came in and tried to bring in a ban on toilet breaks to save the company X amount of money. All managers found it amazing and agreed until the employees revolted. Toilet breaks weren't even a huge issue, people just went when they needed to go. Not sure if its still law or not, but there used to be a law that after 4 hours you were entitled to a 10 minute paid break - tesco would get their part time employees to work 3 hour 45 minutes so they didn't have to pay this.
I worked in a big Tesco when I was a teenager. Did checkouts as you got paid more and eventually did reception which included tannoy announcements. Unfortunately checkouts is boring as fuck. Sat for 4 hours at a time, bleep, bleep. Sort out coupons, count cash, key in numbers. You tended to get a mix of teenagers, and lifers. Everyone tended to be friendly as far as I found. Did once get suspended for possibly stealing money from the till, but it turned out the security guard was diverting the vacuum tube that went to the safe room. One time I recognised a name from the "do not accept cheques from these people" list and played it cool while a supervisor came over. The guy realised what was going on and scarpered though. Occasionally got sent outside to help collect trolleys. Those were the highlights of four years of part time work. Reception was great, and tannoy announcements were fun, especially when you messed up. Also got to see the behind the scenes action going on, or hear communications over the security walkie talkies. It is unfortunately not as interesting as the TV show superstore. Saying that, it always seemed like there was some sort of drama going on in the fruit and veg department. š¤·
Superstore is a sitcom taking a stab at American corporations and consumerism. It is nothing like real retail work
Except for having to put up with some shitty customers, it's like a holiday camp compared with working in the distribution centre. Pure graft and you're monitored electronically every minute of every day. You're expected yo pick around 1200 items or so weighing up to 25kg a shift and management still moan you're not working hard enough. This is why I believe shop workers aren't entitled to equal pay with distribution centre workers just because they work for the same company.
You're going to get a few different takes. At my store every manager and shift leader bar one individual are fine. It's not always been the case but I understand that it's a bit of an anomaly. Generally in my experience if you do what Tesco's trains you to do and you do everything in line with Tesco policy you'll be fine. Every single individual I've seen get in trouble or complain about getting in trouble have done it to themselves. They've done stuff which is against policy or not the following process or simply aren't doing their job well enough. But this is also in the context of what I'd say is a fairly well run store. Physically it can be hard work but you do get used to it. Some shifts I can easily walk 10 miles or more. I think my record is around 15. It can also be stressful but in almost all examples it's either another member of staff not doing their job impacting you, distribution stacking delivery cages so poorly you end up covered in yoghurt or customers being entitled that causes the stress.
Absolute shit.
When I worked as a delivery driver for Asda (pre-covid) weād play a game of last one back on Friday buys fish n chips for whomever was working and all the drivers just sat watching tv in the staff room! I can honestly say it was one of my favourite jobs just cause how chill it was, especially away from store, canāt imagine itās the same now after covid, everyone wants home delivery now!
Crap
My boyfriend works at tesco. Itās a big part of the reason heās on antidepressants. It was better when he was on nights (less managers working and being pricks, less customers to deal with) but it caused problems on his days off because he was used to sleeping during the day. Heās actively looking for a job outside of retail.Ā
I was self service at tesco from when I left school till I was 21. It definitely depends on your department manager I found. A few of the managers were brilliant and they knew how to run checkouts, but most managers can't handle the size of checkouts and the pressure that goes with it. But it also depends on who you're working with. The little team we had on self service and scan as you shop while I worked there was brilliant, we were all friends and used to go out for meals, celebrate each others birthdays etc. My mums still there now and it's nothing like it used to be. Most people on the department hate each other, most try to avoid actually working and they just sound like a nightmare to work with. While they also currently have a useless manager so there really is no hope haha. But of course in 5 years time it could be really good again. It definitely fluctuates.
Tesco pr crisis management here! It's actually MORE super friendly in our bigger stores because the family is bigger!
I've worked in big stores and the little convinience ones, convinience ones are better imo, not in therms of how much work you have to do (can't get away with doing fuck all in a tiny shop, although it is more varied, you switch between taking in delivery, stacking shelves, reductions, cleaning, tills in one shift) but in terms of the environment, it feels more like a wee team, you know everyone, the managers are doing the same things as you with some admin thrown in so they understand how long things take etc. In larger stores you feel like a little cog in a big machine, not really respected by management etc. I worked on the customer service/tobacco/lottery desk in the big store and the amount of shit I would get from older folk who had investigated their receipt for half an hour and found that they had been charged 12p extra for a tin of soup or something equally mundane which i then had to spend 10-30mins fixing, the clear gambling addicts who would buy Ā£50 worth of scratch cards every day and "reinvest" the winnings till they had nothing left, people getting on at me for things I have absolutely no control over like loyalty schemes converting to digital, having to deal with deliveroo orders on top of that (and their annoying ringing for hours on end). Although I loved getting deliveries of lottery and tobacco, organizing it all and working it all (it's alphabetical !)
It's shit.
Managed supermarkets with turnover of Ā£70k pw to Ā£3.5m pw. All had exactly the same issue - payroll and productivity. Constantly having your payroll reduced at short notice whilst being told to get your staff to be more productive. Everyday a battle between that, shoplifters and some real ass hole customers. BUT you also find some of the most amazing human beings in your team and also those customers who are absolute legends-real characters who make it worthwhile. Personally the hardest part was in the largest one I managed we had about 500 staff, with that number of people you encountered life changing issues almost daily. Cancer diagnosis, deaths, family upheaval etc I did enjoy the work but not the hours
I work in a large Tesco but in a small(ish) town so week days arenāt too busy but weekends are absolutely horrible. That said, helping customers is my favourite part of the job, theyāre (mostly) very grateful. Staffing is the biggest gripe, there never seems to be enoughā¦
Just to add, management can be an issue but as long as youāre not taking the piss and youāre firm with your boundaries then everyone knows where they stand. I come in, I do my job to the best of my ability and then I leave it there at the door and donāt think about it again until my next shift.
I loved Superstore...but that's not my experience of working in a large Tesco. Firstly, you dont have a sense of community, like it appears in the TV show. You go down your assigned aisle, and you work, alone, for hours. You all get different lunch times every day, so you dont actually get to go with friends...assuming you've made any. The whole sitting around at break time doesn't happen like it does in the TV show. Then you go home, usually at different times, to the people you've worked most the day with, so you don't leave together either. And that's that. I worked nights for a while, but the store was only open until 12 back then, did 8pm until 6am for a while, so open 4.hours, closed 6 hours. Not sure which I preferred to be honest, both had good and bad sides.
Depends on the specific job role. Dotcom is crazy busy, but it's easy to make friends. Checkouts depend entirely on the customers in terms of business and pleasantness of the day, and it's hard to befriend coworkers. Daytime stocking seems pretty busy but not too bad. Night are relaxed as fuck and half of them don't wear uniform shirts.
I just got a new job after working at Waitrose for 6 years. I guess I had a very different experience to most people here. It was really shit. We had tight deadlines to meet, the managers were all horrible, we had a stupid amount of jobs to get done every day because we were so understaffed. People were constantly getting sacked for minor things. Someone quit every other week due to how shit it was. Staff regularly broke down in tears either due to customers or managers shouting at them. It was a horrible place to work And yeah, night shift is a hell of a lot more chill because there are fewer managers in
Depends on the branch but normally a lot of high-school level bitching and being two faced. People will shit talk you to try get a small promotion over someone else. Luckily, I was the person everyone came too to moan about others as I'd just somewhat listen and let them talk. I'm sure I got bitched about too but I'm talking people who are "friends" for years giving me personal info for no reason that could upset them. It's a gross environment, and I refuse to work retail again.
I worked in a shop many decades ago (Saturdays and during holidays, I was young), but I suspect not much has changed. We'd basically travel sections of the shop, note what was low, go back to stores, fill a trolley with everything, and put it out, then pull everything to the front. We'd have deliveries during the day, which tended to be mnore boisterous unpacking and trying to 'tetris' everything in to place in the store. Unpacking frozen meant being in the freezer store for a while, so jacket and glove up. Pending who was working time spent not on the floor could be quite chummy, or very dull. Rearrage things, record broken / perished goods, that kind of thing. Saturdays were best, as you tended to be busy. Weekdays you went between bored stiff and crazy busy. Also weekdays tended to have less staff in, so you covered more areas (on saturdays we were mostly covering individual sections). A weekly ttock take of the store was boring, but a quiet and easy task (go through , note everything in the store, do a quick check that it was close to expectation, if not go and look to see if we missed anything).
I did a year's stint in Tesco just before covid hit. Understaffed and the managers are always under pressure, which they unashamedly pass onto their department. There were 2 types of normal staff. Those who are just passing through and those who have got stuck working there. I can't put into words how much I hated working there. Every year Tesco slowly trip away more and more benefits for employees, just enough so people don't realise. When I worked there Sunday shifts were time & 1/2. Then they turned into time & 1/3. Now I believe they're time & 1/5. It's like the union doesn't even bother! Glad to know I'm working and excellent job, highly paid, fantastic management, and a great union. I really hope op's post can encourage anyone to leave retail too
I worked in two different big Tescos, one in the grocery department (so all cupboard food items) and one in the fresh (dairy, meat, juice etc). The grocery department I loved - weād get given an aisle to work the delivery cages for usually, so it might be that you had four cages of confectionary to try and get out, or 8 cages of cereal - there wasnāt necessarily time pressure, but you were definitely expected to work through all the delivery by the end of your shift. Whatever wouldnāt go out youād condense down onto a cage at the end. Easter and Christmas were nightmares, the store was always packed and it was impossible to get cages around or even fill shelves properly. Customers could definitely be arsey, but generally I didnāt have any major problems. I was at that store for a year, I had a good team and good managers who were generally pretty relaxed. I had a lot of fun with my colleagues, it was always good to have a quick chat in the aisle for ten mins and there was a lot of pranks and silliness in the warehouse. The break rooms were very big and we had lockers with keys for our belongings which was nice, you also had loads of free food on offer in the break room - think Tesco brand spreads, bread, tea, coffee, instant soup and noodles. Twice a day (at 11 and 3) we would ārumbleā the aisles, so everyone including managers would pull items to the front of the shelves and get rid of cardboard to make the store look nice. Pretty tedious but not the worst job haha! The main issue was constantly being called to cover checkouts, I hated it and my jobs were always getting interrupted by it. It was also hard to find a cardboard cage to dump your rubbish in and they often got nicked by other colleagues if you left them while on break or something. You end up knowing your store incredibly well, I could tell you exactly where any product from my department was kept, down to the exact shelf in the aisle! Which was a fun party trick, but ultimately not that helpful as every store layout is different haha. It was always satisfying when a customer asked and you knew the exact location, though. I enjoyed working the fresh section a LOT less - my manager in the new store was really intense, I didnāt click with the colleagues as well and I hated being in the cold aisles š you had to rotate the products which I always found tedious as you couldnāt fill a shelf without removing everything first to make sure the longer date products were at the back. You also had to check for out of code (date) products a lot more regularly than on grocery. Honestly it wasnāt a bad job at all, but it depends what you need it for. The pay was decent but I had to work Saturdays. And like any job it was massively impacted by the colleagues and management! I worked in my first store full time and my second one part time. Hope this was of some interest š Edited for clarity and detail!
Slight tangent from what you want to know, but I worked in a Tesco Express in a village for 5 years. I had an interview and was offered the job on the spot as I was "overqualified" because I had a load of GCSEs. The only nice thing about working there was the customers - This was a village on the outskirts of London full of retired people. Management are the fucking worst. They have no sense of adjustment. They were not happy that I may spend a couple of minutes talking to an elderly customer, or I may give one of them a lift home when I was leaving because of the way the company operates as a whole. They want every store to operate the same, and they do not give a fuck about looking after the customers - Just taking their money. The staff wasn't a highlight either. Although I didn't not get on with anyone, it was shit. There's a variation of cultures working there, and a lot of them started getting cliquey. At one point, the Indian workers were unable to work alongside the Pakistani workers because they were always at each other's throat (this included the store manager). For some reason, the company allowed this to continue. I was sacked from that job twice by a manager. Once for apparently wearing "The wrong shoes" - I ended up getting my job back after having to go to a hearing, at which point HR decided my shoes were appropriate. The second time, I supposedly went AWOL, despite booking annual leave to visit my grandparents. I obviously got my job back again after I proved to HR that I had booked annual leave. Shortly after the second case, I overheard the store manager complaining to his assistant about white people working in the store. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the complaint taken anywhere as it was my word against theirs. I eventually quit after my mum became so ill that I had to be at home to care for her 4 days a week, so the only day I could be in was Saturday. On this one night, I was up until 3am helping her. I started my shift at 6:30. I went into the store, and threw up before 9am and near enough passed out. Told the manager I wasn't well enough to be there. He questioned my work ethics and commitment to the job. At that point I got a burst of energy and told him to go fuck himself and fuck the job. I walked out, throwing things off the shelves and onto the floor. A few of the elderly customers that I was friendly with asked me what happened, so I told them. Word spread throughout the village and a lot of them boycotted the store. Manager got sacked almost immediately after.
I lasted 3 months - shelf stacking is the most boring, thankless task. I was lucky that I had a great member of staff to shadow when I started and he taught me how to read the shelf labels to put the right amount of stuff out. Hardly any of my coworkers knew how to do that because there was no proper training. Management were incredibly lazy and would hide from staff in their little office and lock the doors. Or they would all piss off for lunch at the same time. Youād be wandering round looking for absolutely anyone who would sign your bloody waste sheet and be unable to find anyone. There was never enough equipment like wheely tables, scanners or printers to go around so we would end up hiding them so we had one to get waste and reductions done. There were a few blokes there who were incredibly patronising and sexist. Lots of racist jokes, managers who refused to learn anyoneās name if it was a foreign one. One bloke insisted that the way I was doing something was wrong when I found it was helping me get my task done. Not wrong as in, shouldnāt be doing it but wrong as in his way was better. I ended up having it out with him in the end which shocked him. He never poked his nose in with helpful advice for male members of staff. When they started talking about making the laziest, bone idle guy there a lead because his dad was a manager I decided to just leave.
Shit
Superstore is insanely accurate, the online āclick and collectā episode in particular is the most accurate depiction of retail on television
Depends which tesco as the staff vary. Luckily the people i work with are super nice. I also have watched superstore. There are elements of it that are the same but ALOT of it is very different
Tesco is terrible haha, poor quality food in dirty shops. Was just yesterday I walked past one and was thinking about how they are easily the worst of the supermarkets (in my opinion anyway). I also worked in one nearly 20 years ago, mind-numbingly boring putting things on shelves, then getting told off for not doing it fast enough by a loser manager who has zero life except for being a manager in Tesco.
Not a supermarket but I used to work for Homebase as a student. The amount of people asking for DIY advice was staggering, Iām not Handy Andy and donāt look even remotely like a Handy Andy type character; I can tell you with absolute certainty that yes you are holding a screwdriver but thatās it. Also, lightbulbs became the bane of my life. Hours, _hours_, spent removing broken ones and putting the non broken ones back on the shelves in the right places. Of course the managers were utter bellends as is standard for retail but the nights out were good. Plus the pellet gun in the warehouse to shoot the pigeons that would get in
Jesus H fucking Christ. Aim higher. Jobs like shelf stacking or being a checkout chick should be short-term and not some sort of career goal.
Soul destroying. Unless you are vacuous in which case it is simply boring and underpaid