Pros
* Surprisingly decent benefits * Room to grow depending on your managers, luck, and how long you want to be stuck in retail * 10% Discount on Kroger brand items (pretty crappy benefit, but better than nothing) * Free parking or a free bus pass for some stores * Depending on your store, there are some pretty awesome people * There is a union, which I would argue is better to have than not
Cons
* Several percent turnover a month for entire stores. You will meet some pretty cool people, but then they'll leave * High turnover even for department heads and store managers. Department heads get yelled at for overtime due to being constantly understaffed. Bonuses can be pretty minimal. Expected to have sales increases in perpetuity to get better bonuses, which is statistically impossible. Store managers and 2nd managers work 10-hour days. For a 2nd manager/co-manager, that barely gets them paid more than a journeyman clerk * Even corporate has a decent turnover rate. They move on to "better" (pay better) Kroger companies such as Fred Meyer. It can't comment on specific management of any store or corporate due to the massive turnover * Pay couldn't be worse (minimum wage), paying less than Metropolitan Market, Trader Joe's Whole Foods, and Costco. Seattle's minimum wage increase to $15 evened those odds recently, however * Takes five years of full-time work to achieve journeyman (good luck getting that at first in the front end (the other departments are understaffed, however, and can get 40 hours a week)). It used to be 2.5 years, and there used to be merit-based raises. Now either you're at the bottom of the scale or the top. There's nothing to look forward to and no reason to put in too much effort - your managers will still expect more. The best reason to try is to prevent screwing over your fellow department * You live and die by your managers, and there are some pretty terrible ones out there * Length of service and favoritism are far more important to getting a promotion than ability. Promotions are also simply given out incorrectly - someone who is really good at something (such as being a deli clerk or cashier) doesn't mean they would be good at managing people or inventory as a department head. And department heads or 4th managers good with inventory or people are not necessarily good at both or managing a large number of people or inventory as a 2nd or store manager * Constantly understaffed * Inconsistent hours, making it hard to budget if you're a new employee * Depending on your store, you have to work all holidays, especially as a new employee. Say goodbye to your loved ones * The union (and most senior employees) supports seniority-based schedules. The veteran employees had to deal with it, therefore everyone after until the end of time should, too. I understand this in theory, but in practice it leads to new hires getting stuck with closing shifts 4/5 days a week (or midnight or beyond for 24/7 stores), causing them to get burnt out on not being able to see friends, family, significant others, and the chance to live a "normal" (to be fair, i.e. non-retail) life. They quit and a new set of new hires is required * No compensation (buy-back) for not using your sick time, causing people to frequently call in sick when they don't feel like coming to work. I used 0 hours in my years with the company - it was my own fault for not calling in sick when I wasn't, I guess * Schedule-writing software is a piece of 1990s garbage that causes a lot of harm * Retail usually sucks in general, but with low labor hours and crappy schedules, people end up working frequent 6-day weeks, causing people to call in sick, causing more stress on everyone else, causing people to quit, causing the already-understaffed situation to get worse. You go to work, listen to how your sales haven't increased enough (as if it's statistically possible to increase every year forever), work your butt off, fill in for people who quit or don't show up, and commiserate with your fellow coworkers how everything sucks and you can't wait to get out (although many never do) * Corporate (particularly Kroger) constantly mentions how we're in it together, we own it, decisions are made together... but make next to no effort in asking the stores' opinions, be it from the common employee to the store manager, the people who are actually being affected by these new policies and have to live them every day, those who actually work in the store and understand the direct impacts versus the corporate personnel who haven't worked within in-store retail in decades, if ever * Slowly but surely eroding the union contract * Slowly but surely reducing labor hours for departments while raising the sales bar needed to acquire more hours for your department * Corporate treats every store and thus every department and every employee as the same. These uniform expectations make it easy on the suits in their ivory towers, but makes no sense in reality as every store has its own strengths and weaknesses, own manager set, own employee set, and own customer clientele. A good manager understands these differences and seeks to bring out the best in their people. This is too much effort for QFC or even multi-billion dollar Kroger * Fred Meyer has a more casual dress code, gives out merit raises or credits hours toward journeyman based on merit, and has a better discount * It took two years of employees complaining to get the music lineup changed. The same. exact. horrible '80s songs day after day for YEARS. I think that legally counts as torture in some countries