Retail and Wegmans, a Horrible Place to Work

Wegmans- A great place to work, really?

If you are at all like myself, the retail world is something you’ve been in and out of every other year. In and out of partly because you know to take appropriate mental breaks; from the horrible wage, the customers not worth the wage, and the managers that pretend to care about your well-being, but more importantly, because you always hold yourself in that ‘light’ of having the potential to do much more with yourself. Hence, you continue a journey for a ‘great place to work’.

Again, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with working retail if that is what you do for a living, you get into the right position and it’s not so bad, but at the bottom of the chain, you might as well slap a chain on and start singing, because it feels damn near close to slavery.

Wegman’s is considered one of the top 100 companies to work for, really? Their slogan ‘Wegmans, a great place to work’ I have personally experienced their charade, and I don’t have much positive to say about them, but I’m going to say it anyway. They base the very cornerstone of their company on ‘Values’ and god do you ever get sick of hearing them, primarily because no one truly follows them. It’s one thing to preach for a common purpose and goal, and it’s another to try and get another voice in my head, I’m full up on opinions and voices that scream inside, hard enough to get them to quiet down when I want them to.

Wegman’s and its legendary values

If you ever have a manager, who has been demoted by the corporate strands of a company, talk to you about ‘company values’, it is code name for “you have the potential to ruin my ass” Which is what I got from my Produce manager on a near regular basis. This is yet another essence of this being a great place to work. Anytime a full-time position became available I was told how other people had more potential at the given time, and by potential, it means that their heads were buried so far up management’s ass they had a permanent glossy brown color along the ridges of their lips.

Back to these concepts of values, the driven message of the company is to pretty much love thy customer and do everything you can for them, but then, they go the extra mile of essentially saying Wegman’s employee’s come first, because if they don’t feel happy, they can’t provide good customer service.

Oh my, If there was ever a statement that claimed ‘welcome to hell, this is work in retail, be happy knowing your manager makes 70 grand a year, meanwhile, they found hiring me at $9.00 an hour to be a hell of an increase on labor hours for the week’

To further this analysis, I understand, retail operations use employees as they need them based on business needs. It’s a common ratio of supply, demand, estimated goods sold, and estimated man-power needed to run the operation efficiently.

I’m fully aware of the mathematical perception, I also know if you go from feeding an employee 30-35 hours a week, and then drop him down to 12-15 once business slows down a bit, he won’t be very happy with you. Well, this was one of Wegmans mottos; apparently they left it out of the hand-book. Essentially they treated you like a pimp, when things were busy you got used, when business slowed down, you got put on the shelf. Ah, such a great place to work.

Dramatic Virtues

Working within the Wegman’s environment is very much like sitting down with a table of pregnant women, it’s like a slew of problems unleashed by uncontrollable hormones that lead you to having a damn near panic attack. The people who work there that last operate on a level of professionalism that I will label as ‘High School’, on account of the following:

• You like gossip
• You have no real true care about your own dignity, and you live for drama.

From the moment you walk in the door it’s almost like a game has been set off toward who can be the largest tattle tale. I lost count of the times people had mentioned things I had ‘done’, which led to ‘pure denial’ on my behalf simply as an act of trying to get ‘promoted’.

The people who remained worked with the capabilities of keeping their balls intact, I will refer to both of these people by name, Steve and Vinnie, and it is an ongoing battle.

Vinnie is gunned for on a nearly regular basis on account that he doesn’t kiss ass, the part about it that should be a human resource dream war: Diabetes has claimed over half of Vinnie’s foot, yet the audacity is put forth in my proud produce department to complain that he doesn’t work fast enough.

Have they lost their damn minds? Nope, they have simply been shitheads all along. This is further validated by the fact I know now that Vinnie has been fired.

Yet another example as to why it’s such a ‘great place to work’. As for you Steve, you have been placed in the range of what I call an abused mental patient, because the shit you have to pretend to enjoy upon arriving there is enough to make a grown man cry.

Favoritism- A great place to work with the right blend

The assistant manager of my particular location may have written the concept on being a fake piece of shit. While he took several man hours pretending to be nice, his real goal, as a grown man, was to be buddies with all the young teenage girls of the department, which among discussion with my peers: several found to be creepy, but what was creepier was the fact that we all pegged him to be a homo from the beginning. The way he talks is very similar to taking the male anatomy, taking a very strong rope, tying it to the anatomy, and yanking is hard as you possibly can. The high pitched yelp that is released once this is done is the pitch level of a voice this particular individual had.

When he wasn’t stalking people half his age around the department trying to seem like he was hot shit, he was attempted to be bossy with the other workers, which much to his disadvantage never got him very far. He was very easy to ignore.

Wegmans- A great place to work? I think not

Wegmans has all the common concepts of your basic retail store, the problem is they are generated into a cult like perception point and distributed among the employees. The place is entirely based on kissing ass, which most retail tends to lean that way sadly, but this is a bit above and beyond the ‘natural’ idea of kissing ass. Unless someone has truly experienced it, they wouldn’t understand.

The company itself continues to go to hell on account of carrying value that appeal to pretty much no one, and being run further into the ground by a management staff that couldn’t find their way out of a basement. The room for intellectual growth in the management systems stays in the higher ranks of the company, with good reason. The people you run into in a majority of stores may seem awful nice, but underneath it all, if they are wearing the tag of a manager, they are an ass-kissing moron who is about as enjoyable to talk to as getting a shot at the doctor. Find another place to shop, there are plenty of options.

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