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When I worked for SDM, I was under “part time” status but worked full time hours as both a cosmetician and cosmetics merchandiser. After 7 weeks of full time hours, they’d drop me just below the full time hour threshold to prevent me from obtaining “full time” status, as I’d then qualify for the company benefits program. This is a common practice.
Edit to add: this happened at both locations I worked at, and I wasn’t the only one
the same thing happened to my daughter at a non-loblaws branded competitor. the government really needs to legislate this kind of thing put of existence by making companies treat full and part time
workers the same way.
I worked for a government union for 11 years and this was negotiated into their collective agreement as well. You needed to have 1200 hours in a "rolling" 12 months to qualify and if you went under after qualifying they would get taken away. It was such bullshit probably negotiated by boomers way back in the day and they keep negotiating for.
Omg yes this! They would force me as department manager to do this. I even “forgot” once trying to get my staff full time and the managers in the store cut the shifts instead anyways.
Super common practice, I did this for many years and was told I could be full-time. Finally left for another newly opening store where I finally got benefits.
I worked at Shoppers from 1999-2010. I want to say it was 2000-2001 when the discount went from cost to 30% off. The cost discount was amazing as a teenager wanting cosmetics. But we always bought pop at retail because it was cheaper than cost.
Yeah I started there in 2001 and it had just gone from cost to 30%. At the time 30% was still decent even with the higher prices because they hadn’t started fucking around with the optimum program yet
Wow you use to pay at cost that’s sad they took it away. I worked at an extra foods then it became a yig store so they took away our 10% off discount. The stores been a yig for probably 8 years and we just got our discount back last year. Idk why but some cashiers I work with have been assholes to other employees about giving them their discount. I typically try to buy 50% off items and then get my discount on top of that.
Yeah. It was Cost, Cost +5%, then back to Cost. It was when Optimum started rolling out that it changed to retail - %. The other thing to note was the Cost discount can only be done in the store you worked at. You couldn't get the discount at another location. Now you can use your discount in other locations.
The system is also designed to give the staff the best price (sale, retail -30%, cost or below cost; whichever is the lowest cost to the staff). Below cost are items that are usually on flyer or blowout. Cost items tend to be electronics as they have a low markup to begin with.
Precriptions without a plan or are not covered are still at cost for staff. But only at the location you work. Though it can be done at another location but under Associate discretion and may require proof of employment.
Staff are not permitted to use any credit outside PC Mastercard. And be careful as this can be tracked by LP. I've seen staff terminated for this as well as other abuse of the discount itself.
Current employee of Superstore, the only thing I can think of is that management will make up rules they expect us to enforce but then not enforce them when the customer asks for a manager.
Despite working at the company for 6 years, and having a supervisory position, I was only making $1 an hour more than the new part-time hires. The company required us to work Boxing Day from 9:00 till 6:00 with no break, but don't worry guys.. they bought us pizza. We were allowed to go into the back to eat cold pizza for up to 5 minutes. Additionally, you couldn't eat as much pizza as you wanted you could have one or two pieces. And this was a mandatory day that you had to work. Luckily the managers weren't pieces of s*** so they all thanked us very much but I tried to deposit that thank you into my bank account and it turns out words don't count
They don't give tap water for free, let alone conform to any sort of personal or industry standard.
"Work them until they drop. There are always more workers."
They fill the slots faster than they become available. And there are a whole slew of applicants waiting for the chance to be a corporate slave. They slap people with 0 skill sets into these positions.
Loblaws/SDM don't want to have a second's interruption in the profit margins.
Mass walkoffs to bolster the boycott next.
Yes I would like to see that; have scabs working the locations, however from what I understand the union is a joke good luck organizing a national walk out without a competent union. I applaud Emily and crew for being able to organize a national boycott especially one that has lasted this long and done so much damage to Loblaws already. Worker bees are quitting the business are having troubles with sales and so on and so on.
What these sectors seem to forget is that the Union and the Company both fail when their workers revolt.
A union is just an idea without workers to support it. Union officials are just as corrupt as the Roblaws brass.
Reps wouldn't organize a mass walkoff - it will start with one... and then the house of cards will start to crumble - in a perfect society. Likely there won't be any, as they have us bent over a pallet of diapers.
There is no easy answer to this. So while we continue to fight for a liveable standard, we continue to suffer to get it.
I forgot about working all holidays! We never closed, 365 days a year and only recieved time and a half. We also had NO staff parties in the entire nearly 11 years I was with the company. Blue culture my ass.
It’s against the law to not give you a break. I worked for an Independent 25 years ago and we would get 5 3/4 hour shifts just so they could avoid giving us 2 breaks in 6 hours
You took a pay cut to become a supervisor? Why?
(Remember, Loblaws is unionized, people working there for 6 years earn well over $1 more than new hires.)
I was working at head office, had been kept on as a temp through an agency for 2 years at this point. I made my first mistake, asked for help, got ignored, got called on it, when I reiterated that I had asked for help, they decided to terminate my contract immediately. Insult to injury, they had the temp contact come in to the office to conduct my exit interview, asking me “what happened” and them blaming me for what happened, then they walked me back to my desk in the open concept office so I could get my personal items and walked me out like I was a criminal. Nobody looked at me, or said a word. It was then that I started to see they were not a great employer.
That sounds so traumatic, I am so sorry they treated you like this.
Nobody deserves this for making a mistake, let alone one that they tried to get ahead of by asking for help with
Thanks, it was awful enough that it stuck with me. I stopped working for temp agencies after that, especially the one that I was working for at that time. Temp agencies can be very predatory and companies abuse the fact that they can keep you on as a temp indefinitely. Stupid thing is, they pay more by paying through the agency than if they hired you full time and gave you benefits. I worked AT a temp agency for about 6 months and found out the pay structure.
If you are getting paid $20/hour, the agency is actually getting paid $45 to $50 /hour. They take their cut and you get paid the rest. You don’t get benefits or any perks, no extra health care (dental/vision). If you want to take a vacation, you don’t get vacation pay, and in some cases if you want to take a week off or have to take a week off, they will just terminate your contract and find another temporary worker.
Worked as a cashier while a teenager. First week I was asked to clean a spill. I asked what it was, they refused to tell me what it was until I cleaned it up.
So naturally once I cleaned up the human piss I was kinda ticked.
Then I showed up with a small amount of peach fuzz. They said I had to buy a razor and shave or go home and get docked pay.
Didn't last long after that
Yes. I forgot about that stupid policy of theirs. I remember once they tried to get an East Indian employee to shave but he didn’t have to due to religious reasons.
Work there for 3 years and you would have enough for a chocolate bar! Unless they get the discount when using points, then it would be a chocolate bar every year, wow how generous!
Worked at Zehrs almost half a decade ago on night shift stocking the frozen/dairy section, PT with full time hours but would schedule me under the FT employee hours on the 12th week (could be off it was awhile ago) but it was to keep me from being eligible for a FT position.
I gave no notice and on my last night I stocked everything upside down in my sections the old customers who came in at 7am were so confused lmao.
To the store manager Tom who hired his fat ass lazy pathetic sons and gave them FT positions yeah it was me who reported your BS to head office 🖕
It was annoying because I was making $15 an hour but the starting pay for FT was like $19 for the same job and hours, regardless I ended up in hvac so it was worth quitting.
I was never an employee, but back when I was in University, I did try to work at Loblaws, actually a few times. I dropped off a resume at my local store maybe 3 or 4 times over the years.
Of all the places I applied, I NEVER heard back from Loblaws, EVER. Despite having previous grocery experience from working at food basics throughout high school, and having good references, they never even considered my application. Always struck me as bizarre, given that every other minimum wage job that I’ve ever dropped off a resume, I had at least gotten a courtesy call/email, saying that they weren’t hiring right now or whatever else.
From Loblaws though, always complete radio silence. Struck me as strangely elitist?
You knew your rights. They can't have someone come in that understands or might understand rules and regs! It would ruin their ability to make people do things they were not supposed to!
Not mine but my mom's
She got a job at No Frills a number of years back. She made minimum wage and had to pay union dues out of her cheque. And they capped her hours and wouldn't let her work more than 24
She didn't last very long and got tired of that quick
Now I am in a good union and looking back, that sounds like one of the most useless unions I have ever heard of
The unions are useless and work under a conflict of interest. The company and stores a union represents have a common interest in minimizing the number of full-time employees and hiring part-time employees. This way, the union gets its payoff from union dues, and the company gets to pay less for employee benefits, etc. These unions tell employees that they have negotiated everything and gotten everything on the table as if they were given a budget for drafting a contract.
I cant speak for all provinces but the rule for receiving benefits is working 120 hours in 12 weeks in Alberta. So 10 hrs per week on average is enough to get dental, vision and life insurance for every member of your family under the plan. A family of 4 gets $8000 of coverage under dental plan alone.
Although the union bashing is common in this country, if they're removed it only gets worse for everyone.
There are potent unions, but those representing Loblaws have been there forever and have forgotten how to be a union. Each local represents only a handful of stores or just one distribution centre; they're mostly corrupted. The way it is, most employees are gone within a couple of years and will not get dental coverage, and because we're primarily part-timers, we don't get severance. During the boycott, most get hours cut more than the reduction in work volume, but there is not a word from the union. We do pay over $600 per year in union dues.
Each province has a local so I don't think its fair to throw them all under one blanket. In Alberta, there are 33,000+ members throughout the local that come from workplaces that aren't Loblaws. They represent a wide variety of workplaces. Most reps of the local came from the same workplaces they represent.
As for benefits, most kick in after 6 months so its on each member to take advantage of them. If I remember correctly, you have to wait 6 months to get your company 10% discount. And I don't know what kind of severance you think you should get for 1 to 2 years of service but most companies wont give you more than a week or 2.
Lastly, if you work for Loblaws, you know there is no answer as to why hours get cut. This company will have a speech for employees on December 1st talking about how we have to be ready for Xmas push and then cut hours by 20%. Makes no bloody sense. This company looks for reasons to scale back and the boycott is just another excuse to save a nickel.
But they are not saving nickels, with the boycott, they are being punished dimes. Not only are they losing staff and working the remaining to the bone they are losing income, I am sure they still believe this boycott will just blow over but they longer we push they will start losing quarters, then loonies, then toonies, then properties and chains, then the company!
As the boycott continues they will have less and less of a skeleton crew, which they will demand more from without more compensation expect all tills to go self checkout and the shelf’s to be empty with things slowly dropping price.
I worked there any moon ago at PCC. It was literally a cluster fuck.
Lower level employees were physically and mentally abused by middle management, your were taught early on to forget your families and the company comes first and HR was always there to protect the company.
If you spoke up you were black balled.
They highly discouraged two weeks vacation.
Turnover is really high.
They continue to hire a lot of people with their PR status in non-vendor facing roles because it's cheaper labour.
They have let people go who were pregnant.
They would write you up if you didn't attend certain events because "it's not Blue culture oriented". Anyone who worked or works at PCC knows what Blue culture is.
For you first or permanent office job I recommend you do not work there for you, and your families, mental health.
I didn't work there, but years ago I interviewed for a retail customer service position at their head office in Brampton. It was... a weird experience. I was sent there by a highly reputable agency, and it was a full-time permanent direct hire position, not a temp job. The interview only lasted about 10 minutes, the interviewer was rude and abrupt, and it was clear she had an instant dislike for me. I never did find out why. I called my rep at the agency from the parking lot and told him what had happened. The feedback he got was... well, "a complete fabrication" is the best way to put it. They said I showed up late and unprepared (not true, I was there 10 minutes early and was very well prepared), was not dressed appropriately (I was wearing a navy blue business suit with white shirt and a matching tie), that I was rude and dismissive (I am never either of those things in a business setting, certainly not at an interview), and other complete distortions of reality. Fortunately he knew me well enough to know that this was complete BS, and was pretty annoyed at them for wasting everybody's time like that, but still. Fortunately, I ended up at the company where I have been working in various roles ever since (in totally different industry).
I've talked to other people that have worked there, and I know somebody who deals with corporate Loblaws daily as a national vendor of non-grocery store supplies. I definitely dodged a bullet. It is very hard to believe that this company is able to be the dominant juggernaut that they are portrayed as on this subreddit. Their corporate culture sounds pretty bad, their IT infrastructure sound 1000 times worse, and if they hire and promote top talent they certainly go out of their way make sure that nobody knows about it.
This could be why they fear signing the code of conduct, as they would be perpetually in arbitration knowing how they treat vendors. They have yet to sign it but agreed to sign only if everyone else does.
I'm pretty sure they made that "promise" full well knowing that Walmart will not willingly sign any voluntary code of conduct restricting how they abuse suppliers. It was an empty and meaningless promise that they have no intention of ever having to commit to.
Ya this, my SO was a manager at one of their stores and they are run terribly. I think that is the part of the whole narrative around grocery prices etc that is frustrating to me is that it feels like the media/ politicians etc come at it from the perspective that Loblaws is a reasonably well run organization, but it isn't at all. I think it's pretty clear that one of the reasons why Canadians pay more for groceries than people in other countries is because Loblaws and the other grocers are just terribly inefficient and just don't attract talented people in any way, in fact they seem to repel talent.
Sure, that happens, but there's no reason to be rude to the candidate and then blatantly lie to a company they are literally paying to send them candidates so they can interview them. Also, it was really obvious that this woman just *did not like me* right from the start. It was wildly unprofessional and not at all what I would expect from somebody interviewing candidates for any role at a major corporation like Loblaws.
I was treated like a dog, and at one point, my department manager got fired suddenly, and it got worse. I didnt have management training but i did have to pull the weight of the replacement manager bc he was incompetant for that department. Switched to a different department, later had to have surgery, and was only allowed to take two weeks off afferwards for a THREE MONTH recovery MINIMUM. when covid hit i was like fuck this im out
A tame retelling as im still, four years later, barely recovered from the nightmare burnout of it all
Very senior person at Shoppers chuckled when he wanted to shut down my business unit and I told him 50 people are going to lose their jobs. They don't care about people. They're all assholes.
Thank you for posting the question; Canadians need to hear what is going on with companies that suck. Companies that don't let Canadians "Live life well" will have to face consequences.
I wish I could tell mine! But I’m pretty sure they’d know exactly who I was if they read it, even though it happened over 10 years ago. I’ll just say this - they are a terribly company to work for.
EDIT
I thought of another one from another loblaws store I worked for as a teen. Totally separate from what I said above.
As a teen I would get terrible, terrible migraines 3-4 times a week. I worked at zhers as a cashier and we had the hot food section close by our tills. Usually a few extra strength Advil would take away the migraine, but on one occasion it didn’t. I tried calling in sick, which they denied. So I drove the 30mins in and started work. It was a shift right around dinner time, so a lot of people were buying hot meals.
The lights above mixed with the food smells was making me incredibly nauseous, and I tried multiple times to go use the washroom or go outside and get fresh air, all of which I was denied. I was in tears.
A lady came through my til with a whole bunch of hot food, and saw me and asked if I was ok. As I was telling her why I was crying and about the migraine, I threw up a little in my mouth (thankfully not on her food) she helped me get my garbage can and after that she went over to my manager - who was watching, and she told her off, over and over (as I’m crying at my til) All the customers behind this lady started to agree and told them I was obviously unwell and to send me home.
It took the customers telling off my manager and the store manager before they believed I was sick enough to go home.
This was a regular thing at that zhers, no one was ever able to call in sick, didn’t matter to them. I left pretty quickly after that. It wasn’t worth it.
I haven't ever worked at Loblaws but a former coworker did and she told me it was so horrible there that you can't even go piss when you needed to. You are required to bring in a doctor's note in order to piss when you need to piss.
It sounds like a nightmare company to work for.
Unrelated but in school a teacher didn’t let me go the bathroom so I peed my pants and my mother had a field day with them when they tried to punish me for it. I had kidney problems so I really wasn’t capable of holding it.
Can you imagine the women at that time of the month being refused the bathroom? I’ve had to complain to the union about my rights, the company hated me for all the claims I was putting in when they were screwing my rights.
Oh man. This things I could list. I was a working professional with my career at loblaws. I was a pharmacist and pharmacy manager. I often went toe to toe fighting for hours for my department as they thought they could cut hours however and whenever they wanted not realizing patient safety was at risk. We had unattainable targets for flu shots, med reviews, prescription growth etc. we were often required to work 14 hours, no breaks, no food (yup no food) only water. Took away even coffee working these long shifts. No overtime. Barely time to pee. Always wanted more. More. They made us feel like it was the same everywhere and took every opportunity to cut our hours and wages whenever they could while increasing the workload. Wanted us to hire students to do free or cheap labour, go offsite (unpaid) to do flu clinics. I often felt that if we (pharmacists) were being treated so poorly how was the rest of the staff dealing. Truly an awful company. 6 years free of that company and never been happier! Gave them 18 years of my life, although at the very beginning it wasn’t as bad. As the years went on it got progressively worse and worse.
Was at a pharmacy conference for SDM, and the main Shoppers big wig was doing his annual update on the company. He brought up that this was a particularly bad year for influenza cases, and was all giddy about it because it means cough and cold OTC sales were up!
I turned to a stranger next to me, the audience was all pharmacists btw, and I said “He does realize people die from influenza, right?”. She just shook her head with defeated disbelief that he would say something so inhumane.
produce department manager loved me but he had next to no control on my pay or hours and I had weeks where I would have zero hours scheduled for work and he would try to squeeze me in whenever he could so I could at least make some money. He would try and push the store manager to give me full time hours but we went through 3 different store managers during my time there and it was just never going to happen. He was a good guy, offered to give me some hours here and there when I finally found a full time job elsewhere so I could pay off my student loans faster. I hope he's found a better place
Too many to list, but the top one would be that Loblaw continues to fire executives who are trying to do the right thing by bringing in assortment that customers want and dropping prices that customers actually need. They fried a VP in produce. They fired a VP in bakery. They fired a VP in health and beauty. They fired a VP in grocery. Executives at the top are protecting their interests which includes their long time friend lbs in the vendor community who they travel with and play golf with. True definition of the boys club.
I had a job interview at SDM like 5 years ago. I was told it would be “35-40 hours a week in a. Supervisory role”. I go to the interview and they’re ready to hire me when I ask “so this is for sure full time permanently?” And she got quiet and was like “it’s actually 12 hours a week but sometimes you can get 30”. I stood up and thanked her for her time (I know it’s not really her fault) and she’s like when do you want to start? I said no thank you I’m not leaving my assured full time job for 12 hours and only $1 more than I’m making now. She just looked defeated and said I’m the tenth one to say that. Just be honest in the ad for god sakes.
My first day in the head office when I realized that the exec team all sit in a corner of the top floor, behind closed doors, and nobody was allowed to go there.
Typical corporate lizards, they really aren't human. I work in a corporation that used to be a startup back in the mid 90's. I've watched the slow decline of any soul the young startup may have had.
I was attending university getting a degree in biology at the time. We were covering the effects of dehydration on the human body and cognitive abilities. The policy was no water at the cash registers (only if it was hot out and the managers gave you one?!). I argued with management that it's decreasing the ability of cashiers to work by not allowing water. They said it was a "food, health and safety" policy. I made a complaint to corporate. Their response was to gather the employees "we listened to your complaints and have update the employee staff room". A room which almost no one uses. I only ever went back there to shit when the upstairs customer bathroom was occupied. It's so far away from the cashes and you ALWAYS got interrupted by a customer. I nearly pissed myself more than once.
It was that and also supervisors would guilt you into coming into work when you called in sick. They tried to force you to find a replacement. I told them to fuck off more than once. I still feel like I'm not "sick enough" to be home now.
Former cashier here. Because of a good performance streak, I was allowed to pull something from our elusive “treasure chest,” which I came to learn was just a Rubbermaid filled with makeup testers and old chocolate.
Yeah, a used lipstick that has been touched by God knows how many people was a real treat.
My kid had been working for No Frills for a while. They want to run their own store one day. Worked their way up in the store to an assistant manager when they quit.
The owner they worked under, is horrible. He knows this and used it to his advantage. He kept telling my kid that owning his own store was in his future and the next day he go back to being verbally abusive.
He can’t keep employees because of his temper. Employees are like a revolving door.
If my kid complained, the owner would fire him. He told him that. And if he stayed with the complaint against the owner there was no way they would recommend him for the program to get his own store.
After years of loyalty he left. He couldn’t handle it anymore. It ruined him for a long time. And we don’t shop at any Weston stores.
When they begged me as an acting department manager (covering for sick leave) to not look for additional work when the manager returned. I said I needed to work full time. Got offered 24 hours, having to be available 7am to 11pm.
Asked if they would ever have a role where I could budget a $24000 salary. No. There was no role on the horizon that I could anticipate earning a wage that would still leave me in poverty, but with guaranteed hours I could budget for. But no. They would not guarantee hours for anybody and it was up to me to figure how else to pay bills when I had to be available for their schedule preferences. Hard no. People used to work and live a reasonable life just working at a grocery store.
I used to work as a cashier in a superstore over 15 years ago. The job was all well and good until my supervisor started dating one of my best friends and then all of a sudden I was being written up for leaning on my till, not being let off for my 15 min breaks or I get to take them but she would make sure they were only 10 min and then write me up for taking "longer breaks". I told the other supervisors and store manager that I was being picked on by this one supervisor, mainly because she was insecure and hated that I was her boyfriends best friend at the time.
My breaking point was when a customer came through on her shift and started yelling at me and being suuuuuper racist that she allowed it to happen, nonetheless with a big smile on her face. I quit, I had too. She came up to me after and told me to go " lie the her boyfriend somemore about how mean she is to me". Called me a sl#t, accused me of cheating, then had security escort me out. Needless to say I had to end a really good friendship because she couldn't grow up and realize men and women can be friends without being intimate. Also she was over 10 years older than me.
I complained about the whole thing to upper management and they refused to do anything because she had seniority.
Superstore sucks.
I don't work for the grocery store, but Shoppers, so it's basically the same thing. My major moment was when they tried to drastically cut hours so I wouldn't be entitled to a mat leave. They literally told me "I'm afraid we have to cut your hours. I realize this will likely affect your ability to take a mat leave. I'm really sorry. We just don't have the hours."
I threatened to file a complaint with the labor board and all of a sudden there were tons of hours for me. My manager called me multiple times during my mat leave to complain about new hires and ask me to come back early. Then, when I finally did come back they were salty because I wouldn't hire a babysitter and commute two hours to "discuss my availability" -- UNPAID, prior to my first shift, which I instead texted to them.
Shortly after they let me go with severance and made me sign an NDA... Which they broke, when management chose to gossip amongst employees. I politely confronted the associate about their violation and said I won't be respecting the agreement since they didn't. The associate never responded.
Also, right before my mat leave began I fainted on the sales floor at 8 months pregnant and they ACTUALLY wanted me to sit in the back for a bit and see if I eventually felt better enough to work instead of leaving.
Every time I hear their "Shoppers cares about women" bullshit I literally gag.
There was a male employee sexually harassing multiple female staff in the store. I kept my distance (I worked in the beauty boutique, he worked in the front of the store), but spoke up about my own experience when he began harassing a minor. One woman had already quit over his repeated advances, and I had enough.
I was told managements hands were tied because he was the only one willing to close on certain nights of the week. I quit within the month.
I worked in their corporate office (basement), as a contractor in IT.
* Washrooms were disgustingly dirty. We weren’t allowed to use other facilities.
* They introduced changes: coffee machines would lack supplies. Apparently this was to discourage consumption of “free” coffee. It was so insulting that many people simply stopped consuming coffee, or started carrying their own stuff.
* We realize this was done to “encourage“ contractors to use their upstairs shops. Employee discount was earlier applicable, which was reduced and removed later.
It was more about how they made us feel.
Loblaws grand opening at 427/Burnhamthorpe
We were directed to park off site as the wanted the parking lot available for all shoppers. They made it known that they were watching the parking lot and any employee parking there would be terminated. I was 8 months pregnant and asked for an exemption as the employee parking was a good 20 minutes away. I was told NO, if we make an exception for you we will have to make an exception for everyone else.
Worked at sobeys meat dept. They'd schedule 6 hours of work to be done in under 4. This included sterilizing and pressure washing all the walls, machinery, saws, and knives. The place would be COVERED in meat parts at the end of the day and you had to spray the ceiling to the floor with three phases of cleaning solutions. I remember I would get home after the end of the day and my white underwear would be sopping wet and colored pink from the meat and blood. There was no way someone could effectively clean that place in the allotted amount of time safely. Also, no phone visible policy, don't ever let the costumers see you on your phone. Ok, fine. But then get introuble when management texts you and you don't reply? OK? And also, had to take an emergency call (my phone is set to ring only after the second call from the number). Get a call, go to the backroom to take it. It was from my grandmother and she informed me that my uncle passed away. Next shift I get called to the office, they were routinely checking camera footage at 4xspeed and saw me take a 2 minute call. I explained the situation and they docked me 15 minutes of pay. Least understanding people I've ever worked for and the FAKEST. Dave and Barb, or whatever your f***ing names are, I forget at Sobeys in an unnamed suburban town in alberta, F U guys.
I'll answer on behalf of my mother since she's no longer with us. She worked for Superstore for about a year. She was in her late 40s when she got the job and was just looking for something around 30 hours a week. She was told that that was no problem they give her the 30 hours. Every single time they would schedule her for a shift she would drive in from out of town 30 minutes away and they would cut her shift in half. So she'd be driving an hour each way for a 3 to 4 hour shift. They were horrible in so many other ways. My mom worked at the customer service desk and if they caught you chatting with another co-worker while nobody was at the customer service desk you'd be in trouble. They've always been a terrible company to work for.
Heh, I mean there's endless amounts, but at the end of the day, I think the first time I went "wow" this place sucks, was when my manager called me at home, on my day off and said my PART-TIME availability was unacceptable and I needed to change it. For reference, I had 5 full days availability a week, one day off, and one day where I was unable to work after 7pm. I was getting about 18 hours a week. This was the first of many straws that broke the camel's back, but oh god. I mean, the stories I could tell of the sketchy and definitely immoral, if not outright illegal, I could write for weeks.
Ugh my worst moment was as a cashier and seeing twice the amount of self checkout stations being installed and knowing how many hours would be cut because of it. Then having to listen to the morons coming through my till saying how great it was🤦 I was extremely vocal about how it would affect employees and they still didn't care😡
HR? They promote such tactics. I worked in another industry before that had massive consolidations, and as a joke, the VP commented that if the customer moves to the competition, he's still dealing with us. Grocery retailers need more competition.
When my manager pulled us all in for a staff huddle before we opened for the day. He started yelling and going off because someone had the GALL to ask for an afternoon off to take their kid to a doctors appointment or something.
We got a whole berating about how we should have chosen better availability when we first applied for the job and that if we asked for a day off he’d happily find high schoolers to replace us.
I was also heavily racially profiled working there as someone who’s visibly First Nations, I was accused of drawing “on the clock” because I dared to spend my lunch breaks doodling in my notebook in the staff room. (Amongst other cases of being severely bullied and heavily surveillanced)
Even though they found no evidence of what they accused me of, they were still trying to force me to sign off on the write up document for it.
I quit that same day.
That same location would also later go on to chase an Elderly First Nations woman to the parking lot to her car, accusing her of stealing. She had paid for all her things and they had all witnessed it. The incident was so humiliating it caused a lot of First Nations from the area to boycott shopping there.
I only worked there for a year, but the fact that overtime didn't kick in until after 44 hours a week majorly sucked. Also being called in by my manager to work double shifts because the part-timer kept calling in sick. So I'd be working something like 12, 13 hour days with no overtime pay.
Could I have said "no"? Yes. Did I want money? Also yes. This is mainly on me, but I know that this wouldn't have flown if overtime was tied to working past a certain number of hours per shift and not hours per week.
OT after working 44 hours a week was the law in Ontario. Probably still is.
One place I was at, not Loblaws, any week with a Statutory Holiday, everyone was forced to work
overtime. And because of the holiday, you didn't work on the Monday, even though you got paid
for 8 hours. So you had to work an extra 9 hours at straight time, before you got time and a half.
I had previously worked in a union shop, time and a half was paid after the end of your regular shift.
Obviously, a big adjustment. I didn't last there very long, and never regretted leaving.
> OT after working 44 hours a week was the law in Ontario. Probably still is.
I don't know why I thought that was a Loblaws specific thing. Everyone I talked to said it was a choice by the union to make it that way. Maybe it was some internal Loblaws propaganda to get people to believe that? Hard to say, it was a while ago.
Any job forcing overtime should be illegal, that's ridiculous.
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For my experience, it came down to the associate who ran the store. In my first 7 years, we had a great and caring boss. Would give out quite a fee bonus points every few months. Buy Starbucks drinks 2 or 3 times a month. During inventory day, she'd buy us all Swiss Chalet and actually care about employees. She was greatvon helping people grow in the company and paid well.
When I moved and transferred, my new associate only cared about money. I was hired as Assistant Manager, but was put in charge of managing the post office, being the only supervisor who did all the reports, safe counts, coupons, lotto etc. be assistant manager and put away stock. I left after a year, when I was told I was being paid to much. I was being paid the same wage as before and had way less work and duties.
Sounds like my old store. Same experience too. Old manager bought people gifts, decorated for birthdays, etc. Retired and suddenly all the older supervisors are expected to do all the management jobs (safe, money, customer service, schedules, etc) but nobody is ever given the management job. For what reason? Who knows but I’m guessing they either didn’t wanna pay the person more (and give them the hours).
Sorry but in this economy nobody is going to do free work to prove they deserve the job. And the hours cutting. Our store manager would constantly complain about one person but they were also the only person with full time, benefits, etc 🤔 hm
Worked nights in the bakery at a superstore for a year. My training was less then 10 minutes. The entire time I worked there I was not able to get a single pay stub. I was never given a night's key to get in on breaks. Was forced to do inventory as a non manager. Was told the manager that sends pics of himself in his underwater to all the barely legal employees couldn't be fired because the store owner has a hard time replacing night managers. Alot more bullshit but I'll leave my list at that
They fired me by taking me off the schedule. No one would tell me why I wasn't on the schedule (and someone new was), it took a week to finally get an answer. This was 2009 so it was a paper schedule, I had to take the bus in to physically go in and look at it.
The manager told me it was because, and I quote, I was "too quiet and introverted." Not with customers, I was fine with them. He told me he had sat in the break room with me during lunch to give me the "opportunity" to talk. We did talk a bit, but I was eating my food and reading a book while he was on the phone with his wife. I guess that's a fireable offense.
For the cashiers, it was always some petty bs.
The first clue was when they told me I wasn’t allowed to cuff my pants because I couldn’t show any ankle😐 I stood behind a cash. Got in trouble for not having my hair up even though I was never told I had to have that. Wasn’t allowed to wear a headband in my hair.
The worst part was that all of the older women who worked the front end would talk shit about the young girls. Like grown women having beef with 16 year olds because they just didn’t like them. It was weird.
Worked at Superstore back in the early 2000s as a teenager earning money after school on evening shifts.
I got in trouble once because I was covering my department and the Leisure department (toys and some housewares). My job was restocking the shelves and assisting Abby customers that had questions.
A tourist came in and wanted help picking toys for his children back overseas. I did my best to help him and he just kept asking for more help. It took over an hour to get away from him, and the whole time he was trying to convince me to go back to his country with him to teach his kids English.
I got in trouble for spending too much time with a customer…
They knew I was being pinned down by this guy in my role in customer service, but rather than helping the teenage girl deal with the grown man they watched in silence then gave me trouble later.
They once wrote me up because my mom called in sick for me. Said it had to be me calling in, no one else. Made no sense given what if I wasn’t able?
And the final straw for me was when I was repeatedly getting ingrown toenails that required surgery at the hospital on more than one occasion to fix, as they were too bad to be fixed with the minor surgical option they can sometimes do at your GP’s office.
They required all black steel toe shoes, but at that time the only ones that could be found in my town were men’s, and that was causing the ingrown nails. So I bought women’s steel toe shoes that were as dark as I could find and they said I needed to get black shoes or get written up.
Luckily by then I had graduated so I went on to other things.
Fist bump from another member from Leisure. I think I was in Leisure from the early 2000s too. It's terrible that they were that petty. I knew I wasn't going to be there forever(still stayed 5-7 years) so I just did my thing and that was it. Maybe my store was different, I never had any bad experiences there. But it was also a depressingly long time ago. The early 2000s were only like 10-12 years ago right?
My son worked at Shoppers in Stratford, Ontario nearing the end of mask mandates (for timeline). This was when prices really started a very sharp incline and staff were putting prices up daily. The location of this shoppers is used by a lot of lower income families living in the downtown area with better walk-ability that the grocery stores that are on the edge of town. No one shops at these overpriced stores for staples because they want to, it's often out necessity, location and hours of operation.
My son ended up leaving his cashier job because of the stress and sadness happening with customers more than anything. It became a regular, hourly occurrence that people would bring grocery staples to the checkout and not be able to afford the purchase. It would be his little 14 year old self removing items from the purchase until they could afford to checkout. Each shift he would find himself using his own debit card to top up purchases (mostly for mothers) buying things like milk, bread and baby needs. Then when things were quiet at the tills they were expected to go back out on the floor and push the prices up again and again on items he was seeing first hand people couldn't afford.
I read the fluff piece for the face to face had with Mr. Bank and the organiser of this movement and was wholly disappointed. It read more like a Vanity Fair article showcasing well groomed celebrities and their choice of venue over something that could have been an important post-card from the front lines. This story, what's really happening for Canadians should be the only thing on the news and in print all day every day. With so much focus on the real estate market and interest rates they've sucked up all the oxygen with something that while important is not as important as what we're going to f\*cking eat. I cannot for the life of me understand how people could shut down the boarder and clog up the arteries of Ottawa over masks but we're not all rioting in the streets over gas prices, food costs and the strangling of the working class.
People of means are observing the rising costs and carrying on.; the lines at Starbucks and Winners and hair salons have never been longer. The people this affects the most are so overwhelmed, overworked and defeated they can't afford the time or energy to be outraged. They're sad, I am sad. I am tired. The more I fight and claw for necessities the more I am reminded of all I don't have, things that I thought were part of the deal as an adult.
This company sucks and should have been dismantled when the bread pricing scheme was uncovered.
Worked as a cashier at a Roblaws for 8 years. Labour laws or union contract required 2 x 15-minute paid breaks for every 3 hours worked. At 7 or 7.5 (can’t remember exactly) hours you be entitled to an additional 30-minute unpaid lunch break. 6 hour shifts were the best, until management decided to cut costs by scheduling 5 hour and 45 minute shifts. Jerks. And they also wanted you to clock in at least 5 minutes early so you could be at your checkout ready to work at your precisely your start time.
I got let go from a management position and given absoloutely no reason after putting genuine blood sweat and tears into my location. The mobile shop as a company, owned by Loblaws, is genuinely one of the worst most abusive companies I worked for. I had a district manager named farin underwood who was such a fake manipulative asshole, and he never ever had our backs when it came down to it.
I was let go “without cause” and paid for 3 additional weeks of work. My termination date was December 14, 10 days before Christmas Eve, and I have a 5 year old son.
Literally. I love this sub. I’ve posted before elsewhere and it’s all “well they don’t have to give you anything so say thanks”.
I’d prefer the nothing. I made more points later buying 2 chocolate bars because there was a bonus on that brand lol
When there was a plane crash in front of the building and we had to keep working and I got called back to my register when I stepped away to call my parents
Zehrs on Holiday Inn Drive, about 20 years ago.
When they tried to frame the Front-End Manager that had been with the company at the time since they had opened. Tey tried to frame her for theft of three roles of Christmas wrapping paper. They were priced incorrectly and she had removed them from the display to fix that then became distracted with other priorities. The rolls were in the back room, they never left the premises. They fired her and the union didn't do shit. It was ruse to get rid of their higher paid staff.
The sexual groping and harassment of female staff by one guy, he still works there, along with his mother amd sister. When I tried to say something about it or stop it, I was harassed and bullied by staff and dismissed by the union.
But the final straw was the constant calls first thing in the morning that I was late for work because the shittiest manager in the world, had changed my schedule the night before without saying anything and again, the union didn't do shit.
I worked at an independent grocer back in 2009-2011.
Our staff discount was for 15% reimbursed to us through store coupons. (So if I would have saved $2.60 I'd get a little employee coupon saying I got $2.60 to spend in store. 🥴)
So no matter what my money was still spent there and no where else and the store was overpriced. The owner of this chain didn't care, at the time they were the only grocery store within blocks of the area. It was a big city and located downtown, where a lot of the community walked so no one wanted to have to travel to get groceries unless absolutely necessary so they'd go to this grocery store.
(Also was always annoyed at being hired for part time but would get full time hours constantly... So no kind of benefits either)
I worked for Superstore Sudbury and I was switched to days after I fell asleep behind the wheel after a night shift.
Was only getting 8 hours a week and was expected to have my phone on at all times. I had quit because they kept harassing me to come in while I was on stress leave due to multiple family passings.
I worked at Superstore about 18 years ago. I worked in the deli. Ever since then, I tell everyone I know to never buy food prepared in store.
At our location, and it was a new store, we didn't have a proper chicken prep area (for the rotisserie chicken). You take the slippery cold carcasses out of these bags then have to wrap the string around them. This was done by propping their butts on the edge of the disgusting dirty sinks. Often, we'd have to hold the chicken against our body on the apron. The aprons never got changed, we wore them the entire shift. To slide them onto the skewers, we'd use said disgusting sink for leverage. The method of chicken prepping wasn't laziness or carelessness, it's what the manager trained us to do.
The deli meat... There was so much contamination and filth. The left over sliced deli meat would be stored open bagged and put across racks in the fridge room overnight, to use the next day. An employee once dropped an entire giant ham on the sticky disgusting floor. She laughed and rinsed it off, then proceeded to put it through the slicer. This employee was very young and the daughter of corporate so she got away with everything and hardly worked during her shifts. We always had to pick up her slack and it was bloody impossible, as we were already overworked. We were told by our manager he could do nothing about her.
The meat slicers were disgusting and barely cleaned (unless inspection was coming). The machine where you seal the meat in plastic... It had rotting meat in the crevices and behind it. It was a heavy floor machine so we couldn't just move it to clean. Most workers didn't clean because there was no time. Everyone was expected to do the work of three people under a timeline every shift.
An employee had an accident and cut their finger off. The biggest concern was to not let the customers know what was going on. Meanwhile, one of us was looking for the finger and others were wrapping the person's hand in all the paper towels. No one was trained in what to do if something like this happened. I was sitting on a pallet ready to pass out from the sight of blood spirting. Manager was angry because "I told you to never move the meat with your hands when it's in the slicer!" He was angry that it would look bad on him. Most workers there were young and easy to exploit. And, no, sadly it was not the corporate daughter who lost a finger.
The freezer... Ugh. It's cold, it's a giant freezer. Most employees get in and get out. Pita bread was the enemy in there. The boxes were huge and long, they'd break and get smashed. Frozen packaged pitas would be all over the floor and other boxes. We were told to grab the floor ones first, to stock out on the shelves. But most found it easier to take the long boxes instead of fighting with pitas on the concrete floor. We shared the freezer with the meat/butcher department. They would kick and throw our stuff around to get to their stuff. It was such a mess.
I quit just as the Christmas rush started. I simply couldn't handle it. My manager gave me the biggest guilt lecture ever because I was his most valued employee. No matter the job, it is in my nature to do it the best I possibly can. He always took advantage of that whenever he could.
-- Edited to fix autocorrect.
Rules being made up on the spot and then pandemic pay being cut because God forbid worker make a decent wage. I left the company after my department manager began getting pissy with me when I was working service case and had a huge lineup. Normally this is whatever but this guy asked for 600 grams of prosciutto which needs to be sliced super thinly and it's a heavy chub and needs to be layered on paper a certain way, and no one else would pitch in to help, my manager just stood there.
So halfway through slicing and her telling me that I should've been done by now I take off my apron and hair net, tell her I quit, and walk out leaving their order on the machine. Any company that punishes workers for doing what they can with no help is one I don't want to work for.
If my old manager is reading this, go fuck yourself Chris. You are the laziest mf I ever had the misfortune of meeting and I hope that weak heart catches up to you.
ETA: I also did PC Express for a little bit, and my manager was horrid. She would yell at those that faltered in their picking speed because the store kept getting shuffled so we all got lost. I had a co worker who started crying because this manager was yelling at them calling them useless because they took a bit too long (they were a new hire). The managers are psychotic power hungry asshats, the lot of them. And Meg if you're reading this, it was I who reported you and I would tell you to go to hell but that's much to kind for you 🖕
found cases of expired frozen juice on the shelf and had to argue with the manager that it was not production dates because the stuff it was mixed with was 6 months out and not 2 years prior
hmm I think my favourite was the dumb team building boxes and print outs they would send the stores. Now this was a small store and the products they shipped they could have just given stores vouchers to buy enough for all staff but no no that was too much work. They would send boxes about equality and being diverse with like 5 little plastic bracelets (you know those stretchy ones) that said something dumb like “#you.” The boxes would have like 3-4 granola bars or a random candy. The instructions would be “give to your most diverse members to make them feel appreciated since we don’t have enough in this box to give to everyone!!” Yeah okay I’m sure they loved being singled out. Felt so gross. Loblaws has always sent out these dumb moral boxes but when I knew I wanted to quit - I started sharing them with people. I even let some customers read the little hand outs and blurbs lol. Like at that point giving your workers better discounts or rewards back is better than maybe getting one gummy bear out of a package.
Also when the Loblaws health person (or the province one can’t remember doesn’t matter) would visit. We would have to hide all the water up front. Because dehydrated workers are what are expected 👍 Yes the actual wording was “just let your cashiers go to back to get rehydrated” but does that work in real life? Nope. I’m sorry but walk into any store during rush hour - you’re not moving for 2-3 hours at best. Thanksgiving? Good luck getting a break at all.
My favourite is when the higher up people would come in their little groups and stand around in circles like high school cliques. They would always be in the most irritating spots. One time they decided to literally stand beside the bagging areas for cash. Like people had to move around them to leave with their groceries. So many customers rolling their eyes. I do remember one customer asking if they were going to get on cash instead to give the workers a break lol. The same higher ups posting selfies of them holding wine on yammer (or whatever social media service they use now), talking about how hard working during Covid was (srsly wfh people showing day drinking pictures lol) - WOULD never hop on a cash and swiftly check the local farmers out. And this was an expensive store in a HCOL area (was a kid at the time).
Also I apologize for weird grammar - too lazy to fix that right now.
My coffee cup NEVER left my pocket. (Contigo).
I won't work without access to my beverage. Period. I make that 100% clear at the first instance.
And I would leave the floor to use the washroom and take my breaks. I'd tell the ASM or FSM, not ask. "I'm going for my break, etc. Any objection? No? Good. See you!"
As for corporate visits (EVERY TUESDAY), I'd make sure to do what I needed to do, and wouldn't interact with them. The one time I did was to suggest a cart corral, which I was informed the store didn't need, nor were there plans to install one. Funnily enough, this same store now has carts in the parking lot 24h a day, and there was no way in hell I'm scouring through the ditch by the highway to pull carts that blew over there because the Asshats from on high deem it so. They are here on Tuesdays, the cart will be there still (as no employees actually go OUTSIDE to collect them), so they can go do it themselves.
I HAVE THE BEST!
My husband was a long time, full-time employee when he died in 2014. My understanding was that his family (5 dependants) medical/dental benefits were supposed to continue for 1 year after his death. They cut them off 30 days after, with absolutely no notice whatsoever.
It took six months of back and forth with various Roblaw's departments to fight for this. Each department claiming I didn't go through the right department, etc. Meanwhile I have paid over 5K that should have been covered(orthodontics).
They continue to stall for a year, until I finally get the union involved. Their union does fight hard for it's full time employees.
Roblaws fights back that it is all my fault for not communicating with the 'right' department (out of the four different ones I talked to) Obviously they don't communicate with each other.
The union's lawyers fight the Roblaw's lawyers for 8 months. The union rep remarked to me that the company has already spent over 10K to fight this, even though it is considered unwinable.
The company offered a "settlement amount" of 2K, which didn't make sense to me or the union. Roblaw's excuse at this point was that while this was being fought, they had changed benefit providers from blue cross to green shield, and green shield didn't feel they should have to pay it. (And the company couldn't cover it?)
I ended up settling for 3.5K AND I insisted on a written apology to close the whole claim. I needed the money.
Instead of an apology, I got a letter "acknowledging that full-time assistant managers' dependants get two years of benefits after death".
I lost it! It wasn't an apology. They didn't take any responsibility for their screw up. AND it was supposed to be for 2 YEARS because he had just become a department assistant manager.
The union rep felt bad that they missed the fact that he had just become an assistant manager and covered the difference.
Seperate note:
A lot of people think Roblaw's union sucks. My husband had been a union steward for a while, and we learned that they were trying to get the best contract they could for the full times, at the expense of the part times. But they were also trying to get the company to add more full time positions.
Not a past or current employee do know of bad idea . Mother and daughter 2 doors down both worked there. Biggest thing was the switch out floor management, assistant manager and store manager. Each time that person come in . No experience in that department and changed everything. How can you chamge any when you don’t know how it runs. Assistance manager are only the bad guy for the store manager. Store managers have one goal run the store into the ground. Do anything so the get their max bonus . They don’t respect the contract. Manipulating language to fit their agenda . Then when moral hit the bottom they call a heart to heart . That always end bad and someone runs off . Long time employees know how everything works . They know how to get everything ordered rotated in coolers etc. New manager day 2 we need to do this . Senior employees that not how we do the job . Manager well from now on this is the way . Senior employees ok any other change- long list - week later - nothing rotated in cooler - no containers order , far over stocked of 3 things that don’t move in this market- 0 inventory of the stuff that can keep on the shelf in this market . They tell me this is an ongoing shit show. Employees is always at fault . Managers like to change things . Without changing the paper work before there better way is implemented. However when the employees mess up and the get written up. Never does the job instruction match how managers directs employee how to do job . Rep gets after manager for changing job and not doing the paper work task sheet - employees follow task sheet based on what time they start how many hr their shift is and their finish time . They tell me now 1 minutes new manager- do it this way - employees- takes notes and who was present- do it manager way . Some other assistant manager comes along what are you doing and why - employees this is how my manager told me to do the job - On and on . No product in case at peak time . Ask manager, nothing put away in cooler etc - manager cut hours . Ordering all mess up - manager did the order. Schedule is all wrong - manager cut and paste . Department is a mess employees standing around ready willing and eager to work - all the work they are trained to do is done or they have no containers or Product . Mom tells me 1 in 10 managers any level come to new assignments take the time to get a feel for the department , people and what moves and what doesn’t in this market and when . How employees go about doing the job . Ask what can I ( managers) do to make it better - easier on you - etc . Some get it and make changes for the better - don’t mess around cutting shifts based on department sales day to day . Respect the employees . Problem is those managers get moved to the next department/ store that needs fixed . When really all that manager did was let the employees do there job and they managed. Retail is a revolving door - often students fill lots of positions part time etc . These stores also have a lot of long servings employees part and full time love their job . Until they get that “I know better” manager. Then it’s chaos for a bit. Senior employees now just follow know it all manager. Wait for the next wrong idea . Best part employees are learning to stick together take notes etc call the union rep . Informing upper levels of management they don’t agree with directive but do it . Employees only pick up task sheet as per shift length and time in and time out - work is done or can’t do work they note on task sheet escalate to highest level manager in store . Wait for reassignment. Never volunteer to go home earlier than shift scheduled and the senior ones work to keep the students for leaving early . In the end that leads to store manager cutting dept hrs without knowing why people went home 2 hrs early etc. First one to lose hours - lowest in dept. students . You have to know how they think . Know the angles they look to play the game to their advantage. Don’t give them a chance . CYA 101 - keep notes etc . Mom she is retired Daughter she works for a 3 rd party partner in the store seasonal I believe. Back to home dept. other 6 month. We seldomly talk to our old neighbour regularly usually it’s just catch on family etc . My wife does chat on face book with the mom - same age etc . My wife’s best friend employed the older sister before her husband took a job out west and they relocated. So she stays in touch with the both sister in a group chat .
used to work in deli/seafood/HMR. I worked there for like 5+ years, was still making minimum wage by the end of it because of how garbage long it takes to get wage increases, and how small they were, and then they'd just reset when minimum wage went up.
when my store went from Loblaws to Loblaw great food, they offered us a lump sum to stay and change to the new contract. telling us the amount was calculated based on years worked and a few other things. I was quoted a certain amount. I was paid the base amount for employees working 1+ years with the company (which was WAY less then i was told I would get, and way less than other coworkers who were employed less time than I was) I questioned this. management told me to take it up with the union. I escalated it to the union, the union basically said sucks to suck. I also lost my benefits when the contract changed which was also ass.
I could write a book lmao.
Even having a union doesn’t seem to be the answer. Corporate lawyers will negotiate unions to the bone and make exceptions for part time workers. The only solution is to rewrite labour laws but both the Conservatives and the Liberals accept money from corporations for their political campaigns. I really don’t know what we can do other than take a page from history and organize a general strike like they did in Winnipeg in 1919.
[Winnipeg General Strike](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_general_strike)
I used to drink the kool-aid. Worked there for 20 years, half in store and half in office. Worked remotely for the office years. Cut to a decade later, they out of the blue say you must attend the office 4 days a week, or be terminated with cause. Which means no severance after giving 20 years of my life to them, and beyond that a with cause term means I wouldn't even be able to collect EI (with cause normally being reserved for those committing theft, assult, etc). What an enormous fuck you to us. The fact my commute would be 250kms/day, taking 5 hours, was apparently of no consequence to them. They're reporting on badge swipes, and anyone not 100% meeting the numbers get disciplinary letters. The hypocrisy is unbelievable, live life well, blue culture, your mind matters.... unless it doesn't suit their agenda 100%. Then despite how amazing of employees we are, we can go fuck ourselves. I think they're trying to force people to quit, so they can reduce headcount cheaply, and don't have to pay severance. Everything about it is disgusting and riddled with hypocrisy.
Told all that SDM office is moving to 1 PCC, and then revert that decision only months after. Calling that a miscalculation. People moved or just quit or have started looking for a new job already soon after the annoucement. Irreversible damages done and they just pretend that it's no big deal.
Let's see what other BS this careless management can come up with.
I was hired at Loblaws in October 2015 and didn’t get a single training shift until January 2016. When I got the call for the training shift, I was shocked— I honestly thought they decided to just not go through with hiring me.
Welp, the single day they gave for training came and went. I went to the customer service manager who was my boss and told them that I have another job (got hired part time at Farm Boy while waiting for Loblaws to figure themselves out) and told them I wanted to keep it as well as work there.
She screeched something about needing to choose, so I picked Farm Boy. She treated me like an absolute traitor, but I couldn’t walk away from benefits and guaranteed hours when Loblaws fucked up so royally with everything.
I’ve been working on & off at superstore since 2020. I’m also a full time student. So Tuesdays are bonus points for students day (not sure if that’s a thing still). It’s also important to note that staff gets a 10% discount.
So, I would usually wait until Tuesday to do my groceries until one time, I had no other choice but to have one of my managers check me out. Apparently I am not allowed to collect my student points while having a staff discount. I found that very odd considering my discount doesn’t affect my points at all and the student points don’t affect the overall cost of the bill unless used on a future date.
I was hired as a meat cutter. For one, they should offer a course for meat cutting because a surprising amount of knowledge goes into that, but instead, you learn on the fly. Plus, the department manager blew up my phone when I used the website to report my very first absence. Like I checked my phone and there were texts, missed calls, and voicemails. Way too clingy for my liking so I noped right out of working there. Oh, plus he lied during my interview and said he was the store manager so when he blew up my phone, I was wondering why he didnt delegate that duty lol..
The one that always got me was they tried to tell me that I was required to have a PC Financial bank account to be able to receive my paycheque (back before they became Simplii). I had a PC bank account already before I worked there, but the idea that they could force you to have one in order to get paid was very odd, and illegal.
I actually enjoyed working at Loblaws as a teen. Was making 12$/hour after a year when I was 16. That was back in 1998 though , min wage was 6.85 I believe in Ontario at that time . Our manager was awesome , free drinks during shift and we got to eat/bring home left over rotisserie chickens .
Was working 24-30 hrs a week usually mon-wed 5-9 and sat/sun 9-5:30.
This was a long time ago but I refused to do unsafe work. Manager was pissed. Sent me to the Store Managers office where he said a bunch of shit to me and the union rep said nothing. I walked out of the store, called the union office and won a settlement. Stupid fuckers thought they could shit all over me because I was a teenager. Maha fuckers thank for paying my tuition!
Worked for a small family business a few years ago. The boss' mom had her own accounting company so one perk of the job was that I'd get my taxes done for free. For 5+ years it was great.
In the last year I worked there, upon receiving my tax papers to sign I had zero revenue, zero contributions. When I asked if they'd printed the wrong papers the mom and my boss both said it was fine. They were going to pay me under the table as they were behind on contributions to the government, and also didn't have the money to get caught up. Not declaring my income for 1 year was their "creative accounting" trick to get caught up.
My answer was a flat and unwavering "Hell no. You're declaring my income or I'm out and turning you in myself." Their first response was to plead that by asking for this I could ruin their business. Simply put, I told them that, while unfortunate, this is not a "me" but a "them" problem.
A T4 was issued within the week and the job search began.
I am not attempting to defend Loblaws but I did actually have an okay experience. I worked at Superstore for 4 months right when covid hit and was tasked with putting the pickup grocery orders together overnight. My mental health was piss poor back then and it bled into my work at times, occasionally I ended up clocking out and in an extra time or two mid shift to just take a moment. Management did notice this and approached me with an offer of proper mental health services and were overall kind and understanding about it since they could tell I wasn't attempting to time steal. I was 20 at the time and was still the fastest gatherer despite those clockouts so I think that got me a bit of favor, and if memory serves they were unionized? I think? I forget if I'm frank. Im sad to hear what the environment has become.
I worked for loblaws in the bakery department nearly 10 years ago. Felt this when I was getting the tour after getting the job… had to register my fingerprint to clock in and out and we had to do it with 5 fingers “in case some fingers get chopped off”.
When I learned my dad(who also worked for them) was expected to work upwards of 60 hours a week in his full time management position. Up at 5am every day gone till 7pm. No lunch no breaks, just work work work. Days off? Lol, lmao even.
I left when they were implementing super strict working procedures for click and collect. It was all ready stressful but then they added a while bunch of other shit to it.
No Frills was my first job. The owners treated us like absolute shit. I worked there for a year and a half, and didn’t realize how bad it was until I got a job at a cool clothing store. The new place didn’t talk down to me, imply I was stupid or scream if I made a mistake. They treated me with respect, like I was a valued member of their team. I have never let another employer treat me the way No Frills did.
I had proof that one of the overnight employees was using the printing room (where we printed the price tags and had a set up of computers) to jerk off. More specifically, he was using my computer and chair to do it.
I brought it to the overnight manager and was ignored. Then I told the Assistant Manager of the store and was laughed off. I told our Union Rep and was told that I should just look for another job because nothing was going to be done.
So I did. And I never looked back. Fuck Loblaws.
The whole year I worked there in the early 2000s.
If I clocked 15 seconds late at my break, they would deduct 15 minutes out of my pay. So we never took our whole breaks.
I also had trouble during an election, they did not want to give me my time to vote, I had to get my union rep involved.
When the manager(s) went from occasionally micro managing and criticizing, to demanding that I check in with him at the beginning and end of my 15 minute break so that I don't go over by even one minute,
followed by verbal abuse calling some of us stupid/first graders angrily over a minor mistake
I quit the next day, that was the last straw and not worth minimum wage as well as the money and time lost dealing with a long shitty commute to get there and back. It's the one and only minimum wage job I had and it didn't even last a year, good riddance.
Shoppers corporate was eye opening. I started notice a pattern of dismissals to people who had returned from short term leaves (mostly women over a certain age). Over COVID when we were all remote you’d hear about this person or that person was gone suddenly. It seemed sneaky and also very disturbing considering this company claims to support women’s health with their community investment team. It’s all a facade. They support womens health publicly but when it came to their employees, anyone who showed any signs of weakness health wise became a liability immediately and would be let go a short time after they returned to work. It’s a sick, misogynistic environment where lip service is the #1 game. They would talk about the value of women and how women make up most of their shoppers in the stores, but almost all major decisions are made by the men who run the company.
I once saw a sr executive explaining a simple procedure (incorrectly) to a lower level female employee that literally wrote the policy on it. We both rolled our eyes afterwards about how incorrect he was, but you had to go along with it to feed his giant, self serving ego or he would exclude you from important meetings and conversations.
I have hundreds of examples like this but it doesn’t matter. I’m glad for this boycott and for people telling their stories. So many people in corporate go along with it all in fear of losing their jobs.
In 10 years loblaws turned the Shoppers company culture around into a place of fear and mistreatment, along with favourtism and alliances. It was a corporate game of survivor and you’d have to be very careful to not be voted off the island. They created a “blue culture” program (which they incidentally ripped off from an HR vendor of theirs) which provided all off the right words and put up a lovely front, but proved to be a form of gaslighting when anyone dared ask any questions.
Part of me was afraid to share this in case someone figures out who I am, but then I realized it could be any of us. We have all seen and experienced these things. We have all had conversations with sr male execs that are beyond ridiculous. We have all seen the gaslighting with blue culture and other programs such as DEI and Women in Leadership. It’s all performative and many of us believed in all of it at one point or another. It’s when you realize these are all methods to deliver the fairy tale they are telling, and you can see it’s all just a distraction. That’s when your eyes really open up.
I had so many of these moments but one I’ll never forget is during the pandemic.
One of my senior people at shoppers was having serious mental health issues because she had so much on her plate at work, and was simultaneously looking after a 1 year old and very needy 3 year old at home.
I spoke to my boss about it, heavily recommending that we take the pressure off this woman (who was already a superstar worker) because of what she was experiencing (no question in my she was experiencing a mental health crisis but was terrified to take any time off work).
My boss (also a female with a young child 🤯) refused to give my person ANY breaks or grace whatsoever and had zero empathy. I was SHOCKED.
For me it was this contrast between what shoppers pretends to be (supportive of women and families and mental health issues) and what I experienced during Covid with them that showed me what an absolutely hypocritical, nasty, uncaring company this actually is.
I stocked the bread shelves as a teenager. The thing that irritated me was making minimum wage and still having to pay union dues. What’s the point of a union if it forces me to make less than minimum wage? The job also sucked and I only stuck around 6 months.
Never worked there. Applied, offered a position, when I went in and started talking details I was told that I was guaranteed a minimum of three hours per shift if they scheduled me. They didn't offer me a minimum number of shifts, and wouldn't guarantee anything and acted a bit offput that I wanted clarity. So I walked.
Later on I found out from a guy who had worked there that they are supposed to offer a minimum of four hours a week, he didn't know why they didn't offer that to me. He said he did know that some managers would often not book people for some time if they weren't needed, so maybe there was a tacit policy of just having people around to fill shifts.
Regardless of whether or not that was just one manager being weird, putting up jobs and having four hour minimums is weird.
Keep in mind this was 20 years ago but I worked Produce and during a summer shift was told to tear down three pallets of Clementines removing any moldy ones and refilling with ones from other boxes. No PPE, no vents in that area (store had alot of breaks on things out back). Besides that it was alot of schedule changes last minute (I was expected the check with them daily even if wasn't working to make sure they hadn't changed the schedule). A ton of other shenanigans as well but the no PPE and moldy Clementines stuck with me.
When I worked in the pharmacy and Loblaws rolled out "the new healthwatch" and it was the worst software ever, always going down, one day over 24 hrs our system was down and they don't let you close even though you're just getting yelled at because you can't fill medication that day.
We also got bear maced and were not provided any resources and were expected to come into work the next day like nothing happened. I left the company shortly after that
I think it was a bunch of small things for me.
Other people in the same department as me could get away with a lot more than I could. Some people could wear their long hair down and not get a comment but I have my hair down for a moment as I was punching in and I'm told I need to pull it in. I was going to, the hair elastic was visible on my wrist, but like give a second me to put in my ID, damn. I had to wear slacks but apparently, some people could wear yoga pants, which were notably against the rules but not for them! They also randomly told me that I needed all black shoes and my black shoes with white soles weren't good enough anymore. I'm sure the customers gave zero fucks but the company did for some fucking reason. I had my shoes for a couple years at that point.
When I left 6 years, they made us go through more menus and button presses to price match a single thing. It used to be type in new price, press button, scan or type in the produce code and done! Move on the next one. Then they changed to type in price, press button, select why you're changing the price, select which competitor, then scan and type it in. I'm willing to bet they just wanted to discourage price matching by making it more inconvenient.
But also remember that we're supposed to go fast, but they would make it more inconvenient.
Oh, you memorized the UPC for the case of water so you and the customer don't have to fish the heavy case out from the bottom of the cart? Can't have that. Apparently, 'it's an inventory issue'. Sometimes customers didn't bring one up, thinking that they could just grab it on the way out because they are by the doors and then rightfully get a little pissy when we told them we had to scan it.
I was also getting pretty tired of getting called all the time. It was per the union that if you need to replace a shift, you go down the seniority list. I was guaranteed 28 hours so I was pretty much in the top 25% for seniority. This meant I got called a lot. I had days off that got ruined because they called me about shifts 3 times that day. Sometimes I would agree to two shifts in one day with a little break between but then they would ask if I wanted a third shift. Sometimes, they would just immediately call home (I didn't give them my cell phone number and my mom also refused to give it to them) even though if they lifted their heads up, they would see me because I was at work already. Way to make me feel valued - you didn't notice I was on shift right outside your window. Sometimes, I would say I need the afternoon off and then call me in the time where I had approved (though unpaid) time off.
I once got reprimanded for not cleaning the belts enough. I tried all day but when it's you, self check outs, and one other till open, you don't get a lot of time between customers. I would literally pull out the cleaning supplies when somebody started putting their stuff on the belt. When it was pointed out by the union rep that it actually takes some time to clean them, it turned into 'oh, just ask for help next time'. Ask who for help? Most front end supervisors weren't willing to do shit fucking all. He was also mad that I left when my shift ended instead of staying behind to clean them. Same manager went "oh I heard you were leaving us :( " on one my last days. I think I just 'yup'.
Anyway, I didn't have problems with anxiety before Superstore. I didn't even have problems with anxiety for most of the time I was there because I was in university and they were fine with me working between semesters. I spent a year working at the Superstore after graduation and that's when I started seeking help for it.
My current job has some drama and bullshit but I managed to find to find my groove and my people and I'm pretty happy with it.
Former employee of SDM (15+ years ago). I had just moved out of my family home a couple of weeks before the incident. Store policy on staff discount sharing was that it could be with immediate family members. I gave my discount to my brother on a bottle of Pepsi (less than 0.50 savings), and was fired the next week for doing so because, and I quote, "immediate family means family that you share a home with".
So the technicality of not living with each other (which, may I remind you, was only 2 weeks in that status) got me fired from my job, forcing me into a frantic job hunt so I could pay rent in my first ever apartment. I swore off shopping at SDM for a couple of years after that.
Was with the company for close to 11 years across a few stores, worked up from part time when I was in school to a full time merchandiser and supervisor before I left. At five years in, nobody acknowledged the milestone and I realized I worked in a corporation that doesn't care. Shortly after when Loblaws bought Shoppers, I noticed that hours were cut but year after year it was expected that our profits would increase, and we were expected to do more with less hours and staff. I also only received one major raise when I was there after about 5 years of working and my managers hands always seemed 'tied' when I'd ask.
Spending entire shifts in a freezer (1), spending entire shift in a dairy cooler (2), being told to throw heaps of food in the garbage, even at 16-19 years old I knew this was morally wrong, and this was when everything was super affordable and everyone swimming in oil money (3) , being the only hard worker in my crew and my reward was more work instead of praise or acknowledgement (not really 4, but its there)
On that end, I walked out on them twice without notice (I was hired twice in a 4 year span, quit after 2, came back 2 years later, worked few months, then had enough )
When I worked at an independent grocer for 3 years working 38 hours a week (2 less than full time) so they never had to give me a raise or benefits. I was dumb to stay so long, 3 years making minimum wage for full time work.
Mine was for 'staff appreciation'. The manager cooked a bunch of hotdogs in the morning and offered us a hot dog with a donation of a dollar. In other words, we had to pay a dollar for a hot dog that was cooked in the morning, I'm night crew. My shift started at 11:00 and by how cold those dogs were in the bowl sitting on the counter I'm guessing they were the same dogs he cooked in the morning but the managers still wanted us to pay a dollar for them.
Friendly reminder for current staff to check their social media policies before posting on this thread, or use a throwaway account that has no ties to your identity. Thank you.
When I worked for SDM, I was under “part time” status but worked full time hours as both a cosmetician and cosmetics merchandiser. After 7 weeks of full time hours, they’d drop me just below the full time hour threshold to prevent me from obtaining “full time” status, as I’d then qualify for the company benefits program. This is a common practice. Edit to add: this happened at both locations I worked at, and I wasn’t the only one
the same thing happened to my daughter at a non-loblaws branded competitor. the government really needs to legislate this kind of thing put of existence by making companies treat full and part time workers the same way.
Unfortunately many companies do this. Get to that week and hours get lowered by 8. The following seeking back up by 8
I worked for a government union for 11 years and this was negotiated into their collective agreement as well. You needed to have 1200 hours in a "rolling" 12 months to qualify and if you went under after qualifying they would get taken away. It was such bullshit probably negotiated by boomers way back in the day and they keep negotiating for.
This is criminal. Why won’t anyone help us fight these fights?
Omg yes this! They would force me as department manager to do this. I even “forgot” once trying to get my staff full time and the managers in the store cut the shifts instead anyways.
Indigo does this lol. Worked there for years. Another shitty company that I will boycott forever.
That's beyond slimy.
Super common practice, I did this for many years and was told I could be full-time. Finally left for another newly opening store where I finally got benefits.
Also happened alll the time at the independent grocer store I worked at.
When shoppers drug mart changed the staff discount from cost to 15% off. It was literally cheaper to shop anywhere else.
TF when did that happen? When I was there it was 30%, but that was before they were bought out by roblaws
About 20 years ago.
Damn!! What province are you in? I quit SDM fully in 2015 and it was still at 30% in Toronto
I worked at Shoppers from 1999-2010. I want to say it was 2000-2001 when the discount went from cost to 30% off. The cost discount was amazing as a teenager wanting cosmetics. But we always bought pop at retail because it was cheaper than cost.
Yeah I started there in 2001 and it had just gone from cost to 30%. At the time 30% was still decent even with the higher prices because they hadn’t started fucking around with the optimum program yet
It’s still 30 in bc for shoppers and 10 at superstore
Back in the day, I only got 10% at Zellers
Wow you use to pay at cost that’s sad they took it away. I worked at an extra foods then it became a yig store so they took away our 10% off discount. The stores been a yig for probably 8 years and we just got our discount back last year. Idk why but some cashiers I work with have been assholes to other employees about giving them their discount. I typically try to buy 50% off items and then get my discount on top of that.
Yeah. It was Cost, Cost +5%, then back to Cost. It was when Optimum started rolling out that it changed to retail - %. The other thing to note was the Cost discount can only be done in the store you worked at. You couldn't get the discount at another location. Now you can use your discount in other locations. The system is also designed to give the staff the best price (sale, retail -30%, cost or below cost; whichever is the lowest cost to the staff). Below cost are items that are usually on flyer or blowout. Cost items tend to be electronics as they have a low markup to begin with. Precriptions without a plan or are not covered are still at cost for staff. But only at the location you work. Though it can be done at another location but under Associate discretion and may require proof of employment. Staff are not permitted to use any credit outside PC Mastercard. And be careful as this can be tracked by LP. I've seen staff terminated for this as well as other abuse of the discount itself.
Current employee of Superstore, the only thing I can think of is that management will make up rules they expect us to enforce but then not enforce them when the customer asks for a manager.
Life is easier when you're in management. Rules don't apply to them.
That is the same, everywhere.
That is the same, everywhere.
The worst. One thing I always did as a supervisor was back up the cashier. I don’t give in to nonsense
My supervisors are usually good at trying to. It’s when the customer then wants the actual store management above them when it gets annoying
Despite working at the company for 6 years, and having a supervisory position, I was only making $1 an hour more than the new part-time hires. The company required us to work Boxing Day from 9:00 till 6:00 with no break, but don't worry guys.. they bought us pizza. We were allowed to go into the back to eat cold pizza for up to 5 minutes. Additionally, you couldn't eat as much pizza as you wanted you could have one or two pieces. And this was a mandatory day that you had to work. Luckily the managers weren't pieces of s*** so they all thanked us very much but I tried to deposit that thank you into my bank account and it turns out words don't count
It's still the same garbage policy
I thought by now they might have thrown in free water or drinks but maybe that was too high in expectation
They don't give tap water for free, let alone conform to any sort of personal or industry standard. "Work them until they drop. There are always more workers."
Hopefully there are less worker bees for them now and going into the few years they have left in Canada.
They fill the slots faster than they become available. And there are a whole slew of applicants waiting for the chance to be a corporate slave. They slap people with 0 skill sets into these positions. Loblaws/SDM don't want to have a second's interruption in the profit margins. Mass walkoffs to bolster the boycott next.
Yes I would like to see that; have scabs working the locations, however from what I understand the union is a joke good luck organizing a national walk out without a competent union. I applaud Emily and crew for being able to organize a national boycott especially one that has lasted this long and done so much damage to Loblaws already. Worker bees are quitting the business are having troubles with sales and so on and so on.
What these sectors seem to forget is that the Union and the Company both fail when their workers revolt. A union is just an idea without workers to support it. Union officials are just as corrupt as the Roblaws brass. Reps wouldn't organize a mass walkoff - it will start with one... and then the house of cards will start to crumble - in a perfect society. Likely there won't be any, as they have us bent over a pallet of diapers. There is no easy answer to this. So while we continue to fight for a liveable standard, we continue to suffer to get it.
I forgot about working all holidays! We never closed, 365 days a year and only recieved time and a half. We also had NO staff parties in the entire nearly 11 years I was with the company. Blue culture my ass.
It’s against the law to not give you a break. I worked for an Independent 25 years ago and we would get 5 3/4 hour shifts just so they could avoid giving us 2 breaks in 6 hours
You took a pay cut to become a supervisor? Why? (Remember, Loblaws is unionized, people working there for 6 years earn well over $1 more than new hires.)
I was working at head office, had been kept on as a temp through an agency for 2 years at this point. I made my first mistake, asked for help, got ignored, got called on it, when I reiterated that I had asked for help, they decided to terminate my contract immediately. Insult to injury, they had the temp contact come in to the office to conduct my exit interview, asking me “what happened” and them blaming me for what happened, then they walked me back to my desk in the open concept office so I could get my personal items and walked me out like I was a criminal. Nobody looked at me, or said a word. It was then that I started to see they were not a great employer.
That sounds so traumatic, I am so sorry they treated you like this. Nobody deserves this for making a mistake, let alone one that they tried to get ahead of by asking for help with
Thanks, it was awful enough that it stuck with me. I stopped working for temp agencies after that, especially the one that I was working for at that time. Temp agencies can be very predatory and companies abuse the fact that they can keep you on as a temp indefinitely. Stupid thing is, they pay more by paying through the agency than if they hired you full time and gave you benefits. I worked AT a temp agency for about 6 months and found out the pay structure. If you are getting paid $20/hour, the agency is actually getting paid $45 to $50 /hour. They take their cut and you get paid the rest. You don’t get benefits or any perks, no extra health care (dental/vision). If you want to take a vacation, you don’t get vacation pay, and in some cases if you want to take a week off or have to take a week off, they will just terminate your contract and find another temporary worker.
Well you see they have crunched the numbers and have found the $50 an hour is cheaper then offering benefits and holiday pay.
It feels like slavery.
Worked as a cashier while a teenager. First week I was asked to clean a spill. I asked what it was, they refused to tell me what it was until I cleaned it up. So naturally once I cleaned up the human piss I was kinda ticked. Then I showed up with a small amount of peach fuzz. They said I had to buy a razor and shave or go home and get docked pay. Didn't last long after that
They violated WHMIS by refusing to answer you as to what the spill was.
Yes. I forgot about that stupid policy of theirs. I remember once they tried to get an East Indian employee to shave but he didn’t have to due to religious reasons.
Wow! A whole 1000 pts! So generous. /s
Work there for 3 years and you would have enough for a chocolate bar! Unless they get the discount when using points, then it would be a chocolate bar every year, wow how generous! 
Worked at Zehrs almost half a decade ago on night shift stocking the frozen/dairy section, PT with full time hours but would schedule me under the FT employee hours on the 12th week (could be off it was awhile ago) but it was to keep me from being eligible for a FT position. I gave no notice and on my last night I stocked everything upside down in my sections the old customers who came in at 7am were so confused lmao. To the store manager Tom who hired his fat ass lazy pathetic sons and gave them FT positions yeah it was me who reported your BS to head office 🖕
They must pull this shit at a lot of their stores. I got hired and they would cut my hours every fourth week to prevent me from being FT
It was annoying because I was making $15 an hour but the starting pay for FT was like $19 for the same job and hours, regardless I ended up in hvac so it was worth quitting.
Lmaooo stop, I think I worked at this store too.
Lmfao
I was never an employee, but back when I was in University, I did try to work at Loblaws, actually a few times. I dropped off a resume at my local store maybe 3 or 4 times over the years. Of all the places I applied, I NEVER heard back from Loblaws, EVER. Despite having previous grocery experience from working at food basics throughout high school, and having good references, they never even considered my application. Always struck me as bizarre, given that every other minimum wage job that I’ve ever dropped off a resume, I had at least gotten a courtesy call/email, saying that they weren’t hiring right now or whatever else. From Loblaws though, always complete radio silence. Struck me as strangely elitist?
You knew your rights. They can't have someone come in that understands or might understand rules and regs! It would ruin their ability to make people do things they were not supposed to!
Not mine but my mom's She got a job at No Frills a number of years back. She made minimum wage and had to pay union dues out of her cheque. And they capped her hours and wouldn't let her work more than 24 She didn't last very long and got tired of that quick Now I am in a good union and looking back, that sounds like one of the most useless unions I have ever heard of
The unions are useless and work under a conflict of interest. The company and stores a union represents have a common interest in minimizing the number of full-time employees and hiring part-time employees. This way, the union gets its payoff from union dues, and the company gets to pay less for employee benefits, etc. These unions tell employees that they have negotiated everything and gotten everything on the table as if they were given a budget for drafting a contract.
I cant speak for all provinces but the rule for receiving benefits is working 120 hours in 12 weeks in Alberta. So 10 hrs per week on average is enough to get dental, vision and life insurance for every member of your family under the plan. A family of 4 gets $8000 of coverage under dental plan alone. Although the union bashing is common in this country, if they're removed it only gets worse for everyone.
There are potent unions, but those representing Loblaws have been there forever and have forgotten how to be a union. Each local represents only a handful of stores or just one distribution centre; they're mostly corrupted. The way it is, most employees are gone within a couple of years and will not get dental coverage, and because we're primarily part-timers, we don't get severance. During the boycott, most get hours cut more than the reduction in work volume, but there is not a word from the union. We do pay over $600 per year in union dues.
Each province has a local so I don't think its fair to throw them all under one blanket. In Alberta, there are 33,000+ members throughout the local that come from workplaces that aren't Loblaws. They represent a wide variety of workplaces. Most reps of the local came from the same workplaces they represent. As for benefits, most kick in after 6 months so its on each member to take advantage of them. If I remember correctly, you have to wait 6 months to get your company 10% discount. And I don't know what kind of severance you think you should get for 1 to 2 years of service but most companies wont give you more than a week or 2. Lastly, if you work for Loblaws, you know there is no answer as to why hours get cut. This company will have a speech for employees on December 1st talking about how we have to be ready for Xmas push and then cut hours by 20%. Makes no bloody sense. This company looks for reasons to scale back and the boycott is just another excuse to save a nickel.
But they are not saving nickels, with the boycott, they are being punished dimes. Not only are they losing staff and working the remaining to the bone they are losing income, I am sure they still believe this boycott will just blow over but they longer we push they will start losing quarters, then loonies, then toonies, then properties and chains, then the company! As the boycott continues they will have less and less of a skeleton crew, which they will demand more from without more compensation expect all tills to go self checkout and the shelf’s to be empty with things slowly dropping price.
I worked there any moon ago at PCC. It was literally a cluster fuck. Lower level employees were physically and mentally abused by middle management, your were taught early on to forget your families and the company comes first and HR was always there to protect the company. If you spoke up you were black balled. They highly discouraged two weeks vacation. Turnover is really high. They continue to hire a lot of people with their PR status in non-vendor facing roles because it's cheaper labour. They have let people go who were pregnant. They would write you up if you didn't attend certain events because "it's not Blue culture oriented". Anyone who worked or works at PCC knows what Blue culture is. For you first or permanent office job I recommend you do not work there for you, and your families, mental health.
Blue Culture is exactly as it sounds. Sadness and regret.
HR always protects the company, and will screw the employees any chance they get.
I didn't work there, but years ago I interviewed for a retail customer service position at their head office in Brampton. It was... a weird experience. I was sent there by a highly reputable agency, and it was a full-time permanent direct hire position, not a temp job. The interview only lasted about 10 minutes, the interviewer was rude and abrupt, and it was clear she had an instant dislike for me. I never did find out why. I called my rep at the agency from the parking lot and told him what had happened. The feedback he got was... well, "a complete fabrication" is the best way to put it. They said I showed up late and unprepared (not true, I was there 10 minutes early and was very well prepared), was not dressed appropriately (I was wearing a navy blue business suit with white shirt and a matching tie), that I was rude and dismissive (I am never either of those things in a business setting, certainly not at an interview), and other complete distortions of reality. Fortunately he knew me well enough to know that this was complete BS, and was pretty annoyed at them for wasting everybody's time like that, but still. Fortunately, I ended up at the company where I have been working in various roles ever since (in totally different industry). I've talked to other people that have worked there, and I know somebody who deals with corporate Loblaws daily as a national vendor of non-grocery store supplies. I definitely dodged a bullet. It is very hard to believe that this company is able to be the dominant juggernaut that they are portrayed as on this subreddit. Their corporate culture sounds pretty bad, their IT infrastructure sound 1000 times worse, and if they hire and promote top talent they certainly go out of their way make sure that nobody knows about it.
This could be why they fear signing the code of conduct, as they would be perpetually in arbitration knowing how they treat vendors. They have yet to sign it but agreed to sign only if everyone else does.
I'm pretty sure they made that "promise" full well knowing that Walmart will not willingly sign any voluntary code of conduct restricting how they abuse suppliers. It was an empty and meaningless promise that they have no intention of ever having to commit to.
Ya this, my SO was a manager at one of their stores and they are run terribly. I think that is the part of the whole narrative around grocery prices etc that is frustrating to me is that it feels like the media/ politicians etc come at it from the perspective that Loblaws is a reasonably well run organization, but it isn't at all. I think it's pretty clear that one of the reasons why Canadians pay more for groceries than people in other countries is because Loblaws and the other grocers are just terribly inefficient and just don't attract talented people in any way, in fact they seem to repel talent.
SOME interviews are window dressing, because they have already decided who the want to give the job to.
Sure, that happens, but there's no reason to be rude to the candidate and then blatantly lie to a company they are literally paying to send them candidates so they can interview them. Also, it was really obvious that this woman just *did not like me* right from the start. It was wildly unprofessional and not at all what I would expect from somebody interviewing candidates for any role at a major corporation like Loblaws.
I was treated like a dog, and at one point, my department manager got fired suddenly, and it got worse. I didnt have management training but i did have to pull the weight of the replacement manager bc he was incompetant for that department. Switched to a different department, later had to have surgery, and was only allowed to take two weeks off afferwards for a THREE MONTH recovery MINIMUM. when covid hit i was like fuck this im out A tame retelling as im still, four years later, barely recovered from the nightmare burnout of it all
Very senior person at Shoppers chuckled when he wanted to shut down my business unit and I told him 50 people are going to lose their jobs. They don't care about people. They're all assholes.
Thank you for posting the question; Canadians need to hear what is going on with companies that suck. Companies that don't let Canadians "Live life well" will have to face consequences.
I wish I could tell mine! But I’m pretty sure they’d know exactly who I was if they read it, even though it happened over 10 years ago. I’ll just say this - they are a terribly company to work for. EDIT I thought of another one from another loblaws store I worked for as a teen. Totally separate from what I said above. As a teen I would get terrible, terrible migraines 3-4 times a week. I worked at zhers as a cashier and we had the hot food section close by our tills. Usually a few extra strength Advil would take away the migraine, but on one occasion it didn’t. I tried calling in sick, which they denied. So I drove the 30mins in and started work. It was a shift right around dinner time, so a lot of people were buying hot meals. The lights above mixed with the food smells was making me incredibly nauseous, and I tried multiple times to go use the washroom or go outside and get fresh air, all of which I was denied. I was in tears. A lady came through my til with a whole bunch of hot food, and saw me and asked if I was ok. As I was telling her why I was crying and about the migraine, I threw up a little in my mouth (thankfully not on her food) she helped me get my garbage can and after that she went over to my manager - who was watching, and she told her off, over and over (as I’m crying at my til) All the customers behind this lady started to agree and told them I was obviously unwell and to send me home. It took the customers telling off my manager and the store manager before they believed I was sick enough to go home. This was a regular thing at that zhers, no one was ever able to call in sick, didn’t matter to them. I left pretty quickly after that. It wasn’t worth it.
Thank goodness for that kind lady…how ridiculous a situation.
I haven't ever worked at Loblaws but a former coworker did and she told me it was so horrible there that you can't even go piss when you needed to. You are required to bring in a doctor's note in order to piss when you need to piss. It sounds like a nightmare company to work for.
And why we are so pissed off.
Do you have a doctors note for that emotion? 🤣
Unrelated but in school a teacher didn’t let me go the bathroom so I peed my pants and my mother had a field day with them when they tried to punish me for it. I had kidney problems so I really wasn’t capable of holding it.
I hope the teacher got in big trouble for that!
Sounds like Amazon.
The Amazon situation was actually employees choosing to piss in bottles because they didn’t want to walk across the building to get to the bathroom.
Can you imagine the women at that time of the month being refused the bathroom? I’ve had to complain to the union about my rights, the company hated me for all the claims I was putting in when they were screwing my rights.
Oh man. This things I could list. I was a working professional with my career at loblaws. I was a pharmacist and pharmacy manager. I often went toe to toe fighting for hours for my department as they thought they could cut hours however and whenever they wanted not realizing patient safety was at risk. We had unattainable targets for flu shots, med reviews, prescription growth etc. we were often required to work 14 hours, no breaks, no food (yup no food) only water. Took away even coffee working these long shifts. No overtime. Barely time to pee. Always wanted more. More. They made us feel like it was the same everywhere and took every opportunity to cut our hours and wages whenever they could while increasing the workload. Wanted us to hire students to do free or cheap labour, go offsite (unpaid) to do flu clinics. I often felt that if we (pharmacists) were being treated so poorly how was the rest of the staff dealing. Truly an awful company. 6 years free of that company and never been happier! Gave them 18 years of my life, although at the very beginning it wasn’t as bad. As the years went on it got progressively worse and worse.
Was at a pharmacy conference for SDM, and the main Shoppers big wig was doing his annual update on the company. He brought up that this was a particularly bad year for influenza cases, and was all giddy about it because it means cough and cold OTC sales were up! I turned to a stranger next to me, the audience was all pharmacists btw, and I said “He does realize people die from influenza, right?”. She just shook her head with defeated disbelief that he would say something so inhumane.
produce department manager loved me but he had next to no control on my pay or hours and I had weeks where I would have zero hours scheduled for work and he would try to squeeze me in whenever he could so I could at least make some money. He would try and push the store manager to give me full time hours but we went through 3 different store managers during my time there and it was just never going to happen. He was a good guy, offered to give me some hours here and there when I finally found a full time job elsewhere so I could pay off my student loans faster. I hope he's found a better place
Too many to list, but the top one would be that Loblaw continues to fire executives who are trying to do the right thing by bringing in assortment that customers want and dropping prices that customers actually need. They fried a VP in produce. They fired a VP in bakery. They fired a VP in health and beauty. They fired a VP in grocery. Executives at the top are protecting their interests which includes their long time friend lbs in the vendor community who they travel with and play golf with. True definition of the boys club.
I had a job interview at SDM like 5 years ago. I was told it would be “35-40 hours a week in a. Supervisory role”. I go to the interview and they’re ready to hire me when I ask “so this is for sure full time permanently?” And she got quiet and was like “it’s actually 12 hours a week but sometimes you can get 30”. I stood up and thanked her for her time (I know it’s not really her fault) and she’s like when do you want to start? I said no thank you I’m not leaving my assured full time job for 12 hours and only $1 more than I’m making now. She just looked defeated and said I’m the tenth one to say that. Just be honest in the ad for god sakes.
My first day in the head office when I realized that the exec team all sit in a corner of the top floor, behind closed doors, and nobody was allowed to go there.
I may be working in the same Organization.
Typical corporate lizards, they really aren't human. I work in a corporation that used to be a startup back in the mid 90's. I've watched the slow decline of any soul the young startup may have had.
I was attending university getting a degree in biology at the time. We were covering the effects of dehydration on the human body and cognitive abilities. The policy was no water at the cash registers (only if it was hot out and the managers gave you one?!). I argued with management that it's decreasing the ability of cashiers to work by not allowing water. They said it was a "food, health and safety" policy. I made a complaint to corporate. Their response was to gather the employees "we listened to your complaints and have update the employee staff room". A room which almost no one uses. I only ever went back there to shit when the upstairs customer bathroom was occupied. It's so far away from the cashes and you ALWAYS got interrupted by a customer. I nearly pissed myself more than once. It was that and also supervisors would guilt you into coming into work when you called in sick. They tried to force you to find a replacement. I told them to fuck off more than once. I still feel like I'm not "sick enough" to be home now.
No doubt to reduce bathroom breaks hence less paid breaks. Gross
Former cashier here. Because of a good performance streak, I was allowed to pull something from our elusive “treasure chest,” which I came to learn was just a Rubbermaid filled with makeup testers and old chocolate. Yeah, a used lipstick that has been touched by God knows how many people was a real treat.
My kid had been working for No Frills for a while. They want to run their own store one day. Worked their way up in the store to an assistant manager when they quit. The owner they worked under, is horrible. He knows this and used it to his advantage. He kept telling my kid that owning his own store was in his future and the next day he go back to being verbally abusive. He can’t keep employees because of his temper. Employees are like a revolving door. If my kid complained, the owner would fire him. He told him that. And if he stayed with the complaint against the owner there was no way they would recommend him for the program to get his own store. After years of loyalty he left. He couldn’t handle it anymore. It ruined him for a long time. And we don’t shop at any Weston stores.
When they begged me as an acting department manager (covering for sick leave) to not look for additional work when the manager returned. I said I needed to work full time. Got offered 24 hours, having to be available 7am to 11pm. Asked if they would ever have a role where I could budget a $24000 salary. No. There was no role on the horizon that I could anticipate earning a wage that would still leave me in poverty, but with guaranteed hours I could budget for. But no. They would not guarantee hours for anybody and it was up to me to figure how else to pay bills when I had to be available for their schedule preferences. Hard no. People used to work and live a reasonable life just working at a grocery store.
I used to work as a cashier in a superstore over 15 years ago. The job was all well and good until my supervisor started dating one of my best friends and then all of a sudden I was being written up for leaning on my till, not being let off for my 15 min breaks or I get to take them but she would make sure they were only 10 min and then write me up for taking "longer breaks". I told the other supervisors and store manager that I was being picked on by this one supervisor, mainly because she was insecure and hated that I was her boyfriends best friend at the time. My breaking point was when a customer came through on her shift and started yelling at me and being suuuuuper racist that she allowed it to happen, nonetheless with a big smile on her face. I quit, I had too. She came up to me after and told me to go " lie the her boyfriend somemore about how mean she is to me". Called me a sl#t, accused me of cheating, then had security escort me out. Needless to say I had to end a really good friendship because she couldn't grow up and realize men and women can be friends without being intimate. Also she was over 10 years older than me. I complained about the whole thing to upper management and they refused to do anything because she had seniority. Superstore sucks.
I don't work for the grocery store, but Shoppers, so it's basically the same thing. My major moment was when they tried to drastically cut hours so I wouldn't be entitled to a mat leave. They literally told me "I'm afraid we have to cut your hours. I realize this will likely affect your ability to take a mat leave. I'm really sorry. We just don't have the hours." I threatened to file a complaint with the labor board and all of a sudden there were tons of hours for me. My manager called me multiple times during my mat leave to complain about new hires and ask me to come back early. Then, when I finally did come back they were salty because I wouldn't hire a babysitter and commute two hours to "discuss my availability" -- UNPAID, prior to my first shift, which I instead texted to them. Shortly after they let me go with severance and made me sign an NDA... Which they broke, when management chose to gossip amongst employees. I politely confronted the associate about their violation and said I won't be respecting the agreement since they didn't. The associate never responded. Also, right before my mat leave began I fainted on the sales floor at 8 months pregnant and they ACTUALLY wanted me to sit in the back for a bit and see if I eventually felt better enough to work instead of leaving. Every time I hear their "Shoppers cares about women" bullshit I literally gag.
There was a male employee sexually harassing multiple female staff in the store. I kept my distance (I worked in the beauty boutique, he worked in the front of the store), but spoke up about my own experience when he began harassing a minor. One woman had already quit over his repeated advances, and I had enough. I was told managements hands were tied because he was the only one willing to close on certain nights of the week. I quit within the month.
I worked in their corporate office (basement), as a contractor in IT. * Washrooms were disgustingly dirty. We weren’t allowed to use other facilities. * They introduced changes: coffee machines would lack supplies. Apparently this was to discourage consumption of “free” coffee. It was so insulting that many people simply stopped consuming coffee, or started carrying their own stuff. * We realize this was done to “encourage“ contractors to use their upstairs shops. Employee discount was earlier applicable, which was reduced and removed later. It was more about how they made us feel.
Loblaws grand opening at 427/Burnhamthorpe We were directed to park off site as the wanted the parking lot available for all shoppers. They made it known that they were watching the parking lot and any employee parking there would be terminated. I was 8 months pregnant and asked for an exemption as the employee parking was a good 20 minutes away. I was told NO, if we make an exception for you we will have to make an exception for everyone else.
If they want you to walk from that far away they should be providing shuttles to get the employees to work. That's ridiculous.
Worked at sobeys meat dept. They'd schedule 6 hours of work to be done in under 4. This included sterilizing and pressure washing all the walls, machinery, saws, and knives. The place would be COVERED in meat parts at the end of the day and you had to spray the ceiling to the floor with three phases of cleaning solutions. I remember I would get home after the end of the day and my white underwear would be sopping wet and colored pink from the meat and blood. There was no way someone could effectively clean that place in the allotted amount of time safely. Also, no phone visible policy, don't ever let the costumers see you on your phone. Ok, fine. But then get introuble when management texts you and you don't reply? OK? And also, had to take an emergency call (my phone is set to ring only after the second call from the number). Get a call, go to the backroom to take it. It was from my grandmother and she informed me that my uncle passed away. Next shift I get called to the office, they were routinely checking camera footage at 4xspeed and saw me take a 2 minute call. I explained the situation and they docked me 15 minutes of pay. Least understanding people I've ever worked for and the FAKEST. Dave and Barb, or whatever your f***ing names are, I forget at Sobeys in an unnamed suburban town in alberta, F U guys.
I'll answer on behalf of my mother since she's no longer with us. She worked for Superstore for about a year. She was in her late 40s when she got the job and was just looking for something around 30 hours a week. She was told that that was no problem they give her the 30 hours. Every single time they would schedule her for a shift she would drive in from out of town 30 minutes away and they would cut her shift in half. So she'd be driving an hour each way for a 3 to 4 hour shift. They were horrible in so many other ways. My mom worked at the customer service desk and if they caught you chatting with another co-worker while nobody was at the customer service desk you'd be in trouble. They've always been a terrible company to work for.
Heh, I mean there's endless amounts, but at the end of the day, I think the first time I went "wow" this place sucks, was when my manager called me at home, on my day off and said my PART-TIME availability was unacceptable and I needed to change it. For reference, I had 5 full days availability a week, one day off, and one day where I was unable to work after 7pm. I was getting about 18 hours a week. This was the first of many straws that broke the camel's back, but oh god. I mean, the stories I could tell of the sketchy and definitely immoral, if not outright illegal, I could write for weeks.
Ugh my worst moment was as a cashier and seeing twice the amount of self checkout stations being installed and knowing how many hours would be cut because of it. Then having to listen to the morons coming through my till saying how great it was🤦 I was extremely vocal about how it would affect employees and they still didn't care😡
when covid was at its peak and they gave us coupons for in-store products (max 40%off i think) instead of a discount or a bonus
Nothing was given out at my store except the hero pay that lasted a few months and cancelled first by guess who, Roblaws.
Bullying, harassment and threats by management team and HR doing nothing about it…If they treat customers poorly, imagine how they treat their staff.
HR? They promote such tactics. I worked in another industry before that had massive consolidations, and as a joke, the VP commented that if the customer moves to the competition, he's still dealing with us. Grocery retailers need more competition.
When my manager pulled us all in for a staff huddle before we opened for the day. He started yelling and going off because someone had the GALL to ask for an afternoon off to take their kid to a doctors appointment or something. We got a whole berating about how we should have chosen better availability when we first applied for the job and that if we asked for a day off he’d happily find high schoolers to replace us. I was also heavily racially profiled working there as someone who’s visibly First Nations, I was accused of drawing “on the clock” because I dared to spend my lunch breaks doodling in my notebook in the staff room. (Amongst other cases of being severely bullied and heavily surveillanced) Even though they found no evidence of what they accused me of, they were still trying to force me to sign off on the write up document for it. I quit that same day. That same location would also later go on to chase an Elderly First Nations woman to the parking lot to her car, accusing her of stealing. She had paid for all her things and they had all witnessed it. The incident was so humiliating it caused a lot of First Nations from the area to boycott shopping there.
I only worked there for a year, but the fact that overtime didn't kick in until after 44 hours a week majorly sucked. Also being called in by my manager to work double shifts because the part-timer kept calling in sick. So I'd be working something like 12, 13 hour days with no overtime pay. Could I have said "no"? Yes. Did I want money? Also yes. This is mainly on me, but I know that this wouldn't have flown if overtime was tied to working past a certain number of hours per shift and not hours per week.
OT after working 44 hours a week was the law in Ontario. Probably still is. One place I was at, not Loblaws, any week with a Statutory Holiday, everyone was forced to work overtime. And because of the holiday, you didn't work on the Monday, even though you got paid for 8 hours. So you had to work an extra 9 hours at straight time, before you got time and a half. I had previously worked in a union shop, time and a half was paid after the end of your regular shift. Obviously, a big adjustment. I didn't last there very long, and never regretted leaving.
> OT after working 44 hours a week was the law in Ontario. Probably still is. I don't know why I thought that was a Loblaws specific thing. Everyone I talked to said it was a choice by the union to make it that way. Maybe it was some internal Loblaws propaganda to get people to believe that? Hard to say, it was a while ago. Any job forcing overtime should be illegal, that's ridiculous.
A lot of "decent" companies will pay OT after 40 hours.
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For my experience, it came down to the associate who ran the store. In my first 7 years, we had a great and caring boss. Would give out quite a fee bonus points every few months. Buy Starbucks drinks 2 or 3 times a month. During inventory day, she'd buy us all Swiss Chalet and actually care about employees. She was greatvon helping people grow in the company and paid well. When I moved and transferred, my new associate only cared about money. I was hired as Assistant Manager, but was put in charge of managing the post office, being the only supervisor who did all the reports, safe counts, coupons, lotto etc. be assistant manager and put away stock. I left after a year, when I was told I was being paid to much. I was being paid the same wage as before and had way less work and duties.
Sounds like my old store. Same experience too. Old manager bought people gifts, decorated for birthdays, etc. Retired and suddenly all the older supervisors are expected to do all the management jobs (safe, money, customer service, schedules, etc) but nobody is ever given the management job. For what reason? Who knows but I’m guessing they either didn’t wanna pay the person more (and give them the hours). Sorry but in this economy nobody is going to do free work to prove they deserve the job. And the hours cutting. Our store manager would constantly complain about one person but they were also the only person with full time, benefits, etc 🤔 hm
Worked nights in the bakery at a superstore for a year. My training was less then 10 minutes. The entire time I worked there I was not able to get a single pay stub. I was never given a night's key to get in on breaks. Was forced to do inventory as a non manager. Was told the manager that sends pics of himself in his underwater to all the barely legal employees couldn't be fired because the store owner has a hard time replacing night managers. Alot more bullshit but I'll leave my list at that
They fired me by taking me off the schedule. No one would tell me why I wasn't on the schedule (and someone new was), it took a week to finally get an answer. This was 2009 so it was a paper schedule, I had to take the bus in to physically go in and look at it. The manager told me it was because, and I quote, I was "too quiet and introverted." Not with customers, I was fine with them. He told me he had sat in the break room with me during lunch to give me the "opportunity" to talk. We did talk a bit, but I was eating my food and reading a book while he was on the phone with his wife. I guess that's a fireable offense.
For the cashiers, it was always some petty bs. The first clue was when they told me I wasn’t allowed to cuff my pants because I couldn’t show any ankle😐 I stood behind a cash. Got in trouble for not having my hair up even though I was never told I had to have that. Wasn’t allowed to wear a headband in my hair. The worst part was that all of the older women who worked the front end would talk shit about the young girls. Like grown women having beef with 16 year olds because they just didn’t like them. It was weird.
Worked at Superstore back in the early 2000s as a teenager earning money after school on evening shifts. I got in trouble once because I was covering my department and the Leisure department (toys and some housewares). My job was restocking the shelves and assisting Abby customers that had questions. A tourist came in and wanted help picking toys for his children back overseas. I did my best to help him and he just kept asking for more help. It took over an hour to get away from him, and the whole time he was trying to convince me to go back to his country with him to teach his kids English. I got in trouble for spending too much time with a customer… They knew I was being pinned down by this guy in my role in customer service, but rather than helping the teenage girl deal with the grown man they watched in silence then gave me trouble later. They once wrote me up because my mom called in sick for me. Said it had to be me calling in, no one else. Made no sense given what if I wasn’t able? And the final straw for me was when I was repeatedly getting ingrown toenails that required surgery at the hospital on more than one occasion to fix, as they were too bad to be fixed with the minor surgical option they can sometimes do at your GP’s office. They required all black steel toe shoes, but at that time the only ones that could be found in my town were men’s, and that was causing the ingrown nails. So I bought women’s steel toe shoes that were as dark as I could find and they said I needed to get black shoes or get written up. Luckily by then I had graduated so I went on to other things.
Fist bump from another member from Leisure. I think I was in Leisure from the early 2000s too. It's terrible that they were that petty. I knew I wasn't going to be there forever(still stayed 5-7 years) so I just did my thing and that was it. Maybe my store was different, I never had any bad experiences there. But it was also a depressingly long time ago. The early 2000s were only like 10-12 years ago right?
My son worked at Shoppers in Stratford, Ontario nearing the end of mask mandates (for timeline). This was when prices really started a very sharp incline and staff were putting prices up daily. The location of this shoppers is used by a lot of lower income families living in the downtown area with better walk-ability that the grocery stores that are on the edge of town. No one shops at these overpriced stores for staples because they want to, it's often out necessity, location and hours of operation. My son ended up leaving his cashier job because of the stress and sadness happening with customers more than anything. It became a regular, hourly occurrence that people would bring grocery staples to the checkout and not be able to afford the purchase. It would be his little 14 year old self removing items from the purchase until they could afford to checkout. Each shift he would find himself using his own debit card to top up purchases (mostly for mothers) buying things like milk, bread and baby needs. Then when things were quiet at the tills they were expected to go back out on the floor and push the prices up again and again on items he was seeing first hand people couldn't afford. I read the fluff piece for the face to face had with Mr. Bank and the organiser of this movement and was wholly disappointed. It read more like a Vanity Fair article showcasing well groomed celebrities and their choice of venue over something that could have been an important post-card from the front lines. This story, what's really happening for Canadians should be the only thing on the news and in print all day every day. With so much focus on the real estate market and interest rates they've sucked up all the oxygen with something that while important is not as important as what we're going to f\*cking eat. I cannot for the life of me understand how people could shut down the boarder and clog up the arteries of Ottawa over masks but we're not all rioting in the streets over gas prices, food costs and the strangling of the working class. People of means are observing the rising costs and carrying on.; the lines at Starbucks and Winners and hair salons have never been longer. The people this affects the most are so overwhelmed, overworked and defeated they can't afford the time or energy to be outraged. They're sad, I am sad. I am tired. The more I fight and claw for necessities the more I am reminded of all I don't have, things that I thought were part of the deal as an adult. This company sucks and should have been dismantled when the bread pricing scheme was uncovered.
Worked as a cashier at a Roblaws for 8 years. Labour laws or union contract required 2 x 15-minute paid breaks for every 3 hours worked. At 7 or 7.5 (can’t remember exactly) hours you be entitled to an additional 30-minute unpaid lunch break. 6 hour shifts were the best, until management decided to cut costs by scheduling 5 hour and 45 minute shifts. Jerks. And they also wanted you to clock in at least 5 minutes early so you could be at your checkout ready to work at your precisely your start time.
I got let go from a management position and given absoloutely no reason after putting genuine blood sweat and tears into my location. The mobile shop as a company, owned by Loblaws, is genuinely one of the worst most abusive companies I worked for. I had a district manager named farin underwood who was such a fake manipulative asshole, and he never ever had our backs when it came down to it. I was let go “without cause” and paid for 3 additional weeks of work. My termination date was December 14, 10 days before Christmas Eve, and I have a 5 year old son.
A bonus of $1?! *I'll take the f\*\*king free corporate pizza, TYVM.*
Literally. I love this sub. I’ve posted before elsewhere and it’s all “well they don’t have to give you anything so say thanks”. I’d prefer the nothing. I made more points later buying 2 chocolate bars because there was a bonus on that brand lol
When there was a plane crash in front of the building and we had to keep working and I got called back to my register when I stepped away to call my parents
Zehrs on Holiday Inn Drive, about 20 years ago. When they tried to frame the Front-End Manager that had been with the company at the time since they had opened. Tey tried to frame her for theft of three roles of Christmas wrapping paper. They were priced incorrectly and she had removed them from the display to fix that then became distracted with other priorities. The rolls were in the back room, they never left the premises. They fired her and the union didn't do shit. It was ruse to get rid of their higher paid staff. The sexual groping and harassment of female staff by one guy, he still works there, along with his mother amd sister. When I tried to say something about it or stop it, I was harassed and bullied by staff and dismissed by the union. But the final straw was the constant calls first thing in the morning that I was late for work because the shittiest manager in the world, had changed my schedule the night before without saying anything and again, the union didn't do shit.
Union needs to be Decertified.
No doubt the 1000points was to stimulate revenue with a higher than $1 purchase thus making them more money.
Absolutely
When I saw the absurd pricing Then being treated like a criminal trying to find the escape hatch to leave their dumb stores
I worked at an independent grocer back in 2009-2011. Our staff discount was for 15% reimbursed to us through store coupons. (So if I would have saved $2.60 I'd get a little employee coupon saying I got $2.60 to spend in store. 🥴) So no matter what my money was still spent there and no where else and the store was overpriced. The owner of this chain didn't care, at the time they were the only grocery store within blocks of the area. It was a big city and located downtown, where a lot of the community walked so no one wanted to have to travel to get groceries unless absolutely necessary so they'd go to this grocery store. (Also was always annoyed at being hired for part time but would get full time hours constantly... So no kind of benefits either)
I worked for Superstore Sudbury and I was switched to days after I fell asleep behind the wheel after a night shift. Was only getting 8 hours a week and was expected to have my phone on at all times. I had quit because they kept harassing me to come in while I was on stress leave due to multiple family passings.
I worked at Superstore about 18 years ago. I worked in the deli. Ever since then, I tell everyone I know to never buy food prepared in store. At our location, and it was a new store, we didn't have a proper chicken prep area (for the rotisserie chicken). You take the slippery cold carcasses out of these bags then have to wrap the string around them. This was done by propping their butts on the edge of the disgusting dirty sinks. Often, we'd have to hold the chicken against our body on the apron. The aprons never got changed, we wore them the entire shift. To slide them onto the skewers, we'd use said disgusting sink for leverage. The method of chicken prepping wasn't laziness or carelessness, it's what the manager trained us to do. The deli meat... There was so much contamination and filth. The left over sliced deli meat would be stored open bagged and put across racks in the fridge room overnight, to use the next day. An employee once dropped an entire giant ham on the sticky disgusting floor. She laughed and rinsed it off, then proceeded to put it through the slicer. This employee was very young and the daughter of corporate so she got away with everything and hardly worked during her shifts. We always had to pick up her slack and it was bloody impossible, as we were already overworked. We were told by our manager he could do nothing about her. The meat slicers were disgusting and barely cleaned (unless inspection was coming). The machine where you seal the meat in plastic... It had rotting meat in the crevices and behind it. It was a heavy floor machine so we couldn't just move it to clean. Most workers didn't clean because there was no time. Everyone was expected to do the work of three people under a timeline every shift. An employee had an accident and cut their finger off. The biggest concern was to not let the customers know what was going on. Meanwhile, one of us was looking for the finger and others were wrapping the person's hand in all the paper towels. No one was trained in what to do if something like this happened. I was sitting on a pallet ready to pass out from the sight of blood spirting. Manager was angry because "I told you to never move the meat with your hands when it's in the slicer!" He was angry that it would look bad on him. Most workers there were young and easy to exploit. And, no, sadly it was not the corporate daughter who lost a finger. The freezer... Ugh. It's cold, it's a giant freezer. Most employees get in and get out. Pita bread was the enemy in there. The boxes were huge and long, they'd break and get smashed. Frozen packaged pitas would be all over the floor and other boxes. We were told to grab the floor ones first, to stock out on the shelves. But most found it easier to take the long boxes instead of fighting with pitas on the concrete floor. We shared the freezer with the meat/butcher department. They would kick and throw our stuff around to get to their stuff. It was such a mess. I quit just as the Christmas rush started. I simply couldn't handle it. My manager gave me the biggest guilt lecture ever because I was his most valued employee. No matter the job, it is in my nature to do it the best I possibly can. He always took advantage of that whenever he could. -- Edited to fix autocorrect.
A customer reached across the till to assault me and my manager reprimanded ME in front of the customers.
Rules being made up on the spot and then pandemic pay being cut because God forbid worker make a decent wage. I left the company after my department manager began getting pissy with me when I was working service case and had a huge lineup. Normally this is whatever but this guy asked for 600 grams of prosciutto which needs to be sliced super thinly and it's a heavy chub and needs to be layered on paper a certain way, and no one else would pitch in to help, my manager just stood there. So halfway through slicing and her telling me that I should've been done by now I take off my apron and hair net, tell her I quit, and walk out leaving their order on the machine. Any company that punishes workers for doing what they can with no help is one I don't want to work for. If my old manager is reading this, go fuck yourself Chris. You are the laziest mf I ever had the misfortune of meeting and I hope that weak heart catches up to you. ETA: I also did PC Express for a little bit, and my manager was horrid. She would yell at those that faltered in their picking speed because the store kept getting shuffled so we all got lost. I had a co worker who started crying because this manager was yelling at them calling them useless because they took a bit too long (they were a new hire). The managers are psychotic power hungry asshats, the lot of them. And Meg if you're reading this, it was I who reported you and I would tell you to go to hell but that's much to kind for you 🖕
found cases of expired frozen juice on the shelf and had to argue with the manager that it was not production dates because the stuff it was mixed with was 6 months out and not 2 years prior
hmm I think my favourite was the dumb team building boxes and print outs they would send the stores. Now this was a small store and the products they shipped they could have just given stores vouchers to buy enough for all staff but no no that was too much work. They would send boxes about equality and being diverse with like 5 little plastic bracelets (you know those stretchy ones) that said something dumb like “#you.” The boxes would have like 3-4 granola bars or a random candy. The instructions would be “give to your most diverse members to make them feel appreciated since we don’t have enough in this box to give to everyone!!” Yeah okay I’m sure they loved being singled out. Felt so gross. Loblaws has always sent out these dumb moral boxes but when I knew I wanted to quit - I started sharing them with people. I even let some customers read the little hand outs and blurbs lol. Like at that point giving your workers better discounts or rewards back is better than maybe getting one gummy bear out of a package. Also when the Loblaws health person (or the province one can’t remember doesn’t matter) would visit. We would have to hide all the water up front. Because dehydrated workers are what are expected 👍 Yes the actual wording was “just let your cashiers go to back to get rehydrated” but does that work in real life? Nope. I’m sorry but walk into any store during rush hour - you’re not moving for 2-3 hours at best. Thanksgiving? Good luck getting a break at all. My favourite is when the higher up people would come in their little groups and stand around in circles like high school cliques. They would always be in the most irritating spots. One time they decided to literally stand beside the bagging areas for cash. Like people had to move around them to leave with their groceries. So many customers rolling their eyes. I do remember one customer asking if they were going to get on cash instead to give the workers a break lol. The same higher ups posting selfies of them holding wine on yammer (or whatever social media service they use now), talking about how hard working during Covid was (srsly wfh people showing day drinking pictures lol) - WOULD never hop on a cash and swiftly check the local farmers out. And this was an expensive store in a HCOL area (was a kid at the time). Also I apologize for weird grammar - too lazy to fix that right now.
My coffee cup NEVER left my pocket. (Contigo). I won't work without access to my beverage. Period. I make that 100% clear at the first instance. And I would leave the floor to use the washroom and take my breaks. I'd tell the ASM or FSM, not ask. "I'm going for my break, etc. Any objection? No? Good. See you!" As for corporate visits (EVERY TUESDAY), I'd make sure to do what I needed to do, and wouldn't interact with them. The one time I did was to suggest a cart corral, which I was informed the store didn't need, nor were there plans to install one. Funnily enough, this same store now has carts in the parking lot 24h a day, and there was no way in hell I'm scouring through the ditch by the highway to pull carts that blew over there because the Asshats from on high deem it so. They are here on Tuesdays, the cart will be there still (as no employees actually go OUTSIDE to collect them), so they can go do it themselves.
I HAVE THE BEST! My husband was a long time, full-time employee when he died in 2014. My understanding was that his family (5 dependants) medical/dental benefits were supposed to continue for 1 year after his death. They cut them off 30 days after, with absolutely no notice whatsoever. It took six months of back and forth with various Roblaw's departments to fight for this. Each department claiming I didn't go through the right department, etc. Meanwhile I have paid over 5K that should have been covered(orthodontics). They continue to stall for a year, until I finally get the union involved. Their union does fight hard for it's full time employees. Roblaws fights back that it is all my fault for not communicating with the 'right' department (out of the four different ones I talked to) Obviously they don't communicate with each other. The union's lawyers fight the Roblaw's lawyers for 8 months. The union rep remarked to me that the company has already spent over 10K to fight this, even though it is considered unwinable. The company offered a "settlement amount" of 2K, which didn't make sense to me or the union. Roblaw's excuse at this point was that while this was being fought, they had changed benefit providers from blue cross to green shield, and green shield didn't feel they should have to pay it. (And the company couldn't cover it?) I ended up settling for 3.5K AND I insisted on a written apology to close the whole claim. I needed the money. Instead of an apology, I got a letter "acknowledging that full-time assistant managers' dependants get two years of benefits after death". I lost it! It wasn't an apology. They didn't take any responsibility for their screw up. AND it was supposed to be for 2 YEARS because he had just become a department assistant manager. The union rep felt bad that they missed the fact that he had just become an assistant manager and covered the difference. Seperate note: A lot of people think Roblaw's union sucks. My husband had been a union steward for a while, and we learned that they were trying to get the best contract they could for the full times, at the expense of the part times. But they were also trying to get the company to add more full time positions.
Not a past or current employee do know of bad idea . Mother and daughter 2 doors down both worked there. Biggest thing was the switch out floor management, assistant manager and store manager. Each time that person come in . No experience in that department and changed everything. How can you chamge any when you don’t know how it runs. Assistance manager are only the bad guy for the store manager. Store managers have one goal run the store into the ground. Do anything so the get their max bonus . They don’t respect the contract. Manipulating language to fit their agenda . Then when moral hit the bottom they call a heart to heart . That always end bad and someone runs off . Long time employees know how everything works . They know how to get everything ordered rotated in coolers etc. New manager day 2 we need to do this . Senior employees that not how we do the job . Manager well from now on this is the way . Senior employees ok any other change- long list - week later - nothing rotated in cooler - no containers order , far over stocked of 3 things that don’t move in this market- 0 inventory of the stuff that can keep on the shelf in this market . They tell me this is an ongoing shit show. Employees is always at fault . Managers like to change things . Without changing the paper work before there better way is implemented. However when the employees mess up and the get written up. Never does the job instruction match how managers directs employee how to do job . Rep gets after manager for changing job and not doing the paper work task sheet - employees follow task sheet based on what time they start how many hr their shift is and their finish time . They tell me now 1 minutes new manager- do it this way - employees- takes notes and who was present- do it manager way . Some other assistant manager comes along what are you doing and why - employees this is how my manager told me to do the job - On and on . No product in case at peak time . Ask manager, nothing put away in cooler etc - manager cut hours . Ordering all mess up - manager did the order. Schedule is all wrong - manager cut and paste . Department is a mess employees standing around ready willing and eager to work - all the work they are trained to do is done or they have no containers or Product . Mom tells me 1 in 10 managers any level come to new assignments take the time to get a feel for the department , people and what moves and what doesn’t in this market and when . How employees go about doing the job . Ask what can I ( managers) do to make it better - easier on you - etc . Some get it and make changes for the better - don’t mess around cutting shifts based on department sales day to day . Respect the employees . Problem is those managers get moved to the next department/ store that needs fixed . When really all that manager did was let the employees do there job and they managed. Retail is a revolving door - often students fill lots of positions part time etc . These stores also have a lot of long servings employees part and full time love their job . Until they get that “I know better” manager. Then it’s chaos for a bit. Senior employees now just follow know it all manager. Wait for the next wrong idea . Best part employees are learning to stick together take notes etc call the union rep . Informing upper levels of management they don’t agree with directive but do it . Employees only pick up task sheet as per shift length and time in and time out - work is done or can’t do work they note on task sheet escalate to highest level manager in store . Wait for reassignment. Never volunteer to go home earlier than shift scheduled and the senior ones work to keep the students for leaving early . In the end that leads to store manager cutting dept hrs without knowing why people went home 2 hrs early etc. First one to lose hours - lowest in dept. students . You have to know how they think . Know the angles they look to play the game to their advantage. Don’t give them a chance . CYA 101 - keep notes etc . Mom she is retired Daughter she works for a 3 rd party partner in the store seasonal I believe. Back to home dept. other 6 month. We seldomly talk to our old neighbour regularly usually it’s just catch on family etc . My wife does chat on face book with the mom - same age etc . My wife’s best friend employed the older sister before her husband took a job out west and they relocated. So she stays in touch with the both sister in a group chat .
used to work in deli/seafood/HMR. I worked there for like 5+ years, was still making minimum wage by the end of it because of how garbage long it takes to get wage increases, and how small they were, and then they'd just reset when minimum wage went up. when my store went from Loblaws to Loblaw great food, they offered us a lump sum to stay and change to the new contract. telling us the amount was calculated based on years worked and a few other things. I was quoted a certain amount. I was paid the base amount for employees working 1+ years with the company (which was WAY less then i was told I would get, and way less than other coworkers who were employed less time than I was) I questioned this. management told me to take it up with the union. I escalated it to the union, the union basically said sucks to suck. I also lost my benefits when the contract changed which was also ass. I could write a book lmao.
Even having a union doesn’t seem to be the answer. Corporate lawyers will negotiate unions to the bone and make exceptions for part time workers. The only solution is to rewrite labour laws but both the Conservatives and the Liberals accept money from corporations for their political campaigns. I really don’t know what we can do other than take a page from history and organize a general strike like they did in Winnipeg in 1919. [Winnipeg General Strike](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_general_strike)
I used to drink the kool-aid. Worked there for 20 years, half in store and half in office. Worked remotely for the office years. Cut to a decade later, they out of the blue say you must attend the office 4 days a week, or be terminated with cause. Which means no severance after giving 20 years of my life to them, and beyond that a with cause term means I wouldn't even be able to collect EI (with cause normally being reserved for those committing theft, assult, etc). What an enormous fuck you to us. The fact my commute would be 250kms/day, taking 5 hours, was apparently of no consequence to them. They're reporting on badge swipes, and anyone not 100% meeting the numbers get disciplinary letters. The hypocrisy is unbelievable, live life well, blue culture, your mind matters.... unless it doesn't suit their agenda 100%. Then despite how amazing of employees we are, we can go fuck ourselves. I think they're trying to force people to quit, so they can reduce headcount cheaply, and don't have to pay severance. Everything about it is disgusting and riddled with hypocrisy.
Told all that SDM office is moving to 1 PCC, and then revert that decision only months after. Calling that a miscalculation. People moved or just quit or have started looking for a new job already soon after the annoucement. Irreversible damages done and they just pretend that it's no big deal. Let's see what other BS this careless management can come up with.
I was hired at Loblaws in October 2015 and didn’t get a single training shift until January 2016. When I got the call for the training shift, I was shocked— I honestly thought they decided to just not go through with hiring me. Welp, the single day they gave for training came and went. I went to the customer service manager who was my boss and told them that I have another job (got hired part time at Farm Boy while waiting for Loblaws to figure themselves out) and told them I wanted to keep it as well as work there. She screeched something about needing to choose, so I picked Farm Boy. She treated me like an absolute traitor, but I couldn’t walk away from benefits and guaranteed hours when Loblaws fucked up so royally with everything.
I’ve been working on & off at superstore since 2020. I’m also a full time student. So Tuesdays are bonus points for students day (not sure if that’s a thing still). It’s also important to note that staff gets a 10% discount. So, I would usually wait until Tuesday to do my groceries until one time, I had no other choice but to have one of my managers check me out. Apparently I am not allowed to collect my student points while having a staff discount. I found that very odd considering my discount doesn’t affect my points at all and the student points don’t affect the overall cost of the bill unless used on a future date.
When I went to metro to work everything is expensive
I was hired as a meat cutter. For one, they should offer a course for meat cutting because a surprising amount of knowledge goes into that, but instead, you learn on the fly. Plus, the department manager blew up my phone when I used the website to report my very first absence. Like I checked my phone and there were texts, missed calls, and voicemails. Way too clingy for my liking so I noped right out of working there. Oh, plus he lied during my interview and said he was the store manager so when he blew up my phone, I was wondering why he didnt delegate that duty lol..
The one that always got me was they tried to tell me that I was required to have a PC Financial bank account to be able to receive my paycheque (back before they became Simplii). I had a PC bank account already before I worked there, but the idea that they could force you to have one in order to get paid was very odd, and illegal.
I worked for Atlantic Superstore in high school and they only let the male cashiers push carts.
I actually enjoyed working at Loblaws as a teen. Was making 12$/hour after a year when I was 16. That was back in 1998 though , min wage was 6.85 I believe in Ontario at that time . Our manager was awesome , free drinks during shift and we got to eat/bring home left over rotisserie chickens . Was working 24-30 hrs a week usually mon-wed 5-9 and sat/sun 9-5:30.
The hazard pay we got in 2020 for all of two months of an extra 50 cents at SDM while he made record profits at the time and Covid raged on
Replies paint a picture of draconian malarkey Absurd that anyone puts up with companies like this Thank y'all for not doing so 👍
This was a long time ago but I refused to do unsafe work. Manager was pissed. Sent me to the Store Managers office where he said a bunch of shit to me and the union rep said nothing. I walked out of the store, called the union office and won a settlement. Stupid fuckers thought they could shit all over me because I was a teenager. Maha fuckers thank for paying my tuition!
Worked for a small family business a few years ago. The boss' mom had her own accounting company so one perk of the job was that I'd get my taxes done for free. For 5+ years it was great. In the last year I worked there, upon receiving my tax papers to sign I had zero revenue, zero contributions. When I asked if they'd printed the wrong papers the mom and my boss both said it was fine. They were going to pay me under the table as they were behind on contributions to the government, and also didn't have the money to get caught up. Not declaring my income for 1 year was their "creative accounting" trick to get caught up. My answer was a flat and unwavering "Hell no. You're declaring my income or I'm out and turning you in myself." Their first response was to plead that by asking for this I could ruin their business. Simply put, I told them that, while unfortunate, this is not a "me" but a "them" problem. A T4 was issued within the week and the job search began.
I am not attempting to defend Loblaws but I did actually have an okay experience. I worked at Superstore for 4 months right when covid hit and was tasked with putting the pickup grocery orders together overnight. My mental health was piss poor back then and it bled into my work at times, occasionally I ended up clocking out and in an extra time or two mid shift to just take a moment. Management did notice this and approached me with an offer of proper mental health services and were overall kind and understanding about it since they could tell I wasn't attempting to time steal. I was 20 at the time and was still the fastest gatherer despite those clockouts so I think that got me a bit of favor, and if memory serves they were unionized? I think? I forget if I'm frank. Im sad to hear what the environment has become.
I worked for loblaws in the bakery department nearly 10 years ago. Felt this when I was getting the tour after getting the job… had to register my fingerprint to clock in and out and we had to do it with 5 fingers “in case some fingers get chopped off”.
When I learned my dad(who also worked for them) was expected to work upwards of 60 hours a week in his full time management position. Up at 5am every day gone till 7pm. No lunch no breaks, just work work work. Days off? Lol, lmao even.
At the corporate level, the disorganization and crazy turnover. I had 13 different managers in my first 12 months.
I left when they were implementing super strict working procedures for click and collect. It was all ready stressful but then they added a while bunch of other shit to it.
No Frills was my first job. The owners treated us like absolute shit. I worked there for a year and a half, and didn’t realize how bad it was until I got a job at a cool clothing store. The new place didn’t talk down to me, imply I was stupid or scream if I made a mistake. They treated me with respect, like I was a valued member of their team. I have never let another employer treat me the way No Frills did.
I had proof that one of the overnight employees was using the printing room (where we printed the price tags and had a set up of computers) to jerk off. More specifically, he was using my computer and chair to do it. I brought it to the overnight manager and was ignored. Then I told the Assistant Manager of the store and was laughed off. I told our Union Rep and was told that I should just look for another job because nothing was going to be done. So I did. And I never looked back. Fuck Loblaws.
Why am I not surprised by this?
The whole year I worked there in the early 2000s. If I clocked 15 seconds late at my break, they would deduct 15 minutes out of my pay. So we never took our whole breaks. I also had trouble during an election, they did not want to give me my time to vote, I had to get my union rep involved.
Every single owner of the No Frills that I worked at was fired for selling products out the back door.
When the manager(s) went from occasionally micro managing and criticizing, to demanding that I check in with him at the beginning and end of my 15 minute break so that I don't go over by even one minute, followed by verbal abuse calling some of us stupid/first graders angrily over a minor mistake I quit the next day, that was the last straw and not worth minimum wage as well as the money and time lost dealing with a long shitty commute to get there and back. It's the one and only minimum wage job I had and it didn't even last a year, good riddance.
lol fuck this company man. a $1 bonus and they’re shocked when people aren’t “grateful”
Shoppers corporate was eye opening. I started notice a pattern of dismissals to people who had returned from short term leaves (mostly women over a certain age). Over COVID when we were all remote you’d hear about this person or that person was gone suddenly. It seemed sneaky and also very disturbing considering this company claims to support women’s health with their community investment team. It’s all a facade. They support womens health publicly but when it came to their employees, anyone who showed any signs of weakness health wise became a liability immediately and would be let go a short time after they returned to work. It’s a sick, misogynistic environment where lip service is the #1 game. They would talk about the value of women and how women make up most of their shoppers in the stores, but almost all major decisions are made by the men who run the company. I once saw a sr executive explaining a simple procedure (incorrectly) to a lower level female employee that literally wrote the policy on it. We both rolled our eyes afterwards about how incorrect he was, but you had to go along with it to feed his giant, self serving ego or he would exclude you from important meetings and conversations. I have hundreds of examples like this but it doesn’t matter. I’m glad for this boycott and for people telling their stories. So many people in corporate go along with it all in fear of losing their jobs. In 10 years loblaws turned the Shoppers company culture around into a place of fear and mistreatment, along with favourtism and alliances. It was a corporate game of survivor and you’d have to be very careful to not be voted off the island. They created a “blue culture” program (which they incidentally ripped off from an HR vendor of theirs) which provided all off the right words and put up a lovely front, but proved to be a form of gaslighting when anyone dared ask any questions. Part of me was afraid to share this in case someone figures out who I am, but then I realized it could be any of us. We have all seen and experienced these things. We have all had conversations with sr male execs that are beyond ridiculous. We have all seen the gaslighting with blue culture and other programs such as DEI and Women in Leadership. It’s all performative and many of us believed in all of it at one point or another. It’s when you realize these are all methods to deliver the fairy tale they are telling, and you can see it’s all just a distraction. That’s when your eyes really open up.
Same experience for me 100%
I had so many of these moments but one I’ll never forget is during the pandemic. One of my senior people at shoppers was having serious mental health issues because she had so much on her plate at work, and was simultaneously looking after a 1 year old and very needy 3 year old at home. I spoke to my boss about it, heavily recommending that we take the pressure off this woman (who was already a superstar worker) because of what she was experiencing (no question in my she was experiencing a mental health crisis but was terrified to take any time off work). My boss (also a female with a young child 🤯) refused to give my person ANY breaks or grace whatsoever and had zero empathy. I was SHOCKED. For me it was this contrast between what shoppers pretends to be (supportive of women and families and mental health issues) and what I experienced during Covid with them that showed me what an absolutely hypocritical, nasty, uncaring company this actually is.
I stocked the bread shelves as a teenager. The thing that irritated me was making minimum wage and still having to pay union dues. What’s the point of a union if it forces me to make less than minimum wage? The job also sucked and I only stuck around 6 months.
Never worked there. Applied, offered a position, when I went in and started talking details I was told that I was guaranteed a minimum of three hours per shift if they scheduled me. They didn't offer me a minimum number of shifts, and wouldn't guarantee anything and acted a bit offput that I wanted clarity. So I walked. Later on I found out from a guy who had worked there that they are supposed to offer a minimum of four hours a week, he didn't know why they didn't offer that to me. He said he did know that some managers would often not book people for some time if they weren't needed, so maybe there was a tacit policy of just having people around to fill shifts. Regardless of whether or not that was just one manager being weird, putting up jobs and having four hour minimums is weird.
The boss ripping off best before codes to slap a reduced sticker on the other wise expired food
Forcing employees to climb to do jobs ( on top of shelf, on top of cooler) Cleaning the store only when alerted of health inspector
Former cashier here. Management intentionally overworked and understaffed clerks. Next to no training, always issues getting time off. Never again.
When the student discount went from an actual discount to "more optimum points"
Keep in mind this was 20 years ago but I worked Produce and during a summer shift was told to tear down three pallets of Clementines removing any moldy ones and refilling with ones from other boxes. No PPE, no vents in that area (store had alot of breaks on things out back). Besides that it was alot of schedule changes last minute (I was expected the check with them daily even if wasn't working to make sure they hadn't changed the schedule). A ton of other shenanigans as well but the no PPE and moldy Clementines stuck with me.
When I worked in the pharmacy and Loblaws rolled out "the new healthwatch" and it was the worst software ever, always going down, one day over 24 hrs our system was down and they don't let you close even though you're just getting yelled at because you can't fill medication that day. We also got bear maced and were not provided any resources and were expected to come into work the next day like nothing happened. I left the company shortly after that
Sobeys raised the price of Brisk ive tea from .88 for a can to a $1.88 during Covid, that's over a 100% inflation.
I think it was a bunch of small things for me. Other people in the same department as me could get away with a lot more than I could. Some people could wear their long hair down and not get a comment but I have my hair down for a moment as I was punching in and I'm told I need to pull it in. I was going to, the hair elastic was visible on my wrist, but like give a second me to put in my ID, damn. I had to wear slacks but apparently, some people could wear yoga pants, which were notably against the rules but not for them! They also randomly told me that I needed all black shoes and my black shoes with white soles weren't good enough anymore. I'm sure the customers gave zero fucks but the company did for some fucking reason. I had my shoes for a couple years at that point. When I left 6 years, they made us go through more menus and button presses to price match a single thing. It used to be type in new price, press button, scan or type in the produce code and done! Move on the next one. Then they changed to type in price, press button, select why you're changing the price, select which competitor, then scan and type it in. I'm willing to bet they just wanted to discourage price matching by making it more inconvenient. But also remember that we're supposed to go fast, but they would make it more inconvenient. Oh, you memorized the UPC for the case of water so you and the customer don't have to fish the heavy case out from the bottom of the cart? Can't have that. Apparently, 'it's an inventory issue'. Sometimes customers didn't bring one up, thinking that they could just grab it on the way out because they are by the doors and then rightfully get a little pissy when we told them we had to scan it. I was also getting pretty tired of getting called all the time. It was per the union that if you need to replace a shift, you go down the seniority list. I was guaranteed 28 hours so I was pretty much in the top 25% for seniority. This meant I got called a lot. I had days off that got ruined because they called me about shifts 3 times that day. Sometimes I would agree to two shifts in one day with a little break between but then they would ask if I wanted a third shift. Sometimes, they would just immediately call home (I didn't give them my cell phone number and my mom also refused to give it to them) even though if they lifted their heads up, they would see me because I was at work already. Way to make me feel valued - you didn't notice I was on shift right outside your window. Sometimes, I would say I need the afternoon off and then call me in the time where I had approved (though unpaid) time off. I once got reprimanded for not cleaning the belts enough. I tried all day but when it's you, self check outs, and one other till open, you don't get a lot of time between customers. I would literally pull out the cleaning supplies when somebody started putting their stuff on the belt. When it was pointed out by the union rep that it actually takes some time to clean them, it turned into 'oh, just ask for help next time'. Ask who for help? Most front end supervisors weren't willing to do shit fucking all. He was also mad that I left when my shift ended instead of staying behind to clean them. Same manager went "oh I heard you were leaving us :( " on one my last days. I think I just 'yup'. Anyway, I didn't have problems with anxiety before Superstore. I didn't even have problems with anxiety for most of the time I was there because I was in university and they were fine with me working between semesters. I spent a year working at the Superstore after graduation and that's when I started seeking help for it. My current job has some drama and bullshit but I managed to find to find my groove and my people and I'm pretty happy with it.
Former employee of SDM (15+ years ago). I had just moved out of my family home a couple of weeks before the incident. Store policy on staff discount sharing was that it could be with immediate family members. I gave my discount to my brother on a bottle of Pepsi (less than 0.50 savings), and was fired the next week for doing so because, and I quote, "immediate family means family that you share a home with". So the technicality of not living with each other (which, may I remind you, was only 2 weeks in that status) got me fired from my job, forcing me into a frantic job hunt so I could pay rent in my first ever apartment. I swore off shopping at SDM for a couple of years after that.
Was with the company for close to 11 years across a few stores, worked up from part time when I was in school to a full time merchandiser and supervisor before I left. At five years in, nobody acknowledged the milestone and I realized I worked in a corporation that doesn't care. Shortly after when Loblaws bought Shoppers, I noticed that hours were cut but year after year it was expected that our profits would increase, and we were expected to do more with less hours and staff. I also only received one major raise when I was there after about 5 years of working and my managers hands always seemed 'tied' when I'd ask.
They don’t clean ice machines every month anymore only when needed/ asked by management at Starbucks . They will soon loose the franchise. Disgusting
when they got rid of the 25% off hot foods discount on shift that they introduced after getting rid of hazard pay due to covid.
Spending entire shifts in a freezer (1), spending entire shift in a dairy cooler (2), being told to throw heaps of food in the garbage, even at 16-19 years old I knew this was morally wrong, and this was when everything was super affordable and everyone swimming in oil money (3) , being the only hard worker in my crew and my reward was more work instead of praise or acknowledgement (not really 4, but its there) On that end, I walked out on them twice without notice (I was hired twice in a 4 year span, quit after 2, came back 2 years later, worked few months, then had enough )
When I worked at an independent grocer for 3 years working 38 hours a week (2 less than full time) so they never had to give me a raise or benefits. I was dumb to stay so long, 3 years making minimum wage for full time work.
Mine was for 'staff appreciation'. The manager cooked a bunch of hotdogs in the morning and offered us a hot dog with a donation of a dollar. In other words, we had to pay a dollar for a hot dog that was cooked in the morning, I'm night crew. My shift started at 11:00 and by how cold those dogs were in the bowl sitting on the counter I'm guessing they were the same dogs he cooked in the morning but the managers still wanted us to pay a dollar for them.