Working in Sainsbury's

I have been for the past three years now worked in Sainsbury's supermarket, and I can tell you it is not the greatest job about. The only reason I have not left is because the pay is good and is only a few minutes away from my home. Sainsbury's advertises to the public that it is a good, fun place to work where all the employees are happy to work there and all have a laugh with each other. I can tell you this is a lie, as is the same in any other supermarket.

When I first started my first job was to order in stock for the fresh, produce, counter and bakery departments, this was more of a nightmare as I only had 3 hours to do it in. It was during my second week I had badly hurt my arm, and with a doctors note was told not to lift heavy objects and to take it easy for a few weeks. I took this into work and by sudden coincidence the store manager at the time told me to work some stock, not part of my job and on a completely different department. So I had to tell him and get Personal to show him the note, they suggested that if I had to work kit then crisps, sweets etc would be best to do, but no what did he have me work, heavy crates of booze, ON THE TOP SHELF. So obviously I could barely do any of it and after being told to work seven cages of them I had only managed to get three done. The response I got from the manager was very loud shouting at in the middle of the shop floor and a threat that he was going to sack me by the end of the week. Luckily another manager was there and complained against him.

There have been a number of times where I have had problems like this, such as being moved department without being told and a job I can clearly not do. this was working on warehouse, bringing all of the deliveries in and having to split each cage up for each isle fir the Night shift to come in. This was when the Night shift manager decided to single me out and do whatever he could to embarrass me in front of his team, only this time another 4 managers had complained against saying that this was a form of bullying, eventually both him and the store manager left for other jobs. HOORAY.

So now once I had moved department yet again after being put in for shifts I could not do, getting phone calls at 10 in the morning for not coming in, I was in college and they knew this, you had to work around their time. My contract at this point was 25 hours a week, they had me doing over time at 39 hours, I could not go in for all of this as I am a student, I complained myself this time and was completely ignored. You see in the place most of the managers stick together and won't bother telling off their friends.

So now on fresh doing my old job again but for only one department and with an pretty good manager that did whatever he could to help you out with any problems, well he also left for a better job leaving us with some one who did no work at all and kept putting you off your work just so she could either complain about her life or put you on another department to help someone out leaving me no time to get any of my work done and get in trouble from our current store manager, who also does not believe anything I say. The problem with this department manager was that she was very lazy, she picked out her favourites and they also did no work and they got away with it, leaving all the work for those who work on the evening shift.

Gladly I can say now that I do like working there, at times, because our last two department managers have done anything they could for you, they have tried to do whatever they could to make everyone on the department happy and keep up moral etc, everyone now pitches in to help each other because of this. There are still a few problems we have, especially with the funding as our store manager will not spend money on equipment unless it benefits him. We are constantly on the hunt for handsets that work as they are nearly all broken and no one can order in any stock because of it, but will waste money on plastic guards at the bottom of the shelves where anyone who is of an average height cannot reach up to the top shelf to get anything without falling. It does not make any sense in any of the other staffs opinions.

My point in all this is that those who have worked in places like this think that they are the big man, the head honcho. All employees under the age of 25 are not really treated with respect, we are considered a joke by one or two of the managers and speak to us as though we are six, seven years old. There have been times where the managers have caused so much bad things on a department they have blamed it on the younger ones, which has resulted in a few investigations and have left a few students without jobs because the managers didn't believe them over their pal, even though their friend has caused the problem.

This is not just happening in Sainsbury's but in places like Asda and Tesco, I am sure other will agree with me, with more likely worse stories than the ones I have described. These are places where just because we are young means we do not know anything and they know better than us and they can treat us however they want just because we are young. I will admit that I am no model employee but neither are the managers who are the majority are very lazy just because they think they can be.