Flexable with great people, but wage and organization need work
You will learn how to do a lot of different tasks, but the primary one here is Customer Service. With the wide variety of customers that you interact with, you will learn how to properly meet these variable needs in addition to making them happy.
In addition to customer service, you will learn how to control and manage gas bar pumps and learn how to properly clean and maintain them. You will definitely gain valuable experience at the gas bar, but if you are just starting out, you may not get a lot of hours. There are exceptions, such as a shortage of employees and call-ins. As you work there longer and people more senior to you move out of the position, your hours will improve. Management is okay, but the primary grocery store will often fail to contact your department, even when you page for assistance. When they do respond, they typically handle the situation well.
The major downside to working in this position (part-time), is the wage, which is right at minimum, and the minimal benefits. When you work long enough, you only get tiny wage increases. If you have a good attitude and get things done, it will be difficult to have a hard time with people at the workplace. The coworkers are great to work with.
ProsGreat workers, lots of customer service experience, varied work
Safeway values money over the well-being of their employees. Toxic experience.
Good work places thrive off of positive reinforcement and a healthy culture. Working in the Safeway bakery department was my first job ever, and those two things were barely present. Although it’s a busy job, working in the bakery isn’t a bad job when the department is run properly, but it was toxic and disorganized. My initial experience at Safeway made me scared to go to work; there were fights between employees and the amount of things they expected you to instantly remember was overwhelming. It was constantly disorganized, and my shifts were often changed a day before they were scheduled. I was criticized and threatened over small mistakes as a brand new employee. There were even a couple of times that my supervisor texted me outside of work and asked why I screwed up. I didn’t sleep well knowing I had to go to work; it made me anxious. My coworkers confided me when they learned I was quitting, and they shared how management has screwed them over with their pay raises and scheduling. This job should pay more than minimum wage.
Spent 3 years of my life from age 16-19 and was spoken to like garbage. I only stayed as long as I did because of the people in my department. They made the job what it is. Otherwise it’s tedious, nobody comments on your hard work, and everyone gets mad at eachother for reasons they shouldn’t have. Everyone’s noses is in everyone’s business. Safeway is filled with little tiny groups and niches. It’s exactly like highschool with adults. It was fine while I was there, but the breath of relief after I left is unexplainable.
The best part was meeting uni students/uni aged students. Even better if you're in the same department. The tasks are fairly easy except during holidays or peak hours. Alslo taking orders at first is hard and sometimes communication with those orders with co-workers can get confusing.
It was okay though, older people tend to work there and they make the work culture not as pleasant.
I don't know if it's the same now but the benefits were really great there as well. It could have changed though.
Proseasy job, benefits
Consbad work culture
5.0
Customer Service Representative | Victoria, BC | Aug 10, 2022
Fun Place to work at Starbucks Kiosk
This was a fun but very busy high paced place to work, but I enjoyed working here immensely. The hardest art of the job was when I had a lineup on days a "special" was on, and remembering customers names and what drinks they ordered. I enjoyed learning to make coffee beverages, it was fun and I loved making customers happy, the best part was that customers were usually happy because it was the best part of their day, because I could make it their best day!
Had a great time working for this company, had random lunch events (pizza, doughnuts, BBQ's) huge mixture of nationality, amazing salary + bonus's, very well managed, never been in an accident once while working for this company. They even had reciept draws to pay for your weeks groceries! though i did not enjoy the 4 months of 12 hour days of mandatory overtime, and hour long bus ride to work.
Proslunch surprises, money draws, flexible, safe
Consmandatory overtime, hour long commute to work (bus)
Der vielbesuchte Safeway im Bow Valley macht den hoechsten Umsatz, da auch sehr viele Touristen, die durch das Valley fahren und die zahlreichen Spitzensportler, die in dem Olympiaort Canmore trainieren, dort einkaufen. Das Warenangebot reflektiert das internationale, sehr auf Gesundheit achtende Publikum.
Mir hat bei Safeway am meisten gefallen, dass man sich die Stunden sehr flexibel einteilen konnte. Sehr nette Kollegen und ein professionelles Management.
Always something to learn about people and lots of interaction with customers and associates throughout the day. Management very friendly and open to suggestions. Co-workers are a great team willing to help each other out. The hours were sometimes long and often had to put in overtime but the schedule was flexible and a great place to work.
Proshalf hour paid lunch on sundays
Consoften had to work overtime to pick up the slack
I think that the company needs a review with the higher management as the lower positions like mine were kind of ignored to express their thoughts. I was unfortunately not happy working for safeway that I had to go.
ProsGreat Company
ConsCompany needs to gather more information from the lower employees.
4.0
Customer Service Representative | Crowfoot, AB | Jul 11, 2022
Working at the busiest store in Canada is a workplace culture shock
Safeway is an exciting work place. A diverse workforce in all departments with loyal customers all working together to make everyone's day better!
Prosinternal advancement, employees support one another
Consshift work, health risk (job is always public)
Store Manager - Long Hours, Hard Work, Wasted Time
I was an outside hire that came in from another industry, so for someone who 'came up' through retail or Safeway your experience might be much different.
I was sold a job with Safeway as a growth opportunity and as a classic, white collar management job. It isn't. I spent fully half of most days either a) checking customers out or b) stocking product onto the shelves. There was a lot of opportunity to lead and manage, but it's hard to get buy-in from associates that are making minimum wage, and more importantly, in a union environment, it's really hard to hold people accountable. But most importantly, it's impossible to take the time to hold people truly accountable - store operations and various random dumb tasks will consume most of the rest of your day. Also, as the Store Manager, you are the only person that 'they' at corporate or your division headquarters, trust. So you'll get a lot of dumb requirements - 'personally verify this signage is posted in the breakroom', 'tell us how many of this UPC item you have on the shelf', 'watch this video title through the satellite feed', 'conference call on these days', 'verify all new hires have completed documentation', 'make sure everyone in your facility has signed off on new policy X', 'complete this checklist for an upcoming holiday', 'make sure this list of employees has completed this computer-based training', 'complete this checklist for limiting "Shrink"', etc. There was a lot of micromanagement and knee-jerk rea
ProsGreat experience to 'learn' business at the operating level, great job stability, good benefits and compensation
ConsLong hours, blue collar work despite white collar job description, 'Backstage' not supportive nor focused on stores, 'Help' not available and not helpful, managment focused on the wrong things
Decent pay and benefits, alot of good people but unwilling to correct big issues
They have a high starting wage with bonus incentives if you reach production standards but thats to trick new people threw the door. They are constantly hiring due to people coming in and working 5 minutes and leaving. The management likes to pretend its lazy people but its much more than that. Safety is a huge problem here that they refuse to address because all they care about is speed which will make more sense as you read on. Everything is stacked too high due to limited space and to much product. You will be lifting up to 85lbs in the produce section tossing it on a stack 7ft tall, you will be grabing fairly heavy pallets that are stacked about 7ft high down to the growned. Being management they dont manage much of anything, labels that you need to call out into a headset to pick your order are all peeling off and faded and they refuse to fix it, even the headsets have issues like randomly shutting off then it takes 5 min to log back in, your on the clock always so if you take even a few seconds to read the label your going to be rushing to get 100% on the order which you will fail to do so to the majority of your orders, and if you fail at reading the label 3 rimes your locked out and have to run to the office to get back on all while the clock for the order is still ticking. The headset will even periodically ask you to split boards but if you do it will count against you and slow you down because the preset clock is counting from the moment you start your first order
3.0
Replenishment Associate | Vacaville, CA | Jan 23, 2020
Good for consistant hours, terrible for inconsistant pace and underappreciation
A typical day at work involves unloading grocery pallets that are brought in either before or after you clock in. On bad days these can range to several hours late, which usually means its impossible to complete your task. When breaking the load you spot, stock, and face the aisles with grocery product, which is the main part of the job. If you enjoy consistent tasks everyday, this aspect is true for Night Crew, however there are complications.
An additional task of Night Crew is to manage the registers for two hours, one before closing and one after opening. This part can tie up a team member from a few minutes to the full hour depending on customer density that day. This is one less person working on the load and often they often take up time traveling to and from the register. You often spot looters coming in to the store and by the company policy you have to still ring them up and can not confront them.
Loads vary in size based on who ordered it. Typically the Night Crew manager makes an order during the night during specific time constraints where they are busy for the duration. One less breaking the load and stocking the shelves. Their orders have to be submitted by a specific time and its contents are typically delivered from the warehouse the next night. If the load or customers constrain them time wise their order can easily be disproportionate to what is needed. Sometimes you get a light load (400-500 items), some times your load exceeds reasonable capabilit
3.0
Front Desk Clerk/Night Auditor | Flagstaff, AZ | Jun 11, 2016
Applied hoping for a summer job as a Courtesy Clerk. Offered Night Clerk instead.
With my spring semester at college coming to an end I needed to find a job to work during the summer. I applied at Safeway to work as a Courtesy Clerk since I had experience from a previous job. I went in for an interview, passed my drug test and was hired on. I was offered a position as a Night Clerk instead of working as a Courtesy Clerk. I decided to give it a shot and accepted.
The first few days were a bit rocky as I was getting used to working a night shift and understanding what I was doing. My training up to this point was only watching a few videos on how to handle customers and treat my workplace. The rest of my training was learned through osmosis as I would learn on the fly by constantly asking where things went and what I should be doing. I never truly felt like I had a full grasp of my job. Constant questioning would only lead to short term solutions and I would often wonder what I was to be doing after I finished my work.
A typical day at my job would start when I would show up early before my shift and wait to clock in. After clocking in I would head to the rear of the store to wait for someone to show up and move the first pallet into place. After this, everyone would break down the pallet and move produce onto carts which would then be taken to the aisles the produce went to. The produce would be then taken off the cart and placed relatively near the area the stock would be on the shelf. This process would be repeated until all the pallets were offl
ProsExperience working night shifts, you get to sometimes listen to music on the job.
ConsBad training, Poor communication between management and workers, Newcomers supposedly get less hours, Working nights ruins your sleeping patterns and possibly your health.
Typical weekly process outside of semi-annual physical inventories
Typical Week consisted of a Monday through Friday 5am to 2pm
Daily work week. Daily processes consisted of the following. Print daily invoices of purchases and daily sales report from previous day. Each are given to the department manager to review and report back to me with any issues or opportunites. Visually received and checked all direct delivery merchandise into store and out of store (credits) Communicated with different Direct Delivery Sales persons and district managers of current and coming soon sale advertisements of company and issued sales floor space for their products. Over sought main backroom and Department Manager adherence to maintain proper backroom standards of product organization.Over sought the Direct scan out process of unrecoverable and store recoverable merchandise done by each Department Manager's team and main backroom team. Produced and Consolidated A daily Direct Delivery purchase and credits report.
Discussed and consolidated with each department manager on daily report of purchases billed versus product received coupled with previous day sales and took appropriate action to prevent any controllable loss.Daily communication with Store management about store inventory issues, Department Manager opportunities and direct delivery vendor opportunities.
On Mondays, Managers meeting discussing preparation of current week events and opportunities, senior management expectations of new company goals and plans, and main weekly objectives and within stor
Prosconsistent schedule. ability to make a difference. team work involved.
Consstressful at times. under appreciation directed at many employees by management.
Enjoyed working with flowers, but the pay, benefits, scheduling, management style and job culture were awful.
Pros:
Geographically desirable (close to home).
Enjoyed the creative aspect of working in the floral department.
Enjoyed helping customers.
Busy.
Decent training.
Career growth possibilities.
Cons:
No guaranteed hours so no guaranteed benefits. If employees work less than 20 hours per week they do not qualify for benefits like health insurance, and they have no control over the hours worked.
Management's main objective is to keep employee hours as low as possible, so the store was always working understaffed.
Punitive, fear based culture. Management uses fear tactics to ensure compliance, i.e. Fear of being written up for the smallest infraction (like your shirttail coming out, or working over your schedule even if you are helping customers); fear of loss of benefits; fear of loss of job; constant reminders that you are being watched at all times; huge department and store penalties if an accident occurs that requires an accident report; etc.
Low pay for skilled labor. Really terrible pay and virtually no benefits for part-time employees. And everyone was part-time except management. Safeway should be ashamed of the way it compensates it's hard working employees. Floral Clerks have the same job responsibilities and required skills as Floral Designers, plus cash, customer service, inventory, merchandizing, stock control, product maintenance and department maintenance responsibilities, but they are paid only slightly over minimum wage, with no guarantee
ProsCreative (floral), busy, enjoyed helping customers, decent training, some career growth possible
ConsLow pay, no guaranteed hours or benefits, punitive fear-based culture, conflicting priorities, poor management, nepotism and favoritism abound.
The store management is so disconnected with the employees and departments that when production is not running properly, instead of trying to help the situation and figure out what the issue is, they just complain and tell you whats not getting done instead of giving you helpful instruction on how to go about fixing issues. There is virtually ZERO training. Everybody has their own jobs and nobody works as a team. The cake decorator is responsible for ALL pastries, cake orders, consultations, and production. the store is open for 7 days a week 6:00am to 1:00am and only one person responsible for all desserts and can only work 40 hours 5 days a week. NO OVERTIME!!!! You get in trouble for not getting all your work done but if you try to stay a little late and catch up, you get in trouble for overtime. Then they tell you that you have to take walk-in cake orders and custom orders yet never considers the extra time it takes to stop what your doing to do that or how long it takes to do custom orders when the details are up to the guest. This could completely throw off the production of the day if people are allowed to constantly come whenever they want and stop production because they aren't prepared. This is the whole reason why there are predecorated cakes available. Its one thing if you have time but 99% of the time you don't.
On top of everything you have to do, there are $5 friday deals where u have to make one item in abundance. This is a great deal for guests and I unde
ProsDescent pay
ConsOverworked, Lack of Training, Unachievable goals
Ups and downs. Could be better. High workload often, despite very low pay. Need more in depth training especially if no experience.
I believe they need more in depth training of the register system as I found it somewhat confusing at times when problems arise regularly. Not too much in person training given, in my opinion. Coworkers and management are nice and hardworking, but I feel some employees and managers seem overworked and stressed a lot, and too busy to help their employees at times when necessary, or teach them more in depth. They try very hard and are usually very busy so I can’t blame them for not having much time to explain.
Pay could be improved a lot considering the often fast pace and work load, when compared to other chains. Can be high stress and busy when problems come up with the register not working, or what to do not being clear. Was not shown how to use intercom much at all, expected to learn very quickly despite no experience. Would be nice to be able to pick my schedule more often (flexible scheduling was advertised at job fair). Only one fifteen minute break about every five and a half hours, I believe. Dress code more strict. Most customers are lovely. High-paced most of the time (may vary by location though).
Breaks now and then, felt breaks could be a little longer considering schedule, friendly people and customers, some very long term employees (one stayed thirty years), break room is usually pretty messy and disorganized but rest of store is clean, given your own locker and there’s a fridge in the break room to store your lunch, caring and helpful employees (
3.0
File Clerk/Office Assistant | Tacoma, WA | Sept 8, 2021
It's a start, I suppose.
For as much as those around me really build up the hype of a long-term career at Safeway, I don't see much of a reason to have one as somebody who actually works here. I started this job working the night shift, which was the position that I actively sought to do, and applied for specifically. I was under the impression that I would be restocking the shelves after closing. However, I found myself doing nothing but facing products and not being allowed to stock the shelves because I wasn't going fast enough.
For those who aren't really sure what I'm talking about, facing is the act of pulling the product evenly towards the front of the shelf. The goal is to make the shelves look fully stock and like a "wall" of sorts. It does have its purposes and that isn't what I am trying to complain about here. My issue more so lies in the fact that this is what I found myself doing every night and I kept getting repeated reminders that I needed to be faster. On one hand, you have my previous point of the store being closed long enough that a high-speed approach is unnecessary. On the other hand, if speed is what you seek then why not have me stock the shelves, too? Stocking shelves the facing them seems to be a much faster way of going about this, but I was told that if I couldn't face an aisle in 30 minutes I couldn't stock the shelves. As you can probably tell, I found myself being very unhappy during the night shift, so a little less than a month into my time at Safeway, I moved to th
Lazy Co-Workers, Unnapriciative Supervisors, and Terrible Hours
A Typical Day -
A typical day at work began around 5 Pm, sometimes 3:30.
Arriving in, I already have my apron on, and my hat set steady on my head. I wash my hands, turn, and help whichever Customer needs help. I smile, and politely greet them "Hi there, what Can I do for you?" After assisting whomever needs It I would walk into the kitchen, and gaze upon the mess that was left by the lazy Mid-Shift or Morning Crews. Usually a gargantuan mountain of trash, and an avalanche of dishes. (That is not an entirely overdramatic unfortunately.)
I set about starting some dishes, before heading back to the case to assist customers and look over what needs to be cooked. If nobody is already cooking I set about doing that as quickly, and efficiently as possible. Food is not something to rush however, as a wrong move could make someone sick, so this tended to take awhile depending on what was being made.
Repeat customer service, cooking, and washing dishes. Around 7 I take out the trash, and recycling as things have hopefully calmed down some. When that is done, I return to dishes and customer service. When it comes to an end at around 10-10:30 I sweep, mop, and finish cleaning the fryers. From there, I go home around 11:30. or shortly after.
What did I learn -
I learned that relying on others can leave you desperate, and overwhelmed. They will not always be there, or willing to do the task. I've learned how to manage time because of this.
In addition I learned good team
ProsThe Good People
ConsLucky to get over 30 hours, Unnapriciative Superiors, Constant Belittlement, They'll screw you out of benefits, Moronic and lazy Co-workers
Questions and answers about Safeway
If you were to leave Safeway, what would be the reason?
Asked Mar 16, 2017
Horrible management and because of multiple supervisors that just bring down their employees moods and self-worth. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.
Answered Apr 28, 2020
Very toxic employees, and some management get their kicks by bullying employees...sad...
Answered Mar 9, 2020
Is it true that your unionized?
Asked Jun 19, 2017
Yes, and they are absolutely useless, so you pay them every week to do nothing.
Answered Apr 14, 2021
It’s union but good luck getting help help from it.
All reps are only doing what the company wants and if they fight too hard for you, then the company will definitely replace you.
Answered Feb 22, 2020
Why did you leave your job at Safeway?
Asked Mar 17, 2017
Because those little signs they have that say abuse won't be tolerated do not apply to staff. If you are staff the customers can abuse you as much as they want with ZERO retaliation or support from management.
Answered Nov 22, 2019
Was stuck in the same old yawn yawn job for 18 years and not ever given the chance to learn anything new 🙁
🙄SO VERY BORING!!! 😵YAWN!!!
😴💤💤💤💤😠GOOD -BYE SAFEWAY
NOT EVER WORKING HERE AGAIN!!😤
I did enjoy working in the Bakery
Dairy Floral Frozen and Produce departments 🙂
Answered Jun 6, 2019
What are the working hours at Safeway?
Asked Mar 6, 2017
The store I work at in the Lower Mainland is open from 7am-11pm every day which means we have cashiers on staff from 6:45-11:15 every day. Our bakery staff and anyone wishing to work in the cash office can start as early as 5am, as do some grocery and produce positions, and we have night crew working some nights whenever the store is closed to the public.
Answered Oct 2, 2019
During the summer I get tons of hours, around 75+ over the course of 2 weeks, and they are mostly 8.5 hour shifts (with a unpaid 30min lunch break), but there are times I wish I had less hours. Also as a high school student during the school year i usually get around 3 shifts a week all closing (4:15-10:15) and I'm lucky if j get one on the weekend
Answered Aug 1, 2019
What would you suggest Safeway management do to prevent others from leaving?
Asked Mar 16, 2017
Listen to your staff more. They are the people dealing with the customers and know what is going on in your business.
