associate merchant

store manager

manager

sales associate

team leader

Wine Rack

In a typical day at a downtown Wine Rack location, as a manager, you may expect the following. You will have to refuse 2-3 customers who appear to be intoxicated. Of these, at least one will proceed to hurl insults in your direction. Expect this, it's part of the experience. You will be directed to upsell wine, in some cases, of low quality, because there is an overstock that must be corrected. You will collect customer e-mail addresses to sign them up for a newsletter. You will likely have to manually place or receive an order, due to the implementation of a new system, which is faulty. You will attend at least one meeting, which will seem like it should have been an email. You will also receive a handful of emails, some of which should probably have been a meeting. Occasionally, off the clock and unpaid, you will be requested to attend an emergency meeting where they fire your area manager and reorganize the entire area to make it more efficient at the expense of every ounce of humanity the company once had, terminating multiple of your co-workers with no notice and leaving everyone remaining in a state of shock and horror as they wonder who is next. 
If you survive this process, you may be offered multiple stores, with double the workload and a pay increase of roughly 15-20%. This is not worth it, as other management positions for other chains with one store will offer the same if not more. 

You will be allowed to set your own schedule with minimal flexibility. As I was leaving this was changed to your area manager making your schedule for you. All corrections and changes must be approved by area management, at great and unnecessary cost to their time. Overtime is not paid, and your salary includes 40 paid hours per week. You will work unpaid overtime. Repeatedly. 

Targets can range from almost too easy to immensely difficult, with 10-15% YoY increases not uncommon, as the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan uses Arterra to recoup losses from cryptocurrency investments. This same issue was the reason for the multiple firings, cost-cutting, and efficiency-seeking measures. Your employees will not be allowed to express any ounce of personality as their uniforms are slowly forced into black on black. You will be forced to terminate experienced, knowledgeable, and kind people due to long-term minor uniform violations. You will also be forced to terminate employees who make minor errors as they are still learning. This is not a job for kind, compassionate, empathetic people anymore. 

The hardest part of this job will be how you are forced to treat others every day, from taking the personal data of regular customers, to witnessing severe addiction, to being harassed, threatened, and intimidated. It will be found in how you must treat your staff, your employees, who are the only reason the business is successful, and are now disposable and must be ruled with an iron fist. 

The best part of the job will be the people you work with, your fellow managers, who will be your support network as area management Becomes more and more remote. Your staff will be people you trust and try to defend, and advocate for, but do not expect to last long if you keep that up. 

This company has the potential to be a good place to work but, in my opinion, it’s unfortunately not. It’s very taxing and tedious for a minimum wage part time job.

As a wine rack merchant you’re not just a sales associate you’re also a palette receiver of wines and ciders twice a week.

You’ll be responsible for refusing possibly intoxicated patrons. Dealing with rude and/or demanding customers Dealing with patrons with mental health issues and petty theft. I don’t recommend working here if you’re not confident asking abusive patrons to politely exit the store because you won’t get much support from Management.

Scheduling can be problematic. Most stores are under staffed and their managers are unsure how to properly schedule for the needs of their stores. Expect to be overwhelmed and balancing customers, the phone calls and the constant buzzing from their ‘take out’ wine tablets.

You may get promoted to a CEC. That’s a position wine rack created where a merchant does a managers work. The only benefit is you’ll get close to 30 hours /week. It’s assistant manager with all the work but without the salary.

If you’re having a Human Resources issue you won’t get much support from store management unless they  personally want to help you. You need to have a manager who cares about their staff. That’s because the company as a whole doesn’t care about its associates. You can complain to upper management and they’ll listen and pretend to care they actually don’t. There’s no accountability with this organization unless it’s about money. This company only cares about its bottom line and it’s shareholders.

The only positives are that good you’ll get one free bottle of wine per month. There are monthly contests where the top seller wins a bottle of wine. It’s usually a bottom tier varietal.

The other positive is that you’re part of a union so there’s some job security.


In many ways it is an alright part time job. Generally pretty easy and laid back. The customers are usually amusing and nice to talk to, same with most of your coworkers. It can be sorta fun to sell wine to customers, and even to try to up sell, since most people who come through the doors are open to trying what you suggest. Also it seems as if it is not too difficult to move up to management positions if you've been there a few years and do a decent job. For most people it is just a few hours on the side to make some extra money, so don't take it too seriously (The pay is extremely low, don't expect to make a living off your wages).

However, the upper management (district managers) and those in head office are certainly out of touch and don't respect front line staff at all. For example, bring up the "grape suit" to most hourly employees and you will get an earful. Demanding that worker to wear a giant purple or green spandex suit filled with balloons is demeaning and insulting. 

You are also expected to follow a script with every customer that inevitably makes you come across false, wooden and pushy, rather than genuinely helpful. They rate your smile even, which again, seems insulting. Head office sends in what are essentially undercover spies to make sure you are following their script to the T, breeding a culture of paranoia at work.

Most of the schemes coming out of head office only serve to bewilder customers, frustrate store managers and alienate hourly associates.

Nevertheless, I would recommend working at wine rack, it is not terrible, especially if you have a store manager that shelters you a bit from the nonsense being spewed from the district managers and head office. Just don't take it too seriously, even if they do.

Actual job role was enjoyable. Many friendly regular customers. Employees learn a lot about wine and how to help a customer choose from different varieties. New employees receive a selection of free wines to teach them the flavour profiles of different varieties, and new products often get a free issue bottle as well. Dress code is flexible (most business casual clothing, several colours permitted). Giving out samples is a big part of the job, and drawing in passers-by with friendly patter and an offered sample can be a lot of fun for outgoing personality types.

However, expectations of the employee are completely different depending on which manager or executive happens to be in the store. Aggressive upselling is sometimes expected ($30 bottle when the customer asks for a $10 bottle). Company claims to respect workers' rights and mental health, but asking for any health-related accommodation results in scorn and reduced shifts. Some managers are fair and personable, but abusive managers are allowed to do as they please, even after formal HR reports are made against them. And getting enough hours to live on is difficult, with the company's recent pressure on managers to avoid giving shifts longer than 4 hours. 

I'd recommend the job as a casual part-time position for building a resume, or if you're personally interested in learning about wine. Just be prepared to learn several sets of rules and switch depending on which higher-ups are present, and don't expect any bad apples to actually be dealt with.

Wine merchants at Wine Rack do a ton of work for minimum wage. 

The stores are often rundown. The managers are disconnected from their merchants and often ignore their requests for help. 

The uniform: a recycled vest handed down from the last person and a name tag. Feels more like a fast food take out restaurant instead of a professional field.

As for the point of sale ; Wine rack uses outdated and under performing equipment and computer systems.

Then there are Load shifts which are exhausting . You’ll be receiving two orders per week and will likely  strain on your body. Demand you be scheduled with someone because they’ll schedule you alone to cut labour costs.

Good luck advancing, as wine rack only hires part time merchants with a maximum of 30 hours a week. To obtain such hours you’ll need to be “promoted” to CEC. Customer experience champion.  That’s a title wine rack created to give merchants the impression they’ll be part of management.  But the gag is, they’re still earning the same hourly wage while performing managent tasks. Think about that.

Customers can be abusive because many of them
Suffer from addictions.

On the plus side, They do have some decent wines from their estates and you’ll be issues at least two per month. Though it’s always what they’re featuring because they want you yo know it to sell it. That’s the only perk here folks. That and you’re part of a union so there’s some job security.

If you have friendly customers and cool colleagues they’ll help make the shift go smoothly and entertaining.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The best part of the job was the customers. I really developed a relationship with them and that was rewarding. The down side was the management. There was so much games played and gaslighting at the store I worked for, ultimately I quit. That may not be the same for all locations though. If there is a strong fair and respected manager it might make a difference. The expectation was to work for 4-6 hours on your own where the store would need to be closed to use the restroom. That was not always greeted well from the management. The closing to use the restroom that is. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Dealing with constant turn over of managers. Unfortunately most were not an improvement. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Presents to be fun and light and can be but daily sales quotas needed to be met. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Could be super slow depending on the time of day or at times extremely fast paced. Fast paced was fun except when you were paired with a coworker who rode the cash register. As in they would not come out from behind to engage with the customers but rather simply stand behind the till waiting for a customer to need to be cashed out. That often left me juggling 3-4 customers at a time while they did nothing.

Stay away from wine rack specially in westboro. Honestly I did like my job, it was a great learning opportunity and I met amazing people. Sadly, no matter how hard you work, you're never rewarded. I gave my life to that company. Did so much work and got nothing back. What did I get ? I get 6 different managers in 1 year aand a half and most of them have no clue what they're doing. Most of them quit or get transferred to other stores. The westboro store is completely ignored by head office, they always promised to show up and help us but they never did. They always failed to come and see us or help us in any way. Everytime we sent them pictures of our store they never published them in their newsletter. The managers - mostly great ones but some are micromanagers. You'll get yelled at for a few cents above minimum wage, no surprise nowadays but not fair in any way. I loved my job but they never gave anyone a chance, and sadly it's like that at most stores. You can't work your way up. I was there for almost 2 years and tried to work my way up but was denied that due to the lack of communication between head office and other managers and probably them just not wanting to promote me in anyway. Over worked and under paid. The amount of money I spent out of pocket for that store to be great is absolutely sad and I hope they know they lost and are losing great, hard working employees.

The employer is wholly uninterested in the well-being of its employees and is an enthusiastic union-buster, often "promoting" with no meaningful pay adjustment or true positional advancement with the aim to remove members from the union. They claim a "competitive wage" but pay slightly above the legal minimum amount. There is a negligible chance that you will be allowed to grow within the company; area managers explicitly tell shop employees that there is no want or need for your advancement and will do nothing to further it, or will mislead you about opportunities, preferring to hire from outside than to promote from within. Store-level management is often completely inept, failing at completing even the most basic of tasks, and forcing shop employees to pick up the slack. Scheduling is not completed on time and is subject to last-minute changes for which you are to be available. The company took away the pandemic pay in the middle of a health crisis, refusing outright to reinstate it. Complementary wine issues are often the lowest-tier wines, rarely worth partaking. This employer is to be avoided at all costs.

It's a fun part-time job if you don't need to work full-time to sustain yourself. You're mostly standing around the entire day giving out samples to random people that walk by. The Customers are nice and the staff is pretty cool and you do learn a bit about wine. The training isn't the greatest though and the management isn't really that engaged unless they're on shift. There isn't really much of a job culture, or at least not at the location I worked. Working alone is probably the hardest part because you don't always feel safe as a female with the kind of clientele that comes at night. I enjoyed working with most of the staff and customers, it's and it's a laid back environment. What really bothers me the most is I've worked hard for a year to get a CEC position to get guaranteed 25 hours for nothing! They want to cut my hours because of their silly part-time policies, I don't feel valued as an employee. After how hard I worked and how much initiative I took to prove myself, this is how they reward me. SMH

A typical day at work consisted of opening store (if on first shift) .Set up cash register, read daily diary and news letter for any new information about specials, up coming features or comunications between staff. Open store set up any displays for current featured products.Make sure all shelves are stocked and dusted. Open store, greet customers, assist with any questions, point out special promotions.Ring purchase through, cash debit or credit.Inform next staff member of any concerns or events .
I learned a great deal about wine.Improved my skills working with the public and how to process various payments.
My co-workers and my manager were great and I always enjoyed working with them.The worst part of the job was to reconcile total sales at the end of the day and at times the job could be a little boring
The best part was going to different wine tastings to learn more about wine, product seminars and working with the public.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Associate merchant 94 salaries reported	$17.85 per hour
Store manager 3 salaries reported	$53,366 per year
Manager 4 salaries reported	$43,000 per year
Sales associate 3 salaries reported	$17.85 per hour
Team leader 1 salary reported	$18.75 per hour

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