Lidl reviews

I worked 4/5 deliveries a week. This meant starting at 5am and working hard and fast or you get told off. You never get a lunch hour, it’s half an hour, despite working mostly 10 hour shifts…. Hence why I lost weight so quickly. I would wake up in agony a few times a night in my arms from heavy lifting The training kept saying not to lift above your head but you constantly had to as the delivery pallets were built very high. The staff all looked dog tired in the mornings… probably because they chose to live a life outside of work. I was too exhausted to do that. I would finish 3pm ish, come home and sleep, wake for tea, then sleep again. I couldn’t go out in the evenings any more. When you work on the first till, you have to manage 7 self check-outs at the same time. No joke, you were scanning someone’s shopping with them and you literally had to keep getting up to help people on self service whilst the customer at first till just waited for you to come back. One day I was made to do 7 hours on that till and self service run around. 2 sales staff came in during my shift and was assigned elsewhere. Yet they say “management” weren’t supposed to be on tills unless absolutely needed… Sickness was a joke, happened so often and then the workload was increased. I later found out, there was absolutely no policies in place to deal with sickness, no return interviews or check ins, nothing. So is it any wonder the staff were not deterred? I hurt myself so much on pallets because of the fear of a telling off if you didn’t work fast enough. One day we had a telling off at 5.05am and another at 7.50am. What a motivator before you even see a customer - albeit disgustingly sweaty (no showers provided). I never had a problem with my hands before Lidl. Within 2 months of leaving I was told both hands needed to be operated on urgently. You could pay me double and I would never do this job again.

- Only offer 10, 20 or 30hr contracts. But you will be working at least 8hrs above this, so be wary. Full time staff rarely get a full weekend off. - Shifts are long (10hrs average), often unsociable and shifts rarely follow a pattern so it's hard to plan ahead. Very inflexible. - Do NOT apply if you are a student (you will be given up to ten hours more than the contract says and you will be put on closing shifts, see below) - One unpaid break of 20mins if you work 6hrs or longer. Whether it be a 6hr or 12+hr shift, you get one 20min unpaid break. - You don't know when you can leave on a closing shift. You can be written for a 2-11pm, but don't dare try to leave at 11 or you will be written up. You go home when the work is done, which is never 11. Try 1am onwards. Nothing you can do about it. Management laugh when you complain about this. If someone rings in sick for a closing shift, that's you staying another couple of hours. - Archaic system on the tills - fruit, veg and bakery products have a code to be manually input into the till instead of a barcode to scan. You will get tested on whether you know these often. There is no logic or pattern to learn these, you just do, and you are expected to study these in your free time at home. Good luck trying to explain why you didn't get full marks in your first few weeks on the job, because management don't want to hear excuses. - Management frequently gossip about staff over the headsets worn by all staff. They will insult and laugh at sales assistants over these headsets fully aware that all can hear. - High staff unhappiness and turnover, results in clear favouritism of some staff over others by management. - Rotas are meant to be released 3 weeks in advance, but usually it's one week in advance.