Bad management, not enough staff and bad recruitment
Pros
25% off in John Lewis 13% Waitrose Depends what store but there was some good social events Most co-workers were great to work with but not managemnet
Cons
I've worked in two stores in London over the past year. The first store I worked for is fully Modern Waitrose, I was trained on every section but instead of training all members of staff, they only trained 2 of us in the whole store. So I was originally hired for Operations however I ended up on food service on most of my shifts as they were so understaffed. That store had great people, but everyone was stressed and there was never enough staff. Management was bad there was a period of a month were I had no manager, suppliers didn't get paid, stock was left out of date on shelves, I'd daily waste a trolley of food. One day £200 of steaks, because they hadn't got staff in to reduce them. Most of management you never saw on the shop floor helping out, they were either in the office looking busy or on their phones. I was originally temporary but was made permanent after 3 months but they cut my hours without prior warning. You're at the mercy of what's convenient for them. Also asking for hours to be changed is impossible. They now have put in a rule that you have to work a minimum of 20hrs a week and many students have had to leave because of this. The second store I moved too never had any staff and I never saw the manger on the shopfloor unless she really had to, she was on holiday a lot and always went home at a convenient time. I was there a short period of time but it was enough for me to workout that if you showed any enthusiasm you'd be relied on to do the stuff no one else wanted to do. The staff at this store were really lazy and would never help out. They tried to make me csa within 2 weeks of transferring, and they made me stay pass my hours because they had no other staff to cash up. I didn't get a thank you for it. I had to tell one of the mangers who was running checkouts one night (who'd worked in the company for 10 years) how to cash the tills up. I was shocked with all the experience she had she was asking me...just a supermarket assistant. If you ask a lot of the older members of staff things have changed and their satisfaction has gone down. The company doesn't have enough money, so all the things that made the partnership a great place to work have been cut, breakfast in the partner dining room is dying out.