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I've been reading this site for about ten years now, but I never really felt like posting here before. Since various circumstances have left me wanting for a better place online to vent about my work life, figured I may as well do it here. 
A bit of introduction - I worked in fast food for 11 years. 6 of those years I was a manager/the manager of a Jack in the Box, and for 2 out of those 6 years I worked graveyard shift full-time (and oh, the tales I can and shall tell about that place). For the last two years, however, I've worked in a grocery store which for the purposes of this site I shall call TBGSITW - The Busiest Grocery Store in the World.
The store I work at (and which I've worked at since this location opened) has 106,000 sq. feet worth of sales floor and is part of a regional chain known for being no-frills and having the absolute lowest prices imaginable. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the busiest grocery store in the world - I've never even shopped at a store as busy as ours, let alone worked at one. We do more business, hands-down, than any traditional grocery store in our area, and we probably give Wal-Mart and Costco a run for their money despite the fact that we just do food and food accessories. To throw a few facts out to give you an idea of how busy we get;
-Our single location was last year responsible for about 8-9% of our company's annual gross, out of approximately 90 locations nationwide
- On peak days (basically the first 12 days of the month, plus the days around major holidays) we have been known to do more than $400,000 in sales in one day, with single-hour sales upwards of $30,000
- During peak hours, we can have all twenty of our cash registers open and still be running long lines
- The night before this past Thanksgiving, at 12:30 AM, we still had eight registers open to cope with the crowd
- Our nightly delivery on a peak day can run upwards of 3-5 truckloads of merchandise, which it takes a freight crew of about two dozen people 8-12 hours to unload and stock (to say nothing of the dozen-plus vendor deliveries we get daily)
- We have been known on occasion to have lines form at the front door because there are no more shopping carts available
As for me, I'm currently something of a jack-of-all-trades at TBGSITW. I'm currently working the overnight freight shift so I can round out my portfolio in an attempt to move into a supervisory position, but I've also worked as a daytime stocker, cashier, maintenance, cart caddy, and for about half an hour as an LP deputy (I was called into their office and asked if I was OK with getting into a fistfight - that's a story I'll have to tell at some point!) I really do like my job here - the pay and benefits are great, there's lots of opportunity for advancement, and my coworkers and most of the customers love me.
But, of course, with a store as busy as this, there's inevitably scads of people who act like they just escaped from North Korea an hour ago and have no mental concept of what is a "store" at which you can "buy" "food" in exchange for "money". And for every one of those people, there's a story to tell.
Stay tuned for those stories.
A bit of introduction - I worked in fast food for 11 years. 6 of those years I was a manager/the manager of a Jack in the Box, and for 2 out of those 6 years I worked graveyard shift full-time (and oh, the tales I can and shall tell about that place). For the last two years, however, I've worked in a grocery store which for the purposes of this site I shall call TBGSITW - The Busiest Grocery Store in the World.
The store I work at (and which I've worked at since this location opened) has 106,000 sq. feet worth of sales floor and is part of a regional chain known for being no-frills and having the absolute lowest prices imaginable. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the busiest grocery store in the world - I've never even shopped at a store as busy as ours, let alone worked at one. We do more business, hands-down, than any traditional grocery store in our area, and we probably give Wal-Mart and Costco a run for their money despite the fact that we just do food and food accessories. To throw a few facts out to give you an idea of how busy we get;
-Our single location was last year responsible for about 8-9% of our company's annual gross, out of approximately 90 locations nationwide
- On peak days (basically the first 12 days of the month, plus the days around major holidays) we have been known to do more than $400,000 in sales in one day, with single-hour sales upwards of $30,000
- During peak hours, we can have all twenty of our cash registers open and still be running long lines
- The night before this past Thanksgiving, at 12:30 AM, we still had eight registers open to cope with the crowd
- Our nightly delivery on a peak day can run upwards of 3-5 truckloads of merchandise, which it takes a freight crew of about two dozen people 8-12 hours to unload and stock (to say nothing of the dozen-plus vendor deliveries we get daily)
- We have been known on occasion to have lines form at the front door because there are no more shopping carts available
As for me, I'm currently something of a jack-of-all-trades at TBGSITW. I'm currently working the overnight freight shift so I can round out my portfolio in an attempt to move into a supervisory position, but I've also worked as a daytime stocker, cashier, maintenance, cart caddy, and for about half an hour as an LP deputy (I was called into their office and asked if I was OK with getting into a fistfight - that's a story I'll have to tell at some point!) I really do like my job here - the pay and benefits are great, there's lots of opportunity for advancement, and my coworkers and most of the customers love me.
But, of course, with a store as busy as this, there's inevitably scads of people who act like they just escaped from North Korea an hour ago and have no mental concept of what is a "store" at which you can "buy" "food" in exchange for "money". And for every one of those people, there's a story to tell.
Stay tuned for those stories.
Welcome to CS! And I can already tell I think you're going to have some of my favorite stories here. Nice to have you!
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