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A good family friend is a manager of a Safeway. It's surprisingly hard work. You spend 55+ hours a week on your feet, you have to sub in for any job in the stor

A good family friend is a manager of a Safeway. It's surprisingly hard work. You spend 55+ hours a week on your feet, you have to sub in for any job in the store at a moment's notice, you deal with the worst customers on an hourly basis, and you still have to know all the ins-and-outs of running an incredibly low margin business. And all for less money than a junior software dev might make.

Havoc 5y ago
>you have to sub in for any job in the store at a moment's notice That sounds absolutely bleak. Basically creates a strong incentive for HQ to run things hyper lean and rely on this as a backstop routinely
- boppo1 5y ago
  I worked in a restaurant. Came in with a strong work etic and attitude. I had something to prove to myself, nevermind the money. Busser to manager in five months (not a brag really, just takes honesty and hard work). >Basically creates a strong incentive for HQ to run things hyper lean and rely on this as a backstop routinely This is EXACTLY how it works. I got paid ~35% more than anyone "below" me. I wound up learning to do jobs when we were slammed and that person didn't show up. For 6 months we were low two dishwashers, so I'd do all my manager stuff then stay till 3 cleaning dishes.
- legitster 5y ago
  I mean, yeah. That's the deal. Managers are salary and the margins are razer thin. You used to pick up a lot of extra part timers - people who would only schedule 15-20 hours a week so that you could have extra capacity for sick days, vacations, etc. But people generally only want full time work these days so that makes it even leaner than it was.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  >Basically creates a strong incentive for HQ to run things hyper lean and rely on this as a backstop routinely That is absolutely what happens. In my youth I worked at a corporate franchise with such a structure. The manager was paid a salary, which was barely higher than the salary of the front line workers, but was responsible for covering all shifts that were not otherwise covered. To make matters much worse, corporate brass decreed that he was not allowed to pay overtime or schedule workers to work enough hours to be considered "full-time". This left the manager scrambling with no choice but to seek a drove of low-wage, part-time workers that were difficult to find, hard to retain, and prone to calling in sick and/or quitting suddenly. The end result was the manager routinely working 60+ hours a week (which sometimes actually drove his average hourly wage below that of the part-time workers), never knowing when he would have to race into work for an unknown period of time. At several points they asked me to become a manager and I flatly refused.

Havoc 5y ago

>you have to sub in for any job in the store at a moment's notice That sounds absolutely bleak. Basically creates a strong incentive for HQ to run things hyper lean and rely on this as a backstop routinely

boppo1 5y ago
I worked in a restaurant. Came in with a strong work etic and attitude. I had something to prove to myself, nevermind the money. Busser to manager in five months (not a brag really, just takes honesty and hard work). >Basically creates a strong incentive for HQ to run things hyper lean and rely on this as a backstop routinely This is EXACTLY how it works. I got paid ~35% more than anyone "below" me. I wound up learning to do jobs when we were slammed and that person didn't show up. For 6 months we were low two dishwashers, so I'd do all my manager stuff then stay till 3 cleaning dishes.
legitster 5y ago
I mean, yeah. That's the deal. Managers are salary and the margins are razer thin. You used to pick up a lot of extra part timers - people who would only schedule 15-20 hours a week so that you could have extra capacity for sick days, vacations, etc. But people generally only want full time work these days so that makes it even leaner than it was.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>Basically creates a strong incentive for HQ to run things hyper lean and rely on this as a backstop routinely That is absolutely what happens. In my youth I worked at a corporate franchise with such a structure. The manager was paid a salary, which was barely higher than the salary of the front line workers, but was responsible for covering all shifts that were not otherwise covered. To make matters much worse, corporate brass decreed that he was not allowed to pay overtime or schedule workers to work enough hours to be considered "full-time". This left the manager scrambling with no choice but to seek a drove of low-wage, part-time workers that were difficult to find, hard to retain, and prone to calling in sick and/or quitting suddenly. The end result was the manager routinely working 60+ hours a week (which sometimes actually drove his average hourly wage below that of the part-time workers), never knowing when he would have to race into work for an unknown period of time. At several points they asked me to become a manager and I flatly refused.