Had to get this out.
I work in the Meat Department of a National grocery chain that shall remain nameless. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll probably be able to work it out, but I won’t name them here. I am going to try my darndest to stay polite during this rant, but I make no guarantees. The opinions I express in this rant are mine and mine alone and don’t reflect the opinions of the company I work for. Policies may change or have changed since I wrote this, just for the knowledge of future readers.
The Meat Department of a grocery store IS NOT a butcher shop. We do not butcher animals on site. I’ve worked for (nameless company) for eight years at this point and we have never cut anything that wasn’t already pre-butchered. Basically large chunks of the full muscle groups. Also, we generally only cut one species of meat as cross contamination issues mean we’d have to shut down the cutting room and completely clean it between each species. This can take up to an hour. So no, I won’t be cutting your chicken. Learn how to do it yourself, please.
I don’t know if this is the same across the industry, but at my store, you have to be certified to cut anything on the saws. Our union rules prohibit me from cutting anything period (except fish). If there is not a meat cutter in shop, we can’t cut anything. Meat cutters usually only work in the mornings and early afternoon. If you want a custom cut, we recommend you call ahead or place an order for the next day. It would be great if people would stop getting angry at clerks for not being able to cut things. Especially as (nameless company) moves into prepack and phases out service cases altogether.
People working at a particular location have ZERO control over what we do or do not carry. Different locations can carry different product. We carry different things at different times of the year. You’re very unlikely to find a whole turkey if it’s not the end of October through January. Just because Tiktok said we carry something, doesn’t make it true. I literally had a woman tell me Tiktok said we had an item. I looked it up on the app and it came up as “Not Available In Store.” Needless to say, she left disappointed. Oh, and this is my favorite: We’re given very little notice to as to when our product lineup is going to change. Like, sometimes we won’t know until the day of the “set change.” That’s when they reshuffle the products around, add new ones, and take out others. So yeah, you could very well have “bought this thing here last week” and we could just not have it anymore. Not usually the case, but possible.
Meat (including seafood) doesn’t come in specific weights. We cannot reliably cut your salmon into 5oz portions. We can only approximate. I’ve had chicken breasts weigh anywhere from half a pound to a pound. Trust mw when I tell you: your dish is not going to be ruined by a couple ounces of extra meat. Neither will your diet. Also, there's not a specific amount of food anyone can eat. Telling someone "I'm feeding x number of adults and x number of kids" does not tell me how much food you want. You need to figure that out yourself and tell me so I can give you what you want or think you need.
Grocery stores have signs that tell you where things are and you should read them. Like items are usually grouped together. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had customers ask for charcoal, which is on the sign over the aisle containing charcoal. That’s just one example, I have hundreds. Seriously. Signs. Read them. Every word on them. Not just the big numbers. (I’ve transitioned to talking about price signs at this point) Didn’t we learn this sort of thing in school? Read the whole page and THEN follow the instructions. All the words make the signs less deceptive than you think they are. This goes for the price tags on items as well. Our sale prices for random weight items (meat and fish and shrimp, etc) are on the BOTTOM of the tags and not up top with the rest of the pricing information. Not sure why this is, but it is, so act accordingly. I also cannot count the number of times I’ve had customers tell me their shrimp (or whatever) is priced wrong, but it’s not, they just haven’t looked at the whole tag.
Departments/Service Cases have different hours than the rest of the store. For example: my store opens at 6 am and closes at 1 am. My department opens at 10 am and closes at 8 pm. It's usually pretty obvious when the Service Cases are closed: no product and the department lights are off. The only time this changes is right before opening or after closing, while we're putting product in or pulling it out of the cases. Sometimes we're early setting up or late shutting down. This does not mean we're necessarily open for business.
Your grocery store is probably understaffed. Just, in general. No one really wants to work at a grocery store, especially these days. Grocery workers are looked down upon by the rest of society, same as most retail, I imagine. I’ve had relative ask me when I’m going to get a real job. We’re little more than furniture to most people, at best. Chronic understaffing make all this worse. I don’t think either of the shops I’ve worked in have had full staff in the eight-plus years I’ve worked for (nameless company). You’ve got one person doing the job of two or three. So, ya know, if we seem stressed, that’s probably why.
In addition to understaffing, grocery stores also seem to be magnets for neurodivergents. I personally have anxiety and probably bpd, both undiagnosed but ya know, there are signs. One of the guys in my department is on the autism spectrum and is hard of hearing. One of the other guys is hard of hearing in one ear and another is just straight up drunk sometimes… we don’t always give the best customer service because of how we function as people. I was incredibly happy to begin masking in 2020 and I still mask simply because smiling for 8hrs a day is grating mentally. We do try our best, but it’s hard and it would be nice if people would remember that we’re people too and not just cogs in the machine.
This job is very physical. Say you’re buying a package of chicken; probably about 3lbs. That package of chicken was brought to the store in a big cardboard box we refer to as a case. That case had at least nine packages of chicken in it; that’s 27lbs or chicken. Now imagine you were me having to a) take that chicken off he truck and put it away in the back and b) having to stock that chicken several times a day. Now multiply that by the seven different pieces of chicken you could buy. Now multiply THAT by all the pork and beef. Gotta move all that product around all day, every day. I am SORE at the end of a shift. Not everything’s gonna weigh that much (sometimes it's definitely more), but you get the point.
Customers (that’s ya’ll) can get downright nasty. I am fortunate enough not to have been assaulted or even seriously yelled at, but these things happen. Mostly I get “yelled at” for not being able to cut things and price changes. I even have people (usually older people) get real pissy over the digital coupons my company uses. The littlest things can set people off, too. Out of the sale item on the last day of the sale? Anger. Discontinued an item? Anger. Out of a random item and will have more tomorrow? Anger. Don’t know where a very specific item that isn’t in your department is? Anger. I’ve apparently ruined a few Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners because we didn’t have something RIGHT NOW. Ya’ll need to calm down, man. It’s not the end of the world.
I am not by any means saying these things are universal or that we don’t sometimes make mistakes. The people who make up the company are only human after all and humans do make mistakes. However, these are things I’ve seen repeatedly over my eight-plus years in the industry and I thought it was time to share.
