produce associate

front end manager

deli associate

baker

meat cutter

Thrifty Foods

I would like to start by saying this is reviewing the warehouse only and not the store environment, it could be different and likely much better work environments in the retail locations. 

I really enjoyed this job for the first few years until the hours changed to 4am and the job quality absolutely plummeted. here goes my experiences at this employer.

I worked at Thirfty's warehouse in Sidney for 5 years. the hours are complete garbage (4am start) with a boss that is not at all understanding of outside needs (family, personal, school, other jobs, ect). It is heavy labor and they have an unreasonable expectation of work (200 cases an hour (very difficult to maintain over time) with little to no room for advancement, mediocre pay for the industry, infrequent raises and a miserable work environment due to the hours. The benefits packages they tote are mediocre for the industry even though they think and claim its excellent. they prey on new employees entering the work force who don't know what a good job is or how they should be treated, the turnover is very high, probably abound 80% of new employees left within a few weeks. the staff are heavily overworked and overtime is EXPECTED up to 12 hour shifts since they cant hire staff due to the hours and low pay. if you dont work the entire shift, with the environment that has been made there, you will be talked down to by not only your boss but the other employees. the boss is often mentally abusive and makes you feel awful, they foster an environment of harping on or belittling your other co-workers for calling in sick or not working fast enough or leaving after 8 hours if there is overtime. Nothing is enough for them, you could work 4, 10 hour days and the 5th day if there is overtime and you leave after your 8, you will get crapped on by the other staff there. As a new employee you will be stuck in the freezer allot (-25celcius) with mediocre gear and long hours, with minimal training. working alone usually for the first 4-6 hours of the shift, maybe 1 helper. You will get no extra pay for working in frozen conditions. There are little to no staff events even if you pay into the social fund, in the 5 years i think the fund maybe got used only a few times and i completely wasted that money i gave into it ( wasn't necessarily a huge amount but still). 

Overall you do not want to work for this location or boss unless the hours change and the environment improves (unlikely since the high ups are very stubborn and do not at all care about there staffs working conditions, hours or impact on family life). 

Thanks for reading and i hope this helps you to make an informed decision as to weather you want to be a part of this company/location.

I worked in the bakery department as a bakery clerk. The department itself was nice, bakery manager was kind and accomodating and it was a comfortable, relaxed environment. Ideal for students and anybody else who needs weird/specific times to work. Free food sometimes up in the breakroom. Little lockers to put your stuff in. Uniform is a Thrifty's t-shirt with jeans or black pants/leggings, and no-slip shoes. Hairnet, no nail polish, no jewelry, if you have face piercings you need to remove them. Tattoos and dyed hair are fine. Transferring to other departments is easy if you ever want to. You need to be able to stand for long periods of time.

You spend most of your shift packaging items, it's the majority of your job. Some things you decorate- icing on cinnamon buns and danishes, powdered sugar on tarts. The decorating is all very easy and requires literally no skill. You also serve customers out of the display case (package the items and print out a label for them), write down cake orders using a form (form has all the info you need for cakes, no memorizing required), make sure the items on the shelves and tables are tidy, and at the end of the day empty out the bulk containers and wash them in the sink. Also take out the garbage and wipe down the counter you worked at. You have to use a bread slicing machine on occasion but it's really easy. The label printing machine is also really easy, you just type in what you're looking for on the keyboard on the screen. You don't have to memorize numbers. If you're struggling to remember how much of an item goes in a package then either go find some already packaged on the floor, or search for it in the label machine- the items are titled things like "Raspberry Tarts 8PK". It's always best to be working with someone else, especially if it's another clerk who can help you work, and if not then as long as you don't have much to package you're okay. If you wind up clerking alone and having a larger amount to package then the job quickly becomes very stressful and hard to handle.

While saying this as delicately as possible, I am giving this company a low rating both because of the very poor pay, and because the store I worked at had a great deal of intense workplace drama that I and others found very disruptive and stressful, as well as other serious deep-rooted issues with store management. I also found myself increasingly less fond of the company as a whole the longer I worked there.

A typical day at work is stressful, irritating, emotionally and physically draining, but can also have some happy moments of getting praised accordingly for going above and beyond or being complimented on something you did. 
I have definitely learned how to handle difficult people, though it seriously never gets any easier. I have learned many transferable skills such as cash handling, robbery prevention, till use, bagging procedures, etc. 
Management is nice, but cannot do as much as you think they should be able to. They don't get a final say in scheduling, no say at all for wages and having workers get paid fairly for what they believe they should be receiving,,...
At my location, the favoritism is unbelievable. Keeping problematic supervisors on, even with many complaints, because they have worked there for so many years. Workers not getting rewarded for going above and beyond every single shift, and only getting criticized or looked down on when they aren't constantly moving about and 'looking busy'.
It is by far, the best job I have had to date, but it still is absolutely nowhere near perfect. Now, not every location is like this. The customers never change, but the staff, do.
If you have a lot of patience, and are not overly sensitive, and/or intellectually/mentally disabled like I am, I am sure this job is better suited for you and you will enjoy it immensely. 
Because even at the end of the day, after everything that sucks about it, after several years, I keep coming back to it. 

I didn’t have much floral experience before obtaining this job, but I was told I would learn everything as I go. For the most part that was true, but the department manager and the assistant manager had polar opposite ways of training and that made the job frustrating. The department manager had a gentle approach on how to help me retain the knowledge of how to treat each flower and the names of each of them, the assistant manager however, didn’t understand why my knowledge of flowers was so minimal if I got the job and would quiz me on the spot and her approach made me panic a little therefore I would blank or answer incorrectly, which would mean I got put on the gruelling tasks. All by myself and all shift long. When the department manager was in, the assistant manager ignored me completely. The position I was in, was a clerk position, the other position besides management was a floral decorator. The floral decorators (with the exception of one who was condescending) were all very helpful when they were able to step aside from their own task to assist which was nice. I did learn quite a lot about flowers, but more than anything this job taught me tolerance. From it, I learned that I do not have to tolerate that kind of treatment from someone whom I work alongside with. The department manager was wonderful though, I would go back to work there if it meant I was working under her. Without the assistant manager though. 

Thrifty Foods is a great, reliable, friendly company, and I really enjoyed my time there. All of my co-workers were really supportive and friendly and helped me adapt quickly to this new environment, I thought everything was going very well. However, I was working 2 jobs and biking half an hour to work every day and I accidentally mixed up my schedules and ended up missing a shift. My supervisors assured me that it was alright, it happens, and that they understood. However, a week or two later, my manager called me up to her office. To be clear, I had never worked with her personally once. She spent a lot of her time in her office, and I didn't even know until after I lost my job that she does indeed work down on the floor sometimes. She called me up to her office to tell me that I'm not reliable enough for the front end, and that she was here to tell me that I would no longer work at Thrifty Foods. I don't feel like this was a fair way to end my employment, as there had been a few others that had missed shifts on top of being half an hour or more late to work several times. I had only ever been about 2-5 minutes late, and on only 3 occasions at most. All of my fellow co-workers expressed their regret that I had to leave, and many were totally mystified at how I had lost my job.

Overall was ok. Was getting paid $11.25 when I should've been getting $16/hr for cake decorating. Couldn't officially become a decorator because there was "no position available". It wasn't back breaking work by any means, but I put a lot of my spare time outside of work doing clerical jobs (making "how-to" sheets, making a night shift training guide, etc) only received 1 raise in 2 years, and after having to ask for it I only received $0.25 which, looking back is pretty bad for a company that pulls in millions a year. Manager was unprofessional, he wrote the schedule himself but would seldom show up to work on the days he put himself down for. The median age of my coworkers was probably around 20, with most of the packagers/clerks in the bakery being around 15-16. Company was too cheap to have a "supervisor" position, so there was never a designated supervisor on shift (read: ever). Of course, since there were no supervisors/anyone around being paid enough to care... there was a lot of horsing around on behalf of the day packagers as well as the people working the closing shifts. Things were often missed, left uncleaned or a complete disaster for whoever was working the next morning. The company's attitude of complete disregard for it's employee's seemed to be contagious and spread among the employee's themselves.

Working as a cashier at Thrifty Foods is enjoyable and rewarding. My purpose in this job is making sure customers have a successful shop as well as experiencing tremendous customer service.
A typical day is greeting customers with a warm smile and a polite attitude. Ringing through products and memorizing various and numerous numeric codes, and placing products in bags. If customers need assistance with their groceries, I am more than happy to help place their bagged groceries into their cart, and proceed to page for assistance to their car. 
If the day seems to be slow, each of the cashiers are able to do chores such as cleaning the monitor screens and wiping the doors and windows.
My management and co-workers are friendly and generous people who only want to see you succeed and do the best you can do at your job. Employees and management are all friends, work well as a team, and works hard to make Thriftys run smooth. 
The hardest part of the job would be to memorize all the various types of food, and the codes for them. Before working at a grocery store I had not realized there were so many types of apples.
The most enjoyable part of my job would be talking to customers and provide them with customer service that has them keep coming back to our store.

Working as a bakery Clerk I was always multi tasking, busy, and productive with my time. There was a lot to do within each day. Overtime I took on more tasks, and I enjoyed learning and working with others aswell as on my own. The manager is great, she always gave me the time off I requested, I got vacation pay, and OT. From my experience there was good communication between workers. We really all worked together fairly well, and did the best we could. 
           The hardest part of the job is there being a lot to do for one person on any give  day, when the shipping orders come in, and you have to do everything else on top of that. Freezer pulls, packaging, labelling, cake decorating, stocking shelves, couponing, pulling products from shelves, organizing and more organizing, customer service, slicing and bagging bread…      The freezer is usually in dissarray, it is shared with other departments.. and is difficult to even walk into let alone get all the things you need and I was in a constant state of organizing back there, and working around the chaos.
        Sometimes there were awkward exchanges with other workers, inappropriate comments, and that can be a challenge to have to work in the same establishment. 
    The pay could be better for all the work that is involved. 

I came in during the final years of Alex Campbell Sr.'s 'Thrifty Foods' and man, what a fantastic company. Now that Sobeys is at the helm, it seems that with every year that passes, the sad metamorphosis of Thriftys in the cogs of this massive corporate machine is progressing.

So much is expected now; there is a huge communication rift between 'head office people' and 'store level employees'. Rules, regulations and operational procedures are being handed down with little consideration to each location's individual needs and 'rhythms'. I get that the company needs to be competitive, but the communication and condescension is disheartening. Regarding what comes down the pipes, it's 'their way or the highway'.

Long story short, Thrifty Foods is being swallowed. It's all about the money; much is being expected of skeleton crew staff, people are getting discouraged and even the customer suffers due to employees being stretched thin. That individual attention -- and trust me, I enjoy helping each and every customer one-on-one when I get the TIME and ABILITY amidst all that is expected -- is lessening despite the best efforts of dedicated employees.

Frustrating place to work for a long period of time. Management can very from place to place mostly on the negative side. Starting pay is typically under basic amount needed to live in British Columbia with raises being tiny at 50 cents with a dollar raise if you "Over Preform in your duties" but are given out rarely to anybody who has either worked for a few years in same location (which is bad for advancement) or is a supervisor. Very little room for advancement as positions rarely open up as supervisors or above do not leave or move positions. Just getting a position as a full time worker can be difficult as they will put you in as a part-time worker with full hours to cut you out of full benefit coverage. Being stuck as a part-time worker  means they can cut out as many hours as they like week to week from you to fit company restrictions. Training is terrible, you'll get at most 3 days of coaching (if your lucky) before they tell you to figure out the rest by yourself. If your looking to work at thriftiest for the long run just be prepared to be a "cost efficient employee" for several years, or move from store to store to efficiently advance in the company.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Produce associate 2 salaries reported	$22.00 per hour
Front end manager 2 salaries reported	$21.63 per hour
Deli associate 3 salaries reported	$20.59 per hour
Baker 7 salaries reported	$23.43 per hour
Meat cutter 1 salary reported	$19.58 per hour

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