gérant de commerce de détail

Value Buds

What is the best part of working at the company?
Coworkers, customers, discount

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Management/ HO is a nightmare, they are so desperate for workers that they will hire anyone. As soon as someone pass their 3 month probation it is almost impossible to fire even if they are harassing/bullying (an entire store) it will take the company at least 3-4 months to actually do something. 
They like to promote within, but training will depend on management and managers get little to no training, so new managers are hard to deal with as they don't have enough information to actually do their job correctly.
Also they require you to promote their lackluster brand, plus possible write ups if not selling enough. No incentive. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Work environment was stressful, it seems like there are new implementations  almost weekly and the miscommunication is the most annoying part.
Lots of management dating their subordinates, so start dating a higher up if you want an easy job. 
Toxic culture, very fake and the company acts like they care about mental health and safety, but they DO NOT CARE. Like any big company they are all about numbers.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
I was a budtender and that was easy, I quickly became a keyholder due to people leaving so quickly. 

Keyholder duties were more stressful and you were required to work alone.  the company hires anyone so be prepared to work some extra shifts because people will call in.

Because of how desperate they were to find a manager I was also quickly promoted from keyholder to store manager and had no face to face training, just video training and half the time the videos were out of date with the company having new software. I worked over 40 hours each week and was told that I could take time off the following week to make up my time, but then was told that sometimes as a manager you have to work extra overtime. Which one is it VB? As a SM you have no control over your store and a Area Manager can swoop in and fire your most beloved staff, like throwing a grenade in a room and just leaving. I know multiple SM's running multiple stores with no raise or incentive. This company WILL take advantage of you.

I was a budtender with value buds for a while, and in the beginning I loved my job, it was really fun, especially as it was something I was interested in but after working for value buds for sometime I learned they don’t value their employees. 
They’re corporate so go figure. 
They don’t respect their employees, they mistreat them and under pay them considering most times you will be overworked. 
I was suppose to be part time and some days I’d be there for 10hours, other times left to run the store completely alone as well as working majority of the weekdays and weekends. 
At the time the store was under staffed but that’s because of the quick turnaround time of employees, you either leave because you no longer want to be disrespected or they let you go without reason since youd try fighting the disrespect. 
While there I witnessed them constantly misgender an employee, and even after it was brought up to HR and even after a team meeting nothing was done about it besides the bells and whistles of the meeting to legally protect themselves. 
Working here and constantly get mistreated really affects your mental health especially when right in front of you they will treat other employees differently and even let them break the rules (ie being on their phone), even the store manager acts above the rules. So the favouritism and double standards mentioned by others is very real 
Save yourself the time and mental health and apply to any other dispensary to work at, paid better, treated better and a way better and more variety in selection of products to get with the employee discount (Ps is also the only benefit to working here if you’re not in management) 

There is no semblance of work place culture or no obvious plans to retain long term employees . There is nothing offered for continuing education and no investment in the individuals future. Disheartening for sure. We constantly hear that Area Managers are burnt out, over worked and under paid. each is responsible for almost 20 stores at a time. 

Managers are hit and miss, many were pushed into positions without training or any leadership abilities at all. Those that were lucky enough to be given training are looking for the door in mass. There will be a huge vacancy soon if nothing is done to sell bud tenders to area managers back on the "Value Buds" dream. 

The SNDL/Palmetto merger seems to be the critical misstep, as these products are simply over priced, lacking in quality and cant even be stoked sufficiently to meet the dwindling demand. Its no surprise as the grow farms had the labour reduced by as much as 60% in some cases. SNDL struggled to sell its own product, and struggles more to even sell it under its own retail banner. Positive though, seems to be a good stock to invest in, as profits are not shared downwards.

The biggest gripe has to be the lack of accountability from the uper management teams. Nothing is ever wrong, or not done correctly on there side, despite dropping the ball on a transfer of pay management systems that saw easily 80% of the company's hourly workers miss wages and the roll of payroll thrown on to retail managers ever increasing workload . At time of writing there hasn't even been an official apology for this from anyone in the higher ranks.




It sure seemed like a great place when I started.  In the last six months for sure though it's changed for the worse.  Managers are quitting or taking stress leave and then quitting.  Staff are tired of being turned into corporate drones  that don't get to see any returns on their hard work.  Oh, you sell $500k worth of weed in a year?  Not even a shout out to say thanks.  There are constantly new rules and "preferred vendors" (translation - companies that pay to have their stuff pushed by us) stores don't get to have any say in the product we sell or carry; and get abuse from customers when they come looking for something that we used to carry but don't anymore.  The customer is always right, even if it means leaving your employee hanging in the wind.  The store level staff are amazing.  The upper corporate office staff, either are so far removed from the day to day business of Value Buds or they never ever worked in retail/cannabis before so they have no clue what they're doing.  It's a very ready, fire - aim kind of company.  If a low level worker makes a suggestion on how something might be able to improve they are scoffed and told "someone already thought of that".  Accounting software that was working perfectly for our needs gets switched to a totally inadequate program that's cost lots of workers hours, pay and frustrated them to the point of talks of organized walk outs.  
I liked the scrappy, cheap buds company that I started with, not the mega-mart weed store that we've become. 

Value Buds has always strived to be the McDonalds or the Walmart of cannabis. The main issue with this being that they also treat their staff as well as said businesses. Costs are cut everywhere to maintain low prices, which means store staff often having to work alone or work more than 5-day weeks due to short staffing.

Employees are paid extremely low, considering: the expected knowledge of products and uses, the necessary licensing requirements to work in the cannabis industry, as well as the risks and dangers associated with handling a controlled substance. Safety of employees is not valued as much as getting customers in the doors, and employee individuality is often quashed to appear the same across all locations, similar to vending machines. The cannabis industry as a whole can be extremely exciting and fulfilling to work in, if the company you work for actually cares about the craft. Value Buds lacks compassion or consideration for its store level employees. Employees are overworked and managers have been driven to quitting from being on call for their short staffed stores 7 days a week. There is no amount of cannabis consumption in the world that can fix this companies lack of work life balance. 

I was super excited to work with the company  until it came to actually working there. Management either your bestfriend or they dont care about you. If they like you, You know all the information on everyone who works there, if they dont like you , they will tell your business to the team they will give you all the bad shifts. The one thing that caught me off guard was the fact that They are meant to help break the stigma with cannabis but I strongly believe that after working there for a long time that they add to the stigma, I watched many co workers sell over 30 grams to one person, all they do is do two transactions. If your gonna break the law atleast be consistent. They DO NOT CARE about your mental health, if something happens during work hours "im sorry try the mental health line from the company" excuse me?!!  if you protected your employees there wouldnt be so much turnover at this store specifically. I really did want to help the community but this is definitely not the store to get accurate thc numbers on products like versus and palmetto.  I am honestly dumbfounded how this store has stayed open.

Worked with this company for 5+ years and have been disappointed with how soul crushing the company has become since SNDL took over. 

A mass layoff of hard working legacy employees, cutting hours, pressuring store managers to pick up the slack left behind from the mass layoff, and constant pushing of their "market share" products just to appease shareholders has taken away motivation to care about the work and causes resentment towards those in charge. Management has made false promises to people for promotions and drags their heels when they actually do promote someone.

There are no incentives for employees to do better, and every time they try to implement something they roll it back after trying it once because it eats into their profits. Employees used to get sampling opportunities to help them sell the products better but they stopped doing it, so the only positive is the discount and even that has a cap on how much you can spend with it. There is no proper training for new hires and is often a steep learning curve if you aren't experienced.

Value Buds is no longer an employer that I respect and warn against job seekers from applying here

A typical day is coming into the store to a pile of things not done by the previous shift because a bunch of stuff wasn’t don’t by the previous shift so they either slacked all shift and left it for the next guy or they were just too busy to do it too. After you scramble around looking for products, updating the menu boards, telling customers we can’t bring in the products they want because ordering is done on a corporate level but let me tell you about a couple suggestions from our spotlight menu and a couple of our partner brands and oh one of my personal recommendations even though you just asked for 510 batteries we don’t have in stock. 
The things that corporate gets excited about and wants 100% buy in are usually the dumbest ideas that look good on paper but when put into practice they just don’t work. Upper management takes way longer than usual to get back to you about anything especially pay or HR related. Overall it’s a very toxic work environment with a lot of entitlement on both sides of the counter. 

I started as a CER on Legalization Day, working 12-20 hours per week. It has taken resilience and hard work, determination, and a patient and positive attitude to survive four years with this company. This job, like all others, is not perfect. There is a strong focus on rapid expansion, and I understand the complaints of other employees who have felt neglected, ineffectively trained, inadequately paid, or poorly managed. That said, I have been treated very well by this company, and I wasn’t friends or family with anyone in high places. I honestly haven’t seen a lot of nepotism, and have rarely seen people promoted without good reason. I’ve celebrated the times that I was scheduled 40+ hours per week, patiently tolerated the lean times when my hours were cut, and eventually managed to prove my value and loyalty. As a result, in addition to good pay, regular hours, and job security, I have been rewarded in ways I never previously encountered in 25 years of employment experience. I look forward to seeing where our company goes throughout the coming years, and just hope to still be part of it all.

This job started out great. Got along with all my coworkers and learned lots. Was given a key holder position almost immediately, was told I’d start training as a supervisor. Then corporate starting changing hands and “revamping” protocols and it all went down hill. They stopped all extra training, won’t allow any of us more than 20 hours a week - even though I was hired for a “full time position” (unless someone calls in sick, then you’re guilted into taking all extra shifts). Worked here for more than a year and have yet to get any raises that were promised to me. My manager still won’t add my wife on my discount account (they keep making excuses why they haven’t done it yet). This job is beyond stressful and you’re treated as completely dispensable. Any of the good “higher ups” that came into the store to help out have all quit with the recent changes and now we are left with managers that are “yes men” and don’t actually listen to any problems you bring forth.

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