team member

cake decorator

replenishment associate

customer service supervisor

stock supervisor

Whole Foods Market

Love this company, for an entry level retail job I have to say this has been the best. The work is very demanding at times however, you are expected to be FAST and efficient. It has stressed me out on occasion, but part of this is due to the nature of the work. 

Pros: Great environment: love my fellow co-workers and team members, Whole Foods is very picky about who they hire and have done a great job at their selection.

Opportunities to grow: I was given the opportunity to work as a store graphic artist, and was given the opportunity to receive full training and act as an unofficial backup artist. There are always opportunities to train in other departments, or seek out additional positions within the company.

Whole Foods Embraces Creativity: Have an idea for a display? The holidays? Halloween? They will use your ideas (and pay you for it). I knew of a store that paid a team member to create paper machet models to decorate the store!

Cons: Management: While I opened a new store and everybody was learning their role, I do feel that there is a lack of communication at times, and not everybody is clear on their roles.

Pay: 6 month raises were cut due to budget cuts. Hours are cut during the slow season, so you can be a full time team member but only getting 30 hours when sales are slow.

Over all great entry level job, the pay is decent for entry level, but things are changing within the company and they are cutting back on expenses, so who knows where this company will be in 5 years?

The management at this company is not one that you would want to work for. There is flagrant sexism and favoritism among a slew of other problems. 

Management will openly select favorites and as such, will give them easier tasks during shifts, talk to them in a more respectful manner, and allow small perks such as more leniency in time frames involving tasks. Generally if you are not on a manager or team leader's 'good' list? You're basically finished and can expect to be treated as garbage during your time at the company. 

When it comes to the division of labor, if you are a male, prepare to be used for the jobs that no one else wants to do. Immediately if there is a garbage can overflowing or someone spilled a drink on the floor; expect to be called if you're a male. Female employees (at least at my location) are never made to perform maintenance tasks despite there being over triple of them in number when put in comparison to male employees. This issue stems to another involving the labor involved in your job description. 

If you sign up as a front of house worker in customer service or cashier services, be prepared to do merchandising and garbage clean up for other departments. The list continues on. 

Overall, join for the half decent pay check but be prepared to be worked to the bone even outside of your job description as well as a toxic work environment with managers who will slander you whenever given half the chance. Remember that if you're applying to Whole Foods Market, be young, have no conscience, and be a female.

Whole Foods being a specialty grocer was a great place to work as a Cashier and engage with customers. But work quality of life has seriously gone down the toilet - literally. Now Cashiers are no longer considered Customer Service and instead lumped with Maintenance workers into a new department called Store Support, and guess what this means? Yes Cashiers are now expected to clean toilets, empty garbage bins and wash floors, and handle food in the same shift. So do not expect if you are hired as a Cashier to be treated as a Customer Service professional that the company sees as the front line person that customers engage with, you are now Store Support and not Customer Service and your job now includes Custodial work even if you did not agree to this change in your job description. Also, Health and Safety is a joke and half the staff have repetitive stress injuries due to complete ignorance of workstation and ergonomics standards in the industry. Furthermore, they ignore employee well being in scheduling by always over or under scheduling you and most of the time also being short staffed. And they often have you close at 10:30pm and open the next morning at 8am. The only redeeming quality of WFM is the coworkers. But do not expect to see them around very lomg as there is a high turnover and retention is not valued at all whatsoever.

The location I was in Yorkville was chaos. I mean, the team leader in Prepared Food Department was totally disorganized, and the team members were bullying each other almost everyday. No respect to each other. The wages I got was fair and the benefits as well. But the workplace attitude was so poor that so unprofessional and ignorant. Prepared Food Service Department was the bad department in all departments at Whole Foods in Yorkville location. The team leader always tell me that, "I don't believe in RESPECT" to each other, you have to deserved to be respected. I don't know what she mean by that. In this case I loss a respect to her too. She doesn't care, she just thinking of money. She said, in our huddles sometimes, its good working in Whole Foods it pays the mortgage. That's a bad attitude whatever call it. It throws me out, that's personal, keep it to yourself. I was so disappointed to this Prepared Food Department team leader and some or few team members because they were bullies. The team leader keep hiring and the team members keep quitting because its hard emotionally working there. There's no control of emotion, not to mention the job also physical so when emotional and physical job combined it kills the person, so they quit. But many employees stays because they were afraid if they cannot find a job. They just work for money, no learning involve. No promotions, you are stuck in one place forever if you just think of the wages.

Do you enjoy working late hours and evenings? Missing fun times with your family and friends? Being bullied by upper management? Dedicating your life to putting products on shelves so the company can make as money as possible while you struggle to survive with your minimum wage? Then working at Whole Foods Market is for you!
Once upon a time, Whole Foods Market (WFM) was a mystical place that took care of their employees, offered them amazing benefits and set them up for success. Now, WFM is owned by Amazon. Elaborating more on Amazon would be a waste of my time, do your own research about this company and their plan to take over the world. Unreal expectations, adding more duties and responsibilities than what you are paid for and management breathing down your neck about the store being "perfect" according to their program Order To Shelf (OTS). In theory this program makes sense, for a robot but for humans the expectations are mostly unachievable unless you want to dedicate your life to WFM.
This was once a great company to work for. Amazon has ruined the culture and turned WFM into the Walmart of health food stores. Do yourself a favour and shop at the locally owned, small business health food stores and engage with people that care about their jobs and how they can help you (Goodness Me, Organic Garage and Nature's Emporium). Rather than the ones that are concerned about putting as much product on shelves as possible.

I would recommend this job for anybody who is all about organic food and healthy living, a student, or someone who needs some extra income, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I care about.

Good short term work. Starting pay is above minimum wage, you get 20% off everything in store and you can work that up to 30% off with healthy lifestyle choices. Coworkers are top notch people, you have to have two-thirds of the department vote yes to get the job. Health and dental for full-timers, gainsharing (pay bonuses) every two weeks gives you extra money based on your hours worked. Paid vacation for FT, plus 5 paid days off, and 5 non-paid days to spend time with family. 

Downsides: while about 97% of the customers are generally great people, that leftover 3% is full of narcissistic, entitled, "me-me-me" attitude jerks who may eventually suck the life out of you; a lot of this job is about making that 3% happy, even if it comes at the expense of your own sanity. Also the work environment is generally geared towards who are the favourites. Doesn't matter how long you work there, people with less seniority can get promoted up and pay raises before you do.

I'm too lazy to keep going. Bottom line is it pays my bills, but I'm leaving soon.

Being at WF for over 5 years, I got to know most of the team leads and managers from both my location and others. Thankfully the current store manager at my location was one of the best, but sadly incompetence by team leaders is a huge problem with WF and it's a trickle-down effect by poor leaders in most locations.  Most TLs absolutely suck at their jobs and their teams suffer from poor leadership. There is not much upper management do about it, but if you talk to the ones willing to listen you may get some support. At the end of the day it's still corporate despite the facade of being big on company "culture", especially since Amazon owns it now. The one benefit of that is that they feel more inclined to be by-the-book for liability reasons. Benefits are meh and scheduling is even more meh. It's still retail. Most of the other employees don't care about their job and at my location a lot of the hires were so-and-so's friend or family members etc and many of them barely speak English, which is not great when you really need teams to be on the same page and help customers without just dumping responsiblity on other team members constantly. 

Whole Foods Market has some great core values, however, if you are a new hire, expect to not get the training you need when you need it. It can become a source of frustration as leadership does not take the time to coach and lead. They do their best, but it is difficult for them as they don't necessarily have the tools they need to structure a good on-boarding process either. It truly is a leap into the fire and you can only hope you find your way through the first 3 months of chaos. It can be fun to a point, but not when leadership puts the burden of fixing their poorly executed processes on your shoulders as the new hire. There are few systems and very little order in place to make things run smoothly for your team. A typical day is rife with customers interested in the products you carry and finding ways to make their experience worthwhile. Most people who work there maintain a good attitude, but poor attitudes are usually ignored by leadership instead of dealt with head on, easily damaging the team morale. The most enjoyable part of the job is sharing product knowledge with customers and working with your team.

Whole Foods Market is not your typical store. You've meet all kinds of people. You hear all kinds of things. Everyday is unique to say the least. I have to say that I am completely blessed to work with the people that I work with. It's a family. How could it not be? You spend most of your life there. If you're comfortable going to work then you will enjoy going to work. That's always important. Creating a good relationship with a person you work with is so very important. Something I will always try to do.
I've been through absolutely everything that you can imagine.
Thanksgiving - all registers shut down. Can't be fixed. 500 people staring at you. What do you do? Whatever you can do. Sample, apologize, run around and accommodate as many people the best that you can. Pray that someone, somewhere is fixing the issue asap! We made it through that day somehow. I have to admit it was one of the best days of working there. 
I've learned a lot about people, retail, management and myself. There's so much I feel like I can do in the world because not one person I have ever worked with in this company has ever told me I couldn't do it.

If I were to say that there is a lack of management in the produce department it would be an understatement. They couldn't handle a shot of peach schnapps let alone handle a department properly. Management is unreliable in giving you the equipment, training and people needed to do the job. But when you confront them about problems they will give pathetic excuses that they have been using since they were five years old or just straight up lie to you. They are just a bunch of yes men who have know idea how to think for themselves. They have no communication, problem solving or people skills. Management wants you to sell your soul and bleed Whole Foods green in order to get ahead. They will expect things from you that they themselves can't or don't know how to do. Favoritism is so bad to the point where some team members just do whatever they want knowing that there will be no consequences. 

The inferior management, absence of responsibility and accountability in the produce department is something that should be avoided unless you are very desperate.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Team member 31 salaries reported	$20.65 per hour
Cake decorator 1 salary reported	$27.50 per hour
Replenishment associate 8 salaries reported	$22.43 per hour
Customer service supervisor 6 salaries reported	$22.90 per hour
Stock supervisor 5 salaries reported	$21.57 per hour

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