BI-LO Reviews

Pros

Employees, teammates and Management are all very friendly. I have a great relationship with all store managers, including both pharmacists. Hours are flexible. Great praise is given when deserved.

Cons

As with all other reviews, wages are too low. I work as a part-time pharmacy technician, bookkeeper and cashier. I have been doing so for over 2 years now and have yet to receive any raise corrolated with a promotion. Store management says that raise cuts have been issued by our regional supervisor. This seems drastically unfair, and a conflict of interest as teammates raises are "directly corrolated with upper-management bonuses".

I have been with the store for nearly 6 years and moved up quickly but still make the same as cashiers. I am certified as a bookkeeper, licensed as a technician, certified as a USCAN operator and have worked all shifts, including third. I have stocked, bagged, checked, kept the books and now deal with life-saving medication. Isn't that worth a raise?

While praise and concern are given by store managers, regional managers and upward to the CEO seem to be out of touch with the goings-on of the store. While I don't feel that they need to recognize a teammate on sight, it does seem that they don't understand the behind-the-scenes of the bookkeeping and shift management.

Advice to Senior Management

Store managers are excellent, especially when they are unafraid of upper management. Pay hard-working and loyal employees the deserved wages.

Pros

i was about to gain customer service experience.`

Cons

not paid enough and always having hourly cuts

Pros

The first thing that was good about it was you got a decent sized employee discount on pretty much everything in the store. Another would be the hours that you worked weren't too loon or to short.

Cons

Lack of communication between management and their staff it was always a middle person. They had preferential treatment for some employees more than others. As the company was on a decline there was no forwarning to employees it was all through the grapevine.

Advice to Senior Management

Train managers to be managers and not to be gods like they think that they are. They need to be more interactive with their employees.

Pros

Easy job and not allot of responcibility for the job and there is potiential for moving up in the company

Cons

managers are nice but training for your job is nonexistant. Most managers dont care or could not do the job themselves

Advice to Senior Management

know how to train your employees and pay them for their hard wook.do not accept low pay for untrained workers. work with less people and pay the more.

Pros

Ability to move up easily
Experience working in fast pace environment
Good environment to work in
Meet a lot of people

Cons

Dont pay well enough for the store is supposedly doing so good. Managers expect frozen food to be blocked in a way that is unrealistic to expect for a job so cold.

Advice to Senior Management

When particular employees have work 3 straight weekends, let them have a couple weekends off. The employee will enjoy work a lot more and will be more productive.

Pros

Decent pay, management can be helpful sometimes, gives time off when you need it, and can be reasonable and flexible about hours.

Cons

Management treats you like a number instead of a person, doesn't ever want to give out raises to employees who deserve them. Still waiting on my initial 3-month evaluation pay raise.

Advice to Senior Management

Get to know your employees on a better level. Give raises where they are deserved instead of where you feel like giving them.

Pros

Health care benefits immediately available to both part time and full time employees. The vast majority of fellow team mates are solid, friendly people who are wonderful to work with. Bi-Lo is a great place for a young worker's first job, a part time or second job, and a great opportunity for older, more experienced workers needing part or full time employment. The degree to which you learn and advance is in direct correlation to the degree you put forth effort in your job. We're in a tough economy and retail is challenging at best - Bi-Lo is not perfect but it's a great place to start.

Cons

This company has come a long way, progressing out of voluntary bankruptcy and moving forward. However, the strict limits on pay increases put into place as we went into bankruptcy do not seem to have been relaxed at all coming out of same. If anything, pay increases seem to have gotten even stricter - there are employees who are working fresh departments, filling in for managers on vacation, being paid MINIMUM WAGE after YEARS of LOYAL SERVICE. Everyone I work with puts forth enormous effort, doing twice the work expected 2 or three years ago - with fewer hours and fewer fellow team mates - with nothing to show for it. Long hours, working at break neck speed, only to be told to cut hours and get the heck out of the store (and then blamed for the work that didn't get done because there was no one else to do the work and your hours were cut.....so your performance evaluation reflects incomplete work assignments, and there is no pay increase recommended as a result) It's a catch-22.

Advice to Senior Management

Close the divide between "us and them". Corporate and Store emplyees seem to work for different companies with entirely different expectations. Send every one of your managers back to "B School" and MAKE THEM FUNCTIONALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT ACTUALLY GOES ON IN EACH FRESH DEPARTMENT. Make sure each and every manager in every store at least understands how each fresh product comes into being. There are managers who actually beleive that painstakingly produced pastries in your PT domes "come in pre-made"? Are you aware that precious few co-managers are able to write on a cake? A current B School student sent to train in deli-bakery was repeatedly encouraged to at least practice writing on cakes. She REFUSED, saying "i'd rather just observe". I've NEVER seen a manager able to make a salad, ice a cake or know how to condition and treat the fresh case in seafood? Before you come down on these co-managers asking them to cut hours - ask them, WHAT DID THEY DO to facilitate production? Or were they kept too busy littering your stores with daily CCF reports? How about sending every one of them to the same kind of training that produced Shane Holliday and Jan Bowen? WE NEED MANAGERS THAT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING. WE NEED MANAGERS WHO KNOW HOW TO LEAD, HOW TO ENCOURAGE, HOW TO PROMOTE TEAM WORK AND SIMPLY KNOW HOW TO TEACH OTHERS TO DO WHAT THEY EXPECT TO BE DONE . Please ask yourself, from whence does great customer service come? From beleaguered, belittled, underpaid, exhausted employees, or from encouraged, rewarded, and properly trained team members? Bi-Lo has SO much potential. DO NOT let this company go down the drain because you're busy tinkering with statistics. YOUR PEOPLE NEED LEADERSHIP - not more surveys.

Pros

I do receive praise for a job well done. I believe the store Manager does appreciate my/our hard work. They are good about working with your schedule.

Cons

We now spend all of our time making $1.99-2.99 items to fill up our cake space. Our store has a phenomenal cake business, but they are replacing $15.99 cakes with "grab & go" crap. It is very time consuming to make all these things. Additionally, it looks messy. They put the majority of what used to be "fresh cakes" in the freezer.? The cake customers don't like it. They don't have the selection that they used to.
We don't get enough hours to make all of this stuff. The only time that they give us hours is when they "think" we are going to have "company"! By this I mean a visit from Mike Byars. It is ridiculous that we spend so much time preparing for a visit that seldom actually happens. The store managers get all stressed out. They ask you to come in at 5 am. All of this is at the expense of the actual customers, who in my opinion, we should be catering to.
They do not pay enough!
We are underpaid.
We should get paid more.

Advice to Senior Management

To the store managers ..Mr. Byars is not a King or a God. He is a man. He puts his pants on just like the rest of us.
To Mr. Byars..Pay your people what they are worth. Research the pay rates. BiLo does not take care of their people. At least not the ones that I work with.
Look at what other retailers do to show value to their employees.(The Container Store)
Happy employees make happy customers!
I'm surprised you don't get that.

Pros

The customers were ok to deal with. The job wasn't terribly stressful. It helped me understand that one of the whole selling points of BI-LO was the customer experience. So the true job of the sales and bagging team was to sell he BI-LO brand.

Cons

The manager was awful. Once when someone was pushing carts through the parking lot they encountered a large oil slick. They reported it to the manager and they could tell as soon as they said it was in the parking lot the manager stopped listening to them. The manager seemed to take the position that it wasn't their responsibility. The worker had almost busted my their on a shopping cart handle when they slipped on one of the oil slicks and they feared for the customers safety. All it would have taken is a few scoops of kitty litter to prevent a possible lawsuit but the manager couldn't be bothered to give me permission to do anything.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire competent managers, it was no wonder that the store wasn't performing well when the worker was employed there. _

Pros

The managers will actually try to work with your schedule as for as family and school life if you need them to

Cons

Pay raises are not what they should be. Some departments are unappreciated and the rate of quitting to people who remain for over three years is very low. Dealing with customers can be very frustrating.

Advice to Senior Management

I just wish management would take what the employees say to heart. I have been employed by Bi-lo for three years. Never called out, never not showed up. I get paid $8.50 an hour and I have been a bookkeeper for over two years. I feel very unappreciated.