Dollar General Reviews

Pros

You get paid every week, great co-workers, mostly friendly customers.

Cons

You have to kiss ass to get anything accomplished the right way, managers will lie on their employees to get them fired if they think that their job is in jeapordy, and upper management will not listen to anything that you have to say if the manger gets to them first on any situation.

Advice to Senior Management

Value your good employees and let them know that they are appreciated and dont treat them like they are garbage, if you want your turnover rate to stop being so high listen to the low man on the totem pole you might learn something.

Pros

- Few hours given out, which might be a good thing for a college or high school student.
- Simple, simple job. Not really asked to do a whole lot.
- Managers, including the head manager, at my store were mostly humane.
- As flexible as possible with scheduling (which turns to be not all that flexible, unfortunately)
- LOTS of loyal customers, so you'll get to know them. This is sometimes nice.

Cons

- The company is suspicious of everyone, all the time. Now, aside from the fact that it's a bit demeaning to you as an employee to have the manager examine the contents of your lunchbox every time you leave the store (company policy), this suspicion causes a huge amount of frustration. As an associate, you cannot do voids, aborts, returns, you name it, which means you're always waiting around on a manager to come do something before you can continue checking customers out.
     We at our store did not even have such luxuries as a quantity key because the cashiers had been "abusing it." So suppose an old lady comes in with 50 pixie sticks to give to the local children on Halloween, each individually wrapped with those impossible-to-scan UPCs. Guess who's scanning fifty pixie sticks?

- There are only 2, three absolute maximum, employees ever in the store. This is frustrating for one thing because you start to feel like Tom Hanks in Castaway: you never see anybody else in the store, and you'll find yourself talking to the jar of olives, and naming various items in the store. But again, there are more practical considerations. With only 2 people in the store, you the cashier are left completely in charge when the manager goes on break. Now suppose the manager leaves the store on break, and is held up for a while. Then suppose you've just finished scanning a cart-load of groceries when the lady decides she doesn't want an item. What do you do? Void the item? Can't do it: requires a manager key. Suspend the order, apologize, and scan the other customers? Can't do it: no suspend function. Switch over to the second register? Can't do it: you're only allowed to work one register - working both, you're probably engaged in some kind of fraud scheme, you thief. Wave your hands furiously, apologizing profusely, and wait for the manager to come stick a key in the register, all to a chorus of tapping feet and throats stridently being cleared? CAN DO! Have a good time.

- There are only 6-8 employees in the entire store, head manager included. This means that scheduling is not as flexible as it could be. If one of your coworkers calls out, guess who's getting a phone call? That's right. I once received 5 desperate phone calls one morning I'd been off because another guy called out. I went in.

- You're supposed to ask every customer to donate to the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. Not really a big deal, I guess, but some managers get pretty aggressive about it: counting out the donations after every shift so they know exactly how much you personally hauled in, etc.

- The company gives out almost no hours. Full time employees can count on 20-some hours a week.

- Stingy company, will take weeks to fix problems such as broken air conditioners. If the air conditioner at Publix malfunctioned, it would be fixed the same day. Not so at Dollar General, where apparently air conditioning is a minor issue. Also, don't expect any nice equipment: everything in the store has been there since the day it opened. Count on your register being less apt to handle a steady flow of customers than a Gameboy.

- Dollar General seems to attract a certain, kooky stripe of people... You have been warned...

Advice to Senior Management

Lay of all the shrink nonsense and actually let employees do their job. Consider spending just a teeny weeny bit of money on the stores every now and then also.

Pros

My pay was amazing and the company spent the money where it was warranted. I work in an investor showcase market (this is going to be in the cons as well). I had DM's and managers from other districts help immensely in my store before investor and corporate visits. Staff was great and worked very hard. DM was very attentive and supportive when they could be. Let's be real, your job is as only good as your support system, I worked for very personable and supportive DM's who moved onwards and upwards due to their great work ethic, communication skills, and management style. They can either deflect and buffer the amount of crap coming from above or not, mine chose to balance themselves accordingly and kept the morale of the district going for the most part. If you are good, you will be recognized and exploited for promotion. This is a great job for a single person with no outside personal distractions, you can really go as far as you want. 401k matched $ for $ up to 5k a year.

Cons

Being in the investor showcase market and so close to Wall St. makes expectations sky high. Its ok because so are my personal expectations, but reducing payroll quarter after quarter and the demands of being a model store takes it toll on everyone. SM hours were well above 60 a week due to work load and lack of payroll. Gets to be a challenge to keep your staff engaged with all of the extracurricular activity of visits, and all the energy expended on preparation. Benefits are too expensive and you could actually do better buying them yourself. Investor visits with little prep time. Upper management in corporate constantly in the store. Stores in most of the other part of country had even less payroll and none of the salary. My training manager was with the company over 5 years and made less than 40k for a 2mil gross annual sales store. Its is extremely hard and almost impossible to balance work and personal/family. If you work for an incompetent DM, its game over. If your DM works for an incompetent RM, it could be game over for your DM, and who knows what kind of crony they'll be replaced with. You have to run the store schedule and you don't get to write it according to holiday, weekend, or expected increased volume days. Its computer based so its based on averages. There is very little flex involved and if store standards falter for any reason, this will be the first thing looked at to assign blame to the SM. Shrink can get out of control if you didn't hire correctly. Training is the same at every other company, you go into training and then into the frying pan so you have to be a good a reactivity when you can't be proactive.

Advice to Senior Management

Rick, keep the company profitable, it only helps an already overbearing situation. I understand your fiduciary responsibility to share holders, but that is where all of corporate's interests begin and end. But thats how these businesses are set up, thats how they have to run. All RM, DM, and SM management are just vehicles for them to get from point A to point Z. As well as reeling in more investors so they can open more stores and grow exponentially without using company capital. But remember, everything else is just an asset. The stores, the inventory, the employees, everything. My car is an asset to me, and sometimes I have to beat on it when I'm inundated, and sometimes I forget to get the oil changed, and sometimes I choose to do other things with my money rather than get new tires or get it washed. This is what happens to DG's assets as well. Whether consciously or subconsciously. Its a high paced environment with little or no resources that make it seem impossible at times. But you can really propel your career by making it possible at the right times. You could run a store for a 12 - 18 months and find yourself getting promoted, or with an opportunity to fix a broken district somewhere in the country with a brass ring attached to it if you do a decent job. If you can run a great district for a few years, and get the buy in from your employees, you can find yourself accepting a regional position. Payroll is the single most controllable expense in any company, so this is where the cut backs begin. If you can learn to live through this, you can make a career for yourself with this company. Ruling with an iron fist and being cut throat will always bring short term results. But being a compassionate leader and winning over the hearts and minds of your people will always bring the long term success. Be aware, some of the reviews you read are real, and I've seen a lot of down-trodden faces who've become scorched from the long term burnout, sometimes being fired or quitting was really the best thing in the world for them. This is not the army, its a voluntary job, if you can't work in this tough environment the good news is you don't have to. There's always Wal-Mart, CVS, or the likes who pay around the same. Career advice, give 100% of yourself and staff your store with your own replacement so your DM can market you for promotion (it will help his career to promote you as well), take any opportunity to run a district no matter where it is located, succeed at that opportunity and ask for a district with a salary based on your performance somewhere off the radar (like Montana, or the Dakota's). I know it seems extreme but you could end of retiring before you get fired in a major metro area because you end of with an over pressured RM who develops an itchy trigger from paranoia. Good luck.

Pros

The corporate office is very comfortable and there seems to be plenty of room for advancement. Fringe benefits are great.

Cons

Compensation could stand to be a little better. Sometimes the environment is too structured making it difficult to think outside of the box.

Advice to Senior Management

There is great leadership at Dollar General. Just continue to give employees the opportunities to innovate and improve the company.

Pros

I got the days off i needed

Cons

I started another job and the manager didnt like it i went to get schedule and she had terminated she gave no notice or anything

Pros

The insurance was cheap. Many locations gave an opportunity for transferring. Usually home by 10pm. Showed me how easy it is to become a store manager if desired.

Cons

Where to begin..... Very unorganized and outdated on their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. Very little ability in training employees to fully understand what is going on. Did not feel comfortable trusting management (even on a district level) with HIPAA associated concerns. Even with a doctor's note I was told to write up associates for attendance. There were several times that I heard (from managers of other stores) discuss reasons why an employee was terminated or quit, as well as one occasion where a manager told a potential future employer of one associate (which is confidential information). Managers were underpaid, as were some employees. We were constantly threatened with termination (management and associate levels). Didn't have a sense of trust that a team should have. Huge turnover rates. I have yet to find anyone on a store level to be happy with their job with DG, and with almost any other company you can find at least 1.

Advice to Senior Management

Dollar General could greatly improve by training their management staff the importance of confidentiality, whether it be HIPAA or reasons of termination. It would also be nice to tell associates when they are doing a good job instead of threatening termination when they do a poor job. People that lead using fear as a tool fail as leaders. Please stop saying that "Dollar General is a great company" simply because they are expanding and offer fairly affordable insurance. It takes a lot more than that to become a great company. It may sound like a statement of pure discontent, but it's more than that, the people know it's not true and it makes them feel like DG values money more than its people. Perhaps start a program focusing on values, such as doing the right thing, or respect for others, etc. Thank you for reading.

Pros

Friendly Co-workers.
Friendly Managers.
Some friendly customers.
Ability to work around school schedule.
Easy to learn.

Cons

VERY underpaid for expected workload.
Sometimes very limited hours.
Can not live off this job.
Corporation thinks you are a theif, and they WILL tell you about it.
Alot of the daily goals are unobtainable.

Advice to Senior Management

If you're going to expect your employees to actually DO what you want them to, try paying them enough to live on.Try setting realistic goals for hourly shifts, some of them are far from realistic. Being open long hours on holidays, especially christmas eve is showing your extreme greed!

Pros

flexible schedule,weekly paycheck,great customers,good reasonably priced merchandise

Cons

Minimum wage $7.25 per hour,too much work for pay,terrible managers

Advice to Senior Management

Need to provide more training for management

Pros

Weekly PayCheck
Decent Benefits.
401K match (although I have not been around long enough to Participate)

Cons

Expectations
Work Load
Payroll Budget (or lack thereof)

Advice to Senior Management

I transfered from another District
The current district is much different than the one I transfered from.
The lack of respect was what bothered me the most.
Also treating staff / associates unfairly and "bullying" was what also troublesome.

Pros

It is easy to move up.

Cons

No insurance for part time employment.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect younger workers