Family Dollar Stores Reviews

Pros

Freedom to learn new skills,

Cons

Sometimes balancing payroll with duties that need to be completed is a challenge but with the right crew it is possible

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your competent employees, ask your customers for direct feedback, you tell us to push the survey but I never see the number on the bottom of our receipts. When we have extra projects to complete a little extra payroll would help and not put customer service at risk

Pros

every week pay
get more hours when you lose employees

Cons

poor pay
heavy workload
expect way too much from you

Advice to Senior Management

get a grip and pay us more, you have 8,000 stores now and your a gold mine...share the wealth....

Pros

Great opportunity for advancement. Decent pay.

Cons

Huge workload with no payroll. Not enough employees. hardly any internal support.

Pros

I still have my job.... I can work overtime due to no managers, but it gets to be a point that they need to hire.

Cons

Work a lot of hours.... The prior DM's would give us direction and then follow up with us and coach and train. RVP thinks that everyone can be replaced and just smiles when he tell us that he will take our keys.... New DM is not aware how to do her job and they have not completed visits like the old DM we had did and share the information. Even old RVP was pleasant and listed to our concerns and didn't think bad about us.

Advice to Senior Management

Get real the last person did a lot of work to get shrink and losses under control. Inventory season is just around the corner we are all shrinking out and you have no body to blame but yourself for the way the district was managed during the transition of the new DM.

Pros

Growing discount channel.
Reasonable work/life balance in many (though not all) roles at corporate.
Great place if you are looking to have one job for 30 years - you might not get promoted, but you probably won't be fired either.
New leadership hired from outside has potential to change the current dynamic.

Cons

Sr. Management wants everything on the cheap - people, real estate, technology - consistently expecting big returns with little to no investment. Annual pay increases are tiny, regardless of performance. No culture of talent development. Highly political environment. Total compensation is generally marginal to poor.

Advice to Senior Management

Reevaluate compensation plans and talent development. Give business managers the resources they need to get their jobs done. Make fact-based, customer-driven decisions versus basing business direction on personal preferences.

Pros

On hand experience as well as availability to online learning. There is plenty of growth potential with lots of locations to relocate if needed.

Cons

Payroll hours are not sufficient enough to properly run the stores. Shrink and theft are major issues and the general public knows that there may only be 2 people in the entire store and how to steal from it without running the risk of getting caught. They also do not invest enough into their stores to properly minimize shrink.

Advice to Senior Management

You have to invest money to make money and that is true of any company. Family Dollar included. Stop trying to pad your own pockets and put that money back into the day to day operations of the stores. Your employees would be a lot happier with proper help and proper hours available instead of feeling like they have been whipped by the time they are done with their shift.

Pros

The fellow employees are friendly and the store has locations everywhere. You continuously stay busy due to the amount of customers coming into the stores.

Cons

They will hire you at one rate and when you become a assistant manager (permanent employee) they cut your pay down to $10.00 and will not guarantee you forty hours a week. When the training period ends so does your pay. No one can survive on that pay. There is no communication with any manager. They are unreachable and no one in the store ever knows what is going on. They promise you the moon and never deliver. Get everything IN WRITING if you have the misfortune of ever working for Family Dollar. RUN. Everythings a dollar including your pay check.

Advice to Senior Management

Hello! Are you there? Take a phone call be fair to your employees. You don't pay enough for anyone to live on and your lack of leadership really sucks. You have no idea what is going on or seem to care. Employees are not a priority to you. Some Family.

Pros

Option to work from home 1 day a week, advancement opportunities, good people to work with.

Cons

Building need updating, more parking needed

Pros

If you have a good DM you can learn the retail ropes. Plenty of opportunities because they churn through management.

Cons

Communications from upper management are convoluted. Too many Chiefs...

Advice to Senior Management

I know you guys have a direction and it has worked on paper but some basic employee relations changes would make the chain unstoppable.

Pros

Nice customers, job is fairly simple, paid holidays, comparable insurance benefits.

Cons

Most managers work all morning and some of afternoon by themselves (how much depending on store), so little is done that is outside of the checkout area (ringing up customers, computer terminal work) during this time. This also makes you more likely to be robbed, which happened at a store near me. Many stores are not in the best areas of town. Managers in the Chattanooga-N.Ga. area generally work 60-70 hr workweeks (I trained w/one that worked 75-80hrs a week!), but just paid for 52 (salary). Trucks are huge, lots of heavy lifting, takes forever to unload because they still unload them piece by piece instead of using pallets. Then it takes at least 2-3 days to put out. Small staffs, so most of duties are up to manager to complete. If you want a life outside of work, find another job! Pay is not that great either. I would have to say this is the worst job I have ever had, and I have worked in retail for almost 20 years! I had to work here for a short time after being laid off, It got me by, but I am so thankful I found another job!

Advice to Senior Management

One or two more part time employees in stores (part time, you wouldn't have to pay them benefits!) would help the managers not be so overworked. Make truck deliveries palletized, It takes 2 hours at least just to unload the trucks, you're wore out already by that time, and then you've got to kick it in gear to separate it and put it out. Quit working your salaried employees like slaves! Goodbye Family Dollar! Me and my family will never step through your doors again!