Whole Foods Reviews

Pros

Good pay. Great learning programs for each department to further your knowledge of the products you specialize in. At some stores, you can wear your own clothes with an apron across the waist. Most of the fellow team members will most certainly become good friends.

Cons

Favoritism is apparent. Lack of understanding regarding personal emergencies, including physical injury. Strict time and attendance policy that can, and often does, lead to losing your job. Reprimands and threats in the form of write-ups that leave team members scared. Although the customer is always right at any workplace, unfortunately this includes customers that are abusive to team members. A work schedule with little to no consistency that is given to you a few days before your work week starts leaving little time to make plans in your personal life. Store meetings at 6am that reiterate the same rhetoric. Micromanagement is a problem as well.

Advice to Senior Management

Please pay more attention to team member happiness.

Pros

Decent pay retail, decent benefits package. Actually, it is a lot better than 90% of most retail environments. Lots of great people work there

Cons

You will live in fear, be over worked for your pay, burnt out, picked on, and subject to nepotism and the personal whim of the higher ups. Leadership who do a great job will always get screwed some how. Having a good relationship between with superiors is better than doing a good job. You will get hung out to dry for no reason. You will be reminded - constantly - about how lucky you are to have your job (i.e. you are expendable). If you are a buyer and deal with direct vendors, you will be required to screw them over at some point. Everything is cut throat.

Advice to Senior Management

Train people. Reinstate the core values. You can be profitable without running people into the dirt. This is a company that relies on service, and having smart, amicable people stay around is paramount to the success of a place that has one of the most insane markups of any retail grocer anywhere.

Pros

20% discount and incentive program discount

Cons

the schedule is not usually regular. Very irregular.

Pros

Gain sharing
Regular performance reviews
Opportunity for advancement

Cons

Little Instruction
Department leadership not present after 3 P.M.

Advice to Senior Management

More employees in each department means better customer service and a higher quality of product on shelves which is what separates Whole Foods from Walmart. This translates to more sales. Do not be frightened about having to pay an extra $10 an hour to additional employees. There is a difference between "lean and mean" and just plain being "short staffed."

Pros

Great pay, great people, great food. Education about food, health, job experience was encouraged and supported by coworkers and managers alike.

Cons

There were minimal cons to this job. If there were any serious issues, it would be with work assistance. There were times when the harder jobs/tasks require more than one person to complete, but there weren't enough qualified people to delegate to.

Advice to Senior Management

Ask your management team, (marketing, graphics, sign makers, demo specialist) if it would be easier to have an assistant. The jobs are very labour intensive and demanding and cause an incredible amount of stress to your workers.

Pros

Great benefits package.
Great mission statement.

Cons

A lot of politics surrounding ability to move into upper management.
If you have a poor store leader, you must move to another store in order to advance.

Advice to Senior Management

Evaluate store leader effectiveness by taking the time to get valuable feedback from team leaders. I don't understand why this is never done since team leaders have the most direct contact with our store leaders.

Pros

Great benefits; tons of different job opportunities

Cons

There isn't a lot of room to move far up

Pros

Some of the team members are okay, and the discount for me and my family. Gain sharing is helpful at the end of the month.

Cons

Leadership is not to be trusted. They seem to want you to follow around as though you were blind sheep. your opinion is not taken into account. they are a bunch of bullies trying to scare people into submission.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the team members more. Stop trying to scare people into doing what you want. Hire more qualified people in the departments that they work in.

Pros

Great benefits for all employees, very fair compensation, friendly environment

Cons

Longer shifts in certain departments,

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

Pay-- For an unskilled labor job such as cashiering it is a good deal above the fare given at other grocery stores.
     --Holiday Overtime and Thanksgiving/Christmas Double are a big boost to the paycheck if you're willing to sacrifice your free time.

Flexible scheduling-- Though I've never required scheduling considerations, people who need time off for personal needs or classes generally get it.

Benefits-- Yes, the health plan has some caveats but at least you get one. Considering I pay about 38 dollars a paycheck with most of the options (Limited Vision and Dental, Life Insurance, General Care, Emergency care, Short/Long Term disability) that's not bad for a young person in general good health to use as a contingency plan. The 2,000 deductible is a kick in the shins but as long as I don't get hit by a car or something I should be good.
       --- Whole Foods also give you their version of a flex account that has a certain amount of dollars dependent on hours work that you can use if your insurance won't cover the expense. That's some conciliation.

Casual Attire-- As long as you don't wear anything to racy the dress code is pretty relaxed allowing you some freedom. They give you an apron to wear at all times but that's nothing compared to a stuffy uniform.

Cons

Management-- Like any menial labor job, you're going to have your fill of bosses who run the gamut from nice to pushy. Unfortunately, the company likes to run little competitions on everything. So upper-management tells the shift managers that your store is not doing as well compared to others in completely different locations in the region. The Shift managers then badger you about getting the numbers up. You are caught between a rock and a hard place because you were doing your best all along and can't fathom a way to improve. Needless to say, the month of donation gathering for the Whole Planet Foundation is a terror.

Brutal Learning Curve-- You've given maybe a week at best of training with an experienced cashier (hopefully, it's not someone who can't be bothered with training) then you're off on your own. How hard could that be? You may say. It's just scanning stuff, shoving things into bags and taking customers' money. In essence that's what it is but the devil is in the details. Below are the things you would have deal with:

As a cashier you are required to learn the Produce Lookup Codes (over sixty of them). Considering many items are very costly and the customers are not shy when complaining about high prices. You better get those numbers right. For example: A five pound bag of nectarines might be 7.45 A five pound of Radiccio is 29.99. Radiccio and Nectarines have similar codes. Mispunch one number and let's say you'll have a fun 15 minutes with a raving customer about your simple mistake.
      --- I don't know how it is other stores but at the store I work, a good deal of the merchandise is not priced correctly or a customer doesn't understand that a Sale is limited to certain varieties of a brand instead of all the flavors. Expect a lot headaches dealing with customers who accuse you deliberately overcharging.

Early Morning meetings-- Every so often there will be a mandatory store meeting at 6 'o clock (some stores have it closing). Nothing of vital importance is talked about while you sit there for 2 hours.