Pros
I enjoy working with most of my colleagues. It's a smaller local supermarket and I like the fact we form a relationship with customers.
Cons
Although I don't mind, and at times really enjoy the tougher shifts; there's far too many tougher shifts which seem to be an uphill battle. This is usually due to the decisions made above us, like ridiculously low wage budgets, overly complex processes for what should be simple tasks. An awful ordering system that wastes so much time and money delivering what we don't need and a lack of what we do need (despite so much time invested in the processes). As a Section Leader I feel I'm overworked and vastly under paid. It feels like we have to do the work of a Colleague plus a Manager as well as our own duties. We're often the Duty Manager for long periods and dealing with quite complex problems. I enjoy this challenge but feel I should be rewarded for it. I get just above minimum wage for this! We are under trained. I did my "training" over 3 weeks when I joined from Netto. It was basically a box ticking exercise. A series of people reading to us from dummy cards. If we asked questions we were usually met with the same answer from all, "I don't know, this isn't my area, I'm just covering". We then had to sign to say we'd had that area of "training". We often make the joke, "in order to progress at Asda, you have to sell your soul to Asda". We are expected to do long shifts. We're contracted to 38 hours but it's taken for granted that we'll stay til a job is done. This is frustrating as the job would be done on time and to a better standard without the fact we're working with one arm tied behind our backs by those above, managing their figures to look good at our expense. We learn as we go along, pick up new skills from other Section Leaders we meet and always have the feeling that we're missing something. We have so many people in deadwood positions visiting, demanding we follow their rules and processes for their particular area of concern. It's not nearly possible to find the time to do any of this for even one of them. Never mind all of them. These are people simply trying to justify their job roles. I don't believe this is unique to Asda, it's the down side to working for a big corporation but it's just magnified ten fold when working in a small building. In order to get on, you have to play the game. You'll thrive if you accept the bull, talk the talk. Say the right things, then when you get above, keep up the presence as though you didn't experience it yourself and carry on making the decisions that cause those bellow so much stress. I have no ambition to go further and stay in this job as it's just a convenient location to me. I will move on when I find a better alternative.