Whole Foods Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at Whole Foods full-time for less than a year

Pros – The company's commitment to "team member happiness" makes this job a lot easier to deal with! The management is great, the coworkers are all friendly and everyone's pretty laid back. During the holiday season we often would get free lunch provided, a relaxation room was set up for us to unwind during the chaos, and managers seem genuinely interested and concerned in your wellbeing.
The job itself is easy. The discount is great and really the "whole checkbook" rumor about whole foods isn't true if you buy the right things. If you only buy snacks and frozen foods you will definitely spend more than you would at other conventional stores but if you buy fruits and vegetables, milk, and bread you will be paying about the same for much better food.

Cons – I'm sure this varies with region but many of the customers a cashier has to deal with on a day to day basis are awful. Perhaps because the food is pricey and they expect a lot of the employees to serve their needs. I've been in customer service all my life from waitressing, retail, coffee shop barista, etc and I've never experienced such snooty, rude, and even downright mean customers than I have at Whole Foods. I've witnessed employees being yelled and cussed at by customers for the most trivial matters. Over Thanksgiving one cashier was called the female derogatory term "ct". Customers also tend to have strong opinions about quality food and can become quite preachy.
This is not to say we don't see a lot of amazing customers too. We get a lot of nice hippies and alternative types too who are really friendly and appreciative. but sometimes they just can't outweigh the bad customers.
Whole Foods also has a weird policy about a "rotating schedule". I've never understood why but no employee, full or part time, is allowed to have a regular schedule. Which means each week is a toss up. This makes it really hard to have much of a life outside of work, especially for people with families.

Advice to Senior Management – This is my advice to upper management since it all just go straight to the top.
1. Allow employees to have regular schedules.
2. Pay us more. Team member positions at Whole Foods are treated like professional careers and that is what customers expect out of us, to be professionals. One worker can only take the job so seriously while being paid so little. $10 an hour may seem like a lot for a cashier level job but there's a lot more expected of us than your average cashier at a conventional grocery store.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company