Pros
The salary and holiday allowance are alright.
Cons
In order to ensure clarity, I will separate the cons into different areas of the experience. Rotas: - supposed to be released 3/4 weeks in advance but are often only released a few days to a week or two in advance - if you need to swap/change a shift you need to fight tooth and nail to get it done (I once had to remind them 7 times and even then it was only sorted the day before said shift even though they repeatedly promised to sort it out earlier). They really do not want to make even the slightest changes, its as if the rota is set in stone. BUT if the need to change rotas comes from the company and not the employee, they're immediately changed on short notice and the employee is usually not notified or asked for consent - 5am starts and midnight finishes scattered throughout the space of a week means you don't get to have a sleep schedule - closing shifts don't end until everything is done and if other team members are being unproductive or if the expectations are out of line, that just means you have to stay much, much longer and you can't do anything about it. - holidays are booked for you if you don't book them yourself in time which is understandable but they never tell you that you need to book more holidays to avoid having to take holiday whenever they want you to which leads to disappointment for new starters who don’t know this Management: - area managers have no understanding of the reality of running a shop and expect you to achieve amazing results with laughably low resources - very little consistency in what different managers expect meaning you will be told off for doing something another manager has told you you should do. - managers criticise assistants for the tiniest mistakes but can't perform their basic duties properly (such as the rotas. I’ve also seen managers break food safety regulations on numerous occasions) Health and well-being: - Managers are very rude when you call in sick, I've had them hang up on me. I understand that its inconvenient when people call in sick but its not my fault I'm a human person. Sickness comes with employing people. I shouldn't have to feel bad for being human. - Chill chain is almost impossible to not break leading to the sale of goods that are not fit for sale. For example, large chiller pallets are often worked by one person and it is impossible to get all that done in 20 mins, it normally takes 40-60 minutes, slow employees might even take 90+ minutes meaning that backstock will be room temperature by the time the pallet is worked - I’ve seen loose blades/sharp items in non-food numerous times and that puts both workers and customers at risk of injury - Security is never there when you need it. Even when there had been armed robberies, security was not increased and thats only because Lidl cut corners on everything to save money. Diversity and discrimination: - Pregnant employees are criticised, called "useless" and even forced to carry out tasks they can't possibly perform without putting themselves and their child at risk - The workforce is diverse on the lower levels but diversity completely disappears at higher levels. Throughout my employment, there were roughly 15 managers that I worked with and every single one of them was a white english man with the exception of one white welsh man. - Eastern European workers are routinely mocked for their accents by management - Managers openly express racist and sexist views Pushing brand propaganda: - Lidl got off the ground by saving tons of money from completely ignoring workers’ rights and only having company interests in mind. In the recent years they have realised that its more profitable to have the image of a good employer so they’ve devised tactics to fool people into believing they are a humane employer - This can even be seen here on glassdoor with responses from the Brand Team designed to push brand image. They know they’re getting bad reviews so they respond seemingly caring about their former employees but its all because they want to make it seem as if they care, there is really no solution offered - It was soul-crushing to walk past posters in the staff area about how we’re a team and how great it is to work at Lidl knowing that we all know none of it was true - They conducted a staff survey to make it seem as if they care and all we got as a response was a poster in the canteen where non-essential concerns (such as “Why can’t we have music in the warehouse?”) were addressed. Serious concerns about safety and discrimination were conveniently ignored because of course, why would they address these things when the sole purpose of the survey was to push brand image? - They have an internal hotline for reporting misconduct which makes it seem as if they’re responsible but its only there so that employees would report misconduct to the company itself and not external authorities because unlike the company, external authorities are likely to take real action and cost the company money in the process Training: - lots of focus on common sense things (I remember having to drag bits of rubbish into a bin on a touch screen as part of my training, god forbid you have any ideas of your own) - essential things are missing from training (I had to show a new starter how to turn on the till belt because the training doesn’t include that. It does however dedicate a whole section to telling you to switch off the kettle when you’re done using it) - They never tell you in training about the priorities (there is a list of priorities you’re supposed to keep going over if you’re not on till and not been told to do something specifically) and then they tell you off for frequently asking what they want you to do - staff are often made to do things they have not been trained to do, I spent countless hours on the self checkout and the only training I had received was being shown how to press “Ignore weight” when items are incorrectly weighed. - some things in the training module are completely different from what you’re actually expected to do, for example the module tells you to keep the cache box key in your pocket and later on I was told off for not keeping it inside my till - employees get criticised for not knowing how to do things they have not been taught how to do
