Working at Lidl (Store Management)
Discussion
Buster73 said:
Someone I knew left a 40 hour full time job in retail , to a slightly better paid full time job at Lidl.
Except the 40 hour week became 20/25 hours a week over strange timings for the start of his shift.
Monitored all the time , he was over 1100 items per hour through the till and was expected to get quicker.
Fifteen minutes to stack a pallet full of stock onto the shelves iirc.
The main thing was that he enjoyed his job.
Horses for courses.
Most of the big retailers have minimum 300 items for replenishment and 1000 items for till staff. Even when they say they don't I can tell you from experience many moons ago that managers in a big well known supermarket chain used to pick a random day and time to sit and watch the CCTV of employees on tills and doing replenishment without them knowing and time them.Except the 40 hour week became 20/25 hours a week over strange timings for the start of his shift.
Monitored all the time , he was over 1100 items per hour through the till and was expected to get quicker.
Fifteen minutes to stack a pallet full of stock onto the shelves iirc.
The main thing was that he enjoyed his job.
Horses for courses.
BlueHave said:
romeogolf said:
Perhaps Lidl is at the extreme end of things, but working for the chain who insist that every little helps was no much different.
I was on their 'management training' program being paid as a team leader rather than a qualified manager for more than two months while doing the manager's job. Their excuse was that to be 'signed off' I had to have 8 weekly 1-to-1 meetings with my line manager to asses my performance before the store manager would review my pay. My line manager was covering at another store and wouldn't arrange the meetings.
60 hour weeks were normal, arriving at 6.30am and not leaving until near 7 in the evening on a daily basis with a 20 minute sandwich break for lunch.
Never again.
I believe Tesco have always been very top heavy with too many managers and team leaders. Not sure about the senior managers but at my local Tesco superstore the team leaders seem to spend most of the time standing around talking while the shelf stackers work their bI was on their 'management training' program being paid as a team leader rather than a qualified manager for more than two months while doing the manager's job. Their excuse was that to be 'signed off' I had to have 8 weekly 1-to-1 meetings with my line manager to asses my performance before the store manager would review my pay. My line manager was covering at another store and wouldn't arrange the meetings.
60 hour weeks were normal, arriving at 6.30am and not leaving until near 7 in the evening on a daily basis with a 20 minute sandwich break for lunch.
Never again.
ks off. I have never seen a manager stacking a shelf like I have in Sainsbury's or Asda.Twice a day all managers, team leaders, and other staff (except checkouts and service desk team leaders/assistants) would do what's called "rumble". This is facing-up all products, removing empty cardboard packaging from shelves, and generally tidying the store. It certainly didn't feel too top-heavy, if anything as a manager I could have done with some additional support - But I was covering checkouts, service desk AND petrol station so my experience was different to many I suppose.
Unless you could read their name badge, you'd probably not know if they were team leader or not, as only managers wear a different uniform
BlueHave said:
Most of the big retailers have minimum 300 items for replenishment and 1000 items for till staff. Even when they say they don't I can tell you from experience many moons ago that managers in a big well known supermarket chain used to pick a random day and time to sit and watch the CCTV of employees on tills and doing replenishment without them knowing and time them.
Watching CCTV? Christ. Our till systems used to measure it themselves.Scan time (with a scans-per-minute figure), payment time, and idle time were measured.
romeogolf said:
BlueHave said:
Most of the big retailers have minimum 300 items for replenishment and 1000 items for till staff. Even when they say they don't I can tell you from experience many moons ago that managers in a big well known supermarket chain used to pick a random day and time to sit and watch the CCTV of employees on tills and doing replenishment without them knowing and time them.
Watching CCTV? Christ. Our till systems used to measure it themselves.Scan time (with a scans-per-minute figure), payment time, and idle time were measured.
Saleen836 said:
romeogolf said:
BlueHave said:
Most of the big retailers have minimum 300 items for replenishment and 1000 items for till staff. Even when they say they don't I can tell you from experience many moons ago that managers in a big well known supermarket chain used to pick a random day and time to sit and watch the CCTV of employees on tills and doing replenishment without them knowing and time them.
Watching CCTV? Christ. Our till systems used to measure it themselves.Scan time (with a scans-per-minute figure), payment time, and idle time were measured.
Type R Tom said:
When I worked in ASDA 15 years ago as a student I was the fastest till operator in the store (average items per minutes) although my error rate was high due to the speed. It was funny, some used to love my speed, usually single men wanting to be as fast as possible but most hated their items flying down the ramp at them.
At Sainsburys when I worked there in 06-07 as a wee lad fresh out of secondary school, we had a target "items per minute" which was around 25 from memory.You could pause it by hitting "finish" on the screen and then press back to continue scanning.
Saleen836 said:
romeogolf said:
BlueHave said:
Most of the big retailers have minimum 300 items for replenishment and 1000 items for till staff. Even when they say they don't I can tell you from experience many moons ago that managers in a big well known supermarket chain used to pick a random day and time to sit and watch the CCTV of employees on tills and doing replenishment without them knowing and time them.
Watching CCTV? Christ. Our till systems used to measure it themselves.Scan time (with a scans-per-minute figure), payment time, and idle time were measured.
My other half was thinking of moving from her call centre manager role to an Aldi one as she's really good with management but Aldi pay a lot more than she can make where she is. Similar to Lidl.
It wouldn't be for me. I have a small team of professionals who care about their work and get paid well for it. My job can be a nightmare dealing with the people issues at times so imagine having to manage more people on lower pay who ultimately don't really care about their career, its a job to pay the bills and then add shift patterns, sickness absence if staff morale is low, etc. I can imagine it's a stressful and pretty unrewarding job.
It wouldn't be for me. I have a small team of professionals who care about their work and get paid well for it. My job can be a nightmare dealing with the people issues at times so imagine having to manage more people on lower pay who ultimately don't really care about their career, its a job to pay the bills and then add shift patterns, sickness absence if staff morale is low, etc. I can imagine it's a stressful and pretty unrewarding job.
romeogolf said:
That was definitely something we used to moan about, but they'd look to see you were following certain methods; Helping customers pack was a big one, as well as giving them the total and instantly packing the last bag for them so they could pay quickly. Most people pack at a reasonable pace though.
I always go at my own pace, had some 'im better than you' type woman behind me tutting and sighing heavily to make me pack faster, when I smiled at her and said "that wont make me go any faster!" she moved tills 
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