Supermarket work

LucySnowe24

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Hello everyone!

I'm writing a scene in my novel where my character is working in a supermarket (in the UK, in the present day but pre-covid). I've worked various customer service jobs but not in a supermarket, so I'd love to hear from anyone who has to help make it more realistic. In particular, please can you tell me:

How many people typically work in a medium-sized store?
How long are the shifts?
What sort of jobs do you do on shift?
How do you enter the store before it opens, when the sliding doors aren't working?

Thank you!
 

ChaseJxyz

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I worked at Toys R' Us in the US and I can tell you that there is a lock on the sliding door, the manager (or whatever keyholder) can let you in by opening it for you instead of it working automatically. There's probably a door in the back, too, by the loading dock, as well as various doors to the sides for emergency exits, tho the latter probably isn't set up for letting people in.

Shifts can be a couple hours to 12 or more, it really depends on the type of work and availability of workers (fewer employees == more long shifts). There's going to be more dedicated cashiers at the busiest times of day (and busiest days of the week), and if there are certain jobs that are only open for fewer hours than the store itself (like the deli counter). There's also the people who work overnight to stock the shelves; more of them are going to work on the days that trucks deliver things, and there will be more deliveries and more sold product to replace the busiest days and times of year (like everyone buying a ton of food for Thanksgiving or the fourth of July, for some very American examples).

I guess you could organize people into 4 categories: managers, cashiers, stockers and whatever. Managers are supposed to help and can do any sort of role but they don't always do that, for reasons. Cashiers are pretty much always at their registers and only leave if it's super dead, they might be sent to round up shopping carts or help elsewhere in the store. Stockers work overnight and "face the shelves" (make sure the labels are turned out and everything is pulled up to the front, so it looks like the shelf is totally full); some stores stock during the day, too, especially for items that sell very quickly (it's ALWAYS yogurt. Every time we went to Market Basket there was someone shelving yogurt. Same thing with Target, it's always yogurt, I don't know why). The whatever-ers do everything else to keep the store running, like cleaning the floors, running price checks, doing the customer service desk, helping you with the Coinstar machine, grabbing things for online orders, checking stock levels in the front and back of the store, crushing cardboard boxes....Depending on how big your store is there may be dedicated bakers/cake decorater guys, people making ready to go food (like sandwiches and the rotisserie chickens and potato salad), the meat/butcher section guys. There might be a security guard, too, depending on the location of your store, like if there's a nearby homeless encampment or teens like to go shoplift once school lets out.
 

redpbass

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I work in a grocery store in a town/small city, there are 15 aisles so it's not the smallest, but by no means a large store. Walmart, for example, is gigantic compared to my store.

Number of employees - Management typically tries to keep the number of employees (and especially full time employees) as low as possible to keep costs down while still allowing the store to function at an acceptable level.
- Cashiers and baggers come and go; some stay for years, but most are gone in less than six months. We have half a dozen or so registers (smallish store), and only two are typically kept open at a time, with 1 or 2 baggers who may be trained to run an empty register when necessary. On holidays and other busy days, there are usually enough people there to run all the registers and a bagger for each. Cashiers and baggers typically retrieve shopping carts from the parking lot, though members of management may help if necessary.
- Stock Crew - consists of about a dozen or so at any one time. Working overnight depends on the store in question; stores with a night shift will often have two separate stock crews.
- Departments - Have crews of just a few to half a dozen or more, depending on what is needed. Meat Department has the most people, followed by the deli and produce, with the bakery bringing up the rear (Many stores in the US combine the bakery and deli into one department, drastically cutting the number and variety of bakery products available)
- Dairy/Frozen - Often combined if customer activity allows it. Just a few people in my store.
- Pharmacy - usually two workers at a time in my store, though there seem to be at least a dozen regular workers who rotate between the pharmacy and an outside drug store.
- Misc - Pricing coordinator/assistant, "floaters" (move between departments and whatever else needs to be done), etc. My store only has a few people in this section.
- Management - Store manager/Co-manager, department managers/co-managers, Front End manager (cashiers/baggers)/office personnel who are often expected to help with cashiering or other issues that may arise.

Shifts - Part time and Full Time. Most workers are part time, management and core employees (such as head cake decorator and similar) are full time. Mostly, management tries to get away with as few full time workers as possible. Shifts at my store are for part time 4 to 9 hours long (9 hour shifts include a one hour lunch you aren't paid for, others receive only a 30 minute unpaid lunch or a 15 minute break, depending on length of shift), while full time gets 9 hours including unpaid lunch. If you have to work longer, you'd better have a good reason.

Jobs - Opening shift comes in early and prepares the store/departments/etc for the day. In the bakery, for example, that means preparing the bread dough (usually laid out the night before by the closing shift) and beginning the day's baking. Some bakeries bake all day, some just bake once; it depends on the store's needs and the number of workers.
- Closing shift finishes everything up, cleans, and closes down the departments/store. Different areas require different closing procedures. The departments tend more toward cleaning everything, while the floor (the aisles/shopping area) and front end (registers/carts/etc) need to be straightened and restocked. The stock room/back room(s) also need to be tidied up, scraps of tape and cardboard and other clutter need to be cleared away, and backstock (products not yet put out on the shelves to be sold) needs to be organized and ready for the overnight/next day stock crew.

Sliding doors - exactly like ChaseJxyz said.
 
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neandermagnon

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How many people typically work in a medium-sized store?
How long are the shifts?
What sort of jobs do you do on shift?
How do you enter the store before it opens, when the sliding doors aren't working?

Sorry, I tried to reply yesterday but I think I failed the "are you a human?" test!

This was back in the 90s, I worked in a couple of very small supermarkets (small by 90s standards, very small by today's standards) - one had maybe eight aisles and I can't remember how many tills, the other had three or four aisles and four tills.

I don't know much about how the first one was run because I was only 15 when I worked there and did 4 hrs on a Sat and 2 hrs Thurs and Fri eve after school. I wasn't there long enough to know more about how it was run. I used to stack shelves and put price labels on the food (yep, back in the days before tills could scan barcodes). I had a pricing gun and a stanley knife and would spend the entire time putting stuff on shelves and making the shelves tidy (aka facing up - making sure all the logos are facing the front and the shelves look full. I never had to go in before it opened, however I think there was a side door for staff to get in.

The other one I worked there as a Saturday kid when I was in the 6th form then worked part time there for a couple of years before going to uni. This was the four till one - there were maybe 12-15 staff including Saturday people, 2 supervisors, assistant manager and a manager. Shifts were very flexible. My contracted hours were mornings only but I ended up working more than full time hours through overtime. Back then shops opened 8:30- 6pm - if they opened later sometimes (e.g. run up to Christmas) then they'd get daytime staff to do overtime. These days shops will have separate evening staff.

The jobs I did there included being on the tills, shop floor (plus jumping on the tills when the queues got big), same as the other supermarket job but included going into the warehouse to get stuff that was out of stock on the shelves. There was a good-only lift between the warehouse (in the basement) and the shop floor (ground level) which everyone considered to be haunted. We'd push the trolleys so they'd roll into the lift then dash upstairs to get them out, without setting foot in the lift. LOL apparently it used to be a funeral shop and they kept dead bodies in the basement before it was a supermarket. I have no idea if that was true but everyone said it. Jobs would be allocated on the basis of what needed to be done, but shop floor staff usually got a section each. Other things you'd have to do would be helping customers. The other staff used to send questions to me if customers wanted vitamins as I'm good at biology (was doing A-level biology when I started there so I got a bit of a rep as the vitamin expert lol). When we got the section, we'd check to see what was out of stock or nearly out of stock, get it from the warehouse, put it on the shelf and keep the shelves looking nice, including "facing up" at the end of the day. Towards the end of the day we might get asked to face up other sections that weren't ours or help out a colleague who still had stock to put out. Supervisors would cash up the tills at the end of the day, sometimes I'd help with that. Coins were counted with a weighing scales, instead of telling you grams, you'd put the coin denomination in and it'd tell you how much money it was. Notes were counted by hand. I expect there's much more fancy/techy ways to count money nowadays. Sometimes we'd clean the store at the end of the day, e.g. spot cleaning with a damp mop and one of the managers would use this floor cleaning machine. There weren't separate cleaning staff but I would expect a larger store to have cleaning staff. Also the first cashier (the one who's on tills all day and not on shop floor) would have a cloth and kitchen cleaner to keep the tills clean when there were no customers.

Not sure how much of that would help, whether it's all out of date now. However there will be some things that haven't changed and some shops that like to do some things the old-fashioned way.