Complaint Review: Rite Aid

I used to work for this Rite Aid, and believe me when I tell you that it was horrible. First of all, I was given the very bare minimum of hours, usually between 20 and 25. I later found out that the store managers got a quarterly bonus if they kept their labor percentages low. Meanwhile, their employees are struggling to feed their families and pay their bills.

They refused to make anyone full time, except the 3 managers, making overtime an impossibility. I started out at minimum wage, and after 11 months of working there, I received a 30 cent raise. I was absolutely shocked and offended by that.

Why not find a better job? Around here there are so few opportunities for employment unless you are willing to travel at least an hour to a major city, which at the time I was unable to do.

Moving on, the store management was a joke. They never knew what was going on in the store. The way this company has it set up, a cashier basically can't do anything except ring out a customer, so any refunds, voids, or exchanges had to be handled by management. However, when there is only one person responsible for all of that at any given time during the day, it makes it very hard to deal with customers in a timely fashion. I can't tell you how many time I was left waiting for upwards of 15 minutes, with a confused customer staring at me, wondering why I wasn't refunding her purchase, while I was paging a manager every minute or two. Then management would finally come up and USUALLY resolved the issue quickly, and I was left to deal with the then rude and impatient customer, as if I had done anything wrong.

Shop lifting was apparently not a concern for them, because no cameras were in the store, not even behind the counters!! What if someone had tried to rob me while I am standing there? There wouldn't have been any evidence on video! We were always finding empty packages of items, and I was told by the store manager that some months they lost nearly $5,000 from shoplifting. It wasn't a surprise to me, because people, usually teenagers, came in regularly and left quickly without purchasing anything. Shortly after they left we would find the empty packages stuffed behind merchandise or left on the floor.

Also, as associates, we were told that we could not, under any circumstances, accuse someone of stealing, even if we had seen them steal something, because they could sue the company for profiling. They needed concrete evidence. How were we supposed to get that?! There were ANY CAMERAS ON THE PREMISES!.

Overall, the managers were all rude, moody individuals. They would give you absolutely NOTHING to do for weeks at a time, leaving you to stand at the register for your entire shift, hoping that someone needed help finding something so that you could keep your brain from atrophying. Or, they would give you a ridiculous amount of tasks to be completed in a short amount of time. Either way, it was just a bad situation.

All in all, my experience there was mostly negative. In the end of my "career" there, I could not wait to leave and move on to bigger and better things.

Anonymous
Catskill, New York
U.S.A.