For me it's conditioning because in my store they have us do it in the middle of the day and customers like to come and mess stuff up where I just finish working. Good thing I get paid to do it though.

Answers will vary by perspective.  I for one would far rather shiver my way through a physically taxing, serum-spattered existence than endlessly kowtow to cranky customers, so my personal hell would be anything Service Desk.  

I'm going to say deli/bakery/meat all combined. The service departments to me have to be the hardest because there are so many more duties than other departments have. We 3 departments have a whole section of the store to close at night which involves a lot of cleanup. And yes, in bakery there is usually only one person closing at night.

I have to prepare all the bread and donuts and bagels, etc, for the bakers in the morning. While deli and bakery might only make up 5% of the stores sales (if that) it is a necessary part of the store! Not saying the other depts. aren't, but you know what i mean. Deli has a lot of cleanup as well, and I don't know as much about meat, but I can see it's a very important department too.

Now that I think about it, I bet floral is harder than you expect too. Usually there's only one person there at a time.

 

Edit: Now on the other hand, I think the easiest would be fuel center. It does suck that they are all alone out there, but I think they at least get a *little* bit of downtime.

-- Edited by 4hourrush on Sunday 15th of December 2013 11:11:36 PM

i work in the dairy and in grocery around the vacation times (btw, why do people wait until the most busy times to all go at once?), both can suck due to the heavy lifting.. but what makes it  really suck is people who don't  believe they have to pull their weight. they have been there for years, and think hey are entitled to do less work. no job would be that ****ty if all pulled their weight. but i don't see things changing, anytime soon.

it depends on your level of responsibility. if you're running the floor eight or nine hours up front your life is miserable. we actually had a day where almost everybody came to work and it was like a miracle. and that's just pathetic.  they already schedule thin and then you have a mess of call outs or no shows and then managers scream we're yellow or red.  you think?  sorry but labor management isn't my job, that's on you.

meat and seafood can be nasty.  hated cleaning the case but stocking was no big deal.  i hate going by the meat dept and two or three people are standing around doing nothing or they'll go hide in the cutting room to use their cell phones and flip me off if i tell them there's a bunch of customers waiting at the service counter.

i enjoyed my time with produce and the shifts i was stocking. it was a nice respite from the insanity up front where i'm trapped in hell because they won't let me change depts.

It depends.. I would never work in deli because I think it'd be gross while I'm sure some deli people wouldn't want to work front-end.

The most physically demanding I think would be night stock just because you're working ALL night, and the night crew at my store goes really fast and has a lot of cases to put up with not that much help.

I think the most mentally-demanding is FES because you have service desk, keep an eye on quevision, make sure cashiers and baggers breaks are going, baby sit the baggers especially with cars, and deal with the customers the cashiers need help with or when the customer demands a supervisor.

Really, at my store when I FES I sometimes have to go 5-6 hours without a break per management because it's so busy (and heaven forbid anything bad like a dip happens to quevision!!!) yet the baggers/cashiers piss and moan when their scheduled break is 10 minutes late.

Meat dept would be hard I think because of all the heavy lifting and cleaning.

Physically the easiest is cashier.

Freezer fans suck. I wear my coat just being in there for 5-10 minutes, i would hate to work frozen and be there all the time.

I do a lot of DSD which many would say "easiest job" which at times it can be but with the extreme hour cuts I would argue that this job requires a lot.  Back dock is always freezing in the winter and balmy in the summer,  On bread clerk's day off I have to do that on top of my back door duties.  I don't know how other stores unload trucks (if each dept comes and gets their own stuff) but we unload and deliver it all.  Typically there is a full combo truck waiting when I arrive at 6am that means making 3-4 trips back and forth delivering dairy, 4-6 trips to frozen, several trips to meat and produce (although those coolers are much closer to the dock) and unloading anywhere from 5-10 stacks of bread (heavy).  Basically I've walked a couple miles before most people are even out of bed.  I'm not complaining, I love the job!  I tie 90% of the bales that are tied because other departments "don't have time" or my favorite excuse from meat shop "it's not in our contract"  People like to dump anything that they don't know what to do with on me.  fixtures, theft items, perishable reclaims.  Here's what I walk in to some mornings.  Keep in mind I've got a truck waiting to be unloaded, typically a vendor or two, and have to clean up the mess from the night before as seen in the pic.  If I'm lucky the perishable depts have their coolers ready for a delivery.  

 

Anonymous wrote:

---

I do a lot of DSD which many would say "easiest job" which at times it can be but with the extreme hour cuts I would argue that this job requires a lot.  Back dock is always freezing in the winter and balmy in the summer,  On bread clerk's day off I have to do that on top of my back door duties.  I don't know how other stores unload trucks (if each dept comes and gets their own stuff) but we unload and deliver it all.  Typically there is a full combo truck waiting when I arrive at 6am that means making 3-4 trips back and forth delivering dairy, 4-6 trips to frozen, several trips to meat and produce (although those coolers are much closer to the dock) and unloading anywhere from 5-10 stacks of bread (heavy).  Basically I've walked a couple miles before most people are even out of bed.  I'm not complaining, I love the job!  I tie 90% of the bales that are tied because other departments "don't have time" or my favorite excuse from meat shop "it's not in our contract"  People like to dump anything that they don't know what to do with on me.  fixtures, theft items, perishable reclaims.  Here's what I walk in to some mornings.  Keep in mind I've got a truck waiting to be unloaded, typically a vendor or two, and have to clean up the mess from the night before as seen in the pic.  If I'm lucky the perishable depts have their coolers ready for a delivery.  

 

---

 I agree, particularly about all the partial stacks of pallets. Is it really that hard to make neat stacks? And I notice the white pallets mixed in with the blue CHEP pallets on left. Happens at my store all the time (not to mention the plastic ones). You are lucky that you have a trailer to put salvage in. Ours just has to sit in the backroom until someone is kind enough to take it.

I work on the Front End doing Bookkeeping and Service Desk.  It's hard but not as hard as most people think. 

Most of our customers are buying Money Orders and doing Western Union transactions.  On Thursday it's Kroger employees cashing their paychecks, and on Friday it's normal people cashing their paychecks.

We get the occasional Rain Check or Refunds/Exchanges.  When it's not busy we go help bag groceries or run the registers to get the lines down.  When we get irate customers, we just call the Floor Supervisor or Manager to deal with them and move on to the next customer. :)

In my opinion, the hardest department to work in is Daytime Grocery.  They have to answer all of our questions on where stuff is located, as well as stock product all over the store, while helping customers and helping bag and cashier on the Front End.  I don't envy them one bit.

-- Edited by VWguy90 on Tuesday 17th of December 2013 09:43:12 PM

-- Edited by VWguy90 on Tuesday 17th of December 2013 09:43:48 PM

I'm a little confused because in Michigan, the Front End Supervisor is just one of the Customer Service employees wearing a red vest and not working primarily behind the service desk.

We have 1 Customer Service Manager(Font-end Dept Manager) and 5 Assistant Customer Service Managers, who work either accounting, customer service desk, or FES, and all make $18.00 an hour..

the only time it's a cashier wearing the vest and acting as Front End Supervisor is when service desk needs a break or there is a vacation and the helper cashier is working, and the cashier gets relief pay.

Our font-end departments in must be set up differently. I am relief for service desk, but i would never do all that for cashier pay every single week considering the pay difference.

If you're working accounting, customer service, or FES and getting paid cashier pay, you're putting yourself through a lot of stress for not that much money!

I know it's been mentioned on this forum several times, but PSC and DSD should receive head pay as they are somewhat difficult (especially PSC) and either of these folks could really screw the store/company if they wanted to.  While it seems easy to count in vendor product (and it usually is), the store could lose a lot of money from those suppliers (and I'm sure they do lose a lot by lazy DSD clerks not counting product like they're supposed to).  

I thought DSD did receive dept. head pay. The DSD guy's on the manager wall in my store so i thought they were included in that.

I'd have to say Courtesy/Utility clerk

1.has to gather carts in ALL weather.
2.clean ALL sorts of messes, some are...questionable
3.do gobacks and LOOK for misplaced items on shelf
4.work bottle room, and clean gloppy sloppy mess inside
5.MUST stop whatever you are doing to assist checkers*


*this means doing tasks that they can do themselves*

Hahahaha yes me every single day in atlanta