Are you in need of a job? If you are in high school or a poor college student you probably don't have much experience in the work force so the job opportunities for you are limited in number and pay. Well Hopefully after reading this article you can get an idea about the kind of jobs that would be right for you in the Grocery store and Department store business.
I will split the jobs into different articles, I've also added what kind of work you can expect to be doing, and some of the problems that you may have at work with.
Grocery and Department Stores:
Freight Unloaders
These types of jobs usually consist of unloading trucks filled with supplies and products. These types of jobs can be found at almost any kind of grocery or department store. Most of the time unloading the trucks you are not dealing with lifting heavy boxes. The products on the trucks are usually on palates. The palates make unloading the trucks faster and easier on the workers. The workers will use a hand held or mechanical forklift that lifts the palates off of the floor which makes moving them simple.
Depending on the amount of raw lifting you will be doing with your body depends on the pay that you will be receiving. Many delivery companies ship their products earlier in the morning rather than later, so expect to be asked to come in fairly early if you plan on taking this kind of job.
Shelf Stockers
Shelf stockers do exactly that, stock shelves. Many times the freight unloaders will also be shelf stockers. This is where the heavy lifting is involved. What you will be required to do is take the products from the palates and put them on the shelves. Here you will be asked to lift heavy boxes of products and sometimes put them on high shelves.
Stockers are also likely to be asked to “face” a store. What this means is that you will have to go into each isle of a store and rearrange the products so that the labels face the front. You may also be asked to do other things such as mop the floors at the end of the night and clean random things.
Deli
In the deli you can expect to be paid a little bit more than some other positions in a store because there is a slight risk involved with using a rotating sharpened blade. What you can expect to do in a deli is cut meat and cheese for customers as well as prepare platters. Some other tasks that you may be asked to do is cook simple things if the store has an already prepared food case.
The deli is a little bit more stressful than other positions in a grocery store because you have to deal with customers who often times demand almost impossible results from the slicers. Also you will probably have to remember all of the codes for the different products.
Cashier
Cashiers are asked to remember different codes for fruits and vegetables. Some of the hardest things a cashier will be asked to do is deal with different methods of payment instead of cash, such as the gift certificates, access card, checks, and credit cards. Cashiers have to be very careful to avoid a potentially hostile conflict with customers if they were to accidentally ring up a product wrong.
Being a cashier can be stressful at times. Have you ever been at a large super store such as Wal-Mart where the lines are backed up and there are at least 7 or 8 people in line with overflowing carts. I have often thought to myself that I would never want to be in that cashiers position. The pay that cashiers get depends on the store. For smaller stores the pay won't be that great starting but at bigger stores the pay will be much better.
