Sainsbury’s

When I first joined Sainsburys in 2014, it definitely lived up to it's great place to work status. I joined as a online shopper for 3 months on a 12 hour contract and the store offered alot of training and overtime to become multi-skilled and gain extra money. The online shopper job is easy in a sense that you need to pick a certain amount of items per hour, in which the items are shown and organised by a scanner to be put in various totes for each customer. Although the less easy part was the 5 till 9 am shifts. Management was supportive and listened to issues. 

An internal vacancy lead me into a 24 hour contract bakery assistant role in which grew into a 39 hour contract in a year. When I started the bakery role it was mostly always adequately staffed so that stress and morale levels were minimal and the workload was manageable as the bakery is also a patisserie serving cream cakes and displaying donuts, pastries, etc, aswell as bread, rolls and sticks. The department also sorts the bread and cake aisle. The management is supportive and also listens to issues and trys to sort any shift discrepancies. The hardest part of the job is to keep the shelves stocked and make and/or bake more products to fill gaps. The most enjoyable part is the banter the colleagues have whilst at work to keep a happy and less stressful environment. 

To this end, this all changed in 2017, with massive cut backs on labour in particular and not replacing leaving staff members. From my experience, this has caused working for sainsburys more difficult as the work load set upon each staff member is more than it should be. This in turn has caused loss of morale, disgruntled colleagues and elevated stress levels. Though it is still a great place to work, it is not as great as it once was.

Relaxed, friendly atmosphere makes the job slightly more bearable than it would otherwise be. The rate of pay is also decent for the job & the regular discounts & free stuff is also nice. Unfortunately, the positives end their. Sainsburys as a company is held back by a "we want it all" board. Store managers aren't as helpful as they perhaps should be & stores are chronically under supplied on just about everything. The whole workplace culture is actually okay but if things ran a little smoother it could be so much better. Complaints & queries also seem to fall on deaf ears & you should be prepared to do 2, 3 or 4 tasks at once. There is also a miniscule chance of career progression & some department managers are younger than I am which hardly seems right.
But its a straight forward job with decent pay & some good people so I'd say its worth checking out.



Very hectic at times and hard to meet goals, learned mostly every dept, at times lack of staff bad management.
staff are good, hardest part is fitting in various duties within specified short periods, enjoyable part when get paid and incentives and great communication with staff who care and supportive more then managers who are awkward at times.

lack of health and safety in bakery dept when starting evening shift when prev staf have failed to keep counter clean as the y use which build up extra work for me on top of my general duties that make me fall behind and stay back to end it even with overtime involved delay me from getting home in time.

no day was a typical work day in this branch of Sainsbury's as we were by the seafront it was very popular in the summer but quieter in the winter.
I learned how to cash up, and i started to learn what a supervisor does before leaving.
The management are friendly and help when the store is busy.
the hardest part of the job is when it gets busy and the queue is going around the store and even though you have everyone working to get people served and out the door you can still end up working way past the end of your shift.
The most enjoyable part for me was getting the interaction with the customers they were all lovely in the area lots of different people coming in, getting the staff from the loacl restaurants to the elderly that were living there.

My typical day at work started at 9 pm, and finished next morning at 7 am.
I learnt to work as part of a team and also to work under my own initiative, I got on well with all my co-workers and sometimes spent time outside of work socialising with co-workers.
The hardest part of my job was the hours i worked, I had to work through the night to work around my daughters as I am a single parent, the most enjoyable part of my job was the satisfaction of completing my duties to a very good standard in the target time given.

at first it was great but you just do the same every day. its all changing now and you have to work on different departments then all jobs on your own department never gets done. management in my store all left because they had to 
to cut staff levels or go down to a normal colluague and get a pay cut. all work staff are amazing and so friendly and will help in any way they can and thats why I stayed so long because of my team.
hardest part of my job
not getting jobs done and always helping on tills
most enjoyable part of my job
the team I worked with every day
and pay was good

I loved the people I worked with which makes a huge difference, managers included. The pay is okay for what you are doing also, gets a little boring at times so make sure you bring headphones (I worked night shifts) to listen to podcasts or music. Ask to work elsewhere if things get too same same. Only thing that would make it better is a paid break, night shift employees cannot leave the building for safety reasons so in my opinion it is only fair for a paid break since we can't leave. Also communication needs to happen across day time/night time staff. A lot of things tend to get blamed on the night time people which isn't always the case.

Sadly, if you have long term health problems or want to better yourself and/or have something to say if you don't agree then it's not the job for you. Poor management and lack of empathy makes working for Sainsbury's hard work and made me ill! Pension, discount and wages were very good, the training is constant if you want it and head office do take your ideas to make the store better, seriously. 

I learnt how to talk to customer's with confidence and professionalism.

Management was good always talking to you and giving you feedback to improve your work ethic.

Hardest part of the job was getting to know where products are so when a customer ask's where something is i could not tell them as i did not know, sometimes they would get aggrovated and say something rude.

Most enjoyable part of the job was working with a positive and friendly team of people.

Job's simple to do and understand and the managers have been perfectly reasonable thus far, I even like some of my coworkers. However, I cannot handle the sleeping pattern night shift requires of me. I'm steadily losing it and I miss spending time with my family. It's a shame, because if it was day shift but the exact same work, I wouldn't be wanting to leave at all.

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