So I work for a Dollar General. Very big company, very popular, made 33.747 BILLION dollars in 2021, a whole 21.59% increase from 2020. You'd expect the employees that work there to make a living wage.
Nope! I personally started off at $10.75 an hour at age 19, but one of my coworkers said they started at $10 and was STILL making that much whenever I hopped on at my starting rate. Only reason he knew that was because I told him (side note: the rule of “you can't share your wages” is against the law).
Now onto the main subject, the hours. Now I'll preface that I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes behind Dollar General. I don't know the inner workings of the store and I just close the store and such. What I DO know is that hours are almost always super strained where I work because of how hours are distributed.
They are given based on how much sales the store location makes each week, and they fluctuate each week.
They fluctuate.
You see the problem here?
As a full time keyholder making 11.25 an hour, closing the store and all of its systems for the night, making sure everything is pulled up and expired items are taken off the shelves for damaging out, I get at most 30 hours a week. That's on a lucky week. Sometimes I get as low as 25. And the managers are forced to put themselves at least 48 hours on the schedule, eating up the amount of budget even more. After taking the 48 hours from the manager, they are left with mayyyyybe 138 hours to give out to at least 5 or 6 employees, some part time some full time, including the assistant manager and keyholders.
Oh and I'd like to mention that depending on your rank, you may cost MORE on the budget. From my memory, keyholders count as 1.2 hours to their hour. So instead of 5 hours you'd take up 6. Assistant Managers are 1.5, so every two hours you actually take up three.
Those numbers could be slightly inaccurate so take that with a grain of salt, but the part about higher ranks taking more hours is true.
I'm not blaming my manager for this. They are a lovely person and treats their employees like people. It's just a shame that they have to take orders from a shitty corporation like DG.
Last note, more of a nitpick: DG's way of “appreciating their employees” was to give us a week of wearing certain themes based on what day of the week it was. I got more appreciation from two customers who gave me whole loaves of banana bread with a heartfelt message on the bag.