Work- Life balance was the biggest disappointment for me. At ALL times you are expected to put your life on hold for this job. When someone calls off and there is no one to cover that shift (BECAUSE EVERY STORE IS UNDERSTAFFED AND OVER WORKED), the store managers are the ones covering it. And calling the position a “store manager” is a joke. You are nothing more than a glorified shift manager. The DMs have all the say in how the store is run (gives you a laundry list of tasks for you and the one other person in your store who is running register), how things are displayed (which although most does come from corporate), who gets hired (if they actually do that) and fired (that almost never happens cause you can’t afford to lose another body). It’s utterly insulting to be considered a store manager honestly. The only thing that constitutes you as a store manager is you train new hires (with an awful training program which focuses too much on policies instead of the actual task at hand) and delegate tasks to your staff. When the higher ups come in, you have to act as if everything is great because god forbid you are actually honest and real with them. Then they ask you why there is an out of stock, but can’t open their eyes to see it’s warehouse and transportation issues. One day it’s bad ordering by Purchasing, next it’s mis-picks from the warehouse selectors, and even better when a driver takes it to another store or even leaves it at the warehouse and NO ONE CAN FIND IT. But you know, you are the “store manager” so it’s your fault. Quite frankly I am amazed when I hear how long people have been store managers and it surpasses my length. I gave it my all and felt suffocated. The best day of my almost 9 year long career with Aldi was my last day.
