Meijer reviews

- The pay is low for the industry (across all roles), and the structure in place for raises and merit-based performance is just controlled by mid-to-upper management. It's not tied to your actual performance. If the company is doing really well you can expect maybe a 3% raise. If the company doesn't meet it's financial goals, 0-1% is more likely. - There's a culture of promoting from within for most roles, but it never seemed to be in a way that made sense. People end up being managers and directors or areas where they have no core competencies. Most of the key players in merchandising and marketing don't have any backgrounds to oversee those areas. - Almost every decision made on a daily basis is done-so by the personal opinion of someone in management. In my many years being there I can only recall 1 business decision being made based on consumer-insight data, and not something the management had a strong personal preference on. - They are an extremely techno-phobic organization. They avoid using successful third-party services to do key business functions (like Analytics, or Project Management software), and instead have everything developed internally by Meijer IT people much to the detriment of the employees. They don't seek out aid from outside organizations, and seem very fearful of any "confidential" information leaking out. Be prepared to use custom apps for everything in old versions of Internet Explorer in order to do day-to-day tasks. - The techno-phobia also spills out into their web presence. Which, in 2016, is still almost nothing. You can't buy products from them online. You can browse a very limited version of their merchandise from the site, but only to add it to an order to find a store near you. Or in some selection locations, pick up at the store via a curbside service. - Strict dress code. When they added 'jeans on Friday' it was a big deal, because Meijer is still one of the few places that requires a pretty formal business attire for everyday work. - Traditional to a fault. Meijer's culture is very puritan in the way it reacts to and treats people who aren't heterosexual white people. If you're a member of the LGBT community or a minority, you will get a strong sense of being treated differently, and probably have lesser benefits for things like medical when it comes to your partners. They didn't officially revise their non-discrimination policy to include sexual orientation until 2009. - Everything is done in a reactionary way. Meijer is always chasing the tail of competitors like Target and Kroger, but not in the 'analyze the competition' type of way. Long term forecasting and following of trend data are not followed in favor of decisions being made based on something that leadership saw while out in the world, and then a reactionary plan will be thrown into place. However due to how slow projects are to mobilize, by the time it's complete they continually appear 2-3 years behind the trend curve of what the world is doing. - Terrible allocation of resources by leadership to make a couple select stores which are local to the senior leaders look nice, while the rest of the chain looks terrible. Stores like Knapp's Corner and Cascade will have reinvention and remodel year after year, while stores in other areas struggle to get the paint on the walls redone, and signage that is decades-old removed. - The culture at the corporate office is toxic. It's driven by gossip, and over-sized egos of management trying to keep people in their place. Meetings are always filled with trying to figure out what was done wrong last, and lots of blame being passed around. There is also no accountability from upper management. Any mistake or miscalculation is passed down to the lower workers and blamed on them. For example: Leadership requesting a special 'drop everything' project to do something at one of their key stores like Knapp corner -- only to turn around a month later and complain that the employees messed up their other project timelines and budgets as a result by spending too much resources on the special project management asked for. - Very meeting-heavy culture. The calendars of most people are booked 50-70% of each day, and if you're in management or leadership you're probably looking at 100% most days, with double-and-triple booked moments. A majority of most of the meetings is spent trying to recap or figure out what happened since the last meeting. Very little process or action items ever get addressed. - No dissenting opinions are allowed. Multiple times during my time there I was told of a decision that was made by leadership that would have to be passed on. We were told to never speak ill of the decision, and never ask questions. Even on small matters, if someone 'higher' on the organization chart than you said something, you are supposed to agree with it, full stop. Any time questions or concerns are raised, you can probably expect to get spoken to afterward about being 'difficult.' - Poor communication and organizational alignment. It really feels like on a day-to-day basis that each segment of the business is at war with the others. Each has different leadership and objectives, and none of them every seem to align. So where merchandising leadership would want X, Marketing leadership would want Y, and space planning leadership would want Z. Each respective group would demand their outcome of their employees, and leave the lower staff to argue it out. In the end, the result is always a poor blend not meeting anyone's objectives, and everyone involved can be seen as failing for not having met their objectives. - Most areas of the business have people quitting often (due to reasons stated above), and therefore there is very frequently a workload burden on the remaining employees. It will take months to hire someone new, and during that time employees will be expected to do the work of multiple people. People arriving at 7am, not taking a lunch, and leaving by 6 or 7pm that night was very common. Every day. -Little 'off' time. By saying that they are a 24-hour store, and the employees of the store don't get a break, Meijer likes to reinforce a culture of never taking time off. You're expected to react at all hours of the day or night, and there any almost no corporately observed vacation days other than the 6 or so national ones. - The HR department is basically a non-entity. When asked questions they always give vague answers, and are unable to speak to the actual policies in place that are driving their communication. Twice during the time I was there employees surfaced concerns to me that I needed to loop HR in on. Those concerns were immediately surfaced to the people who were in the complaint via email. So when an employee tries to anonymously get help with an issue with a superior, HR just copies the superior and the subordinate on an email together about the complaint and disappears. - Almost no diversity at all. The corporate campus is made up of about 95% or more white people. There's a handful of minorities here and there, but if you were to pick any random sample of employees, the overwhelming majority would be white. While there I heard someone in leadership try to paint it as a reflection of West Michigan in a meeting, but it's not even close. - Micro-management of every task. There are very few decisions that can be made on a day-to-day basis without the approval of senior leadership. This culture results in many extra hours of work for employees making up review documents explaining their decisions to leadership. Every area has an approval process which is laborious and involves 3 or more layers of people to go through before anything can be considered 'approved.' -If you're in need a job desperately you could probably get a job here and not mind it too much depending on how invested you get. Be sure to negotiate and come in at as high of a salary as possible if you do because your pay will likely never go up in any meaningful way while there. However, I would strongly advise anyone who takes pride in their work, or who has a 'get it done' mentality to look elsewhere. Meijer is a culture of strict orders down to the dress code, and doesn't take kindly to people going against the grain on anything. It is a corporation in every sense of the word, and every strange or awful corporate behavior you can think of is alive and well here, amplified to a tremendous degree.

Awful management, lack leadership, development, Hazzardious work environment and extremely low morale. Ridding middle age, hiring young, Discrimination is clear