A former Albertsons cashier detailed how a “very angry” manager berated her after leaving her alone to deal with a mounting line of customers.
MK (@mk9unit) captioned in the video that the grocery store chain should “count [their] mf days” in her viral TikTok that raked in over 49,000 views.
“I’ve always worked minimum-wage jobs like from the time I was in high school and legally allowed to work up until I wanna say my senior year of college. Longest jobs that I’ve ever held down were at grocery stores back home, so when I moved out west, and I had to get a job, I decided why not try the grocery store?” MK started. She said she found a job there but only had one “very angry manager” and could tell the grocery store was grossly understaffed.
She said one day, she was the only cashier working. “My line starts to build up. I’m calling for the … manager; I couldn’t even remember the phone code to get the manager in the front of the store,” she recalled. “Dude that I’m checking out is getting angry at me; the manager isn’t coming. [The customer is] yelling at me, ‘You should know how to do this!”
MK said she “needed an override, which you can’t do without a manager’s key.”
“So I start crying,” she said. “I just start bawling. Everyone in that line was dead quiet waiting for the manager to come. I found him in the … break room on his phone. He’s like, ‘What?’ I’m like, ‘I need an override, and you’re not up here.’”
She said the manager yelled at her, which caused her to cry even harder. He said that despite her state, her manager made her continue checking customers out. She said a nice customer, who was in line behind the customer who yelled at her, bought her a candy bar. “He’s like, ‘It’s OK. This happens all the time. He shouldn’t have left you here if it was one of your first days working,’” she recalled the kind customer telling her, letting viewers know she thinks about him and that gesture often.
The TikToker’s experience at the job wasn’t one that she wanted to experience again. She ultimately decided to hand in her pink slips instead. “I quit the same day!” she proclaimed at the end of her video.
@mk9unit albertsons count your mf days
♬ original sound – mk
Viewers who responded to MK’s post remarked that they, too, have had less than stellar experiences while working at their own grocery store jobs. “When I worked at Safeway I overheard my manager saying she couldn’t believe they raised the wage to $10 & that we didn’t need/deserve that like ok Joan,” one shared.
Another user called out Albertsons, specifically. “Bro I entirely LOATHE that company. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the phrase ‘we’re a family here,’” they wrote.
Progressive Grocer noted that the human response to the implementation of COVID restrictions highlighted many glaring customer-to-employee issues for food retail workers. A number of them reported experiencing burnout at their respective jobs, not to mention poor and rude treatment from customers. Such workers are also often underpaid, receiving an average annual salary of less than $23,000 a year, according to Comparably.
The Daily Dot has reached out to MK and Albertsons via email for further comment.
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