My Personal Review of Employment Experience at Food Lion

When I work at Food Lion, there are so many different encounters that I have. Some things are nice, and others are tiring. From ringing up hundreds of grumpy customers, to retrieving the heavy long line of grocery carts from the steep hill in the parking lot, to counting every single penny that the store made in cash at the end of the night, my job can be hard but I love it. Of course, not everyone that I greet is going to be nice, and situations will not always go the way that I want them, but at the end of the day I still enjoy my job.

Ringing up and scanning the customers’ items out of their square shaped carts is a huge factor in my job working on the front end of a grocery store. I greet all customers that I ring up; sometimes they are not so kind, and they do not reply; some of them have pinched looks on their faces, acting as if they are better than I am. Many customers who go grocery shopping put heavy items on the bottom of their grocery carts. The most common items found on the bottom of the baskets are, heavy plastic containers of cat litter, or a big forty-eight-pound bag of dog food that has such a strong smell that its aroma can be smelled outside of the bag, and the most common are the big packs of tall clear water bottles that are so heavy I can barely lift them. When people bring those items through I usually walk around my rectangular shaped cash register and scan the items with my portable scan gun so that I do not have to lift them. After ringing up many people, my register belt tends to get a little dirty from all the different groceries being put on it. When it starts getting nasty with white patches of dried milk left on it or streaks of clear juices from the residue of raw chicken, I clean the filthy, long, black moving belt. I wait until no customers are approaching me and I reach under the receipt printer to open up a tan cabinet door that contains a trash can with a clear bag, a small, white roll of paper towels and, a clear bottle with a translucent liquid inside of it. I spray the clear liquid onto the register while its moving, making sure that I cover the entire surface; then, I wipe everything up with the paper towels occasionally switching one cloth out with a new one because the other one gets soaked with dirt and cleaner.

Rounding up grocery carts is also a big factor to my job. Before I go outside, I must put on the oversized neon yellow safety vest that contains a horrid stench. Then I must take the long black cord that has a hook at each end of it outside with me. I strap the first hook to the first cart in the line, and I pull the string as far as it will reach to the last cart and hook them all together. I yank the remaining cord so that it pulls the carts together forming a rolling arch of grocery carts. I struggle to push them up a steep hill and inside to the lobby. They go into a long straight row of identical grocery carts. There are blue carts and gray carts; the blue carts are much smaller in size and more of a square shape, while the gray ones are larger and more rectangular, and I must push each one into their correct spot.

The last aspect to my job is office work. At the end of the night, I must close all the registers in the entire store and count the money out of them. I sit in a small enclosed, hot, room until I have counted the money from every register till. I have to individually carry each heavy till to the office door and unlock it while still holding the till. Trying not to drop it is the main goal. I push open the heavy door and stack the money up on to the money machine while it counts it for me. After the money is counted I carry it to the big tan safe and stack each one on top of the other. Then I lock all the registers and the safes at the very end of the night. Making sure that everything is counted and done correctly is very important for the stores closure each night.

Working is not always fun, and it has many irritable aspects, but nothing that is easy pays off. Running registers is gross. Pushing grocery carts up a hill is hard and requires strength. Finally, counting money is a lot of work. In the end, it will all come together and if I put my mind to it, I can accomplish anything.