Dollar General
Reviews and Complaints

Monday, February 1, 2010

During the month of August 2009, I worked for Dollar General in North Arlington, NJ. In July they sponsored a Job Fair at their new location in North Arlington. On August 14, I began training with the Manager at that time, Pete Fox. On August 18, I actually began working at the North Arlington Location. On Tuesday, August 18, 2009, I worked from 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM without a lunch break, a total of 6 Hours; on Wednesday, August 19 I worked from 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM with no meal break, a total of 4 hours, on Thursday, August 20 I worked from 6:00 AM – 11:00 AM again no meal break a total of 5 hours; Friday August 21, I was out sick. On Saturday, August 22, I worked from 4:00 AM – 9:00 AM without a meal break, a total of 5 hours. On Monday, August 24, I worked from 4:00 AM -11:00 AM without a meal break for a total of 7 hours On Tuesday, August 25, I was off. On Wednesday, August, 26 I again worked from 4:00 AM – 11:00 AM with no meal break for a total of 7 hours. It was on this day that I was told that they had hired too many sales people, and that I was one of those being let go. At that time I was told that I would receive two checks for the hours that I had worked, I asked if I could pick them up, and was told to stop in the following Friday to do just that. When I asked for my check I was told that it had been mailed to my home address. Since I was terminated from this establishment, there has been a change in the Management at this location. On Thursday, January 21, 2010, I telephoned the new manager Ron and made an inquiry about my missing check. At that time, he stated that he would have to investigate my claim. He took my Social Security Number and stated to me that he would be in contact with the previous manager Pete Fox, and that he would get back to me. It is now February 1, 2010, and, I have heard nothing from either the former manager, nor the current manager regarding my back pay. Since making these inquiries; I did receive my tax forms from their central office. This tax document shows that my earnings while with them to be $330.00. The only payment I actually received was an earlier check for $120.00. Thusly $330.00 - $120.00 = $210.00 that I am still owed as payment for the hours that I actually worked. I am tired of playing “telephone tag” with these people; the evidence is clear, by the very tax documents that “their” payroll department sent to me. This document unequivocally demonstrates that I am owed this compensation.
I would appreciate any assistance that you might provide to help resolve this matter.

I have worked at the DG in my town for over a year now. I still work there, and I am in school at a local college full-time. I keep my job because around here especially, jobs are very hard to find. I have very few complaints with my job itself, I actually do not mind my job. I love to interact with people, and I just about know all of my customers by name. The pay really sucks, but other than that it is a job. My Store manager, though, seems very sexist. In the last year I have worked there, we have had at least 4 new people hire in, none of which are male. We have an all female staff except for my store manager who is a male. All of the girls that he hires are, well, young and pretty. Most of the time they do not even do their jobs. I do not mind working hard, but sometimes the trucks and lifting gets rough. We have girls who cannot lift due to pregnancy and others who just refuse. I know many men who need a job and would be more than happy to work. I just feel like he is being sexist in his hiring. Not only that, but our assistant manager is lazy. She does nothing when the SM is not around except for sit on her butt and talk to her friends and family on the phone. She has been suspected of taking money. When I say she does absolutely nothing, I am not exagerating one bit. The store manager has been informed and talked to about her behavior several times, but has never confronted her. WTF? I think our store is in desperate need of better management.

I have worked with Dollar General starting off as an Assistant Manager in December of 2007 to later get promoted to Store Manager in June of 2008. I ran a high volume store with only 4 employees on staff. If my employees couldn’t get the work load done, guess who had to step in and finish it. Yes, me. The STORE MANAGER. It infuriates me to think of how much this company really doesn’t care about its employees. I see all the time how they’re getting sued left and right. Gee, I wonder why. I had other store managers come and help me at my store every other week it seemed because I didn’t have the time to even look for new employees let alone hire new ones. Once those other store managers glanced at my schedule and saw that I was working about 80 hours a week, they looked at me and said “Is this your REAL schedule?!” Well, yes I replied. I didn’t have a choice. I had to be at the store due to staffing issues that my District Manager wouldn’t help with, basically, I was doing everything myself. That store wouldn’t run without me being there….period. Working for this company took a hard downfall with my life. My personal life. I was never at home anymore to be there for my kids, I honestly didn’t even have a life. My own doctor warned me even that I should look for another career to pursue cause this job was about to kill me, that’s how hard I was working. My kids eventually had to go live with their dad because they hated me that much more for having spent so much time at this place. That’s how much overtime I worked. Some weeks, 80 hours, some weeks even more if there was a corporate visit. Working late nights until 4 or 5 am, or even overnight since being there since 6 am to open the store that same day. It was close the store for the night, then wake up and go open first thing in the morning. All the time, never failed. Sure I could have my employees do this, but they always called in or always had an excuse not to show up. When I brought these matters to my District Managers attention, she said it was up to me to hire new employees. Well ok, no problem, but if I’m having to do everything else in the store at the same time as being a manager, how am I suppose to run this store efficiently? I can’t even be a “manager” if I can’t even get off of the register long enough to even LOOK at applications. I even worked at OTHER stores to get them prepared for corporate visits because we knew they were going to get visited, and we must have stayed at that store scrubbing wax and other debris off of the floor, laying cement in the front foyer, painting posts, proping their stores to where they looked emmacualte, ect. We did it all. And I’m sorry, but this was NOT in my job description. If they’re looking for a cheap way out, they’ll do it. And they’ll use anybody that knows how to do whatever it is they want done. I thought in my own mind that being a manager was to manage your people, your schedule, your store and inventory. Being a manager at this company means going above and beyond every day until the point where they almost kill you. And trust me, that is NOT AN UNDERSTATEMENT! I truly regret ever working for this company and really putting my blood, sweat and tears into this so called "management career" due to the lack of ethics this company stands behind. Worse off than that, they turn a blind eye to their own managers including me when it’s profiting them not to have to pay for someone’s hard earned paycheck for all the crap they put people through. I hope this letter gives you somewhat of an insight on what a lot of “managers” go through working with this company. I too have once before talked with lawyers on going after them for all of the overtime I have put in to try and get some kind of compensation on this. It’s against strict labor laws in the US no matter which county, or state you live in to work people like this and NOT pay them. They’re excuse is that they “classify” our store manager position to be EXEMPT from hourly salary so that we can be there to run the store all hours of the day/night. Which I’m sorry, but when I was hired, no one told ME that I was going to be doing. Seems like this particular company comes up with all sorts of ways around the truth, other than the truth to appreciate how hard their employees really do work for them. To me, that’s just sad. I no longer shop nor reccomend this store to anyone I know now. I have boycotted the whole business no matter what products they have either in stock, or how much cheaper they sell it for in this tough economy now a days. If you're reading this now, I would take a step back and really consider just how well you have it, and how much trouble it would be to go out of your way to pay for an item that costs $2 rather than paying $2.50 just to please your self consciousness. NOT WORTH IT to let this company profit off of the people that truely know how hard work really pays off...But that's just my opinion...

Recently I went into dollar general to purchase things that I needed for my home. I usually spend $35-$40 a week in the store. The way things are now a days, we have to watch what we spend. The cashier was pleasant enough, but I was continuously asked to donate to not only one, but three different charities! I looked the company up on line, and this is a multi million dollar company! So why are they asking the average shopper to contribute to these charities, when they have such a high prophet margin! You know that they will take the credit for the donation, but the company itself dropped no money into the bucket. All they manage to do is drive away thier customers - send them straight back to walmart. I personally would rather deal with the crowds then feel like I was just charity raped!

I was former employee of dollar general (Jackson heights) murfreesboro tn for five months and several stores in surrounding area with no problems and even was asked to come give help when needed. New manager was transferred in, and all of a sudden everything was completely different - (Ex. Not permitted to count drawer before or after shift, payroll always being cut, bringing in "her" people who don't have a clue regarding customer service, she herself rude to customers and employees) this company is infamous for "promising" the world and delivering absolutly nothing - then if you leave you loose your "creditablity" same old, same old i'm gonna, i'm gonna. (Theme song)
Personally would not recommend anyone to work here!

I've been working with the company for the past six months. Started off as a stocker with only two days a week, despite being in retail for the past five years. That manager got sick and had to quit. Our store was a mess, then an outside manager came in and managed the store for three months and completely had the store running the way it is supposed to. He and I got along great because we both had the exact same mind-set and both of us have high standards for how the store is supposed to be run. He saw that and I suddenly got bumped from two days with only 10 hours a week straight to five days with 32-40 hours a week.
My first complaint is our 3rd key, who doesn't do a thing. All she does is goes around and straightens the store, then she comes up with some BS excuse why she didn't do the planogram she was supposed to do that night. She was supposed to do the food planogram, she didn't do it until 3 weeks after the deadline. And even then, she didn't do it on her own. She had to have the assistant manager practically hold her hand while doing it. I really wish she would be demoted. Not fired because she is great with customers and doing basic stocking, but she is incompetent in her managerial duties. Her excuse for screwing up and not doing anything is always "I didn't know how to do it because I wasn't trained". She has been 3rd key for 8 MONTHS. She should have learned everything she needed to know on her own by now. I mean, I've even taught her how to do a few things that she didn't know how to do because of her supposed lack of training.
I do my job and I get nothing to show for it. The outside manager left and we now have a new permanent manager who claimed on his application to be a former K-Mart GM. Turns out its BS because he accidentally let it slip to me that he wasn't even a manager at K-Mart. They didn't even do a freaking background check. He's been here for since late August, was in training for a month before that, and he still doesn't know how to do the things a manager is supposed to do. I've even had to show him how to shut the store down and count the money! Seriously, why should a freakin' sales associate have to teach these two? It's literally me and the Assistant Manager taking care of the store. We are supposed to set up the store the way the company says to in the books with those pretty pictures, or (as the people who do their jobs like to call it) the planogram. Me and the Assistant Manager are always going back behind the 3rd key and GM, moving the holiday stuff to the isle it is supposed to be put in because they put it on the other side of the store.
Our Assistant Manager is a hard worker, but has a bad attitude problem. One of those people who "tells you like it is". Now, I don't mind that but it is not a good thing to be a blunt ### towards co-workers and customers you don't get along with and get an attitude with anyone who doesn't make you laugh.
Everyone that works in that store knows I take great pride in my work and show great dedication to my job. If I see a planogram that needs to be done, I do it rather than just loaf around because "there is nothing to do". A few days ago, my assistant manager called me into the office saying that they're thinking of getting rid of me if I don't "straighten up". I ask her what she means and she said that I don't wear my name tag every day (forget the damn thing once and they make a big deal about it).
1- Says that the GM is mad because I did a couple end-cap planograms that he didn't give me permission to do. Aparently it is a bad thing to put christmas candy on an endcap that the company says it's supposed to be on, even though he told me to get as much of the christmas candy up as possible. I did my job on top of doing two endcaps with everything exactly as it was supposed to be.
2- Said that the 3rd key is saying she tells me to do stuff and I refuse to do it. She never told me to do anything except that one time when she told me to straighten the store, which I had just finished doing and no customers had come in since two hours earlier (we're located in a very dead location). So, since I was cashier, I went through the impulse area and rooted out all of the expired candy. Wanna guess how much of that candy was expired? Not even an exaduration: at least 90%. We had barely any candy up in the impulse area because someone finally combed through it. I found 3 Kit-Kats that have been expired since 200-freakin-5. I almost staggered back when I saw that mixed in with Kit-Kats that we just got on truck two days before. I let that be known and I'm still hearing about it as a bad thing I did. And whenever I do have nothing to do, I ask the manager on duty. They always only tell me to "Just straighten". That is the only thing they tell me to do, then they (aside from the Assistant Manager) don't talk to me the rest of the day.
3- The Assistant Manager claims she over-heard me complaining to a customer that I hadn't taken a break yet. Why the hell would I complain about not taking a break during a 4-hour shift where I was covering for an injured co-worker? I have pulled a 13-hour shift with just a 15-minute break before without complaining to anyone, and it was my decision to stay. I didn't have to, but I wanted to because I didn't want to ditch my store with just one person working there. Especially since we are in a crap area with bad crime.
4- I came in sick earlier last week, but called in and asked if I could do stocking since that needed to be done so I can stay completely active and work myself out of being ill. My productivity didn't even waver, despite being sick. Now I'm getting criticized for coming in sick because of the fact that I didn't want to call off work at the last second when one associate was just fired for stealing and the other had already called in sick. (So it was just me and the 3 keys)
5- She says is also claiming she hears a lot of crap about the store, mostly about me. Our entire customer base is consisted of nothing but regulars. I know every customer by name and they know me by name. Many have said that they shop there because they know I will be working. They even know my car and some only show when my car is in that lot. So I know it can't be crap coming from customers, so it must be co-workers.

The assistant manager and I specifically stated that "I am not telling you as your boss, I'm telling you as your friend. If you don't straighten up, you they will get rid of you". Why the hell is it that they are wanting to get rid of me? It seems the only reason they're wanting to get rid of me is because I do my job and actually know what I'm doing, unlike the GM and especially the 3rd key. I seriously have to not do my job in order to keep my damn job?

This is my complaint against the dollar general store in my area! I usually visit this store several times a week and now have decided to never ever go there again. Everytime I go I have to wait for several minutes before I can find an employee to ring up my items and when they do show up it's due to the fact that I have to whistle or run around and try to find someone to help me. Then they are rude and disrespectful toward me because I am there and they to do something. Several people usually are lined up before service is available.
Also I have witnessed rude and unexceptable behaviour toward the hispanic race, as if these employees do not like and just don't have time to wait on them, i'm a white woman and not hispanic and still find it to be disgusting how these people are treated in public! Hopefully someone will see this and do something about this store! Oh and for the old lady that works there that makes rude comments to customers and asks personal questions that should not be asked, she should be fired for this behaviour!

I've not been employed with the company very long, and while I am still employed I have noticed more than a few things that send warnings off in my head. We are insanely short staffed, when I began my job I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they had no employees. The managers of the store I work at were more than polite as was the other Cashier, however thing's have began to reveal themselves to me slowly.

1. If you dare complain about the company ( I.E. Not getting breaks when you are meant to they will find any logical reason they can to let you go.)
2. Open packages within the store, If Loss Prevention notices them before you happen to, they will let you go with the accusation that you are the source.
3. If you are lucky enough to get a break, and happen to be stuck in a line and open you're drink before paying, they will let you go regardless on if you pay for it after the fact.
4. Customer is always right, it doesn't matter if you've caught them stealing or not.

I have had my life threatened more than once while working at this establishment and each time it is brushed off with the " The customer is right" alway's trailing in tow.

We have Outside management because the original management has been let go, with no real logical reasoning behind it of course.

I am really at a loss on what to do.

I've been working for Dollar General for nearly two years now. I've put my blood, sweat, and tears into this job (litterally). From the moment I applied for this job to the present I've been abused. It all started with my first store manager. She hired me in November of 2007 but wouldn't let me start until January of 2008. And never informed me of health benefits even when I asked. She finally told me that I was eligable for Cigna. But ofcoarse, by that time, I was no longer eligable. She had told me too late. I had to wait six months for Blue Cross Blue Shield. When I finally was eligable for that the insurance company tells me my supervisor would have to make me full time. She was no where to be found. Then she requests that I transfer with her to a Dollar General in Gallatin. I agree to it and still, she was no where to be found. I was working in a strange place with strange people and I wanted to go back but they had replaced me. Then, my manager resigns in a text message over night. I was alone. And wasn't even in the system yet.

Weeks later we finally get a new store manager. I ask her to make me full time and she does so without hesitation. I liked her. She seemed like a good person. That was until a year later (now) she has my salary at the new mininum wage (7.25) even though I've been working there for nearly two years. I'm a very valued employee. I close every single night. I am the best compared to the rest and she treats me like ###. I called her and from the moment she answered the phone she had a tone with me. I told her that I appreciated the raise (I was expecting a raise at the time) going from 7.05 to 7.25 but that only got me up to the minimum wage. I told her that I had two raises prior and was expecting another and that my salary should be around 8 dollars. She freaked and said no. She said something like the Federal Goverment won't allow her to do that and that she has no power over my salary. That was a lie right there. Every idea/ attempt to being justified here has been destroyed. I can't do anything about this so I'm complaining.

The day manager in this store is ver rude. She argues over advertisements which are clearly stated. One time my daughter spilled a little bit of pop on the floor in the store. I couldn't find anyone to report it to. Shortly after the manager and another employess were making a big deal out if it and were loudly pointing out my girls. They were saying, "there are the girls, wheres the pop?" They made my friend and I feel so uncomfortable. I had to hide the pop on the shelf because I thought they were going to search my cart. I will never go back in there again!

I recently took their on-line “survey” and consider such a survey a joke as only one question was used. The question concerned about the satisfaction I felt while shopping at your establishment. A survey that includes only one question does not supply you with a large enough population to accurately measure results with any certainty.
While I was checking out, the cashier asked me to donate to the Literacy Fund with some of my loose change. Who are they attempting to con here, I just checked their web-site and there is nothing supported within 25 miles of my community concerning any type of Literacy Program Grant from Dollar General Stores. The stores were founded in 1939 by Cal Turner in Scottsville, Kentucky. Turner was illiterate and later created a Literacy Fund which helps people learn to read; the fund is supposed to donate computers and books to local schools and libraries.
I suggested that instead of asking for more donations from areas that they do not support, that they support the communities that do support the Literacy Fund such as mine. I do not feel that I should support other communities as I keep my purchases within my local community and do not make donations to be used in other areas.

This is apparently a corporate initiative that the we the consumer is supposed to support. Dollar General Corporate does not support all local areas as evidenced by their 2009 Dollar General Literacy Foundation Adult and Family Literacy Grant Recipients report. So the next time I am asked for loose change at the check out process I will lay my purchase down and demand a refund due to their inflexible corporate policies concerning the generosity of their customers. I reminded them not forget the current economy is tight and the donations that they grew to rely on in the past are shrinking, and that they get used to this current economic situation and deal with the economic pressures exerted on everyone.

Dollar General should be grateful that some people actually do donate to this program. I strongly suggested that a sign on the collection container would meet their requirements much better as most do not like to be asked to donate and will leave without leaving anything, but a silent request made by a sign can gather more donations than the cashiers requesting donations from every customer, thereby slowing down the checkout process making other customers dissatisfied with the checkout process. I also suggested that they re-write their corporate policy on this, as the current corporate policy and practice is severely lacking in actual practice by the local manger at the Dollar General.

In closing I expect to see revisions to this policy within the next few weeks or my patronage at the local Dollar General will cease. I really doubt that they really care but who knows maybe this complaint can make a difference.

I bought a swiffer wet jet starter kit for $20 at my local dollar general where I shop frequently. When I got it home I realized it was used, broken, and didn't have the cleaning solution or pads. So I took it back immediatly with my reciept. All I wanted was a new one. The cashier was more than willing to do it for me, but the assistant manager on duty accused me of breaking it and then trying to get a new one. He made me come back 1/2 hour later to speak to the general manager. I went back and the manager accused me of the same thing! I told him I bought it off his shelf just like it was. He insisted on checking the survalence video! He came back and still after seeing me in the store with my son earlier that day buy it right off the shelf, didn't believe me! He did give me a new one but refused to give me my money back and wrote on the receipt not to return it without seeing him. I was treated like a thief and highly insulted all because they had a broken product on thier shelf! I will never shop there again and have told everyone I know to do tha same!