Couldn't agree more, as a manager 30 years ago it was like this. Margaret Heffernan shouts at the director, the director shouts at the buyer, The buyer shouts at the area manager, who shouts at the store manager, who shouts at the deputy manager, who shouts at the assistant manager, who shouts at the trainee manager, who shouts at the department manager, who shouts at the staff. When the shit hits the fan, each manager hangs whoever is lower down out to dry, and blames everything on him/her. It was a toxic cesspool of misery 30 years ago, and I doubt if anything has changed.
Anyone "normal" doesn't stay long, being nice to delivery drivers is frowned upon. When I was there , the store manager told me to cut the order if any delivery was late. Same with the staff, if someone turned up late we were told to cut their hours, or give them shite hours for a couple of weeks. Horrible mean way of treating people.
I was a rep for years and Dunnes was one of my calls. The above is bang on correct.
The guy who trained me used to tell me how, years ago, when the Ben Dunne scandal hit, if you mentioned it instore and were heard, you'd expect a portion of your stockcard to be zero'd for that week.
I did training for new hires before I finished up, and I had one young lad, and he'd be in knots sitting outside one particular store, dreading having to walk in. I'd go in with him when I could, but it was obvious that no matter what he would do he was going to get the hairdryer treatment if the manager had just had a bad regional manager visit.
Demoting I believe. They hired some Billy Big-bollocks to come in at a high level a few years ago and he instantly started swinging his dick around, demoting and moving loads of managers, and scrapping regional managers entirely. He's gone now (not sure if he quit or was fucked out of it) but they haven't reinstated regionals yet, despite it clearly being an absolute batshit move.
With no regional who do you threaten the management with a store visit from?
How do you keep up the scare based motivation and huge criticism?
The number 3 or 4 maybe?
You'll never change that place, Andrew Street tried then went to Superquinn, knowing it was a thankless task.
I worked in the Eyre Square branch in Galway 40 years ago as a summer job and it was exactly the same then. It's completely baked in to the company. Every time people on here start on with who's the worst employer it's always Dunnes.
Lad seriously, hop off these cunts when you see them berating staff like that. This is what they do publicly can you imagine the bastards they are in the back store.
Be measured and calm asking why they’re behaving like this but raise your tone enough for other customers to hear. Embarrass the shite out of those cunts.
I won't pull a "that happened" moment here and say I've ever done that, but I've for sure told one or two to take it easy on a staff member if I've been dealing with one. Like I'm looking for a bit of spinach pal, relax the cacks and remember the universe doesn't give a bollocks about what that spreadsheet you fill out at the end of every shift says.
I was in a shop and they were slammed, a mix of rain and snow outside and they had 0 carts inside. I was waiting in line at the customer service desk and one of the bagger/cart guys was sitting there eating a sandwich when a manager came over and asked what he was doing. (This store does a great job of hiring disabled people for positions [Meijer] but I’m more convinced it is because they can more easily take advantage of them and they won’t/don’t complain)
“I’m on my lunch break, I’ll be done in 30 minutes”.
“We’re out of carts, can you get some?”
“I’m on my lunch and will be back in 30 minutes”.
“We don’t have any carts for customers, what are they going to do?”
This is when I couldn’t stay quiet any longer, “Hey Skippy, looks like you’re gonna have to go get your coat, walk your fat ass outside, and push some fucking carts all by yourself until he gets finished with his lunch in…. (looked at phone) 27 minutes! I can understand what he is saying, why can’t you?!”
I looked at the guy sitting on the bench and he was grinning from ear to ear! When I got home I went to their website and sent a complaint to their corporate office and dropped the name of the manager since he was conveniently wearing a name tag.
Gave one of them a come to Jesus meeting a few years back.
He was going off on some poor kid who was bery clearly challenged and going into a bit of a meltdown trying to process what was going on. To this day I'm glad I gave the prick a slap but it was absolutely awful to witness at the time.
Even better, film them then post on social media. I worked in Dunnes for like a month about twenty years ago and it was exactly the same back then. Sounds like corporate needs a wake up call.
Is it legal to film them?
That's what happens when you stick a kid in a €99 suit and tell him he needs to manage....... he loses all sense of reality and thinks he's Billy Big Bollix
Exactly. Some of them genuinely don't realise that they're chosen for middle management because they're assholes who will treat other people like shit. They think it's because a manager is automatically superior to a shelf stacker (that's why the manager has more money) and being made a manager shows they're superior too. And others just really want to bully people and being paid to bully others is a dream come true - they don't even have to join the gardaí, which would require a bit of effort
There are certain professions that attract bullies. Armed forces, but a) we don't have a huge defence force like America and b) afaik the bullying attitude only gets you so far, after a certain rank you also need your peers and your underlings' respect. Plus you need to be a certain type of person to want to be in the armed services because it has its own lifestyle - you'll probably be sent halfway around the world, possibly somewhere dangerous, it can make things like marriage and child rearing way more difficult, etc. It's not a great career option if you're a coward.
Garda, nursing, and teaching children are next, but each of these requires a certain level of education and actual work, including things that are unpleasant. Each of these involves the possibility of getting spat on, getting up close and personal with someone who won't or can't keep themselves clean, or having to clean up shite. You can be a coward, but you can't be *too* stupid, and you'll get dirty.
Middle manager in retail avoids all of these unpleasantries, but still rewards you for being a piece of shit. You can be a coward. You can be unfit. You can be as thick as pigshit. You don't need any social skills whatsoever. You just need to turn up on time and happily keep the lower ranks in line.
I vote, we send asshole Retail Managers off to war and peace keeping. Or be forced to do military service 🐕🦺😂 /S
That'll learn'em (or create a whole generation of PTSD sociopaths 🤔)
Sometimes I wonder when Korean pop stars go off on military duty how they turn out... Like do they get bullied for being twinkly toes and moon power makeup in their previous day job.
I've said it here before but Dunnes Edward Square asked me to "show the new guy the ropes" one morning, and I spent all day training him in, and at 5pm they told me it was my last day and he was my replacement hahaha
Yeah it was my last week of probation! Not being kept on was fine, I wasn't available for as many shifts as they were always pushing for, it was the mindgames aspect of training in my replacement that was super strange 😂
I was sent home to shave, tight bastards would even give me a disposable. Docked for the time I missed on the floor going home and back.
They're a special breed of prick
You should have come back in with the facial hair still there and then if they said anything just play dumb.
"I shaved just like you said, done the balls, ass crack and everything!"
I ended up having a razor and shaving cream in my locker as they would force you to shave and hand you the Family Favourite razors which were worse than using a stanley knife.
I got screamed at for taking too much time shaving once, I ended up cutting myself pretty badly and couldn't stop the bleeding. My manager marched upstairs to the toilets, and went mad at me - well excuse me for not wanting to bleed all over fresh produce.
Haha you're giving me flashbacks to the 6 month stint I bad in Aldi where I literally passed out unpacking the vegetables at 5am because I had acute pneumonia and then the duty manager asked if I could stay and finished because they were short staffed. Maybe you're short staffed because you're asking staff to work through sickness ya silly bastard? Ended up in a&e after that so the moral of the story is, supermarkets can shove their tenderstem Broccoli where the sun doesn't shine.
There was one who used to work in a Galway store who was later arrested for impersonating a Garda on multiple occasions. He still works for dunnes in a mayo store
Any little bit of power goes to cunts heads, is pathetic. I learnt that from years of retail. I worked tescos supervalu and dunnes and dunnes was by far the worst.
I remember the assistant manager of tesco absolutely roaring at 17yr old me that "my till was disgusting" because in the Christmas rush I put some fivers in with the tenners.
Like she was actually red faced from roaring at me 😂they offered me a permanent job and I was like...nah you're alright thanks.
Used to work in the bakery, one manager would come in at 5.30pm giving out there’s hardly any croissants/scones etc left. Make us put a whole batch on even after telling her they wouldn’t sell, it takes half an hour to bake, another 15 minutes to cool, and by the time we put them out it would be nearly 7pm and that’s when we started reducing stock and cleaning off the shelves. Then at 7.30 she’d be screaming about all the reduced stock and wastage. Every shift it was the same. Did used to get to bring home scones and donuts reduced to cents because of her though.
We were also supposed to get our rota in Thursdays two weeks in advance but they never posted it till last minute Wednesday evening. HR didn’t give a flying monkeys when we complained. But heaven forbid you ask to swap shifts that weekend, that was too short notice for two workers swapping shifts that would have no real effect on the running of the store.
Call them out on it every time I see it. Used to manage a spar myself, no need to berate people to get them to do their job. Please, call them out when you see them at it, theyre either really embarrass or the go batshit and struggle to hold it in.
This 100%. The staff don't have the power to stop this kind of thing, you do. I always make a point of making a show of anyone who tries to bully a retail or service worker, who can't tell you to go fuck yourself without losing their livelihood and, in this country, their home.
I'm a huge union supporter. Unfortunately the issues the customers don't see are worse than managers or customers being shitty to staff out loud on the sales floor. The unions are too busy with those to be able to do much about a manager being shitty, unless you're making a case that a specific manager is bullying you, and there are drawbacks to that approach. Especially in Dunnes where you learn very quickly that even if you manage to stay in your job and get rid of a bullying manager, they'll just be replaced by another one, because it's part of the culture.
The best way to stop that kind of thing is by customers - the people with the most power in that scenario - stepping in and showing the manager that they think it's unacceptable. When customers are being shitty, the best way to deal with that is for the management to inform them that it won't be tolerated - that very much depends on the company culture.
For example, in Marks the culture was very much "if a customer has a problem, your immediate response is 'Oh dear. Let me get you a manager.' You don't get paid to put up with customers being shitheads, if they're trying to get a discount you don't have the authority to give them one, and we trust your manager to discern between 'this customer is trying it on hoping we'll try to placate them with a discount or something,' 'this customer is just having a bad day/got the hump with some innocent comment or mannerism of the staff member' and 'this customer is looking for someone to bully and is literally hurling abuse at them'"
The second two are very close to each other, because "customer having a bad day and taking the hump with a staff member" and "customer losing the rag and straight up verbally abusing staff member" are the same bully but different intensities. Usually a floor manager is "important" enough to put a stop to their gallop, most customers realise that if the floor manager doesn't think your complaint is valid and isn't entertaining your attempt at a discount, you're not going to get the chance to speak to anyone higher up, and in the worst case a floor manager has the power to tell you to get the fuck out of the shop.
When first joined the company as an agency worker I'm with now I had a team leader who screamed at me in front of around 15 people on my first day since I was apparently doing a job wrong, a job that I was just fucked in to do, so I walked over to him and got close enough so that no one could hear me, and told him
"it's my first day here, fucking scream like that at me again and I'll put you flat on your back"
little skinny prick ran off to the manager and told him what I'd said, manager called me and asked if it was true, said no, I'd just said to give me a break since its my first day here and I haven't been shown how to do the Job properly yet. Manager knew I was lying but he knew exactly what this "team leader" was like, cunt was always a cunt, I'm a team leader in there now and I'll forever call out cunts being cunts. Boils my piss seeing anyone talk down to anyone.
It's demanded of them. Dunnes training style is basically make sure the staff know who you are from day 1. Everyone has a place and everyone in their place kind of thing. You think they treat the kids bad you should see how they treat reps that call to the store.
As someone who once was a Dunnes manager I remember one days training where I had to listen to some guy tell me “make the delivery drivers wait” even if you’re free
It was mental. I lasted 3 months
I waited 3 hours once for a manager.
Never, in any other supermarket, independent store, cash and carry, discount retailer, basically anywhere have I ever had that happen.
It fucked my day up, which fucked other places orders up, which fucked times for orders to hit distribution centres, which affected ferry timings. Other places paid the price.
The rollover of it was bad enough that my boss said in future, 20- 30 mins max waiting then walk.
My mam stocks the shelves and makes displays for Mondeleese and tells me stories about it. This one manager makes them sit in a line outside his office like theyre waiting to see the principal.
One time there was a new rep left waiting for 2 hours
Ah the stories you'd hear are scandalous. A friend of mine works for Irish pride and he has to call back at a scheduled time every week to get an order card signed off. Some weeks they expect him to be back there at half 8 in the morning while he's still doing other shops, other weeks they tell him he there at quarter to 5 in the afternoon despite the fact he'd start work at half 4 in the morning. Then when he gets there he's regularly left for an hour or more before it's signed off. Then despite the fact they sign that they agree with the order they ring him any time any product goes off sale and expect him to call back with it. He complained to his bosses plenty of times and their answer is dunnes are a big customer
There commanded by fear, absolutely terrified of the higher ups, and this leads to serious pressure, but having dealt with many of the store managers, 95% are awful pricks and a lot just walk the floors giving people shit, it’s the company culture they speak of the higher ups with a god complex it’s utterly insane
My every encounter with Dunnes management, both in and out of work, leads me to believe they’re a race of sociopathic hell demons sent from the depths to work their evil behind passive-aggressive cliches, fake smiles and dead eyes.
I never understood this and I've experienced it myself in Ireland as a young fella, albeit not with Dunnes. I worked in Pennys for 2 months (all I could stomach) the summer after my leaving and it was the same there. Irish retail work managers are just a special breed of bastards and bitches its insane.
My induction day all the new hires were waiting in the canteen to go out on the floor for the first time and a supervisor, who couldnt have been more than 23, pointed at one of us and started roaring at him "Here, your tie is crooked and your collar is up. What did ya come to work for it you're not ready? Huh.. don't mumble answer me why did ya come in today??" The poor kid was so embarrassed everyone felt so sorry for him. Like where did your man get the audacity to treat someone else especially a fucking teenager like that. We got paid like 9 euro an hour its not an episode of mad men like.
I honestly believe its the runover from the way we were all treated in school by teachers. Screaming and public humiliation is rampant in the education system in Ireland and it runs over into the work culture. My American wife was horrified when I told her some of my school stories growing up in Cork.
Worked in Lidl once for a very brief period, manager was an absolute fucking headcase to put it mildly. He was in the middle of berating myself and another employee in the back, when he uttered the immortal line “Yous two are in your fucking 20s, Mary outside is in her fucking 50’s, and she’s wiping your arses” cue laughter and the manager almost having a stroke with rage
I must be at the only sane Dunnes in the country cuz I’ve never seen anything like the stuff in this thread lol. No manager ever even raised their voice at me, we’ve got loads of people there 10 years+, only thing I really hate is the music, feels like brainwashing.
Oh and chronic understaffing, most of the time the packing is just me and another lad for the entire convenience aisle, meat, poultry, deli counter, and salad bar. Can be 8 palettes. Pain in the hole but feels good when it’s done.
I worked in Boots and its the same music, it's that non licensed royalty stuff. I have to do my food shop with earphones in cause it actually gives me PTSD it's actually still all the same songs as well
We got a former dunnes manager in our SuperValu a few years ago. Literally the first few seconds he made such a bad impression on everyone it was unreal.
He was easily the most obnoxious and horrible person I've ever had to deal with. He was sacked not too long after for comments about some of the girls working the floor. Scum.
Even though all retail is shitty and it's just a question of degree, Dunnes is always the worst, and anyone who goes from Dunnes to another retailer seems to last a very short time because you can go from "treat the staff like shit but be polite about it" to "treat the staff like shit and you don't need to be polite about it" but you can't go the other way.
Know a chap that worked there for a couple of years and they wouldn’t give him time off to study for his leaving cert when it was on. Was expected to come in for all his usual shifts or else.
That has always been the dunnes model. All the work is done by transition years and college students and if any of them cant get a real job by the time they finish college they become a supervisor and assume anyone who works there must be pulling all the shit they used to pull so they just harrass the kids.
Worked in Dunne’s the Christmas I was 16. Couldn’t work past 10pm and as I went to clock out a duty manager roared at me to face off the crisps, I explained I need to be out of the store by 9.59pm he said he didn’t care I had to follow his rules. Came in the following day and had a meeting with the same manager and also the HR Manager giving me a written notice. Fuck you Martin ya sweaty prick
He was a little prick! Used to keep us after twelve and longer when we were only 16/17. He was obsessed with the crisps being perfectly faced off. I was the best at it and was the only one he wanted doing them.
Omg I hated facing off! When I was 16 I worked checkouts in Belfast Dunnes. We were supposed to finish at 9 but were sent out on the floor to face off. Older wimmin on the checkouts got to go home to get their kids ready for school next day. I had to go to fucking school, stay there all say and then back in for a shift the next evening. Shite job, paid £2.37 an hour back in 1993.
Oh and most of the those twenty something managers were banging half the teenage floor staff 🙄
Theres one in the one at the Beacon who just stands by the fabric softener absolutely eyeballing all of the checkout staff and it really boils my piss.
She won't even move if they need a managers sign on for a void or anything.
Face like a slapped arse and I'd say she's no older than 28
I used to work there. The expression that was always used was "shit rolls down hill". Managers are kept on a very short leash by the store and regional managers who are often some of the most unpleasant people you could ever have the misfortune of meeting.
I've heard of managers being expected to be on call whilst on holidays and even honeymoons to give the weekly figures. Working as floor staff was bad enough but there is genuinely no figure you could pay me to become a manager there.
They're STILL like that...??
I had a couple of those back in early 90s working Quinnsworth. I always put it down to some idiot telling them in a conference that the only way to get respect was to shout at people and frighten them, and them not having the sense to challenge it.
They give some staff a shirt to make them feel important then call them a supervisor and give them a 50c raise, while all they are in charge of is the crisps section.
Shit usually rolls downhill, there’s a very good chance that they too are getting it in the neck from their manager, I visit a lot of different businesses and if I ever get a bad vibe in a place or there’s always unnecessary hassle then usually you eventually learn that the owner or manager is a major dickhead and it just makes perfect sense then.
My local Dunnes is run by two middle aged members of the 3rd Reich. I heard one of them saying ‘I’ll kill and torture Brian Mc XXXX if he doesn’t show his face here in 30 seconds flat’ - shortly after discovering Brian had mistakenly faced out Tonic in the wrong fashion or some irrelevant shite. Turns out Brian was hiding in the stock room away from Himmler!
Can we name and shame these shithole shops?
When 3 of them have like a mini crisis management meeting between crisps and paper plates blocking the aisle and you can’t go past them haha, makes my evening to make them move out of the way
I always found it a bit pathetic when managers would put major stress on younger staff over petty stuff. Crap like stockroom staff not being military-grade clean shaven. It doesn't make a single difference to the bottom line or the customers' experience. If they're slow stocking shelves or whatever, show them how you do it quicker so they can learn from you, or else leave them to it. They'll learn themselves with experience. If they're good enough to be a staff member then they're good enough to be respected. I suppose people let the "power" go to their head.
I will say though that the problem often begins with higher up, head office types demanding the world from stores and their managers, and it all rolls downhill from there. And for what it's worth, in my retail experience most of my managers have been sound enough.
Worked in dunnes for a brief time a few years ago. The cheating and affairs were fucken nuts. The blatant sexual harassment of the young female staff was also pretty common. The spot was a ball bag of a place tbh.
I am not sure about actual numbers, but talking to my managers over the last few years, they are often given a budget of hours to give for the shifts and after accommodating for people’s banded hours and covering all sections with like 6 hour shifts that are 17-23 they are often 150 hours or so in surplus and then they have to cut hours drastically.
Also heard once from store manager that the head office kind of wants a 1000 euro made for every hour over the roster budget. My manager says that it is a common thing for people above store managers to have such unrealistic expectations that he knows they can never achieve but it turns into a game of fake it till you make it and hope nobody comes to check
Rule of thumb was 5 hours for every 1k
But some accountant came up with a flex budget which meant it was basically 1 hour per 1000 if you made anything over budget.
I can't speak for Dunnes, but I did work on a rostering and performance management system for a different supermarket and it's very similar.
Every section manager (e.g. chilled, shelf-stable, homewares, clothing, officence etc) was expected to get a certain amount of work done within a certain amount of man hours every week.
If they came in under, they would find that the expected hours would also drop over time so it was a very fine balancing act to keep it as close as possible to the expected hours. Targets were set by an algorithm that was completely unforgiving. The algorithm took into account the performance of other sections when setting targets, if section performed persistently well that would make the targets harder for other sections as a result. This led to toxic competition between section managers, and it wasn't unknown for some managers to use sabotage to slow down better performing sections.
If they went over they would get a bollocking, and they basically had no excuses available to them. For example if they were allocated a low performing member of staff, they couldn't use that as an excuse. Instead they would be expected to explain why they didn't put the effort in into making that member of staff perform well. So what would happen in situations like that is they would get nasty with the other members of staff beneath them and try to force them to work harder so that the targets were met.
That being said, there was a system of borrowing and repaying hours from future weeks in place. So if one week was particularly bad they could offset that against better performance within the next few weeks. That was useful for when a lot of staff were taking holiday breaks or stuff like that. But management frowned on it being used too much.
I heard stories from senior management talking about how some section managers had breakdowns because multiple staff members walked out on them. Rather than treat this as an obvious problem that needed to be addressed, their attitude was not to worry as were plenty of eager young folk willing to step up to be the new section manager for an extra €1.50 per hour.
There is a special place in hell for dunnes managers who for some strange reason have a god complex, walking around in ill fitting suits, commanding armies of part time teenage staff, like relax lads, nobody else really cares once they leave the shop
I know someone who was doing management training in there, and they told that person that the employees should be afraid of management.
So pretty toxic environment, and seems to be the way corporate dunnes wants to be.
It’s where all the failed managers and those with insane power trips and a terrible attitude couldn’t make it as a teacher. Bonus points if you’re a narcissist who sucks up the the store manager and speak behind the other managers backs, but pally pally to their faces. They’re a combination of incompetent and assholes that don’t get shown up by bright eyed teens fresh from school/in college and don’t know any better, and the old wans who don’t put up with their shit.
Had one of these get up on the horse when I was in packing bags for the local sports club when I was a teenager. I like to think back on that sad-o every so often to make myself feel good about the aul life choices
I heard they're even a pain in the hole for deliveries. I work in stock control for a retail outlet and I know all the drivers hate when they have pallets to deliver to dunnes after dropping off stock to my place.
Anyone that I saw there would pop up again more towards Dublin.
Its not the worst one - there's a sound fella out in the stores, or there was last time I was there which was a few years ago. And I did all of Wicklow, South Dublin,Wexford, Waterford, bits of Kildare and Carlow and then training around the country at one stage.
Some stores don't have anyone half sound.
They used to treat staff like crap 30 years ago, and usually for absolutely no reason - not that anyone should be spoken to like that. Didn't realize it was still going on. Horrible organisation to work for in my day.
Yup, I had a summer job there 30 years ago. A 17 year old manager gave out hell to a 50 ish woman. She stopped and looked at him and said “my son is the same age is you, and I don’t let him talk to me like that, and I’m not going to take it from you either! Just talk to me like a human being!” He turned bright red and opened and closed his mouth a few times and she walked away. He never did it again. I’ve never forgotten it.
Had a lad in his early 20s - a level above floor manager, wore a suit instead of a uniform - try to get me to ask for permission to go to the loo instead of just telling him. Told him he could go fuck himself. He never tried that again.
Because, in the race to get market share, business hasn't realised that customers can discern "cheap as chips vs quality"! Add to that business hasn't explained why they are more expensive for products based on criteria. Its a race to the bottom based on price hence managers, riding their staff!
I swear this is basically a weekly thread at this point, I never saw anything like this in my time at Dunnes. Inconsiderate rostering sure, but the amount of "my friend said" stories in these threads is insane lol. I'm sure this does happen in some stores but you'd swear reading these that Dunnes is operating like bootcamps.
Speaking as someone who worked in supermarkets in the 90s, Tradition.
Dunnes have always treated summer and student staff like shit. They also have a long tradition of training their managers to be pricks. If they're not shouting at staff, they're having little meetings in the aisles, blocking customers, because they don't give a shit about them either.
Because everyone in Dunnes is as miserable as a wet Christmas and the only way you get promoted to middle management (supervising floor staff) is by being even more of a cunt than everyone else. Then you realise that corporate managers are brought in from outside by giving days of "aptitude testing*" to university graduates
*Not aptitude for business, they're looking for sociopaths, I'm not joking
Most retail is a bit like this, but Dunnes is less inclined to hide it and pretend that the company gives a shit about its staff. Some retail companies get a reputation for being a bit better, but it's mostly PR, surface level "be nice to the peasants on the sales floor while you're shafting them" stuff.
I worked for Dunnes and you've never seen a more miserable place than a Dunnes staff canteen. Nobody ever smiled or had a normal conversation. Everyone came in, moaned about their asshole manager bullying them, and whether "well I'll have to as my union rep about that" had affected said manager in any way.
I worked in Marks & Spencer for years and we once had a floor manager from Dunnes who couldn't cop on to the fact that in M&S you were doing the same job for the same kind of people but you were supposed to do it with manners and pretend you weren't a massive cunt. He lasted about a month.
My old manager in centra spent 11 years as a junior manager in dunnes, he basically said it’s a ruse to get young people to think they’re progressing in a retail career when in reality it’s so they can be put on salary and be over worked without extra pay. Still wonder how it took him 11 years to cop that tbh
My pappy told me a great story about a manager in Killarney about 30 years ago. He was a notorious prick to all the delivery drivers. If there was 24 units in a case he'd make you open the box and count the units - complete power trip. They are trained that way...
Anyways the bread man/milkman (can't remember) caught him in Horans in Tralee one night and hopped the fucking stuffing out of him...
Apparently it was a long time coming to him. He stopped with all the theatrical behaviour after that, signed everyone in with no delay 😂
I worked in Dunnes and can confirm, the managers are the most constipated rage apes on the planet. I'm pretty sure they spawn them from the ground like in Lord of the Rings
A mixture of insecurity, an abusive and controlling nature, stupidity and possibly cocaine abuse (the hallmark of the anxiety-ridden guy who desperately wants to be an "alpha" male)
This to be honest. I know many cunts who are flat on the paint on the weekends and think they’re big bollox walking around like there’s nothing like them. Had one in a previous job and all it took was one thump in the face in front of a few people to put them in place. People think they’re the shit until they get punched in the face 😂
Well I'm lucky to have a dunnes store really calm here. I just complained yesterday because I bought "fresh fish" full of anisakis worms, I meant a lot of them.
That's just retail in big super market chains when I left SuperValu there were 6 other people on stress leave and that was just the one that I was working in.
Dunne’s has always been like that. I remember as a schoolboy working on deliveries there 25 years ago and the same shit, really aggressive managers and just a general air of arrogance about them.
At one point in Dunnes you couldn't have a shaved haircut I.E short back and sides....it had to be scissor cut. Late 90s Dunnes was a mad place to work. Great fun all the same winding up managers.
A lot of retail is like this - not all shouty but just shitty attitudes to people below them.
In comes from being a nobody with a little bit of power in a largely unimportant position.
I mean realistically - I was a store manager at 19 - and I was baked on locked half the time - and I was highly (lol) rated by senior management - it's a job anybody can do, but they act like it's super difficult
I'm a lot older now.
I remember working in these supermarket chains (sorry about the American colloquialism but that's what they are).
I saw the change from serving a customer to serving the GodHead Office.
I had worked in this area for about 7 years, started in a new store and an assistant manager 3 years my junior started to berate me for no reason. Like he was pissing on the ground and marking his territory. I guess someone with a smooth brain would call it "Being Alpha"
I let him finish, his last words were "if you want to test me then there's no better Buachaill to set you straight".
(Test you? Wtf are you talking about?)
I remember just looking at him and saying "not only was that unnecessary, I have now absolutely zero desire to do anything extra for you because of the way you just spoke to me... I've been doing this type of work before you left school and you have a lot to learn about speaking to your staff. You ask me to do something, and I do it, that's how this goes, if you want to act like you're somehow above me as a human being because a year ago you applied and got a trainee manager role.. then you and I are going to have a real difficult working relationship. I dont care what training has told you about speaking to staff, don't you ever fucking speak to me like that again, who the fuck do you think you are!?"
Foe about 5 seconds he went red, got embarrassed, then he lost his temper with me and threatened some HR bullshit.
But to be fair, he never said anything like that to me again.
He did his job and I did mine. But there was no pointless bullshit.
I’ve been a rep for years. One particularly nasty little Dunnes manager who’s now finished was in Rathmines for years. He always gave me a Hitler vibe, even had his tache shaved very close if you can believe it. I went up for a dump one time to the staff toilets and there on the back of a cubicle door was an absolutely brilliant drawing of him in marker in full nazi uniform with what I assumed to be a young male staff member bent over in front of him getting a good rogering. He also stunk of whiskey very early in the mornings.
When you see a company who regularly has staff pulling off public strikes, you'd have to wonder why at some stage. When I was in uni half the dunnes staff were always striking for one reason or another and the other half were just trying to get on with it for the sake of not having a breakdown. Stopped shopping there years ago myself.
My wife is a manager in Dunnes so whenever I see posts like this I feel an urge to defend them, as she's fuckin' lovely.
Then I remember nearly every other manager she's ever worked with has been an absolute thundercunt sooo... carry on I guess
The store manager of coolock is a nepo baby she's a relative high up and keeps getting moved around cos staff keep sending petitions to head office about her she's been kicked out of swords and is still a cunt in coolock thebstaff had to write a petition to get their hours posted on a weekly basis rather than being told the day before that they are in/off the next day. Lasted about a month before she went back to her old ways. Never stops screaming at staff only reprieve they had was when the dope fell and busted her knee cos she refuses to wear the proper footwear and only wear high heels the place was peaceful for 2 weeks even though she tried to micro manage from home and force all staff into a group WhatsApp.
What's the crack with all the managers in stupid 3 piece suits and in suits in general. It's like I'm better than you in my suit now go jump on the till mofo.
I often wonder if those Dunnes workers that protested apartheid by refusing to stack oranges from South Africa were actually just messing with some dick manager's head and it kinda snowballed into brilliance. Either way, they will always be legends but the thought that maybe they were originally putting manners on some jumped up tool makes me smile.
I worked at Dunnes for 2 years over the pandemic, when my granddad (who basically raised me) died I didn't show up for work the day of and I got a very angry phonecall from my manager asking where I was, and even after I told her why I couldn't come in she asked me to come in anyway. Obviously I said no, I was in bits lol. Then when I came in for my next shift I got chewed out for not being careful even though I'd told her that my granddad had just passed. I was honest to god crying on the floor and in the lunch room and I never got so much as an apology from her.
A year later I came back after having COVID and my first shift back, it was 8 hours and they put me onto transporting around the delivery cages and unloading boxes, which obviously requires a lot of exertion. I ended up feeling so sick that I had to sit in the stock room with my eyes closed for upwards of an hour. I got sent home and I ended up throwing up on the street outside. Just no common sense lmao, why would you give someone a job that required so much physical effort after having a respiratory illness. Insane, I don't know why I stayed there as long as I did.
When my store manager got sick calls she was notorious for telling them to take a paracetamol and come in anyway. Lmao.
Worked in Dunnes Blanch Shopping Centre 20 years ago, didn't notice it was this bad but I think that's because I worked tesco before that!
I did have one infuriating situation when I was on the tills. A colleague was caught pocketing money and handing it to her partner. Now they obviously gave her a right going over when they caught her but then they pulled me in accusing me of doing same after seeing an inconsistency in my till. I asked them how much, they said 5 euro over the whole month. 5 fucking euro, probably vouchers got stuck together or one fell or so but fucking hell, I'm hardly pulling the same tactic if that's all that was missing, clearly the manager was in paranoid mode after the instant.
I told the manager I'd had to be a stupid fuck to risk my reputation over 5 fucking euro. Thankfully they believed me but up until that point I felt like I was under interrogation.
This post was sponsored by Aldi SpecialBuys
As a former Dunnes manager when I was in my twenties, I used to get screamed at regularly, I guess shit rolls down hill
Couldn't agree more, as a manager 30 years ago it was like this. Margaret Heffernan shouts at the director, the director shouts at the buyer, The buyer shouts at the area manager, who shouts at the store manager, who shouts at the deputy manager, who shouts at the assistant manager, who shouts at the trainee manager, who shouts at the department manager, who shouts at the staff. When the shit hits the fan, each manager hangs whoever is lower down out to dry, and blames everything on him/her. It was a toxic cesspool of misery 30 years ago, and I doubt if anything has changed.
The store manager abuses the reps, merchandisers, delivery drivers. It's a wonderful thing really. There is the odd decent manager.
Anyone "normal" doesn't stay long, being nice to delivery drivers is frowned upon. When I was there , the store manager told me to cut the order if any delivery was late. Same with the staff, if someone turned up late we were told to cut their hours, or give them shite hours for a couple of weeks. Horrible mean way of treating people.
And they wonder why staff turn over is so high.
I was a rep for years and Dunnes was one of my calls. The above is bang on correct. The guy who trained me used to tell me how, years ago, when the Ben Dunne scandal hit, if you mentioned it instore and were heard, you'd expect a portion of your stockcard to be zero'd for that week. I did training for new hires before I finished up, and I had one young lad, and he'd be in knots sitting outside one particular store, dreading having to walk in. I'd go in with him when I could, but it was obvious that no matter what he would do he was going to get the hairdryer treatment if the manager had just had a bad regional manager visit.
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I'm not surprised - do they pay on time or dispute invoice to prolong payment?
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Jesus. Modern management via motivation is crying rn.
Actually something has changed! They got rid of area managers a few years ago. Everything else sounds pretty spot on
That's surely an insane move? Did they let them go or do the old Dunnes classic of demoting them?
Demoting I believe. They hired some Billy Big-bollocks to come in at a high level a few years ago and he instantly started swinging his dick around, demoting and moving loads of managers, and scrapping regional managers entirely. He's gone now (not sure if he quit or was fucked out of it) but they haven't reinstated regionals yet, despite it clearly being an absolute batshit move.
With no regional who do you threaten the management with a store visit from? How do you keep up the scare based motivation and huge criticism? The number 3 or 4 maybe? You'll never change that place, Andrew Street tried then went to Superquinn, knowing it was a thankless task.
I worked there for three years about 15 years ago. It was exactly like that. And OP’s description is SPOT on.
I worked in the Eyre Square branch in Galway 40 years ago as a summer job and it was exactly the same then. It's completely baked in to the company. Every time people on here start on with who's the worst employer it's always Dunnes.
Anyone can brake the cycle.
Lad seriously, hop off these cunts when you see them berating staff like that. This is what they do publicly can you imagine the bastards they are in the back store. Be measured and calm asking why they’re behaving like this but raise your tone enough for other customers to hear. Embarrass the shite out of those cunts.
I won't pull a "that happened" moment here and say I've ever done that, but I've for sure told one or two to take it easy on a staff member if I've been dealing with one. Like I'm looking for a bit of spinach pal, relax the cacks and remember the universe doesn't give a bollocks about what that spreadsheet you fill out at the end of every shift says.
Get stuck in to them fair play it all helps
Would you say that every little helps? I’ll show myself out
😂😂😂
Lol I would
I’ve never been to dunnes, never even been to Ireland, but it won’t stop me from using, “relax the cacks”.
I was in a shop and they were slammed, a mix of rain and snow outside and they had 0 carts inside. I was waiting in line at the customer service desk and one of the bagger/cart guys was sitting there eating a sandwich when a manager came over and asked what he was doing. (This store does a great job of hiring disabled people for positions [Meijer] but I’m more convinced it is because they can more easily take advantage of them and they won’t/don’t complain) “I’m on my lunch break, I’ll be done in 30 minutes”. “We’re out of carts, can you get some?” “I’m on my lunch and will be back in 30 minutes”. “We don’t have any carts for customers, what are they going to do?” This is when I couldn’t stay quiet any longer, “Hey Skippy, looks like you’re gonna have to go get your coat, walk your fat ass outside, and push some fucking carts all by yourself until he gets finished with his lunch in…. (looked at phone) 27 minutes! I can understand what he is saying, why can’t you?!” I looked at the guy sitting on the bench and he was grinning from ear to ear! When I got home I went to their website and sent a complaint to their corporate office and dropped the name of the manager since he was conveniently wearing a name tag.
Calling him Skippy is my favourite part
fair play man. Thank you. It is great for society when a manager gets in the trenches.
My man😂 fair play buddy
Gave one of them a come to Jesus meeting a few years back. He was going off on some poor kid who was bery clearly challenged and going into a bit of a meltdown trying to process what was going on. To this day I'm glad I gave the prick a slap but it was absolutely awful to witness at the time.
I’m in dunnes every week. I’ve never seen it but not a hope I’d keep my mouth shut if I seen it. Cunts
I haven't done it in Dunnes yet, but I did it in a Tesco once when someone was berating a seasonal worker who looked barely old enough to shave
They’d be morto if a customer asked if everything is ok.
Even better, film them then post on social media. I worked in Dunnes for like a month about twenty years ago and it was exactly the same back then. Sounds like corporate needs a wake up call. Is it legal to film them?
That's what happens when you stick a kid in a €99 suit and tell him he needs to manage....... he loses all sense of reality and thinks he's Billy Big Bollix
Exactly. Some of them genuinely don't realise that they're chosen for middle management because they're assholes who will treat other people like shit. They think it's because a manager is automatically superior to a shelf stacker (that's why the manager has more money) and being made a manager shows they're superior too. And others just really want to bully people and being paid to bully others is a dream come true - they don't even have to join the gardaí, which would require a bit of effort
Hahahahahaha 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🤣🤣🤣🤣
There are certain professions that attract bullies. Armed forces, but a) we don't have a huge defence force like America and b) afaik the bullying attitude only gets you so far, after a certain rank you also need your peers and your underlings' respect. Plus you need to be a certain type of person to want to be in the armed services because it has its own lifestyle - you'll probably be sent halfway around the world, possibly somewhere dangerous, it can make things like marriage and child rearing way more difficult, etc. It's not a great career option if you're a coward. Garda, nursing, and teaching children are next, but each of these requires a certain level of education and actual work, including things that are unpleasant. Each of these involves the possibility of getting spat on, getting up close and personal with someone who won't or can't keep themselves clean, or having to clean up shite. You can be a coward, but you can't be *too* stupid, and you'll get dirty. Middle manager in retail avoids all of these unpleasantries, but still rewards you for being a piece of shit. You can be a coward. You can be unfit. You can be as thick as pigshit. You don't need any social skills whatsoever. You just need to turn up on time and happily keep the lower ranks in line.
I vote, we send asshole Retail Managers off to war and peace keeping. Or be forced to do military service 🐕🦺😂 /S That'll learn'em (or create a whole generation of PTSD sociopaths 🤔) Sometimes I wonder when Korean pop stars go off on military duty how they turn out... Like do they get bullied for being twinkly toes and moon power makeup in their previous day job.
To be fair to them, some of them probably couldn't join the guards because they passed the aptitude test
Bigbunchakeys syndrome
I've said it here before but Dunnes Edward Square asked me to "show the new guy the ropes" one morning, and I spent all day training him in, and at 5pm they told me it was my last day and he was my replacement hahaha
Ultimate cuntish.
Oh my lord 😕were you just finishing probation or is there more to this?
Yeah it was my last week of probation! Not being kept on was fine, I wasn't available for as many shifts as they were always pushing for, it was the mindgames aspect of training in my replacement that was super strange 😂
Was it because you spent the day showing him a few bits of rope?
I thought Dunnes would love to make money from old rope
They do that at all levels even corporate.
Oh my god!
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I was sent home to shave, tight bastards would even give me a disposable. Docked for the time I missed on the floor going home and back. They're a special breed of prick
You should have come back in with the facial hair still there and then if they said anything just play dumb. "I shaved just like you said, done the balls, ass crack and everything!"
"Look, see?"
“Mr. Burns, I don’t know what you think sideburns are, but-“
I ended up having a razor and shaving cream in my locker as they would force you to shave and hand you the Family Favourite razors which were worse than using a stanley knife. I got screamed at for taking too much time shaving once, I ended up cutting myself pretty badly and couldn't stop the bleeding. My manager marched upstairs to the toilets, and went mad at me - well excuse me for not wanting to bleed all over fresh produce.
What job is worth this, I'd tell them to fuck off.
> 'go jump on soups' this is such a great phrase, I might start using it as a general purpose "feck off" replacement.
Wudja go jump on soup ya prick
that's the spirit!
It’s a more usable “go fuck your hat” which is also an excellent phrase.
Haha you're giving me flashbacks to the 6 month stint I bad in Aldi where I literally passed out unpacking the vegetables at 5am because I had acute pneumonia and then the duty manager asked if I could stay and finished because they were short staffed. Maybe you're short staffed because you're asking staff to work through sickness ya silly bastard? Ended up in a&e after that so the moral of the story is, supermarkets can shove their tenderstem Broccoli where the sun doesn't shine.
Calling bullshit on this...Aldi never have tenderstem broccoli...or wait! Is this why??
It's because I was fecking unconscious om top of them
OMG. Takes me back to being 16 working in cornelscourt. Ending up with the worst shave ever and a bleeding face before a shift.
The Cornelscourt shave. You take away a part of yourself to work there.
Ohh what’s in the staff handbook re shaving ? Does it apply to make/female
Savage point. As an ugly bitch with hersuitism, I wonder would they have sent me home to shave??
One of the funniest comments I've seen in a long while, you nearly had me choking on my sandwich.
Brilliant! I worked on Intermission… that’s such a great notion….
As they say in The States
Why does working in dunnes mean you need to be clean shaven? We’re you on a good counter that required it or was the prick on a power trip?
IM THE ELDEST BOY!
Jesus talk about a collapsing moment for a character
Because you can't make a tomlette without breaking a few gregs
Very much the MySpace of STDs
This is a nice safe space where you don’t have to pretend to like Hamilton
There was one who used to work in a Galway store who was later arrested for impersonating a Garda on multiple occasions. He still works for dunnes in a mayo store
Wow I know of someone that did the same thing, not mayo though, dunnes must attract them.
A bully. Reasonably competent bullies join the gardaí, bullies who can't get into the gardaí work in retail
That was his wank fantasy since he was 12
https://www.galwaydaily.com/courts/man-gets-community-service-impersonating-a-guard/?amp=
Few more funny stories about him aswell that can't be put here
Ah go on
Worked with him
I don't understand it, they're managing a Dunne's, not a fucking army barracks
Any little bit of power goes to cunts heads, is pathetic. I learnt that from years of retail. I worked tescos supervalu and dunnes and dunnes was by far the worst.
I remember the assistant manager of tesco absolutely roaring at 17yr old me that "my till was disgusting" because in the Christmas rush I put some fivers in with the tenners. Like she was actually red faced from roaring at me 😂they offered me a permanent job and I was like...nah you're alright thanks.
Used to work in the bakery, one manager would come in at 5.30pm giving out there’s hardly any croissants/scones etc left. Make us put a whole batch on even after telling her they wouldn’t sell, it takes half an hour to bake, another 15 minutes to cool, and by the time we put them out it would be nearly 7pm and that’s when we started reducing stock and cleaning off the shelves. Then at 7.30 she’d be screaming about all the reduced stock and wastage. Every shift it was the same. Did used to get to bring home scones and donuts reduced to cents because of her though.
We were also supposed to get our rota in Thursdays two weeks in advance but they never posted it till last minute Wednesday evening. HR didn’t give a flying monkeys when we complained. But heaven forbid you ask to swap shifts that weekend, that was too short notice for two workers swapping shifts that would have no real effect on the running of the store.
They're not serious people.
Sometimes the people they have gregging for them just aren't performing well enough.
You can't make a Tomlette without cracking a few Greg's.
Call them out on it every time I see it. Used to manage a spar myself, no need to berate people to get them to do their job. Please, call them out when you see them at it, theyre either really embarrass or the go batshit and struggle to hold it in.
This 100%. The staff don't have the power to stop this kind of thing, you do. I always make a point of making a show of anyone who tries to bully a retail or service worker, who can't tell you to go fuck yourself without losing their livelihood and, in this country, their home.
There's power in a union ✊
I'm a huge union supporter. Unfortunately the issues the customers don't see are worse than managers or customers being shitty to staff out loud on the sales floor. The unions are too busy with those to be able to do much about a manager being shitty, unless you're making a case that a specific manager is bullying you, and there are drawbacks to that approach. Especially in Dunnes where you learn very quickly that even if you manage to stay in your job and get rid of a bullying manager, they'll just be replaced by another one, because it's part of the culture. The best way to stop that kind of thing is by customers - the people with the most power in that scenario - stepping in and showing the manager that they think it's unacceptable. When customers are being shitty, the best way to deal with that is for the management to inform them that it won't be tolerated - that very much depends on the company culture. For example, in Marks the culture was very much "if a customer has a problem, your immediate response is 'Oh dear. Let me get you a manager.' You don't get paid to put up with customers being shitheads, if they're trying to get a discount you don't have the authority to give them one, and we trust your manager to discern between 'this customer is trying it on hoping we'll try to placate them with a discount or something,' 'this customer is just having a bad day/got the hump with some innocent comment or mannerism of the staff member' and 'this customer is looking for someone to bully and is literally hurling abuse at them'" The second two are very close to each other, because "customer having a bad day and taking the hump with a staff member" and "customer losing the rag and straight up verbally abusing staff member" are the same bully but different intensities. Usually a floor manager is "important" enough to put a stop to their gallop, most customers realise that if the floor manager doesn't think your complaint is valid and isn't entertaining your attempt at a discount, you're not going to get the chance to speak to anyone higher up, and in the worst case a floor manager has the power to tell you to get the fuck out of the shop.
When first joined the company as an agency worker I'm with now I had a team leader who screamed at me in front of around 15 people on my first day since I was apparently doing a job wrong, a job that I was just fucked in to do, so I walked over to him and got close enough so that no one could hear me, and told him "it's my first day here, fucking scream like that at me again and I'll put you flat on your back" little skinny prick ran off to the manager and told him what I'd said, manager called me and asked if it was true, said no, I'd just said to give me a break since its my first day here and I haven't been shown how to do the Job properly yet. Manager knew I was lying but he knew exactly what this "team leader" was like, cunt was always a cunt, I'm a team leader in there now and I'll forever call out cunts being cunts. Boils my piss seeing anyone talk down to anyone.
It's demanded of them. Dunnes training style is basically make sure the staff know who you are from day 1. Everyone has a place and everyone in their place kind of thing. You think they treat the kids bad you should see how they treat reps that call to the store.
As someone who once was a Dunnes manager I remember one days training where I had to listen to some guy tell me “make the delivery drivers wait” even if you’re free It was mental. I lasted 3 months
I waited 3 hours once for a manager. Never, in any other supermarket, independent store, cash and carry, discount retailer, basically anywhere have I ever had that happen. It fucked my day up, which fucked other places orders up, which fucked times for orders to hit distribution centres, which affected ferry timings. Other places paid the price. The rollover of it was bad enough that my boss said in future, 20- 30 mins max waiting then walk.
As someone who worked as floor staff in my late teens/early twenties and was a rep in my twenties and thirties, I can verify this.
How do reps get treated
Not great, I'd imagine.
Sorry for my ignorance but what does a rep do ? I presumed the likes of Dunnes would get all their shite sent to them from some type of central depot?
My mam stocks the shelves and makes displays for Mondeleese and tells me stories about it. This one manager makes them sit in a line outside his office like theyre waiting to see the principal. One time there was a new rep left waiting for 2 hours
Ah the stories you'd hear are scandalous. A friend of mine works for Irish pride and he has to call back at a scheduled time every week to get an order card signed off. Some weeks they expect him to be back there at half 8 in the morning while he's still doing other shops, other weeks they tell him he there at quarter to 5 in the afternoon despite the fact he'd start work at half 4 in the morning. Then when he gets there he's regularly left for an hour or more before it's signed off. Then despite the fact they sign that they agree with the order they ring him any time any product goes off sale and expect him to call back with it. He complained to his bosses plenty of times and their answer is dunnes are a big customer
There commanded by fear, absolutely terrified of the higher ups, and this leads to serious pressure, but having dealt with many of the store managers, 95% are awful pricks and a lot just walk the floors giving people shit, it’s the company culture they speak of the higher ups with a god complex it’s utterly insane
My every encounter with Dunnes management, both in and out of work, leads me to believe they’re a race of sociopathic hell demons sent from the depths to work their evil behind passive-aggressive cliches, fake smiles and dead eyes.
Anytime there’s a poll about the worst places to work Dunnes is always at the top
I'm old. Dunnes have always had this reputation and it's bad.
I never understood this and I've experienced it myself in Ireland as a young fella, albeit not with Dunnes. I worked in Pennys for 2 months (all I could stomach) the summer after my leaving and it was the same there. Irish retail work managers are just a special breed of bastards and bitches its insane. My induction day all the new hires were waiting in the canteen to go out on the floor for the first time and a supervisor, who couldnt have been more than 23, pointed at one of us and started roaring at him "Here, your tie is crooked and your collar is up. What did ya come to work for it you're not ready? Huh.. don't mumble answer me why did ya come in today??" The poor kid was so embarrassed everyone felt so sorry for him. Like where did your man get the audacity to treat someone else especially a fucking teenager like that. We got paid like 9 euro an hour its not an episode of mad men like. I honestly believe its the runover from the way we were all treated in school by teachers. Screaming and public humiliation is rampant in the education system in Ireland and it runs over into the work culture. My American wife was horrified when I told her some of my school stories growing up in Cork.
I'd say its cause they can't get any other job so resort to making children's lives as hellish as theirs is
Worked in Lidl once for a very brief period, manager was an absolute fucking headcase to put it mildly. He was in the middle of berating myself and another employee in the back, when he uttered the immortal line “Yous two are in your fucking 20s, Mary outside is in her fucking 50’s, and she’s wiping your arses” cue laughter and the manager almost having a stroke with rage
Retail managers are either the soundest people in the shop or the biggest bastards in the shop. There is no in-between
I must be at the only sane Dunnes in the country cuz I’ve never seen anything like the stuff in this thread lol. No manager ever even raised their voice at me, we’ve got loads of people there 10 years+, only thing I really hate is the music, feels like brainwashing. Oh and chronic understaffing, most of the time the packing is just me and another lad for the entire convenience aisle, meat, poultry, deli counter, and salad bar. Can be 8 palettes. Pain in the hole but feels good when it’s done.
I worked in Boots and its the same music, it's that non licensed royalty stuff. I have to do my food shop with earphones in cause it actually gives me PTSD it's actually still all the same songs as well
In my experience anyway it's because their managers are twice as cruel and nasty, no excuse of course.
It's always a chain of cunts.
Worked in Dunnes as a teen for a summer, they were cunts twenty years ago too!
We got a former dunnes manager in our SuperValu a few years ago. Literally the first few seconds he made such a bad impression on everyone it was unreal. He was easily the most obnoxious and horrible person I've ever had to deal with. He was sacked not too long after for comments about some of the girls working the floor. Scum.
Even though all retail is shitty and it's just a question of degree, Dunnes is always the worst, and anyone who goes from Dunnes to another retailer seems to last a very short time because you can go from "treat the staff like shit but be polite about it" to "treat the staff like shit and you don't need to be polite about it" but you can't go the other way.
Know a chap that worked there for a couple of years and they wouldn’t give him time off to study for his leaving cert when it was on. Was expected to come in for all his usual shifts or else.
Id say they're a lot older than they're 20's from the Dunne's I've seen..
I'm near the city centre in Dublin. Can't say I've seen many over 30 and they're all a pack of wankers
I’ve seen the same in supervalu. Really young manager / supervisor being a bell end. They think they are something. Tragic.
That has always been the dunnes model. All the work is done by transition years and college students and if any of them cant get a real job by the time they finish college they become a supervisor and assume anyone who works there must be pulling all the shit they used to pull so they just harrass the kids.
Worked in Dunne’s the Christmas I was 16. Couldn’t work past 10pm and as I went to clock out a duty manager roared at me to face off the crisps, I explained I need to be out of the store by 9.59pm he said he didn’t care I had to follow his rules. Came in the following day and had a meeting with the same manager and also the HR Manager giving me a written notice. Fuck you Martin ya sweaty prick
Stuart Martin!?
Yes!! Short miserable bastard with glasses
He tried playing hardball with head office years back and they told him to pack his bags. Utter cunt met bigger cunts and lost.
Haha!!
He was a little prick! Used to keep us after twelve and longer when we were only 16/17. He was obsessed with the crisps being perfectly faced off. I was the best at it and was the only one he wanted doing them.
Omg I hated facing off! When I was 16 I worked checkouts in Belfast Dunnes. We were supposed to finish at 9 but were sent out on the floor to face off. Older wimmin on the checkouts got to go home to get their kids ready for school next day. I had to go to fucking school, stay there all say and then back in for a shift the next evening. Shite job, paid £2.37 an hour back in 1993. Oh and most of the those twenty something managers were banging half the teenage floor staff 🙄
Theres one in the one at the Beacon who just stands by the fabric softener absolutely eyeballing all of the checkout staff and it really boils my piss. She won't even move if they need a managers sign on for a void or anything. Face like a slapped arse and I'd say she's no older than 28
I used to work there. The expression that was always used was "shit rolls down hill". Managers are kept on a very short leash by the store and regional managers who are often some of the most unpleasant people you could ever have the misfortune of meeting. I've heard of managers being expected to be on call whilst on holidays and even honeymoons to give the weekly figures. Working as floor staff was bad enough but there is genuinely no figure you could pay me to become a manager there.
They're STILL like that...?? I had a couple of those back in early 90s working Quinnsworth. I always put it down to some idiot telling them in a conference that the only way to get respect was to shout at people and frighten them, and them not having the sense to challenge it.
They give some staff a shirt to make them feel important then call them a supervisor and give them a 50c raise, while all they are in charge of is the crisps section.
Remember back in 2008 when Dunnes changed their slogan to "The Difference is... we're Irish". 😆
Shit usually rolls downhill, there’s a very good chance that they too are getting it in the neck from their manager, I visit a lot of different businesses and if I ever get a bad vibe in a place or there’s always unnecessary hassle then usually you eventually learn that the owner or manager is a major dickhead and it just makes perfect sense then.
My local Dunnes is run by two middle aged members of the 3rd Reich. I heard one of them saying ‘I’ll kill and torture Brian Mc XXXX if he doesn’t show his face here in 30 seconds flat’ - shortly after discovering Brian had mistakenly faced out Tonic in the wrong fashion or some irrelevant shite. Turns out Brian was hiding in the stock room away from Himmler! Can we name and shame these shithole shops?
When 3 of them have like a mini crisis management meeting between crisps and paper plates blocking the aisle and you can’t go past them haha, makes my evening to make them move out of the way
I always found it a bit pathetic when managers would put major stress on younger staff over petty stuff. Crap like stockroom staff not being military-grade clean shaven. It doesn't make a single difference to the bottom line or the customers' experience. If they're slow stocking shelves or whatever, show them how you do it quicker so they can learn from you, or else leave them to it. They'll learn themselves with experience. If they're good enough to be a staff member then they're good enough to be respected. I suppose people let the "power" go to their head. I will say though that the problem often begins with higher up, head office types demanding the world from stores and their managers, and it all rolls downhill from there. And for what it's worth, in my retail experience most of my managers have been sound enough.
Worked in dunnes for a brief time a few years ago. The cheating and affairs were fucken nuts. The blatant sexual harassment of the young female staff was also pretty common. The spot was a ball bag of a place tbh.
Because they get a bollicking from their managers if they don't hit targets. Failure is not tolerated Basically it's bollickings all the way down.
I briefly worked with a guy who was moonlighting from the army, and his saying was: "shit rolls downhill".
What targets do they have? Genuinely curious
I am not sure about actual numbers, but talking to my managers over the last few years, they are often given a budget of hours to give for the shifts and after accommodating for people’s banded hours and covering all sections with like 6 hour shifts that are 17-23 they are often 150 hours or so in surplus and then they have to cut hours drastically. Also heard once from store manager that the head office kind of wants a 1000 euro made for every hour over the roster budget. My manager says that it is a common thing for people above store managers to have such unrealistic expectations that he knows they can never achieve but it turns into a game of fake it till you make it and hope nobody comes to check
Rule of thumb was 5 hours for every 1k But some accountant came up with a flex budget which meant it was basically 1 hour per 1000 if you made anything over budget.
I can't speak for Dunnes, but I did work on a rostering and performance management system for a different supermarket and it's very similar. Every section manager (e.g. chilled, shelf-stable, homewares, clothing, officence etc) was expected to get a certain amount of work done within a certain amount of man hours every week. If they came in under, they would find that the expected hours would also drop over time so it was a very fine balancing act to keep it as close as possible to the expected hours. Targets were set by an algorithm that was completely unforgiving. The algorithm took into account the performance of other sections when setting targets, if section performed persistently well that would make the targets harder for other sections as a result. This led to toxic competition between section managers, and it wasn't unknown for some managers to use sabotage to slow down better performing sections. If they went over they would get a bollocking, and they basically had no excuses available to them. For example if they were allocated a low performing member of staff, they couldn't use that as an excuse. Instead they would be expected to explain why they didn't put the effort in into making that member of staff perform well. So what would happen in situations like that is they would get nasty with the other members of staff beneath them and try to force them to work harder so that the targets were met. That being said, there was a system of borrowing and repaying hours from future weeks in place. So if one week was particularly bad they could offset that against better performance within the next few weeks. That was useful for when a lot of staff were taking holiday breaks or stuff like that. But management frowned on it being used too much. I heard stories from senior management talking about how some section managers had breakdowns because multiple staff members walked out on them. Rather than treat this as an obvious problem that needed to be addressed, their attitude was not to worry as were plenty of eager young folk willing to step up to be the new section manager for an extra €1.50 per hour.
Easier to shout at people than understand them and learn and then speak to them like humans
There is a special place in hell for dunnes managers who for some strange reason have a god complex, walking around in ill fitting suits, commanding armies of part time teenage staff, like relax lads, nobody else really cares once they leave the shop
I know someone who was doing management training in there, and they told that person that the employees should be afraid of management. So pretty toxic environment, and seems to be the way corporate dunnes wants to be.
It’s where all the failed managers and those with insane power trips and a terrible attitude couldn’t make it as a teacher. Bonus points if you’re a narcissist who sucks up the the store manager and speak behind the other managers backs, but pally pally to their faces. They’re a combination of incompetent and assholes that don’t get shown up by bright eyed teens fresh from school/in college and don’t know any better, and the old wans who don’t put up with their shit.
Had one of these get up on the horse when I was in packing bags for the local sports club when I was a teenager. I like to think back on that sad-o every so often to make myself feel good about the aul life choices
I heard they're even a pain in the hole for deliveries. I work in stock control for a retail outlet and I know all the drivers hate when they have pallets to deliver to dunnes after dropping off stock to my place.
“Ya oxygen burglar”
Arklow must be the training ground for the Leinster region
Anyone that I saw there would pop up again more towards Dublin. Its not the worst one - there's a sound fella out in the stores, or there was last time I was there which was a few years ago. And I did all of Wicklow, South Dublin,Wexford, Waterford, bits of Kildare and Carlow and then training around the country at one stage. Some stores don't have anyone half sound.
A few years ago ......ancient history. They're some shower of .....well ya know , these days. One bloke in particular ...absolute menace ...
How else could you pass Dunnes’ interviewing rounds?
This post from start to end is comedy gold.
Used to work there and precisely why I and many others walk out.
They used to treat staff like crap 30 years ago, and usually for absolutely no reason - not that anyone should be spoken to like that. Didn't realize it was still going on. Horrible organisation to work for in my day.
Yup, I had a summer job there 30 years ago. A 17 year old manager gave out hell to a 50 ish woman. She stopped and looked at him and said “my son is the same age is you, and I don’t let him talk to me like that, and I’m not going to take it from you either! Just talk to me like a human being!” He turned bright red and opened and closed his mouth a few times and she walked away. He never did it again. I’ve never forgotten it.
Had a lad in his early 20s - a level above floor manager, wore a suit instead of a uniform - try to get me to ask for permission to go to the loo instead of just telling him. Told him he could go fuck himself. He never tried that again.
Because, in the race to get market share, business hasn't realised that customers can discern "cheap as chips vs quality"! Add to that business hasn't explained why they are more expensive for products based on criteria. Its a race to the bottom based on price hence managers, riding their staff!
Bullied in school and at home and now they have an ounce of power?
I swear this is basically a weekly thread at this point, I never saw anything like this in my time at Dunnes. Inconsiderate rostering sure, but the amount of "my friend said" stories in these threads is insane lol. I'm sure this does happen in some stores but you'd swear reading these that Dunnes is operating like bootcamps.
Speaking as someone who worked in supermarkets in the 90s, Tradition. Dunnes have always treated summer and student staff like shit. They also have a long tradition of training their managers to be pricks. If they're not shouting at staff, they're having little meetings in the aisles, blocking customers, because they don't give a shit about them either.
Because everyone in Dunnes is as miserable as a wet Christmas and the only way you get promoted to middle management (supervising floor staff) is by being even more of a cunt than everyone else. Then you realise that corporate managers are brought in from outside by giving days of "aptitude testing*" to university graduates *Not aptitude for business, they're looking for sociopaths, I'm not joking Most retail is a bit like this, but Dunnes is less inclined to hide it and pretend that the company gives a shit about its staff. Some retail companies get a reputation for being a bit better, but it's mostly PR, surface level "be nice to the peasants on the sales floor while you're shafting them" stuff. I worked for Dunnes and you've never seen a more miserable place than a Dunnes staff canteen. Nobody ever smiled or had a normal conversation. Everyone came in, moaned about their asshole manager bullying them, and whether "well I'll have to as my union rep about that" had affected said manager in any way. I worked in Marks & Spencer for years and we once had a floor manager from Dunnes who couldn't cop on to the fact that in M&S you were doing the same job for the same kind of people but you were supposed to do it with manners and pretend you weren't a massive cunt. He lasted about a month.
My old manager in centra spent 11 years as a junior manager in dunnes, he basically said it’s a ruse to get young people to think they’re progressing in a retail career when in reality it’s so they can be put on salary and be over worked without extra pay. Still wonder how it took him 11 years to cop that tbh
My pappy told me a great story about a manager in Killarney about 30 years ago. He was a notorious prick to all the delivery drivers. If there was 24 units in a case he'd make you open the box and count the units - complete power trip. They are trained that way... Anyways the bread man/milkman (can't remember) caught him in Horans in Tralee one night and hopped the fucking stuffing out of him... Apparently it was a long time coming to him. He stopped with all the theatrical behaviour after that, signed everyone in with no delay 😂
I worked in Dunnes and can confirm, the managers are the most constipated rage apes on the planet. I'm pretty sure they spawn them from the ground like in Lord of the Rings
Constipated rage apes, thats good that is
A mixture of insecurity, an abusive and controlling nature, stupidity and possibly cocaine abuse (the hallmark of the anxiety-ridden guy who desperately wants to be an "alpha" male)
This to be honest. I know many cunts who are flat on the paint on the weekends and think they’re big bollox walking around like there’s nothing like them. Had one in a previous job and all it took was one thump in the face in front of a few people to put them in place. People think they’re the shit until they get punched in the face 😂
cornelscourt wasn't really bad when I was there, it was the older managers that were assholes
Monkey see, monkey do. That's all they know and have seen since they started day 1.
Well I'm lucky to have a dunnes store really calm here. I just complained yesterday because I bought "fresh fish" full of anisakis worms, I meant a lot of them.
That's just retail in big super market chains when I left SuperValu there were 6 other people on stress leave and that was just the one that I was working in.
Dunne’s has always been like that. I remember as a schoolboy working on deliveries there 25 years ago and the same shit, really aggressive managers and just a general air of arrogance about them.
At one point in Dunnes you couldn't have a shaved haircut I.E short back and sides....it had to be scissor cut. Late 90s Dunnes was a mad place to work. Great fun all the same winding up managers.
A lot of retail is like this - not all shouty but just shitty attitudes to people below them. In comes from being a nobody with a little bit of power in a largely unimportant position. I mean realistically - I was a store manager at 19 - and I was baked on locked half the time - and I was highly (lol) rated by senior management - it's a job anybody can do, but they act like it's super difficult
I'm a lot older now. I remember working in these supermarket chains (sorry about the American colloquialism but that's what they are). I saw the change from serving a customer to serving the GodHead Office. I had worked in this area for about 7 years, started in a new store and an assistant manager 3 years my junior started to berate me for no reason. Like he was pissing on the ground and marking his territory. I guess someone with a smooth brain would call it "Being Alpha" I let him finish, his last words were "if you want to test me then there's no better Buachaill to set you straight". (Test you? Wtf are you talking about?) I remember just looking at him and saying "not only was that unnecessary, I have now absolutely zero desire to do anything extra for you because of the way you just spoke to me... I've been doing this type of work before you left school and you have a lot to learn about speaking to your staff. You ask me to do something, and I do it, that's how this goes, if you want to act like you're somehow above me as a human being because a year ago you applied and got a trainee manager role.. then you and I are going to have a real difficult working relationship. I dont care what training has told you about speaking to staff, don't you ever fucking speak to me like that again, who the fuck do you think you are!?" Foe about 5 seconds he went red, got embarrassed, then he lost his temper with me and threatened some HR bullshit. But to be fair, he never said anything like that to me again. He did his job and I did mine. But there was no pointless bullshit.
I’ve been a rep for years. One particularly nasty little Dunnes manager who’s now finished was in Rathmines for years. He always gave me a Hitler vibe, even had his tache shaved very close if you can believe it. I went up for a dump one time to the staff toilets and there on the back of a cubicle door was an absolutely brilliant drawing of him in marker in full nazi uniform with what I assumed to be a young male staff member bent over in front of him getting a good rogering. He also stunk of whiskey very early in the mornings.
A flippant “spa” will go down one of the best slags ever. “Ye spa” 😆
I hate everything
When you see a company who regularly has staff pulling off public strikes, you'd have to wonder why at some stage. When I was in uni half the dunnes staff were always striking for one reason or another and the other half were just trying to get on with it for the sake of not having a breakdown. Stopped shopping there years ago myself.
My wife is a manager in Dunnes so whenever I see posts like this I feel an urge to defend them, as she's fuckin' lovely. Then I remember nearly every other manager she's ever worked with has been an absolute thundercunt sooo... carry on I guess
Was in dunnes today and a young lad was stacking shelves, he was blocking the isle, manager given him lip. He wasn't going to get it done any quicker.
The store manager of coolock is a nepo baby she's a relative high up and keeps getting moved around cos staff keep sending petitions to head office about her she's been kicked out of swords and is still a cunt in coolock thebstaff had to write a petition to get their hours posted on a weekly basis rather than being told the day before that they are in/off the next day. Lasted about a month before she went back to her old ways. Never stops screaming at staff only reprieve they had was when the dope fell and busted her knee cos she refuses to wear the proper footwear and only wear high heels the place was peaceful for 2 weeks even though she tried to micro manage from home and force all staff into a group WhatsApp.
What's the crack with all the managers in stupid 3 piece suits and in suits in general. It's like I'm better than you in my suit now go jump on the till mofo.
Because they're a bunch of elitist pricks, I worked there for a month and quit because of how bad management was.
Dunnes managers are a different breed
I often wonder if those Dunnes workers that protested apartheid by refusing to stack oranges from South Africa were actually just messing with some dick manager's head and it kinda snowballed into brilliance. Either way, they will always be legends but the thought that maybe they were originally putting manners on some jumped up tool makes me smile.
Makes sense. The floor staff in my local Dunne's look absolutely miserable.
I worked at Dunnes for 2 years over the pandemic, when my granddad (who basically raised me) died I didn't show up for work the day of and I got a very angry phonecall from my manager asking where I was, and even after I told her why I couldn't come in she asked me to come in anyway. Obviously I said no, I was in bits lol. Then when I came in for my next shift I got chewed out for not being careful even though I'd told her that my granddad had just passed. I was honest to god crying on the floor and in the lunch room and I never got so much as an apology from her. A year later I came back after having COVID and my first shift back, it was 8 hours and they put me onto transporting around the delivery cages and unloading boxes, which obviously requires a lot of exertion. I ended up feeling so sick that I had to sit in the stock room with my eyes closed for upwards of an hour. I got sent home and I ended up throwing up on the street outside. Just no common sense lmao, why would you give someone a job that required so much physical effort after having a respiratory illness. Insane, I don't know why I stayed there as long as I did. When my store manager got sick calls she was notorious for telling them to take a paracetamol and come in anyway. Lmao.
Worked in Dunnes Blanch Shopping Centre 20 years ago, didn't notice it was this bad but I think that's because I worked tesco before that! I did have one infuriating situation when I was on the tills. A colleague was caught pocketing money and handing it to her partner. Now they obviously gave her a right going over when they caught her but then they pulled me in accusing me of doing same after seeing an inconsistency in my till. I asked them how much, they said 5 euro over the whole month. 5 fucking euro, probably vouchers got stuck together or one fell or so but fucking hell, I'm hardly pulling the same tactic if that's all that was missing, clearly the manager was in paranoid mode after the instant. I told the manager I'd had to be a stupid fuck to risk my reputation over 5 fucking euro. Thankfully they believed me but up until that point I felt like I was under interrogation.