warehouse worker

store manager

manager

customer service representative

buyer

Wilko

Although I'm 23, Wilko was my first employer. They rang to organise an interview, and the interview itself felt very casual - it was myself with the manager, who was asking most of the questions, and the assistant manager, who was taking notes with the odd interaction.

The manager saw on my CV that I have an interest in film, so for about 25% of the interview, that's what we spoke about. I'm not the most confident person, but that part of the interview allowed me to converse more freely - probably why that conversation started. 

It seemed, very much so, that they made their mind up there and then, as they were asking about my availability in a more direct sense, while they were thinking about what days I could do. As I said I liked practical work, the idea of working in the early mornings came up (shifts starting at 6am until 10am) - something I've had no experience with, but I didn't feel comfortable saying no to the idea. 

I left the interview feeling pretty certain I got the job, and a few days later, I got the "Job Offer Call" and so I was invited to the induction day, which was a few days later. The induction day went on from about 8am until 3am - roughly, and there were 4 of us. The day consisted of the expected tour of the store, meeting some of the staff, learning a few basics, but most of the day was spent reading a fairly large health and safety booklet - which made the day quite dull overall, but yes, you should be paid for the induction day!

A few days later, it was the day of my first shift, but there were problems. They hadn't received my employee number, so I couldn't login to the system yet and set up some things, so in the early hours of the morning, I had to go straight back home. A few more days later, I returned in, same hours, but again there were issues, so I had to go home - another person at the induction day, who didn't stay on, had the same first name as me, so my supervisor was given the incorrect employee number. I then had to wait about a week or so for it all to be sorted, and I could finally have my first day - eventually, I discovered that the other people at the induction day also had employee number issues.

Truthly, working at Wilko wasn't something I wanted to do, but I had to get a job, so I thought I'd only be here for about 6 months before I found somewhere else - somewhere closer to my interests. It has now been 7 months, nearly 8. That's not to say I intend on staying - I'll talk about that a little later - but the time has flown by incredibly! Perhaps Christmas being in the center of it all may have contributed to that.

My typical day is waking up at 4:30, leaving home at 5:15, getting there and parking at about 5:30, and then going in at 5:50. I'm then told what section I'm working on - it's fairly inconsistent with how busy each section is, and you are given different areas, which is helpful in learning where everything goes. Of course, 7 months in and there are still somethings I don't quite know where they are, and when customers ask I can get confused because they either say a brand name that I don't recognise or aren't very specific - truth be told. 

Of course every store is different, but I'm quite unfortunate with my fellow morning-shift-staff. While I do get on well with them and they are all quite friendly, they are all much older than me (I'm 23, and the second youngest has just turned 50) - it would be nice to have people doing the same shift who are closer to my age group - most of the younger employees work on the tills/help desk and their earliest shift time is at 8am. Sometimes I'd hear them talk about going for a drink later, but because of the age difference, and my next paragraph, I'd feel very alienated, and wouldn't ever want to go with them even though I know I probably should. During the shift, there isn't much time available to chat to people, so it's simply left to having the odd comment being thrown about.

As I said earlier I'm not the most confident person and I do have quite strong social anxiety, which makes me unnecessarily confused when a customer asks me a question even though I know the answer. I mention this as in the past couple of weeks the idea of making me till-trained has come up - something I desperately don't want to do, but the new assistant manager has said it's compulsory for the morning staff (even though I've never seen some of them work behind the till before). It's because of this as to why I have now started looking for jobs that are more warehouse focused, where there is, obviously, less customer interaction, as well looking at jobs that are better suited to my interests.

Pay - Minimum wage. No extra for Sundays or bank holidays. Zero incentive to work harder or more efficiently. It is laughable how management encourage us to let customers know if they review us online they could win £100 - what’s in it for me? Nothing. There is no reason for going ‘above and beyond’, not even considering the fact it’s a minimum wage job too. There seems to be no ladder to work your way up, as till supervisors are paid the same as the cashiers themself. No incentive to do a harder job!

Hours - It seems many people like myself are contracted low hours, which increases during the busiest times of the year as expected. This doesn’t account for anyone who actually needs the money, a 16 or 20 hour week is common. This is just a load of rubbish as you’re hours will be dispersed over 4 or 5 days guaranteed. Your working week will also have very little structure and pattern, so you won’t really know when your days off are - unless you have been at the company for some time, then you’ll actually be listened to somewhat. 

I was given 4 hour shifts 5 days a week for months, even asking management for a change - which was rejected. What makes this so bad is that I have a commute to work each day that brings time and costs to the equation. 

Staff - When I started here, I felt very welcome by all the staff. Then, time goes on and I learned of a few members of staff that are extremely rude, to other members of staff and even customers. Quite honestly it is beyond me how said staff still have a job here. 

I have made great friends here, yet I am aware of a lot of backchat between full grown adults happening. I feel constantly belittled by other members of staff, most likely due to having the job less time as they have. On the surface, it seems like there’s a great team of staff, look a bit deeper and you’ll realise it’s quite the opposite. Overall, there is a consensus that you are given more authority, the longer you have been there, even if that means you are awful at your job. 

Management - Some friendly, nice knowing you can talk to them, and understanding of situation too. However, extremely by the book. Store manager doesn’t care about anything or anyone but money and figures. Since taking over the store, the work environment has become more money focussed, with staff even being given talks about numbers such as sales and targets - when this means almost nothing to us. Store manager cannot even talk to his staff either and refuses to serve people on the till even if needed. Furthermore, your views on what could help to improve the store aren’t listened to.

The job itself - Mindless. Simply put very repetitive with not much more to do or variation. Customers can be delightful, but it is very common to have extremely rude customers. I have to put up with a lot on the daily, and if you don’t know where EVERY product is and EVERY product we sell, then expect to get a lot of rude comments. 

Being told off for talking on a purely discriminatory basis. If you are old, then you can stand around and talk for hours and nobody bats an eye. If you are younger than 30, then you’ll be told off even if the conversation was work related or even essential discussion to complete your job! Absurd. 

Very dated technology, often getting in the way of the job. Management reluctant to update, most likely due to affecting profits. 

Training - inadequate. Very little training, commonly see colleagues not knowing what they’re doing, even on the simplest of tasks. It is up to you to teach yourself the less common parts of the job, as management seems equally clueless. 

Most enjoyable part of the job is probably not actually doing the job. This I mean is when you are, on the rare occasion, given some varied work not on tills. 

To summarise, a very negative but honest view of Wilko, offering an insight to the workplace and it’s downsides of pay, hours, staff and management, training and the job itself.  Overall I do not recommend, as you will be much better off working for a different retail store, such as one of the big four.

I worked at a Wilko store for over a year before I found a different retail job with much better pay and working conditions. I didn't know it at the time, but after working at a different store for a while I realized just how unorganized and strange my experience at Wilko was.

First off, I had a group interview which was something more akin to school activities. They made us work in teams to build structures out of spaghetti and marshmallows, for example, and we raised our hands to answer or ask questions about the job. This was good in a way, because it was basically impossible to fail this interview, however it also meant that you weren't asked personal questions about your flexibility or retail experience etc. I was put on weekday shifts in the afternoon after I began, however this was in the summer holidays and I was soon going back to sixth form for my second year. When I told them I could no longer work weekday shifts they berated me for not letting them know I was a student. For one, I was 17 at the time, of course I'm a student, and secondly it was on my CV that I attended college and this was something you surely should have asked in the interview anyway???

Shortly after beginning I also learned just how absolutely terrible they were at training their staff. I was put on shop floor to begin with which was absolutely fine, but eventually they told me I'm expected to help out on tills and I was sometimes put on them without having yet been trained how to use them. So basically I could scan things and give people change but that was it. If a customer had a return or wanted something I didn't know how to do I basically just had to tell them to go to a different till and they would understandably get very upset with me. 

We were also told to never leave our tills when serving a customer and instead to press a button and a supervisor on the shop floor would come over and help with something e.g. finding out how much an item should be if it came up wrong on the till. However shortly after I began working at wilko they made the supervisor role redundant and I was simply told if I didn't know how to do something from now on I had to "figure it out" or tell the customer I couldn't help them and they had to go find someone else who could. This also meant a lot of tills were being left unattended while logged in and mid-transaction, which they absolutely should not have been.

Also shifts were not consistent each week and would change, constantly, however there was no way to check shifts from home, they only had a printed piece of paper in the break room you would need to check because a LOT of technology in these stores is ridiculously out of date. Because shifts weren't fixed and would change all the time, you would check when your shift was and go home only to come in whenever your next shift was and get shouted at because you were supposed to come in at a different time which you couldn't have known because they changed the shift when you couldn't come in to check it.

I cannot reccommend working at Wilko at all. I hope they have at least fixed some of these things and become a more consistent and organized place of work, but overall it set a bad example for me of what retail work SHOULD be like and I am now much much happier working in a different retail store with fixed hours, real training, where there was a real interview and supervisors/team leaders who are actually able to help me if I am stuck. Oh, and I'm paid £3 more an hour than I was at Wilko. Do not work here unless you want to be undertrained, underpaid, and humiliated.

My experience at Wilko Cannon Park is a story of two exeperiences. 

When I first started the management were very accomdating of my Autism and Dyslexia, I was affored the same opportunities as someone else and they always made themselves avaiable to me whenever I needed them. 

However after the restructuring in 2017 a new manager came in who took one look at me and judged that I wasn't capable of anything else persides from being on tills. The new manager took me having learning disablities to mean that I would struggle to do any complicated tasks, so when my team mates were being trained on the help desk and how to process orders and deliveries, I was left on the checkout feeling very isloated and depressed.

The manger changed the shifts which resulted in me being constantly on the express till (the fastest one) I often came home feeling completly overwhelmed and upset, that added to the stress of being in my final year uni led me to have a melt down on christmas eve. 

When I told my manager about the meltdown she turned it around on me, saying it was my fault for not coming to her first and that she dosen't see why I'm having a problem considering everyone else is doing the same job. What made this worse was that she said this whilst another memeber of staff was in the room acting as her witness, basically to cover her own backside. 

After this I was left feeling like the village idoit and for the next couple of months I dredded coming into work. I felt I was on tender-hooks around her, whenever I made a mistake she would always come down on me harder then anyone else. I eventually decided to ask if I could do some additional roles but she said no and then a couple of days later I was in postion where I had been given no training in and then when I inveritbly made a mistake she came down on me so hard it caused another panic attack. Then I realised nothing was going to change with her and I would of quit but I was still in uni at the time and needed the money. 

Things did eventually improve when a new assistant manager came in and started treating me like a human being and then the manager soften her  apporach because on him. However the manager clearly didn't understand how autism works and there were still numerous occasions where I felt she picked me on or targeted me to make a point. Such as when she informed me 

Such as when she informed me and enforce the fact I was only meant to be taking 25 min breaks not 30 despite the fact that everyone had taken 30 min breaks since I started and I hadn't been aware of this because of that. 

I eventually left Wilko last year to go and work at a university however when I left I recived no card, no sign of gratifcation for the 3 years I had been there. 

I was only after I left I realised that I was actually being discrimated against by the manager and whilst I don't think it was intentional because the manager openly admited she even know what autism was, it still left a scare on me and I wish I had made a complaint about it at the time. 

My opinon on Wilko is if you have a learning/behaviour disability like autism go and work at Sainsburys or something because Wilko won't support you at all. 

The only pro I could say about Wilko is that sometimes their incompetence leads you to getting extra holiday haha.

Typical Working Day:
You'll start your shift looking for someone to tell you what to do. After being told by numerous members of staff to go ask another, you'll finally give up and assist another member of staff until told otherwise. You'll more than likely be asked by a customer where something is every 5 seconds of your shift and then be asked by said customer to "Check in the back" despite the item having a 'Not stocked' label on the ticket. Till supervisor will be calling you and only you to go on a till because the members of staff that have been at the company for 20+ years will refuse to. While on the till you will receive moans and groans about the queue and that there's no staff. You'll also be expected to act as store security. 

What you'll learn:
You'll quickly learn that people who have been at the company for years are faultless. They do their job perfectly and are the hardest working people in the store. Anyone younger than them or have been there less time than they have are useless. You'll learn that if things go wrong, it's always someone else's fault. When something is in the wrong location, it's ALWAYS the merchandiser's fault. ALWAYS- not the hundreds of people who work the warehouse trolleys during the day. You'll very quickly learn that working at Wilko will take you back to your high school days because you'll be witness to (and more likely the subject of) infantile gossip. If you're lucky, you'll might be till trained.

Management:
Sometimes you'll catch a rare glimpse of your store manager on his/her way in or way out of the shop. Even rarely, this mysterious creature might be seen on shop floor for a short period of time to check on their store because someone from higher up in the company is going to be visiting. If things aren't looking good, you'll soon hear about it because it'll be your fault. If things do look good, you won't be given a pat on the back. The manager of the store is there to purely keep his/her chair in the office warm- this is achieved by watching his/her staff on the security cameras for hours on end. 

Workplace Culture:
As specified above, you simply cannot compete with older members of staff- they are the martyrs of the store and work tirelessly to put right the blunders that other members of staff have caused. God forbid you should ever use a black pen to write a reduced price on an item. There would be mass murder. 

Hardest Part of the Job:
Summoning the energy to have to go to work and deal with such a toxic environment. 

Most Enjoyable Part of the Job:
Going home.

If you really are in need of a job, by all means go for it but don't plan on staying there for long. You'll soon come to realise that there is VERY limited room for progression and you'll be expected to be available for every kind of shift. You won't be given the same shifts every week. There's no structure to the rota. Company won't last another 5 years.

I’ve worked for Wilkinson in the DC at Worksop for well over 15 years and it’s got progressively worse in that time, and it wasn’t brilliant to start with!

Where do I start? 
You don’t tend to get swore at or shouted at as much as you did back then   .....only now it’s mainly the childish variety of punishment for basically trying to get on with your nearly impossible to do job, with - unrealistic targets, moronic supervisors that seem to just hang around all day doing very little and shouting the odd obscenity of encouragement, ridiculous break times where you spend nearly as much time walking to the canteen that takes nearly 10mins each way and your only given 25mins for your break. Or maybe it’s purely just not having the right tools or help to do your job or even being properly trained rather than just being shown an instruction leaflet on how to do a certain task, then being asked to sign to say you can do it safely.  Or could it be the continuous barrage of inventive ways the so-called “family friendly” company comes up with week in week out to gradually eat away at the moral amongst the workforce!  

Basically the company doesn’t care less about “family values” even though they promote it.   Enforcing 7 day week working with no two days off together, making loyal employees work every single Saturday and not giving a seconds thought to their circumstances, work life balance or current working agreements that the company has been more than happy to accommodate for years, is utter disgusting.  The management that have implemented this are ruthless, insensitive and couldn’t care less about their loyal workforce!

Of course any outside visitors that come into the DC including high end management that maybe lost, probably think its nice and clean and runs smoothly when in actual fact it doesn’t. Most of the time health and safety is ignored and the warehouse is a mess.  At busy periods the place is utter chaos. The misleading impression they get is after the supervisors and team leaders have frantically run around cleaning and tidying for it to then be a complete mess again the next day.  

In all these years I’ve never known anyone get recognised for doing a good job, or being promoted because they are good at what they do.  It’s always been “if your face fits”    Maybe if you play golf with management, know someone high up the chain that will get you into a totally fabricated job role that never existed before,  or.......        your just sh#gging the manager!  

The ONLY good thing about working here is the workmates I’ve made as they are all truly fantastic people and easily friends for life!  It’s just a shame none of us get recognised for the hard work we do every day! 

In a nutshell...  if your considering a “career”  as they call it at Wilkinson’s my advise would be to maybe continue down the A57 to McDonalds!

Immediately upon joining Wilko, I was made to believe that this place was amazing and very lenient, however I was wrong.  Upon facing a medical issue, which entirely restricted my stock associate role, I was being told by different managers different procedures and actions. I got shouted at, belittled and indirectly accused of lying about this medical issue; I was intimidated me and quite scared to talk to some members from management. There was no understanding or willingness to adapt to my needs and this was essentially the first time I was pushed to tears. It became prominent that the management were abusive of their authority and used it to their advantage. 

From the medical issue onwards I was always being given warnings, taunts for ‘not being quick enough’ and being compared to workers who had worked there for 10+years (bearing in mind I had only been there for 5 months at the time) . The policies and procedures all seemed much more lengthy and unnecessary than they should have been, and it became prominent that they were only in place to suit the company. 

I understood that this may have been an experience that I felt only, however within a week of working there, employees were telling me to leave because ‘the salary wasn’t worth the drama it came with’. This shows the lack of care for employees the management system had, if entire teams were only working there ‘for the pay’ or because they felt they had ‘no options left’ for other work places to accept them (for reasons such as lack of experience in fields or age). 

I would never recommend working here to anyone, while i believe that other cities or branches may be better at their management, Coventry is definitely not a place to work. Had it not been for my desperate financial needs I would have left from the get-go. 

I am now happily employed at a different workplace which are so much more lenient, understanding and prominently a healthy operating company - a company whose employees are happy and have policies and procedures which are clear to follow.

At Wilko, shifts vary - one day you may start at 8 AM, another you may start at 1 PM - you're never stuck doing the same thing.

If you're on the till, you're serving customers, some of whom like to purchase National Lottery tickets and scratchcards, as well as handling refunds. Although, if you find yourself on the self scans you will be encouraging customers to use them, helping out where necessary and engaging with customers. You may find yourself on shop floor, pushing out stock, keeping the shelves tidy and assisting customers with their queries.

At this particular branch, the management team are always able to help you out and training is available, depending on what your doing. You don't go in head first, you'll be trained by either management or an experienced co-worker, whether it be scanning lottery tickets or scanning products with an RF gun.

Furthermore, if you've got other commitments, the management team are great - people are happy to support one another in covering shifts. If you're in education, such as college or university, the management are happy to work around you and that is something to be appreciated.

There is a friendly workplace culture, everyone gets along and if you ever need help, you only need ask - whether it be finding a SKU for an item or briefly covering your break. Your colleagues are only a radio (or tannoy) call away at most.

Like any retail role, you'll be working with customers from all backgrounds, dealing with queries and dilemmas - such as finding an item or dealing with a large return. However, sometimes things can get busy and slightly stressful, so it may be difficult to get things done - but your colleagues are always happy to assist you. 

The greatest privilege working at Wilko is the people, who are all friendly and supportive, brilliant at what they do, who have your back.

Working at wilkos as a sales assistant is your standard job when you are young. They provide good working hours, sometimes not enough in Stevenage for some but for me 4-7 hours on a weekend was enough, although I was given more hours when I was transferred to Nottingham so this is not the same for all stores. The people at wilkos are nice and it is a very friendly environment, if you need any assistance co-workers are very willing to help. I think that working at wilkos is also very beneficial to adults with families, as they do their best to give you hours that work best for you if requested. If you book holidays they are likely to let you have them off, I have been declined once however I had given them short notice. You must give 4 weeks notice before hand. However, there have been exceptions where I've given short notice and they've still let me take this time off, so they do what they can for you. Management is very good they're friendly and regularly go through safety precautions and other important material as reminders. They give 15 minute breaks for 4 hour shifts and more if you are working longer shifts, they have always given me a break, unlike other companies which may try to avoid giving you one. I personally never liked being on shop floor as I find it slow paced and quite isolating so I was moved to tills which I much preferred. The salary is fair although they got rid of time and a half on sundays which was always a nice bonus, but this did happen for a lot of companies at the time so it can't be helped. At this time the discount also went from 13% to 20% which isn't the best but after quitting wilkos I do notice the price difference. I learned a lot of skills here as it was my first job, I've become much more confident with providing customer service and am able to work on shop floor and tills. The hardest thing about the job is that it is a repetitive one and I did find myself bored a lot of the time but shifts went by quickly on tills as it is fast paced and they'll always keep you busy doing something if there are no queues. Would recommend working here:)

The whole store is unorganised whenever you go no matter what branch you visit. Lots of favouritism/nepotism. Working till 8pm most days. Managers never on the shopfloor. They threaten us continuously with reduction in hours even though they have the budget to give us overtime. If there is any overtime they give them to the same 3-4 people each time. Supervisions are never doing their job. Women given different roles such as sweeping the floor while men do not. The supervisors and managers are very unprofessional. Always speaking about other staff memebers behind their backs to everyone else. During the corona virus everyone else in the high street was given proper protection. While our manager repeatedly told us it wasn’t even real and we shouldn’t be worried about a made up virus. He also spoke badly about everyone who had a week off during the epidemic if they were off sick. And told other colleagues they don’t deserve a bonus. Our Rotas are never up so we never know what hours we are doing. There have been many instances where they change hours while we are on holiday and we come in without knowing our times and get sent home... even though they never informed us of them. The shopfloor is chaos with rats regularly in the shop and no real pest control. Very understaffed and given more jobs than anyone can juggle. Highly racist till members who are not educated towards other cultures. Regularly having backhanded comments under there breath if they have to serve black customers or Muslims (this is a predominantly white town) shameful management and no real consequences to people’s actions. Everyone walks around doing what they want as certain till members can always refuse certain jobs while the rest of us bare the brunt of it all without even a thank you or real bonus during corona.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Warehouse worker 3 salaries reported	£21,667 per year
Store manager 4 salaries reported	£40,500 per year
Manager 6 salaries reported	£45,167 per year
Customer service representative 1 salary reported	£25,714 per year
Buyer 4 salaries reported	£44,750 per year

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