For my internship I had the privilege of working at Vacaville Safeway with Martin Padilla, the manager of Safeway. Vacaville Safeway is 62,000 sq feet and employs 286 employees. It does $580,000/week on non-holidays. The average order size is $35/customer and the customer count is 18,000/week not including holidays. Last year Vacaville Safeway did $24,400 in fundraising and participated in the local 4-H chapter and donated over $3,000 on livestock at the Dixon May Fair. Safeway also participates in the E-Scripts. Vacaville Safeway had multiple employees of varieties of cultural backgrounds. Vacaville Safeway was nominated for best employer of the year 2005-06 – 2006-07 for working with people with Disabilities. Safeway was acknowledged by the Vacaville Chamber of Commerce, Vacaville Mayors Committee, Congressional Recognition, California Legislature and California State Assembly. Mr. Padilla has been the store manager in Vacaville 12 years. When I first met Mr. Padilla he asked me what I wanted to learn how to do and what my weaknesses were. For the 50 hours that I got to work and spend with Mr. Padilla I was able to work on the my areas of opportunity/ skills that I will be able to take with me and use in the future. I have obtained skills such as people development, leadership, communication, customer service, collaboration, delegation and following up as well as, organizational skills. Mr. Padilla taught me the importance of writing things down after all he says, nobody can remember everything.
I spent my days following Mr. Padilla doing a checklist to make sure the store was in order while also doing inventory making sure that the shelves were full. For me one of the hardest things about working at Safeway was inventory. The pallets that were loaded with its individual supply of products stacked about five feet high was so back breaking for me. I had to take the pallets from the backroom to the sales floor on a six wheeler and take the cart to the certain shelves to be stocked. For one pallet it took me almost five trips to finish. I learned how to use the ordering guns and the process of sending orders, reading invoices, and using the in store paging system. Doing inventory in just the short amount of time made me have much respect for the workers of Safeway. Mr. Padilla taught me the importance of inventory control and sales dollars to the public.
Working at Safeway was a whole new experience for me compared to working at Marine World. I had the opportunity to work in the different departments with the different department managers. The holiday season is when I really learned to multi task while providing customer service to costumers one at a time. The Thanksgiving and Christmas time of year is the busiest time of the year for grocery stores. I learned how to order products and learned the importance of not forgetting to send the orders. I also learned the sense of urgency the checkers have to open up check stands so customers don’t have to wait in line. Safeway has the secret shopper program and stride on providing great customer service. Mr. Padilla made me roll play with different employees in all the different departments. At first I was a little uncomfortable but then I got the hang of it. It was at that point I realized how important customer service is. That is one thing I took back to Marine World.
I think the one thing I learned from Mr. Padilla was holding people accountable and stating expectations. I mentioned to Mr. Padilla I had trouble holding people accountable and I struggled with confronting my co-workers. I sat in with Mr. Padilla when he wrote employees up for failure to perform required job duties. I learned that you don’t have to yell and scream but just state expectations, be consistent and remind people of job performance. Did he want to fire people? No, and he let them know that as well as what he expected and hopes the problem didn’t happen again. I used his techniques when I went to Marine World. My employee wasn’t in dress code and was talking on his cell phone. I talked to him about it and stated my expectations, policies and procedures and I didn’t have the problem again.
I think that working at Safeway is one of the best jobs to gain experience for fast paced environments and customer service. Yes working at Safeway was a hard job but I was able to gain skills and experience that I think will be useful that I wouldn’t have been able to learn anywhere else.
I interviewed Mr. Padilla and asked him what makes him so successful? He said, surrounding himself with strong knowledgeable people.
I spent my days following Mr. Padilla doing a checklist to make sure the store was in order while also doing inventory making sure that the shelves were full. For me one of the hardest things about working at Safeway was inventory. The pallets that were loaded with its individual supply of products stacked about five feet high was so back breaking for me. I had to take the pallets from the backroom to the sales floor on a six wheeler and take the cart to the certain shelves to be stocked. For one pallet it took me almost five trips to finish. I learned how to use the ordering guns and the process of sending orders, reading invoices, and using the in store paging system. Doing inventory in just the short amount of time made me have much respect for the workers of Safeway. Mr. Padilla taught me the importance of inventory control and sales dollars to the public.
Working at Safeway was a whole new experience for me compared to working at Marine World. I had the opportunity to work in the different departments with the different department managers. The holiday season is when I really learned to multi task while providing customer service to costumers one at a time. The Thanksgiving and Christmas time of year is the busiest time of the year for grocery stores. I learned how to order products and learned the importance of not forgetting to send the orders. I also learned the sense of urgency the checkers have to open up check stands so customers don’t have to wait in line. Safeway has the secret shopper program and stride on providing great customer service. Mr. Padilla made me roll play with different employees in all the different departments. At first I was a little uncomfortable but then I got the hang of it. It was at that point I realized how important customer service is. That is one thing I took back to Marine World.
I think the one thing I learned from Mr. Padilla was holding people accountable and stating expectations. I mentioned to Mr. Padilla I had trouble holding people accountable and I struggled with confronting my co-workers. I sat in with Mr. Padilla when he wrote employees up for failure to perform required job duties. I learned that you don’t have to yell and scream but just state expectations, be consistent and remind people of job performance. Did he want to fire people? No, and he let them know that as well as what he expected and hopes the problem didn’t happen again. I used his techniques when I went to Marine World. My employee wasn’t in dress code and was talking on his cell phone. I talked to him about it and stated my expectations, policies and procedures and I didn’t have the problem again.
I think that working at Safeway is one of the best jobs to gain experience for fast paced environments and customer service. Yes working at Safeway was a hard job but I was able to gain skills and experience that I think will be useful that I wouldn’t have been able to learn anywhere else.
I interviewed Mr. Padilla and asked him what makes him so successful? He said, surrounding himself with strong knowledgeable people.
