Vantaggi
The pay starts decent at the warehouse (13.89 cold, 11.82 warm dry grocery) and the raises are pretty good, top out is currently 20.70 and going up each year, it's easy to get your hours and some overtime available, especially in the grocery side (they can't seem to keep people as well). Work is hard and gets easier as you accumulate seniority, being in a union is nice, although they don't seem to protect the harder workers as much as they do the bad lazy ones. Can call off like crazy, not be sick, and not get fired (after first 90 days). If you come in and do your job, management will leave you alone and they aren't breathing over your shoulder which is really nice. You can go months at a time without even hearing from management if you are out doing your job. If you work for Meijer, the DC is the way to go, you will work almost as hard in the store for half the pay (or so I hear).
Svantaggi
Hard to get full-time with full benefits unless you average over 36 hours per week for two quarters (which is not difficult to do unless you work in the freezer but you will be part-time for at least 6 months with less benefits) . After you make the average, you must apply for full time or bid for it by seniority which is harder to do. Some favoritism especially for crap workers, no accountability for not doing your job (not pulling wood, wrap, or tape in order to make higher rate, lots of people do this and screw over their coworkers). Management in my department doesn't really hold anybody accountable for anything except rate, and extreme things (this can be looked at as a pro, but if you are one of the hard workers, you will get frustrated fast because of this). Problems that exist are not addressed, and Meijer is actually very inefficient in many of their processes, they also throw away a ton in food every week (product can be perfect in a box but no one has time to fix the problem so they just throw away busted boxes instead of trying to send them out to a store or donate). You are actually better off not doing the right thing in almost every situation because doing the right thing causes back lash from management because most of them don't like doing their jobs (not to mention if you screw others over you will make a higher rate and make more money in the cold department, and be liked by management for making their #'s look good). Everybody is mostly out for themselves, there isn't much teamwork going on. Pre-shift meetings are pretty pointless except giving you a slight idea of when you get to go home. Safety is preached but not that well practiced. You don't go home until all the work is finished, so checks and work hours vary. Scheduling sucks, you never know if your vacation got approved until the week before, and they are old school and use paper to give out vacation, nothing ahead of time to tell you that it got approved (mostly vacation is based off of seniority but don't plan anything big until you accumulate some paid vacation because it's almost impossible to get unpaid vacation, generally if you are newer you just have to call off to get any days off). There is a rate and you must always make it in order to survive, when you start, the work you get put on is generally the hardest in the warehouse to make rate. Turnover is crazy high among first year workers, but after that , it is pretty slow from the higher ups. It's a big place and you are a very small, dispensable part of it, so don't expect any appreciation or feedback for much of anything. Work is mundane and boring once you get used to it. You will do the same thing over and over again.