Extremely low pay rates versus industry standards at each level
Almost no training program for advancement. It's the luck of the draw if you get a manager who cares enough of offer training to help advance a career.
Hourly wages just above minimum wage and a 25 hour/week cap for all part time employees to avoid paying benefits.
Part time staff is expected to perform multiple tasks that would normally be rewarded with higher wages and benefits with none of those extras actually offered. (upselling, add-on selling, complicated product knowledge with regard to thousands of different wines and spirits.
Top management levels change like a revolving door. 3 senior VP's in less than 6 years meant multiple changes in company visions and poor implementations of rushed efforts to show they could make real changes in order to prove they deserved their 6-7 figure salaries to the board of directors.
5 cent sale is actually a huge con on the public made to seem like it is almost saving you half the cost when you buy every 2 bottles of select wines. In reality, the wines carry the largest initial mark-ups of all the wine in the store from cost to retail prices and were almost always on sale for several dollars off the regular retail when not included in the current 5 cent pricing program. Employees are expected to lie about the deals being offered on the 5 cent sale in order to move volume and drive profits. Unfortunately, the majority of those wines are much lower quality than similar wines in the same price ranges. They even ended up settling a class action lawsuit because of their deceptive marketing and sales practices with regard to this sale.
Middle management consistently lays poor performances on their store managers instead of bringing up global issues like one of the tightest payroll allocation percentages in retail, extremely poor pay for all levels of employment, especially entry level sales associates, limited staff training programs or the inconsistent enforcement of industry regulations with regards to alcoholic beverage sales and returns.
Monthly errors in their global pricing system meant you could have several dollars in discrepancies between a shelf price and what was actually charged at the register with nothing that any store employee could do to prevent it, without rescanning the entire store's inventory weekly to print out and rehang hundreds of price changes made in error through the system. And even with 18+ months of consistent failures under their belts, the necessary resources were never allocated to make sure the stores are meeting the guidelines of the Weights & Measures department.