Very Corporate - Lots of Pressure to Sell - Budtender Friendly Stranger Employee Review

What originally attracted me to this company was their advocacy work for cannabis amnesty. It was originally a cool store and place to be. Slowly, after being bought by two other companies (fire and flower and then fika), it has transformed into essentially weed walmart.

Corporate culture, they don’t care about the store level employees and see us as replaceable. The executives don’t have cansells so can’t touch or sell cannabis. Can’t play your own music, middle aged dudes “curate” playlists for the stores to use. Sales metrics are tracked, although incentivizing cannabis sales is illegal, and used in competition to earn sample products and used in determining scheduled hours. We can’t put price tags on any sale items, only items with high general margins. Almost no opportunities for budtenders to move into higher positions. Almost no opportunity for full time. Little to no corporate support, even in emergencies. Little to no store purchasing power, and partnered with LP’s that can be difficult to sell, yet required to carry a certain number of products from the associated brands. This makes it difficult to actually meet the wants and needs of the customers. I’m barely making a dollar more than when I was hired a few years ago. Mostly white people in corporate roles. Weren’t allowed to accept tips for a while, although customers asked and offered, when we were allowed to accept them again, we got a memo saying we had to hide the tip jar under the cash desk because “we’re not beggars.” Overheard the district manager saying people need to be screened for their mental health during interviews to only hire stable people. Its hard to avoid corporate nonsense out there but expect it here!

Good environments, friendly staff, decent managers.

Questionable directions from above. Lack of communication.