Daniel Acosta - Trader Joes

Technical Overview:

Day to Day Responsibilities:

Help customers with any questions they may have.
Work the register and bag groceries.
Organize the back-stock with labels and refill whatever is missing at the front of the store.
Clean up work areas and the store front.
Communicate with management on what needs to be done in the assigned section on an hourly basis.
Order product using the companies ordering system based on trends and product knowledge.
Breakdown delivered pallets to be sent out for stocking.

My Story at Trader Joe's

I first started working at Trader Joe's when I was 17 in high school in 2017. It was a good job to have since they worked around my schedule and I still could do sports and spend time with friends. After graduating high school I began to work full time during the summer while I waited to start community college at Santa Ana College. Once again the management team worked with my school schedule and allowed me to excel in both my academics and job. I really enjoyed the first two years at Trader Joes.

Then... the pandemic started it was a bit strange, a lot of unknowns. The company wasn't exactly sure how to react, but to be fair no one really did. I remember for some time people referred to us as "heroes" which felt weird since I was just trying to pay my bills and get through school. This was the early stage of the pandemic and there was still a lot of people panicking and buying up all the toilet paper, waters, and frozen food. A lot of funny scenarios that seemed to be strait out of a sitcom happened while working during this time.

One of my favorite early on interactions during the pandemic was when I answered a phone call from a customer, and she had asked about a product that was imported from Italy. To make a long phone call short, she was worried that the Italian manufactured breadsticks might have been infected with COVID since Italy, at the time, was having severe outburst in cases. I quickly reassured her that if she didn't feel comfortable keeping the product that she can just return it to the store and we can refund her money back. Well...turns out she ate the whole box while she was watching the news and now she was scared to leave the house. I didn't know how to respond to her anymore so I just handed the phone to one of my managers lol.

Anyways, now starting year 4, some big changes were happening in my life and in the world. California was letting people be outside more freely and I had just moved to San Diego for school. I transferred to a new store in La Jolla where I made some awesome friends. We had such a strong community between the college students working at the store and it was a lot of fun.

However, the reason I was in San Diego was to be in school and I felt that the management at that store didn't really care much to work around my schedule. My first year in San Diego I was going to school Monday-Friday and working Friday-Sunday. I was pretty miserable, I wasn't adjusting well to the transition to quarter system and the campus being so large I was struggling to find my community. So ultimately after 5 years of working for Trader Joes, I made the decision to quit my job and look for research positions, and student clubs I can join and leave my mark on.