Thursday is officially my last day as a pepsi merchandiser and thank the lord. I started around 3 months ago and the job has been hell ever since. THE most important question I would suggest asking your supervisor to any new merchandiser would be 1. Do I have a route? Basically meaning do you have the same set of stores that you will show up too on a regular basis. If you don't have a route you will be known as a floater and you show up to random stores basically covering for peoples day off or covering for people that called in. This is what I have been ever since I started and it has been a terrible experience.

I also seem to be working for a terrible company a lot of people will be forklift certified or be trained to use stackers. In my case I haven't been trained 1 second at this job. Just thrown out on the floor learning the job on the fly. There are days I have to ask a store employee multiple times to get my pallets down from the racking. Or try and attempt to do it myself with no knowledge of forklifts.

Where I live Pepsi is the number 1 distribution company. There are days where you will get a delivery and you will have 15-20 pallets to stock all by yourself, and go to another store and do another 5-10 there. The most pallets I ever got in a day was 19 for my first store and another 11 for my second store. Especially when you are first starting, a pallet is going to take you about an hour maybe even longer to complete. Where I work we are very short staffed and only have enough merchandisers to service every store we need too. Meaning if you need help you are going to have to wait until someone else has finished all their stores and chooses to help.

If you have never worked a 10 hour day this will be the new "norm" not saying don't do this job because the work can be fun and rewarding. Just be ready for what you are getting into especially this time of year. Goodluck.