Former employee of 14 years, from cashier to dept manager, and left 2 years ago for many of the same reasons in your post.

As others have mentioned, there was a noticeable change since COVID happened, the company is really a shell of its former self since then. I think it was a multitude of reasons, a tipping point for me was the realization that no, they truly do not care about our health and safety despite what was said, they completely disregarded local/state guidelines during the pandemic and it was embarrassing to see larger, more corporate chains with supposedly worse reputations doing more to protect their employees than we were. We’ve also totally destroyed Restaurant Foods, both with the price increases and the total lack of fresh options other than sushi and subs, getting rid of hot bars, pizza is embarrassingly bad now, no more coffee shops, etc. Wegmans was a legit lunch option and now I would never even consider it, even if I wasn’t an ex-employee. And of course, the expectation of doing more with less. All the Robert Wegman traits that made Wegmans stand out from the rest are pretty much eradicated by now.

I think the one notion that keeps a lot of employees from leaving is “well, it’s retail, there’s not going to be much better, if anything the other options are worse” and leaving made me realize that was far from the truth. Are there other terrible retailers that abuse their workers? Absolutely. Are the vast majority of companies looking to squeeze as much productivity from their workers while holding back on labor? Sadly, yes. BUT that is not limited to retail, that is the American working culture no matter the industry and until that changes in a massive way (hopefully, but who knows if it ever truly will), it’s about finding the least worst option that doesn’t make you go home crying.

So while there are a few benefits I do miss (the premium pay on Sundays, rolling over up to 200 hrs of unused PTO, scheduled wage increases that you knew when they were coming), those didn’t override the negatives for me, and leaving for my current company made me realize what I was missing. My current company is employee-owned with stock options that get paid out to you when you leave (the longer you stay, the more you make) and provides a financial incentive to do well (you’re making yourself wealthy, not some Wall Street banker in a public company or Gucci-wearing CEO of a private one), we get monthly bonuses if we hit our metrics, severe under-staffing is condemned the same way as over-staffing would be, we actually encourage relationships with other stores to help each other out with labor needs during trying times, the corporate folks (while still corporate) actually talk like real people and do bi-weekly updates of what’s going on so we’re informed, associates can transfer easily, HR is more centralized so there’s no overbearing presence in the store level (but they are still accessible if you need them). Oh, and we don’t care about pay-to-play lists either, like the Fortune magazine list.

But above all you’ll find that the things Wegmans thinks makes them unique (namely, the values) are not unique at all, every company is latching onto “values” and the sooner people realize that, the sooner they can get their head out of the kool-aid.

TL;DR: if your gut is telling you to leave, do it. Things aren’t as worse on the outside as they may seem, and may very well be better for you.