“Everything is fine until you get boiled alive”
The Globe Gourmet supermarket positions itself as a place where the biggest gourmets can find the most exquisite food for their refined taste and are ready to pay for it at price tags many times higher than the price tags in grocery stores for mere mortals. However, if you listen to those who know the “kitchen” of an institution for the rich from the inside, even non-gourmets will lose their appetite. A woman from Central Asia worked in the same basement where four workers were fatally scalded with boiling water from a broken pipe. She told us the details of her work.
Lola (name changed at the request of the source. -) is 37 years old, she comes from Uzbek Andijan, in Moscow on earnings. Not so long ago, she was “left” from a branch of a gourmet supermarket near the Slavyansky Bulvar metro station. Here's what she says about her work at the «globe for the rich» — as they called the chain owned by their employer among themselves, the most junior staff of the stores.
— When I first arrived, fellow countrymen who rent an apartment in Kuntsevo told me that it is very good to work in this Globus — it is convenient to get there and they take it without experience and citizenship, they only need a patent. There were no vacancies then, but I asked fellow countrymen to tell me if they would.
When a vacancy for a saleswoman opened up in the store, the girl went for an interview.
— The manager talked to me, — Lola recalls, — also non-Russian. But she acted so arrogantly that I realized that she was not a migrant. The fired saleswoman, in whose place I came, was paid 40 thousand, but they took me for 25. And they said that it would be so until I gained experience. But first they put it as a rootstock — cut off rotten parts from vegetables and fruits. But in fact, more often than not, I washed everything in the utility room, took out the garbage, soaked the labels.
— Well, if, for example, you need to peel off a label from a plastic bottle or package and stick another, then they are soaked in such a large basin.
— Used throw away, yes. But this is if the product is still inside, and it needs a label with a new date. Was today, became tomorrow. Well, there are products that nothing is done to, but the buyer, if he sees yesterday's date on the label, will get scared. Cake, for example. We had cakes for 4-5 thousand rubles. They were not always sold out on the same day, and they were simply re-labeled. What will they do in 3-4 days. Or freshly squeezed juice that was not bought on the same day. The next day he is still normal. It was much worse with fish, caviar and seafood. When I first arrived, I immediately smelled a musty smell, then I sniffed it. This is because refrigerators often break down. And fish products spoil the fastest, so they spoiled.
— Sent to the hot shop. Where some ready-made dish was made from it. Sometimes we, the rooters, had another woman with me, they sent us, we cut stale fish products into salads, which were seasoned with mayonnaise or such seasonings to beat off the breath.
— Newcomers are promised a free uniform, three hot meals a day, career growth. All this is true, but with reservations. The form is not new, but from someone else’s shoulder, they give it what it is, you can’t pick up the size. There is only a delay. Salaries were often delayed. At least for people like me. The youngest staff — loaders, assistants in the cold and hot shops, handymen, washers and others — from guest workers, we get cash at the checkout, and not on the card, like cashiers and administrators. Career growth is also for everyone, like me.
In the summer, when there was not enough staff, they were raised to the trading floor. But only night shifts were given. There were often not enough night sellers, because night work is the hardest. 12 hours on your feet, you can not sit down, even if there are no visitors. Although at night they are often absent. You can only sit if you hide in the toilet. Half an hour break, you can have a bite for it — and back. Administrators, however, yell at sellers more during the day than at night. It's just that at night there are fewer administrators themselves, only one. And sellers are monitored by internal control.
— They hire such very tall uncles so that they can see everything from afar. They just walk between the rows and make sure that the sellers do not sit, do not eat the goods, do not steal, do not smoke in the back room and all that. By the way, if there is a leak or a fire, they also look. But controllers work in pairs and take turns sleeping there in the back room. One sleeps for 4 hours, the second guards, then they change, and so the whole 12-hour shift.
— It is unlikely that the store is to blame for the pipes themselves, even in front of me they said that the owner was some kind of greedy, spares money for major repairs. So they said that they would not do it, «until the ceiling fell on someone's head.» But it was not the ceiling that fell, but the pipe. And we have a basement. And if the store is to blame, then only that he does not care about small people. And it is more important for them not to scare away the visitors than to save the lives of some workers there. They did not raise the alarm, did not throw all their strength into saving people. They pretend that everything is fine until you are boiled alive. The management could not not know that there was a problem with the pipe. After all, these tall guys, internal control, constantly make rounds and notice everything everywhere, this is their duty.