06/25/2025
SAFEWAY REPORT FOR BULLYING, HARASSMENT AND THE ENFORCEMENT OF UNSAFE AND UNSANITORY WORK PRACTICES.
I have worked in the deli for Safeway since October 2023. I worked the closing shift for the first six months but due to the ongoing bullying and false accusations of upper management on the closer, I switched to production and day shifts. I also refused to work any further closing shifts because the general manager, James Delffs, refused to acknowledge the situation of bullying and harassment, and, being forced by the deli manager, Sharon Harbison, to cook and serve expired food to customers.
I was retaliated against by Sharon Harbison and James Delffs for refusing to work any more closing shifts. Sharon constantly sabotaged my jobs in the deli and James Delffs just kept overlooking my complaints of this bullying, backing Sharon up in her bullying, and sending me home for insubordination when I refused to do anything unethical that Sharon had instructed me to do.
Sharon constantly had me cook and prepare expired food to customers, and when I went to James Delffs requesting that my work time be restricted from 4 shifts /week to 2/week because of the toxicity that Sharon brings to work, James Delffs retaliated and simply lowered my work time to one 4-hour shift per week.
I filed several grievances against James Delffs, with the union between April 2024 and December 2024 but was further bullied by Doug Martinez, the person who decides if your grievance will stick, in the second phase of the grievance. I started to gather evidence. No surprise, I was just notified of the rejection by Safeway, of the second grievance.
On 02/27/2025, Sharon placed several meat chubs in front of me that she instructed me to slice up and put out on the floor on a managers special with 50% off. All of the meat was expired. The hot and honey turkey had the expiration date of 01/26/2025. It was a month past expiration. I reported the situation to James Delffs, who simply threw the meat in the trash and carried on like business as usual. I then reported the incident to HR, along with some of the photos I had taken of previous incidents of preparing the expired food for customers.
This incident which spanned over 15 months was extremely stressful and the day it came to a head and Sharon was put on suspension, I fell ill and was off work for the next 7 days. It was during these 7 days that the bullying and harassment was taken over by Denise Deluzio Vigil, the assistant deli manager. Denise in no way believed that I was actually sick and called or texted and harassed me over work related topics every single day that I was off. After the 7th day of harassment, I finally had to report the issue to the ethics hotline, where asset protection looked into the matter and essentially claimed that it was normal for Denise to contact me over work related issues.
When I came back to work the bullying and harassment was picked up to a feverish pace by Denise in retaliation for me reporting her to the ethics hotline. Now it was Denise who was putting expired meat in front of me with the instructions to use it for making the sandwiches.
I fell ill again and was automatically placed on LOA by Safeway after missing 4 days of work. I did not request to be placed on LOA, and it took me 5 separate visits to the doctor to get the paperwork correct to allow me to come back to work 5 weeks later. I was back for 1 week and Denise really turned up the bullying and harassment. I have had to file 5 reports with the ethics hotline from April 22nd to May 5th, through Navex global, the company that Albertsons employs for its employees to report unethical behavior, over Denise’s compulsive bullying and harassment. Denise is also insistent on me not obeying the safety rules by: instructing me to use the slicer without the safety bar to hold the blade cover in place; forcefully instructing me to fry double the amount of food in the fryer, even when the 350-degree oil boils over the side of the fryer and onto the floor because of overfilling. If I disagree, I am sent home by James Delffs, who pretends not to know about what Denise is doing, but then secretly has meetings with Denise to instruct her to keep doing it.
The last report that I filed, James Delffs came to me during the filing process to tell me to get off the phone and back to work, as these reports need to be made on my own time. When I refused to clock out while making the report, James Delffs placed me on suspension.
I have missed months of work by being sent home for not obeying and cooking expired food
I have over 70 pictures from October to April of expired food being prepared for customers.
I have voice recordings, being instructed by Sharon to cook the stinking expired chicken because it doesn’t smell bad enough to not cook, and, that she will tell me when it smells too bad to cook for the customers.
I have 30 plus picture showing unsanitary conditions of food preparation
I have pictures proving that I was bullied and treated differently to the other employees by James Delffs, Sharon Haribson and Denise Deluzio Vigil.
Denise has also removed the cooking time guidelines that we had in the Deli because she is compulsively training the new employees to undercook the food. She has reduced all the cook times claiming that we cook the food to long and it dries out in the chicken bar and so to cook it less as it keeps cooking in the wing bar once it has been put out for sale.
When Billy from Ecolab comes and does an inspection and finds unsanitary conditions, Denise simply lies to Billy about how she is going to remedy the situation. There is no accountability.
As I previously mentioned, I have filed several grievances with the union over James Delffs management of the issue of bullying. The result of this grievance takes 6 months, in which time anyone who has filed a grievance has already left because of how bad the bullying is.
I have filed numerous reports with the HR, but they insist on standing with the managers. I found out that after all my reporting of Sharon Haribson making me cook and serve expired food to customers for a year, that she was not even fired. She was simply transferresd to another store. Denis the current Deli manager was just nominated employee of the month.
Therefor its safe to say that the problem of bullying associates into cooking and serving expired food to customers is how Safeway honors its business transactions.
