This article offers a new perspective on the study of supermarket employees in France. Until now, publications have mainly focused on cashiers. Focusing on department managers, i.e., the first level of management in stores, allows a better understanding of the methods in this industry. Contrary to the usual approach, which relies on monographs and focuses on the same types of employees, our approach combines different scales of analysis (micro, meso and macro) in order to understand field observations in relation to the history of the sector and the economic context.

This approach led us to bring together the sociology of work and employment with the sociology of occupational groups in order to show that the managers work in two major professional segments: food departments on the one hand and non-food departments on the other. In each segment, the working conditions are not exactly the same. Because integrated groups are in an economically worrisome situation, they have reorganized supermarket departments. Consequently, working conditions are also different.

Although the process of centralization-decentralization of tasks and the selection of a new management profile have both been uniformly implemented in the food departments, two non-food departments have retained their specific characteristics. First, in the drugstore department the title of doctor constitutes a barrier to entry into this closed labour market. Second, in departments for brown-white-gray goods (consumer electronics, major appliances, small appliances), managers could disappear due to financial losses.