I haven't posted in a while because I've been working pretty much all day every day for the past two weeks and have been too tired and lazy to rant. I guess that's an effective way to minimise dissent amongst the ranks: keep them too busy and overworked to have time to complain.
I've been working at Sunshine, Mooball, and helping set up a new clearance store in Blowhard. And then I've also been at the new HO helping Helena with the weekly reports (which were a few weeks behind as a result of the move) and even had the pleasure of 'meeting' The Owner, which I suppose deserves a post of its own. I've also been picking up shifts at The Supermarket, being a checkout chick, and getting to know more about The Company and maybe beginning to take on a bigger role and being trained in all aspects.
I've just finished a shift at Mooball, as Charlene roped me into doing (training new staff to do) stocktake today, and I will be back again tomorrow night. I just had the great fortune of 'doing' stocktake last week at Sunshine. Looks like I'll be doing the rounds where I'm needed. Anyway, it's 10:30, so I want to have some dinner!
Showing posts with label clearance store. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clearance store. Show all posts
Monday, November 20, 2006
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Bad things come in threes...
Ooh, I was so pumped Friday night! I worked 9-midnight on Checkouts, and then the night fill guys came in to purchase their stuff just before close. I was chatting to them, as obviously I am still quite new... and Trev asked me jokingly if I'd like to work on night fill. I jumped at the chance! Literally! It was earlier that very day, as I was woken from my afternoon nap (just cos I can) by Girl, who told me to change out of my Checkout Chick position and move to night fill, as I had originally intended. And then, just like that, I was offered the position by chance! Good thing I agreed to work that crap 9-to-close shift.
It was pretty quiet from 11PM, so I filled the time scrubbing down the registers and conveyor belts. Fun. Random crusted-on juices. Had a few interesting encounters selling smokes. Asking people for ID, and selling smokes to whacked out, stoned kids younger than me! I was reluctant, and quite glad when we had sold out of the brands that they liked. Unfortunately for me, most people with that kind of addiction will just go for a stronger one. I have no idea about cigarettes, brands, papers, milligrams of nicotine? tobacco?, and what the packets look like. So, I took a while to find the smokes and papers they were after. 'On your left' 'Right in front of you' -Er, yeah, be more specific, stinky. I'm still new and haven't even worked on the service desk before ok. Stop smoking!
So Trev took me on to work night fill, as I think one of the other girls is on leave, and they always need more competent, efficient staff anyway. I was shown how to use The Supermarket safety knife, disassemble and reassemble it, change the blade, and important safety aspects like not to keep it in your pocket. Of course, yet another case of what is procedure and what is actually done. Like stacking shelves, which proved relatively simple, once I could figure out where the category numbers and products were displayed. Who knew there were so many types of cake sprinkles. I learned quickly from Ellen, what is procedure for stacking and what is done. Random stuff in the wrong spot where you need to stack your goods: move it to the next random section. Random stuff shoved way at the back of the shelf from months/years ago, leave it there or bring it forward. Rip a hole in your pack of sprinkles while shelving it? Chuck it on the floor and the cleaners will pick it up. Can't fit all of your items into the one price point area? Put it on top of the next one. People will find them if they want it.
It was quite a lot of fun. Laid back, casual, I was forewarned that there was lots of cussing. The muesli bar aisle:
'If you're not a swearer now, you will be by the time you finish that aisle' Trev laughed as I moved on to the next aisle.
'Why?' I asked innocently. Muesli bars, all in boxes, looked easy enough
'There's sh*t everywhere!' he chuckled as he walked away.
Sure enough, those evil satan spawn kids had opened boxes to take out muesli bars, shoved random junk food on the shelves, and stuff would just fall down on you as you were stacking. There was no escaping it.
I might have stayed later if not for work at The Company at Sunshine the next morning (all day), and Ellen did a great job of making me feel welcome and showing me the ropes, keeping me entertained with her hilarious customer service stories and crazy customers and crazy supervisors in Deli. No one wants to work in Deli, because it stinks. And then you end up stinking.
Well, turned out Saturday was a crappier day than I could've imagined.
I was so pumped at 3AM when I arrived home and was in bed, that I couldn't sleep. Chatted on the phone for a bit, and then decided I'd better try and sleep anyway around 4AM, seeing as I'd have to get up by 8 at the latest, to get to Sunshine by 9. Oops. Overslept my alarm and woke up at 9. Holy moly. I am never this disorganised and late for work! Managed to make it to Sunshine half an hour late, only to find Jessi, one of the new girls, sitting outside the store. Turns out she didn't have a key to open either. It was her first shift at Sunshine. I'd called the store to let the girls know I was running late, but no answer. No wonder. She called me when I was on my way, and said she was inside. Or there was a misunderstanding to that effect. She didn't know what to do and just waited for me to arrive as she assumed I'd have a key. I'd assumed one of the other girls would.
So, 9:30AM, the shopping centre starts to fill up, but we are still stuck outside. I paged Charlene for help, and even called her on her mobile. No answer, no call back, despite the urgency of the message. I didn't realise she was on leave and had gone away for a few days. I hadn't been working since Wednesday and left my key for the other staff, as I'd assumed one of the other new girls, Karen, who was working Friday night and also supposed to be working Saturday, would take a key. I didn't want to keep my key if someone else needed it. Oops, I was wrong. Turns out Karen had asked for the day off or something. Well, no one bothered to tell us. Oops.
There has been an ongoing mix up and change of rostering and shifts as staff quit, are hired and trained and not put on the roster, and when new staff are put on the roster without having finished their training. So of course, no one bothers to tell me this, so despite my feeling responsible for the smooth running of the store without a manager or experienced staff (it's just me, Skye and Alicia, new but extremely competent, experienced full-timer, and occasionally experienced staff Gina and Annie from Innaloo and Howlong), I can't find covers and know what's going on when no one tells us. And I'm not in every day. So needless to say, there have been more than a few hiccups.
Close to 10AM. Store still not open. Couldn't get hold of Charlene, so I paged Gemma, and she called back straight away. I explained the situation, we tried to get hold of Alicia, who doesn't work weekends, but when I finally managed to get her number from another store her phone went to voicemail. I called Gemma back in desperation, hoping not to inconvenience her to come in and open our store with her master key that all AMs have. She was 45 minutes away, so could probably arrive at 10:45. A few minutes later, Alicia calls back, after I've left a few strange messages on her phone, she was in the shower. What a surprise to get so many missed calls early Saturday morning. It can only be work. Thankfully Alicia could come by in 15 minutes, and I quickly called Gemma back and let her know she didn't have to come over anymore. So we managed to open up by 10:30. I felt so bad for Alicia, having to come in, but at least Gemma authorised her to be paid for driving in to open for us. And I bought her a box of consolation/apology chocolates as well. I was so embarrassed. Not only was I late, but I should've had the key to open. Charlene also called back as well, I was embarrassed to bother her about it on her day off and try to make sense of the situation as well. The music from the other stores was pumping (deafening) and it was hard to communicate. Yikes.
You'd think the day could only get better after such a disastrous start. Wrong! About 2:10, Gemma called me back at Sunshine and asked if I could go to Iron Knob, a new clearance store that'd opened 4 days ago. Apparently there were only 2 new girls on and they were in the weeds. And one of their computers had crashed and the other was going at snail's pace. So I agreed to go, and left a reluctant and hesitant Jessi on her own for 3 hours. It was her first shift at Sunshine, and I didn't want to leave her on her own either. And I didn't think she'd be able to cash up alone. It hadn't been that busy at Sunshine either, but I suppose I'm used to being on my own when the place is swarming with customers. I forget how more than 3 separate customers in store can be confronting and stressful to new staff.
Followed Gemma's instructions to Iron Knob, out in the sticks, got slightly lost and had no idea where I was headed, but had faith in Gemma's instructions and kept going. I arrived at about 10 to 3 and both the girls went on their lunch breaks then, and I sorted out the manual sales from the broken computer, and continued to process sales at the counter. Thank goodness the clearance stores are self serve.
Turned out that the day wasn't going to get any easier. The slow computer certainly didn't help. There were certainly less customers, but cash up proved a major problem. The other computer had crashed, and some sales had been processed on it during the day, so in order to balance the second computer and the cash and EFT takings, I added them all onto the 2nd (slow, but working) computer. In theory they should all balance. But the EFTPOS machine hadn't settled from the night before and were adding the previous day's totals to Saturday's takings. So our EFT amount was a massive amount more than the actual sales, which was obviously wrong... Hmmm so we stayed til 6:15 trying to figure it out, with the help of Gemma on the phone. In the end, we concluded that it couldn't be balanced that night, but the girls, and Caroline, manually added up the EFT takings today and found the problem, and it was all sorted.
Meanwhile, Jessi at Sunshine was still on her own, I didn't manage to get back to cash up with her, but was able to talk her through it over the phone. I think she was so nervous she couldn't think straight. She couldn't peel the plastic backing off to seal the banking bag, get the money to balance, fill out the daily summary paperwork, or find the key to close the store. In the end, I just told her to leave it, and I'd fix it up tomorrow. Sigh. What a day. I had plans to meet my friends at 7 and it took me about 45 minutes from Iron Knob to get to my friends' place. I didn't even get to go home and change or have dinner. What a day!
Hey, at least I haven't been cranky with the customers lately! And I think with all the running around and stress I may have redeemed myself for being late. Let's hope!
It was pretty quiet from 11PM, so I filled the time scrubbing down the registers and conveyor belts. Fun. Random crusted-on juices. Had a few interesting encounters selling smokes. Asking people for ID, and selling smokes to whacked out, stoned kids younger than me! I was reluctant, and quite glad when we had sold out of the brands that they liked. Unfortunately for me, most people with that kind of addiction will just go for a stronger one. I have no idea about cigarettes, brands, papers, milligrams of nicotine? tobacco?, and what the packets look like. So, I took a while to find the smokes and papers they were after. 'On your left' 'Right in front of you' -Er, yeah, be more specific, stinky. I'm still new and haven't even worked on the service desk before ok. Stop smoking!
So Trev took me on to work night fill, as I think one of the other girls is on leave, and they always need more competent, efficient staff anyway. I was shown how to use The Supermarket safety knife, disassemble and reassemble it, change the blade, and important safety aspects like not to keep it in your pocket. Of course, yet another case of what is procedure and what is actually done. Like stacking shelves, which proved relatively simple, once I could figure out where the category numbers and products were displayed. Who knew there were so many types of cake sprinkles. I learned quickly from Ellen, what is procedure for stacking and what is done. Random stuff in the wrong spot where you need to stack your goods: move it to the next random section. Random stuff shoved way at the back of the shelf from months/years ago, leave it there or bring it forward. Rip a hole in your pack of sprinkles while shelving it? Chuck it on the floor and the cleaners will pick it up. Can't fit all of your items into the one price point area? Put it on top of the next one. People will find them if they want it.
It was quite a lot of fun. Laid back, casual, I was forewarned that there was lots of cussing. The muesli bar aisle:
'If you're not a swearer now, you will be by the time you finish that aisle' Trev laughed as I moved on to the next aisle.
'Why?' I asked innocently. Muesli bars, all in boxes, looked easy enough
'There's sh*t everywhere!' he chuckled as he walked away.
Sure enough, those evil satan spawn kids had opened boxes to take out muesli bars, shoved random junk food on the shelves, and stuff would just fall down on you as you were stacking. There was no escaping it.
I might have stayed later if not for work at The Company at Sunshine the next morning (all day), and Ellen did a great job of making me feel welcome and showing me the ropes, keeping me entertained with her hilarious customer service stories and crazy customers and crazy supervisors in Deli. No one wants to work in Deli, because it stinks. And then you end up stinking.
Well, turned out Saturday was a crappier day than I could've imagined.
I was so pumped at 3AM when I arrived home and was in bed, that I couldn't sleep. Chatted on the phone for a bit, and then decided I'd better try and sleep anyway around 4AM, seeing as I'd have to get up by 8 at the latest, to get to Sunshine by 9. Oops. Overslept my alarm and woke up at 9. Holy moly. I am never this disorganised and late for work! Managed to make it to Sunshine half an hour late, only to find Jessi, one of the new girls, sitting outside the store. Turns out she didn't have a key to open either. It was her first shift at Sunshine. I'd called the store to let the girls know I was running late, but no answer. No wonder. She called me when I was on my way, and said she was inside. Or there was a misunderstanding to that effect. She didn't know what to do and just waited for me to arrive as she assumed I'd have a key. I'd assumed one of the other girls would.
So, 9:30AM, the shopping centre starts to fill up, but we are still stuck outside. I paged Charlene for help, and even called her on her mobile. No answer, no call back, despite the urgency of the message. I didn't realise she was on leave and had gone away for a few days. I hadn't been working since Wednesday and left my key for the other staff, as I'd assumed one of the other new girls, Karen, who was working Friday night and also supposed to be working Saturday, would take a key. I didn't want to keep my key if someone else needed it. Oops, I was wrong. Turns out Karen had asked for the day off or something. Well, no one bothered to tell us. Oops.
There has been an ongoing mix up and change of rostering and shifts as staff quit, are hired and trained and not put on the roster, and when new staff are put on the roster without having finished their training. So of course, no one bothers to tell me this, so despite my feeling responsible for the smooth running of the store without a manager or experienced staff (it's just me, Skye and Alicia, new but extremely competent, experienced full-timer, and occasionally experienced staff Gina and Annie from Innaloo and Howlong), I can't find covers and know what's going on when no one tells us. And I'm not in every day. So needless to say, there have been more than a few hiccups.
Close to 10AM. Store still not open. Couldn't get hold of Charlene, so I paged Gemma, and she called back straight away. I explained the situation, we tried to get hold of Alicia, who doesn't work weekends, but when I finally managed to get her number from another store her phone went to voicemail. I called Gemma back in desperation, hoping not to inconvenience her to come in and open our store with her master key that all AMs have. She was 45 minutes away, so could probably arrive at 10:45. A few minutes later, Alicia calls back, after I've left a few strange messages on her phone, she was in the shower. What a surprise to get so many missed calls early Saturday morning. It can only be work. Thankfully Alicia could come by in 15 minutes, and I quickly called Gemma back and let her know she didn't have to come over anymore. So we managed to open up by 10:30. I felt so bad for Alicia, having to come in, but at least Gemma authorised her to be paid for driving in to open for us. And I bought her a box of consolation/apology chocolates as well. I was so embarrassed. Not only was I late, but I should've had the key to open. Charlene also called back as well, I was embarrassed to bother her about it on her day off and try to make sense of the situation as well. The music from the other stores was pumping (deafening) and it was hard to communicate. Yikes.
You'd think the day could only get better after such a disastrous start. Wrong! About 2:10, Gemma called me back at Sunshine and asked if I could go to Iron Knob, a new clearance store that'd opened 4 days ago. Apparently there were only 2 new girls on and they were in the weeds. And one of their computers had crashed and the other was going at snail's pace. So I agreed to go, and left a reluctant and hesitant Jessi on her own for 3 hours. It was her first shift at Sunshine, and I didn't want to leave her on her own either. And I didn't think she'd be able to cash up alone. It hadn't been that busy at Sunshine either, but I suppose I'm used to being on my own when the place is swarming with customers. I forget how more than 3 separate customers in store can be confronting and stressful to new staff.
Followed Gemma's instructions to Iron Knob, out in the sticks, got slightly lost and had no idea where I was headed, but had faith in Gemma's instructions and kept going. I arrived at about 10 to 3 and both the girls went on their lunch breaks then, and I sorted out the manual sales from the broken computer, and continued to process sales at the counter. Thank goodness the clearance stores are self serve.
Turned out that the day wasn't going to get any easier. The slow computer certainly didn't help. There were certainly less customers, but cash up proved a major problem. The other computer had crashed, and some sales had been processed on it during the day, so in order to balance the second computer and the cash and EFT takings, I added them all onto the 2nd (slow, but working) computer. In theory they should all balance. But the EFTPOS machine hadn't settled from the night before and were adding the previous day's totals to Saturday's takings. So our EFT amount was a massive amount more than the actual sales, which was obviously wrong... Hmmm so we stayed til 6:15 trying to figure it out, with the help of Gemma on the phone. In the end, we concluded that it couldn't be balanced that night, but the girls, and Caroline, manually added up the EFT takings today and found the problem, and it was all sorted.
Meanwhile, Jessi at Sunshine was still on her own, I didn't manage to get back to cash up with her, but was able to talk her through it over the phone. I think she was so nervous she couldn't think straight. She couldn't peel the plastic backing off to seal the banking bag, get the money to balance, fill out the daily summary paperwork, or find the key to close the store. In the end, I just told her to leave it, and I'd fix it up tomorrow. Sigh. What a day. I had plans to meet my friends at 7 and it took me about 45 minutes from Iron Knob to get to my friends' place. I didn't even get to go home and change or have dinner. What a day!
Hey, at least I haven't been cranky with the customers lately! And I think with all the running around and stress I may have redeemed myself for being late. Let's hope!
Friday, October 27, 2006
How original!
Having finished my work for the day at HO, I offered to do odd jobs for Grant. That day, it was going through applications for Area Manager positions, as The Company prepares for its rapid expansion and growth of clearance stores. Basically, I was just stapling together applicants' cover sheets and resumes. Mindless, but hey, I don't mind for $17 an hour. No problem.
What I did notice was that many of the resumes were VERY generic. I lost count of how many resumes were created using Microsoft Word templates. Not that it's a problem, as the content and the candidate's relevant experience would be what counts, but it can be difficult to remember one particularly outstanding candidate from another when their resume looked just the same as the other hundred in my pile. I'm a visual person- I will remember info for tests by where and how they are located on my page, there were a mere handful of resumes that stood out visually.
So my 2 cents to people applying for upper management (hey, we're talking AREA MANAGER here, salary $90K plus) positions, go all out with your resumes! Do them in colour with interesting lines and headers and all that. We're scrooges, but DO print in colour! Keep it professional, and for crying out loud, if you've got 7 pages of experience and details, put page numbers on each page. Standing out from the crowd is the first step to getting noticed.
What I did notice was that many of the resumes were VERY generic. I lost count of how many resumes were created using Microsoft Word templates. Not that it's a problem, as the content and the candidate's relevant experience would be what counts, but it can be difficult to remember one particularly outstanding candidate from another when their resume looked just the same as the other hundred in my pile. I'm a visual person- I will remember info for tests by where and how they are located on my page, there were a mere handful of resumes that stood out visually.
So my 2 cents to people applying for upper management (hey, we're talking AREA MANAGER here, salary $90K plus) positions, go all out with your resumes! Do them in colour with interesting lines and headers and all that. We're scrooges, but DO print in colour! Keep it professional, and for crying out loud, if you've got 7 pages of experience and details, put page numbers on each page. Standing out from the crowd is the first step to getting noticed.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Too much stock, not enough staff.
It's been completely hectic at work lately. Stock office and Head Office have stuffed up again and still can't get it right. It's change of season and we have finally received instructions to send out the last of our winter stock (a random assortment of jackets, vests and knits) to a selected clearance store for storage. The Company can never seem to coordinate old stock being sent out and new stock being sent in. So at the moment, our stores are some 20-30% capacity, and we all just (finally) received our new spring/summer stock. A good 60 boxes in one go. That's how much Innaloo received today. Other stores like Beverly Hills received 100 boxes. Nevertire was supposed to receive 80-odd, but seeing as they are still trading with renovations going on in store (yes, The Company is that stingy) and only the front half of their already small store is accessbile, they only delivered 42 (where they stacked them up, I have no idea) and the other half will be delivered probably on Monday when the poor newbie manager is there all day without a cover.
Of course, I was covering at the last minute at my old store today, as Jen was sick. Probably due to having to work all day every day by herself without a break and under very stressful circumstances. No doubt being forced to find her own cover when there was no one else available didn't help either. We only received 29 boxes. Apparently, one of the GMs or something in head office has been campaigning to not have more than 20 boxes delivered in one go. It's about time. But right now, too little too late. We had 29 boxes to transfer in and 11 pages of consolidations to send out. So we'd be simultaneously transferring stock in and out at the same time so that we'd have boxes to pack things up and also so our store didn't look completely empty.
Because of the huge debacle with new and old stock, they have gone all out and allowed extra hours without penalties to the AMs. Budgeted hours and staffing are strictly controlled at The Company, and Charlene was notorious for enforcing budgets. This time, they have even asked us to stay back and get extra staff to come in so that we can get the stores set up back to the high The Company standard. Problem is, no one is available to come in, or stay back. You'd be hard pressed to find a cover if you're sick or dying. We're at the unenviable stage where once you're rostered on for a shift but you can't do it for whatever reason (outside your stated availability, sick, having an operation, mother just passed away...) too bad, there's no one to cover you. And Charlene, who hasn't yet received her master key for all stores in her region, also seems reluctant to work in stores, so you're pretty much stuck with the shift. Hence my covering Jen's shift at the last minute (called up at 9:30 the night before) without a key to open the store. Great. I was actually be supposed to be training at Head Office that day as well. More on that later.
But wait, it gets better.
I was also forced to work all day Saturday at Innaloo without a cover (or key to open) as well. Gina, who had been moved from Innaloo to my former store, Sunshine, when Andie quit, was moved back to Innaloo as the new manager had a few days leave. So I was originally rostered to do 12-5, but was happy to come in and work all day to help with stock, but then Gina messaged me on Friday night to tell me her grandmother wasn't well. Pretty bad timing, as it was her birthday the next day too. Poor Gina. At least she didn't have to go in to work, as she probably would've been forced to do if there was no one else.
It's now Monday, as I started this post on Friday night. I received a message from Nevertire during class today that they need more staff to come in tomorrow to help transfer in and unpack the 54 new boxes of stock today (the 18th)! So it looks like they got the rest of their 80 boxes originally supposed to be delivered last Friday, and then some! Poor Robyn. And she had to work all Monday by herself, without a break. She came in on her day off on Saturday (overtime) to help unpack the stock. She paged Charlene as their scanner had completely broken and she couldn't transfer in any more (of her 40-odd boxes of) stock. And you know what Charlene's response was? "Thanks for the update, Robyn." What the?! Get me another scanner from a clearance store! Now! That's part of what her job as AM is: ferrying scanners from HO or clearance to retail when ours break down or when we have stocktake. She obviously still doesn't quite get it.
Charlene officially became our AM on the 12th. I completely missed the boat there as I wasn't working that day but found out the next, as I was going through some emails at Innaloo. I've decided to be civil and give her a chance. Who knows, she may have changed. But then, she was the one who roped me into the Friday shift without a key when I was supposed to be training...
Of course, I was covering at the last minute at my old store today, as Jen was sick. Probably due to having to work all day every day by herself without a break and under very stressful circumstances. No doubt being forced to find her own cover when there was no one else available didn't help either. We only received 29 boxes. Apparently, one of the GMs or something in head office has been campaigning to not have more than 20 boxes delivered in one go. It's about time. But right now, too little too late. We had 29 boxes to transfer in and 11 pages of consolidations to send out. So we'd be simultaneously transferring stock in and out at the same time so that we'd have boxes to pack things up and also so our store didn't look completely empty.
Because of the huge debacle with new and old stock, they have gone all out and allowed extra hours without penalties to the AMs. Budgeted hours and staffing are strictly controlled at The Company, and Charlene was notorious for enforcing budgets. This time, they have even asked us to stay back and get extra staff to come in so that we can get the stores set up back to the high The Company standard. Problem is, no one is available to come in, or stay back. You'd be hard pressed to find a cover if you're sick or dying. We're at the unenviable stage where once you're rostered on for a shift but you can't do it for whatever reason (outside your stated availability, sick, having an operation, mother just passed away...) too bad, there's no one to cover you. And Charlene, who hasn't yet received her master key for all stores in her region, also seems reluctant to work in stores, so you're pretty much stuck with the shift. Hence my covering Jen's shift at the last minute (called up at 9:30 the night before) without a key to open the store. Great. I was actually be supposed to be training at Head Office that day as well. More on that later.
But wait, it gets better.
I was also forced to work all day Saturday at Innaloo without a cover (or key to open) as well. Gina, who had been moved from Innaloo to my former store, Sunshine, when Andie quit, was moved back to Innaloo as the new manager had a few days leave. So I was originally rostered to do 12-5, but was happy to come in and work all day to help with stock, but then Gina messaged me on Friday night to tell me her grandmother wasn't well. Pretty bad timing, as it was her birthday the next day too. Poor Gina. At least she didn't have to go in to work, as she probably would've been forced to do if there was no one else.
It's now Monday, as I started this post on Friday night. I received a message from Nevertire during class today that they need more staff to come in tomorrow to help transfer in and unpack the 54 new boxes of stock today (the 18th)! So it looks like they got the rest of their 80 boxes originally supposed to be delivered last Friday, and then some! Poor Robyn. And she had to work all Monday by herself, without a break. She came in on her day off on Saturday (overtime) to help unpack the stock. She paged Charlene as their scanner had completely broken and she couldn't transfer in any more (of her 40-odd boxes of) stock. And you know what Charlene's response was? "Thanks for the update, Robyn." What the?! Get me another scanner from a clearance store! Now! That's part of what her job as AM is: ferrying scanners from HO or clearance to retail when ours break down or when we have stocktake. She obviously still doesn't quite get it.
Charlene officially became our AM on the 12th. I completely missed the boat there as I wasn't working that day but found out the next, as I was going through some emails at Innaloo. I've decided to be civil and give her a chance. Who knows, she may have changed. But then, she was the one who roped me into the Friday shift without a key when I was supposed to be training...
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
She's BACK!
A post about staff, and sometimes, Area Managers moving around. One of the girls called herself a The Company whore, as she'd worked at almost every store in the metropolitan region. I'll also reintroduce a returning AM.
Things at The Company can be far from consistent. Especially during Christmas and holidays, when things get busier and staff are forced to leave, as casuals are not allowed leave in December-January. Fair enough, as that's when it's busiest, and other full time staff are able to take leave (though not store managers, I believe) then as well. Last year, we lost a good batch of experienced staff, as they went on overseas trips over the holiday period and had to quit. Others also graduated from university and are working in their respective industries. Of those that went overseas, they have since found other work at such reputable fashion labels as Hugo Boss, Esprit and Country Road. We are indeed expendable. So it can become quite hectic and short staffed, to say the least. We also usually train new staff before the busy sales period, which generally starts around November. So the busy stores, combined with short staffing, new and inexperienced staff and lots of stress will start in the next few months.
All the above, and then with staff's vastly different and always changing availability, we are then required to move around and work at different stores. That's usually fine. I've now cut down my rostered hours to a maximum 15/week and that's enough for me. The way I see it, it also frees me up to cover shifts where necessary. But only working at Innaloo for a few days a week, I must say, as I'm not there to follow things up, it can lead to a lack of accountability. Some staff are split between two, sometimes even three stores within a week. Often only working a few hours at one store and then a few hours here and there at another.
Despite our best efforts, it can be hard to stifle our lack of care. Because really, even though there is a list of things to get done for the next few days or whatever, 'non-regular' staff will not be there again to follow it up, so realistically, they don't care that much. I generally do care about how all our stores are run, and will endeavour to fix things up and get things in order if there is no manager or there are new staff, etc, but there is only so much one can do in a 7 hour shift. Alone. If I were to one day become a manager, I'm sure I'd be obligated (for the sake of my own sanity at least!) to put in overtime (most likely unpaid) to fix things up and get everything in order and to my liking! Our stores are set up pretty much the same, but there are always the little things that always stump you. Like where the sticky tape or pricing gun is at any particular store. I must admit that when I am frustrated at someting at a particular store, I won't always bother to change it because really, "who cares, I don't work here anyway!" or "who cares, I'm not going to be back here for a while anyway!" So-and-so can fix it up to however they like it displayed, etc.
On another note, our current Area Manager, Lauren, will be leaving our region to preside over the city stores region. It's much smaller, with only a few stores to manage, so should be easier for her, seeing as she's new and all. We're talking what, 2 months new? At least she seems nice enough and eager and enthusiastic. Though some staff think her incompetent, I'm keen to give her a go, and with time, think she'll get it right. Eventually. But at the moment, she seems to have given up on our region, and isn't exactly going out of her way to help us out or fulfil her AM duties. When she joined, two retail stores had since closed, and the stores were shuffled around to accommodate our new AM, Lauren. We had previously been under the superior leadership of Gemma, who's been with The Company for some 7+ years or so...
I had been working exclusively at my previous store (before moving to Innaloo) for some 8 months or so as I had major issues with our AM, Charlene, so they probably figured it'd be easier to move me to a different region with Gemma.
The regions had been shuffled before, but I had personally never been under the managership of anyone but Natalie. Natalie was tough, but respected. She put in a lot of work for The Company and was pretty much always available to help when on call. She hired me, and had faith in me. Natalie left mid-last year, as she had been offered a better position somewhere else, where she would have a lot more responsibility with range development and she now has ample opportunity to travel overseas. And she now drives a huge Toyota Kluger, which beats the Hyundai Elantra hands down.
The arrival of Charlene was met with some apprehension, as The Company was in a bit of turmoil having just demoted several other long-serving AMs as well as various head office staff. These staff then moved into stores, so also ended up taking up some of our shifts and hours as well. Not many staff knew much of Charlene to begin with, as she was based in NZ, but we hoped she would be as good as Natalie was, being experienced in The Company policies and how things were done. Well, we should have all just changed our availability then, so as to avoid dealing with her wherever possible.
Perhaps time has been an amnesiac, but I can't remember any positive things ever having happened as a result of her coming to manage our region. Sure, it was a hectic time over Christmas with the majorly stuffed up stock levels and sales, which were out of our control, but her being heartless, demanding and completely lacking in compassion and understanding didn't help much either. With so many boxes of stock arriving and needing to be unpacked, and many new styles to fit in when there was no more space, no generous increase in staff hours (yes, we're still expected to do all of this and serve the 20-odd customers as well), as well as then having to pack up and consolidate to clearance stores the same stock just received days ago, our stores were not looking their best. Needless to say, the staff were also extremely stressed. Many casuals, as students also had exams and assignments, store managers were expected to train several staff at a time while getting little increase in staff hours, so they had to train the newbies and serve customers and deal with all the stock issues, as well as complete all the store tasks and endless paperwork, pretty much alone and without any support.
Charlene would come in every week or so to do store reports and was openly critical of the state of our stores and the staff for not being able to get everything done 110%. I had never seen staff morale so low as it was under Charlene. She criticised staff in front of customers, gave many of us "formal interviews" (like a formal warning, three strikes and you're out) for issues that were out of our control while offering little support as to how to deal with our stock and staffing problems. Being stingy with hours leads to disgruntled staff. Further cutting back hours during busy sales periods, that is, sending staff home when the staff remaining are obviously swamped and will continue to be so for the rest of the shift, also does not make for happy staff. I felt bad leaving Jane during a busy weekend pre-Christmas rush, but I am also not staying back at work when I am not going to get paid.
Charlene had appointed Stephanie, the manager at Nevertire to call up her region's stores and check to see if we were on track to making the day's budget. If we weren't, then staff hours would be cut. It didn't matter that we had 30-40 boxes of stock on the floor, or that the stores were still extremely busy with customers, if you weren't 2/3 of the way there or whatever measure it was that they were using, someone was going home. As casuals, that was usually us. So we weren't getting regular hours either. Paging Charlene for authorisation to be paid (AMs must authorise the pay for any extra hours, that is non-rostered, worked) for extra staff to come in to help with stock or customers, was out of the question.
Inevitably, the stock situation- receiving, transferring in, unpacking and displaying stock, and then having to remove, untag and pack up and transfer stock out again within a matter of days or weeks; got so bad that many stores had to schedule "stock unpacking nights" and staff were invited to bring in their friends and family to help out. Seriously. They would be paid the requisite award wages. There has been some reluctance at The Company to pay for hours outside store open hours, as there is no direct opportunity to make money. So if staff requested to stay back for half an hour to tidy after close or to cash up, there was little chance of it getting approved and the staff getting paid. Another one of the reasons why we're not paid to cash up and which I have raised in my most recent acerbic Staff Feedback submitted. So to have to organise stock unpacking nights, where staff would stay behind to pack and unpack stock was not only unprecedented but also a blinding sign that something was obviously very wrong.
Well, the constant unreasonable demands and pressure Charlene put on staff, as well as her condescending and arrogant attitude eventually got to many staff. Stephanie, like Jane had been training several new staff and had difficulty coping with the pressure and Jane quit early January, Stephanie shortly after, and joined us at our store in her last month. James, co-manager at my store with Andie, took over the manager position at Nevertire, and soon found it too difficult to manage. He was put under a lot of pressure by Charlene to pick up the store's performance and appearance, and not coping, rather than offerings of help and advice, received several formal interviews for petty issues so that he was eventually demoted to a casual position. James was demoted even though there was no other manager available to take over. So several 'lucky' staff, who were back to full time study, were suddenly working 30-hour weeks. The constant changing and lack of managers and constant, experienced staff had led to a disorganised store and demoting James was not helpful at all but to serve their own egos.
I'd also had my fair share of run-ins with Charlene. As an experienced casual, The Company could rely on me to work at several different stores and still work hard and get things done. Sure, I'll get things done, but I want to be paid for it. And therein lay the issue of the conflict between myself and Charlene. She wouldn't pay me. I had to drive for over an hour to pick up a store key, and she wouldn't authorise my pay. I was livid. I had late customers and had to cash up, and she wouldn't pay me for the extra half hour or so. We needed extra staff hours and she never allowed it. I was working extra hours for whatever reason, and she refused to pay me. I calculated that at the end of it all, when I refused to deal with her any longer, she owed me at least $250 in unpaid wages. And that wasn't even including overtime.
I felt that Charlene didn't care about us and was arrogant and self-serving. She was a miser with hours, keeping well under the budgeted hours even though we were allowed extra unrostered hours, as she wanted to keep staffing costs down so as to maximise profits and protect her own bonuses for performance. There were countless shifts and hours when we were unknowingly scammed out of our overtime pay, and paid our regular award wages. I personally don't have any good things to say about her, which as those who work with me will know, won't stop me from saying nothing at all! Surely in the 7 or so months that she was our AM, she must've known that we all hated her. And we always wondered what it'd be like to have so many people hate you and then not even care. It's hard to find enough superlatives to describe our feelings towards her. Hate is strong, but perhaps not strong enough for some staff. She was passionately abhorred, loathed, despised and detested region-wide.
Things haven't exactly resumed normality, and The Company is changing for the cheaper, so I am quite interested in seeing how Charlene is welcomed back to our region. Admittedly, many of the remaining staff are so new that they have not met her (such is our staff turnover), but have heard about her! I know I for one will now be confident enough not to take any of her crap and will ensure that none of the other newer staff are pushed around by her either. I am currently in the process of stirring the pot some more (see the link and following post "Update" as well) and am campaigning for fair pay for our work. I should be very interested to see if they have taken any of our feedback on board and reassessed her performance and to see if she has changed at all.
She'll be rejoining us shortly, coming back from having been moved to the Northern New South Wales-Queensland region. I'll be sure to keep posting updates as they occur!
Things at The Company can be far from consistent. Especially during Christmas and holidays, when things get busier and staff are forced to leave, as casuals are not allowed leave in December-January. Fair enough, as that's when it's busiest, and other full time staff are able to take leave (though not store managers, I believe) then as well. Last year, we lost a good batch of experienced staff, as they went on overseas trips over the holiday period and had to quit. Others also graduated from university and are working in their respective industries. Of those that went overseas, they have since found other work at such reputable fashion labels as Hugo Boss, Esprit and Country Road. We are indeed expendable. So it can become quite hectic and short staffed, to say the least. We also usually train new staff before the busy sales period, which generally starts around November. So the busy stores, combined with short staffing, new and inexperienced staff and lots of stress will start in the next few months.
All the above, and then with staff's vastly different and always changing availability, we are then required to move around and work at different stores. That's usually fine. I've now cut down my rostered hours to a maximum 15/week and that's enough for me. The way I see it, it also frees me up to cover shifts where necessary. But only working at Innaloo for a few days a week, I must say, as I'm not there to follow things up, it can lead to a lack of accountability. Some staff are split between two, sometimes even three stores within a week. Often only working a few hours at one store and then a few hours here and there at another.
Despite our best efforts, it can be hard to stifle our lack of care. Because really, even though there is a list of things to get done for the next few days or whatever, 'non-regular' staff will not be there again to follow it up, so realistically, they don't care that much. I generally do care about how all our stores are run, and will endeavour to fix things up and get things in order if there is no manager or there are new staff, etc, but there is only so much one can do in a 7 hour shift. Alone. If I were to one day become a manager, I'm sure I'd be obligated (for the sake of my own sanity at least!) to put in overtime (most likely unpaid) to fix things up and get everything in order and to my liking! Our stores are set up pretty much the same, but there are always the little things that always stump you. Like where the sticky tape or pricing gun is at any particular store. I must admit that when I am frustrated at someting at a particular store, I won't always bother to change it because really, "who cares, I don't work here anyway!" or "who cares, I'm not going to be back here for a while anyway!" So-and-so can fix it up to however they like it displayed, etc.
On another note, our current Area Manager, Lauren, will be leaving our region to preside over the city stores region. It's much smaller, with only a few stores to manage, so should be easier for her, seeing as she's new and all. We're talking what, 2 months new? At least she seems nice enough and eager and enthusiastic. Though some staff think her incompetent, I'm keen to give her a go, and with time, think she'll get it right. Eventually. But at the moment, she seems to have given up on our region, and isn't exactly going out of her way to help us out or fulfil her AM duties. When she joined, two retail stores had since closed, and the stores were shuffled around to accommodate our new AM, Lauren. We had previously been under the superior leadership of Gemma, who's been with The Company for some 7+ years or so...
I had been working exclusively at my previous store (before moving to Innaloo) for some 8 months or so as I had major issues with our AM, Charlene, so they probably figured it'd be easier to move me to a different region with Gemma.
Charlene, Charlene.
Charlene started at The Company about 4 years ago, and quickly rose to Store Manager and then Area Manager positions. Apparently, one particular gentleman in Head Office was quite fond of her. This is something I heard in store, so may or may not be true. I'd say the source is pretty credible though. For some reason, she then left The Company for some 2 years and joined the team at a young women's fashion and accessories chain store, before rejoining us recently. As an AM, she was moved around a bit, and before coming to take over from Natalie (our AM who had diligently started as a casual during uni, then moving up to AM in her 6-odd years of loyal service to The Company). Charlene was previously based in New Zealand to manage the few stores just recently opened there.The regions had been shuffled before, but I had personally never been under the managership of anyone but Natalie. Natalie was tough, but respected. She put in a lot of work for The Company and was pretty much always available to help when on call. She hired me, and had faith in me. Natalie left mid-last year, as she had been offered a better position somewhere else, where she would have a lot more responsibility with range development and she now has ample opportunity to travel overseas. And she now drives a huge Toyota Kluger, which beats the Hyundai Elantra hands down.
The arrival of Charlene was met with some apprehension, as The Company was in a bit of turmoil having just demoted several other long-serving AMs as well as various head office staff. These staff then moved into stores, so also ended up taking up some of our shifts and hours as well. Not many staff knew much of Charlene to begin with, as she was based in NZ, but we hoped she would be as good as Natalie was, being experienced in The Company policies and how things were done. Well, we should have all just changed our availability then, so as to avoid dealing with her wherever possible.
Perhaps time has been an amnesiac, but I can't remember any positive things ever having happened as a result of her coming to manage our region. Sure, it was a hectic time over Christmas with the majorly stuffed up stock levels and sales, which were out of our control, but her being heartless, demanding and completely lacking in compassion and understanding didn't help much either. With so many boxes of stock arriving and needing to be unpacked, and many new styles to fit in when there was no more space, no generous increase in staff hours (yes, we're still expected to do all of this and serve the 20-odd customers as well), as well as then having to pack up and consolidate to clearance stores the same stock just received days ago, our stores were not looking their best. Needless to say, the staff were also extremely stressed. Many casuals, as students also had exams and assignments, store managers were expected to train several staff at a time while getting little increase in staff hours, so they had to train the newbies and serve customers and deal with all the stock issues, as well as complete all the store tasks and endless paperwork, pretty much alone and without any support.
Charlene would come in every week or so to do store reports and was openly critical of the state of our stores and the staff for not being able to get everything done 110%. I had never seen staff morale so low as it was under Charlene. She criticised staff in front of customers, gave many of us "formal interviews" (like a formal warning, three strikes and you're out) for issues that were out of our control while offering little support as to how to deal with our stock and staffing problems. Being stingy with hours leads to disgruntled staff. Further cutting back hours during busy sales periods, that is, sending staff home when the staff remaining are obviously swamped and will continue to be so for the rest of the shift, also does not make for happy staff. I felt bad leaving Jane during a busy weekend pre-Christmas rush, but I am also not staying back at work when I am not going to get paid.
Charlene had appointed Stephanie, the manager at Nevertire to call up her region's stores and check to see if we were on track to making the day's budget. If we weren't, then staff hours would be cut. It didn't matter that we had 30-40 boxes of stock on the floor, or that the stores were still extremely busy with customers, if you weren't 2/3 of the way there or whatever measure it was that they were using, someone was going home. As casuals, that was usually us. So we weren't getting regular hours either. Paging Charlene for authorisation to be paid (AMs must authorise the pay for any extra hours, that is non-rostered, worked) for extra staff to come in to help with stock or customers, was out of the question.
Inevitably, the stock situation- receiving, transferring in, unpacking and displaying stock, and then having to remove, untag and pack up and transfer stock out again within a matter of days or weeks; got so bad that many stores had to schedule "stock unpacking nights" and staff were invited to bring in their friends and family to help out. Seriously. They would be paid the requisite award wages. There has been some reluctance at The Company to pay for hours outside store open hours, as there is no direct opportunity to make money. So if staff requested to stay back for half an hour to tidy after close or to cash up, there was little chance of it getting approved and the staff getting paid. Another one of the reasons why we're not paid to cash up and which I have raised in my most recent acerbic Staff Feedback submitted. So to have to organise stock unpacking nights, where staff would stay behind to pack and unpack stock was not only unprecedented but also a blinding sign that something was obviously very wrong.
Well, the constant unreasonable demands and pressure Charlene put on staff, as well as her condescending and arrogant attitude eventually got to many staff. Stephanie, like Jane had been training several new staff and had difficulty coping with the pressure and Jane quit early January, Stephanie shortly after, and joined us at our store in her last month. James, co-manager at my store with Andie, took over the manager position at Nevertire, and soon found it too difficult to manage. He was put under a lot of pressure by Charlene to pick up the store's performance and appearance, and not coping, rather than offerings of help and advice, received several formal interviews for petty issues so that he was eventually demoted to a casual position. James was demoted even though there was no other manager available to take over. So several 'lucky' staff, who were back to full time study, were suddenly working 30-hour weeks. The constant changing and lack of managers and constant, experienced staff had led to a disorganised store and demoting James was not helpful at all but to serve their own egos.
I'd also had my fair share of run-ins with Charlene. As an experienced casual, The Company could rely on me to work at several different stores and still work hard and get things done. Sure, I'll get things done, but I want to be paid for it. And therein lay the issue of the conflict between myself and Charlene. She wouldn't pay me. I had to drive for over an hour to pick up a store key, and she wouldn't authorise my pay. I was livid. I had late customers and had to cash up, and she wouldn't pay me for the extra half hour or so. We needed extra staff hours and she never allowed it. I was working extra hours for whatever reason, and she refused to pay me. I calculated that at the end of it all, when I refused to deal with her any longer, she owed me at least $250 in unpaid wages. And that wasn't even including overtime.
I felt that Charlene didn't care about us and was arrogant and self-serving. She was a miser with hours, keeping well under the budgeted hours even though we were allowed extra unrostered hours, as she wanted to keep staffing costs down so as to maximise profits and protect her own bonuses for performance. There were countless shifts and hours when we were unknowingly scammed out of our overtime pay, and paid our regular award wages. I personally don't have any good things to say about her, which as those who work with me will know, won't stop me from saying nothing at all! Surely in the 7 or so months that she was our AM, she must've known that we all hated her. And we always wondered what it'd be like to have so many people hate you and then not even care. It's hard to find enough superlatives to describe our feelings towards her. Hate is strong, but perhaps not strong enough for some staff. She was passionately abhorred, loathed, despised and detested region-wide.
Things haven't exactly resumed normality, and The Company is changing for the cheaper, so I am quite interested in seeing how Charlene is welcomed back to our region. Admittedly, many of the remaining staff are so new that they have not met her (such is our staff turnover), but have heard about her! I know I for one will now be confident enough not to take any of her crap and will ensure that none of the other newer staff are pushed around by her either. I am currently in the process of stirring the pot some more (see the link and following post "Update" as well) and am campaigning for fair pay for our work. I should be very interested to see if they have taken any of our feedback on board and reassessed her performance and to see if she has changed at all.
She'll be rejoining us shortly, coming back from having been moved to the Northern New South Wales-Queensland region. I'll be sure to keep posting updates as they occur!
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Bargain shopping fun!
Due to more corporate mismanagement, our brilliant promotion featuring the ever so popular $5 backpacks with a purchase of $50 or more has been extended for another 2 weeks. Yippee. You can just see the excitement in the faces of all the retail staff. These sorts of promotions always bring in our favourite, big spending customers.
I think they decided to extend the promotion to get more mileage out of the posters they printed for all the stores in Australia. That and the fact that we didn't even receive any of the coloured promotional backpacks until a few days after the stated end of the sale. And even then, we only received selected colours. My new store (I've been moved again), Innaloo, only received white, dark green, and a handful of light blue and light and dark pink. So we missed out on receiving black, orange, yellow, more navy and whatever other colours they advertised. So of the huge backlog of backorders that we sceptically took, some customers will be pretty angry that we don't have all the colours. And then there's the ongoing grief we'll be faced with when the bargain shopper customers, at the POS, announce that they'd like X colour backpack. Great.
This isn't the first time that stock has been so delayed for a promotion that The Company has been forced/pressured to extend it. But of course, once it's past the stated end of the promotion, many customers don't bother coming back. There have been countless catalogues since the start of the year, where the stock has not arrived at all in time for the catalogue, and The Company printed out "apology" posters for us to put up in stores. No public apology was made, nothing printed in the newspapers or aired on television though. As if! That would be some unwanted bad publicity...
I have come to the conclusion that since The Company has decided to lower the prices on the majority of our stock, and then not provide us with decent amounts of stocks to sell (say, 60-odd styles of women's shoes and 4 pairs of each left) it's not the customers' fault that they're shopping for reduced stock. It's all reduced! Well, the majority of it anyway. But that doesn't make me any more eager to serve them! Our stores are set out so that it is easy for the customers to serve themselves, and of course, all our stock is on the floor so obviously, mid month of the beginning of spring, we're not going to have any more heavily reduced winter jackets "out the back". These kinds of promotions bring in the customers that will just buy a jacket/item because it's cheap, regardless of whether it's the right size. They buy the items in whatever bigger size that's left and wear them, a size or two too big. Looks ridiculous in my opinion, but hey, what would I know about fashion? I work at The Company.
We're also in the process of sending out more discontinued and current stock to the clearance stores, so our stores will be pretty much empty (or 30% capacity) until we receive some summer stock. No, still no short sleeved shirts or polos or sandals. We will of course, receive more of the stock we send out to clearance, back again, adding to more time wasted packing and unpacking stock.
So none of our retail stores have yet received any spring/summer stock, but we all know that the clearance stores are overloaded with the stuff. Checking out the online store on The Company website, I can get a fair indication of what we will soon be bombarded with. Going from 30% capacity, The Company will surely then take the opportunity to fill our near-empty stores with 40 boxes of stock in one delivery. That was just what happened at the beginning of the year, when we had no stock after Christmas/stocktake sales, as warehouse staff were on holidays or they didn't want to send us 'unnecesary' or 'non-priority' stock during a busy sales period. We had nothing to sell!
Well, I bit the bullet and finally sent through the angry feedback about the unfairness of not getting paid to cash up. It was a long email, and I won't reprint it here, more info later. I sent it through on Thursday night, and apparently, staff at head office were so alarmed by the content of it, and that I referred to the low morale of staff in stores, that they immediately called my store, Innaloo on Friday, and spoke to Caroline for about half an hour! Caroline's great and has been with The Company for about 7 years or more, as a manager and now casual. She's trained a great deal of now Area Managers, managers and casual staff in her time, and I'm sure she gave them an appropriate earful! Oh, I hope it gets published and I hope they do follow it up with me, as I would certainly welcome the opportunity to discuss my grievances.
I think they decided to extend the promotion to get more mileage out of the posters they printed for all the stores in Australia. That and the fact that we didn't even receive any of the coloured promotional backpacks until a few days after the stated end of the sale. And even then, we only received selected colours. My new store (I've been moved again), Innaloo, only received white, dark green, and a handful of light blue and light and dark pink. So we missed out on receiving black, orange, yellow, more navy and whatever other colours they advertised. So of the huge backlog of backorders that we sceptically took, some customers will be pretty angry that we don't have all the colours. And then there's the ongoing grief we'll be faced with when the bargain shopper customers, at the POS, announce that they'd like X colour backpack. Great.
This isn't the first time that stock has been so delayed for a promotion that The Company has been forced/pressured to extend it. But of course, once it's past the stated end of the promotion, many customers don't bother coming back. There have been countless catalogues since the start of the year, where the stock has not arrived at all in time for the catalogue, and The Company printed out "apology" posters for us to put up in stores. No public apology was made, nothing printed in the newspapers or aired on television though. As if! That would be some unwanted bad publicity...
I have come to the conclusion that since The Company has decided to lower the prices on the majority of our stock, and then not provide us with decent amounts of stocks to sell (say, 60-odd styles of women's shoes and 4 pairs of each left) it's not the customers' fault that they're shopping for reduced stock. It's all reduced! Well, the majority of it anyway. But that doesn't make me any more eager to serve them! Our stores are set out so that it is easy for the customers to serve themselves, and of course, all our stock is on the floor so obviously, mid month of the beginning of spring, we're not going to have any more heavily reduced winter jackets "out the back". These kinds of promotions bring in the customers that will just buy a jacket/item because it's cheap, regardless of whether it's the right size. They buy the items in whatever bigger size that's left and wear them, a size or two too big. Looks ridiculous in my opinion, but hey, what would I know about fashion? I work at The Company.
We're also in the process of sending out more discontinued and current stock to the clearance stores, so our stores will be pretty much empty (or 30% capacity) until we receive some summer stock. No, still no short sleeved shirts or polos or sandals. We will of course, receive more of the stock we send out to clearance, back again, adding to more time wasted packing and unpacking stock.
So none of our retail stores have yet received any spring/summer stock, but we all know that the clearance stores are overloaded with the stuff. Checking out the online store on The Company website, I can get a fair indication of what we will soon be bombarded with. Going from 30% capacity, The Company will surely then take the opportunity to fill our near-empty stores with 40 boxes of stock in one delivery. That was just what happened at the beginning of the year, when we had no stock after Christmas/stocktake sales, as warehouse staff were on holidays or they didn't want to send us 'unnecesary' or 'non-priority' stock during a busy sales period. We had nothing to sell!
- Update -
Well, I bit the bullet and finally sent through the angry feedback about the unfairness of not getting paid to cash up. It was a long email, and I won't reprint it here, more info later. I sent it through on Thursday night, and apparently, staff at head office were so alarmed by the content of it, and that I referred to the low morale of staff in stores, that they immediately called my store, Innaloo on Friday, and spoke to Caroline for about half an hour! Caroline's great and has been with The Company for about 7 years or more, as a manager and now casual. She's trained a great deal of now Area Managers, managers and casual staff in her time, and I'm sure she gave them an appropriate earful! Oh, I hope it gets published and I hope they do follow it up with me, as I would certainly welcome the opportunity to discuss my grievances.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Father's Day
This is not a post about the joys of fatherhood nor about the joys of Father's Day, rather I will rant about the crap that is The Company and the scams it is pulling this Father's Day.
Father's Day used to be one of the biggest times of the year for The Company, a predominantly male clothing and footwear outlet. Used to be. Several things have changed that, more on that later. So, The Company was favoured by lots of dads for their great quality clothing and Australian made footwear. You got what you paid for.
We have a promo running in our retail stores: spend $50 or more and get a backpack (normal RRP $100) in a colour of your choice (10 or so colours available) for $5.
Hmm... how can I go about this without outing myself completely? I can't. I think that pretty much gave it away.
Anyway, we received and were instructed to put up the posters drawing attention to this great offer about a week or so ago, maybe 1 1/2 weeks ago, I don't work that often anymore, so don't take much notice.
Background info-
The retail stores have had similar offers in the past, what, last year now? I've lost track of time, people and promos at The Company... Spend $100 or more, get the backpack for $5. It would be advertised and invariably bring in lots of customers. The Company, in its infinite wisdom, decided to keep the offer ongoing, so we often had stock of backpacks to offer with high sales. Most stores had plenty of them, as the staff often didn't bother offering them to customers who spent over the requisite amount.
Retail stores only ever stocked the backpacks in navy and they were not a 'stock' item, ie they weren't in regular supply. At my former regular store, we had sold out of most giveaways and promo items, so had them sent over from bigger stores with more stock and less inclination for turnover...
As our customers get stingier, so do our staff. So many people just don't feel that the customers 'deserve' the giveaways and special offers. I am also of that opinion, sometimes... though I do try to reward the good ones!
Here are some reasons why we have stopped offering giveaways (apart from it cheapening our reputation)
*because they've lowered the minimum spending amount to qualify for a freebie, we have a lot more customers who could previously never afford to get a "quality The Company" backpack/etc and are more stingier than the ones of FD two years ago. The minimum spend amount then was $150. Now it is $50. See why?
Anyway, back to the promos... Earlier this year, our clearance stores had some good promos going on with said coloured backpacks. I don't know what the spending minimum was, but it was pretty good for them to be selling lots of backpacks as well. I even saw some on eBay... dodgy...
So, bottom line: The Company giveaway backpacks were navy for retail stores, coloured for clearance stores. Neither of the two types of stores were kept in regular supply of said backpacks after the promo.
Enter 2006 Father's Day promo-
What a scam.
We have as far as I know, still not received any backpacks. I was working at Innaloo yesterday, nothing received. Nevertire nearby also had not received any. Unless there was a huge delivery today to fill all the backorders and projected rush in the lead up to FD on Sunday, I can see a lot of angry customers. We do NOT receive stock on weekends. We had already all sold out of our meagre existing supply of navy ones and staff had to explain that again, we have not yet received any coloured ones yet, and began to take backorders.
We were reassured on Monday that backpack supplies were imminent and were indeed coming. Many more prepared customers have already bought their FD gifts and the ones that only wanted to spend $50 to get the backpack were understandably pissed. Other people, on hearing that we have not got any stock, will not care. Others still will ask for an alternative, say a free shirt. What the!? Get out of my store!
This is just like the previous sale we had, which was so popular also because it offered a particularly fine looking, expensive 'giveaway' promo. Minimum spend only $100, not hard with everything on sale, but hard because no stocks of said sale items.
What is similar about both sales is that we had a selected promo item to be sold when a customer spends over a requisite amount. Problem is, both promos were advertised and in both instances, we were never supplied with adequate, or more stocks apart from what we already had on hand from a previous promo. Which was not much. What happened with the last promo was that the clearance stores, which for some unknown reason also had the promo items, had to send them to us late in the sale period, as The Company couldn't get their act together and send us enough stock in time. All this transfer of stock between stores can't be cheap. They kick up a stink when we don't send discontinued stock in one consignment. Now they're getting clearance stores to waste time and freight sending us their stock because The Company is in damage control. There is too much sending of stock back and forth.
So the only customers who actually got the special offer promo items last catalogue were the ones that came in early (say, the first 2 days) and the ones that were lucky enough to come in at the end of the sale. The majority of customers who came in early-midway through the sale missed out. I have stopped taking orders and backorders for stock, promo stock is (usually) not to be backordered under any circumstances, as there is little-no chance of getting more stock in.
I am fortunate enough to have today (Friday, 9AM-9PM trade) and tomorrow off. I will get to work on Sunday, Father's Day though. It will certainly be interesting to see if the clearance stores have sent us whatever backpacks they had leftover, and if we will indeed receive any at all, as some staff have been taking backorders for them. I'm more cynical than that.
Though I can understand their frustration at the false advertising, I can't do anything to appease their anger except offer them a feedback form and phone number and email address in order to make sure they are heard. Hey, I know how you feel. I know exactly what the situation is, I have written through several staff feedbacks, but they don't listen to us. I tell my customers that, and encourage them to go write some feedback, because The Company certainly doesn't care about us. Heck, I've even been known to go onto The Company's website and write through customer feedback myself!* It's all published for the world to see, positive and negative, so for a short time, I was infamous!
*Using pseudonyms of course, and for the record, it was similar to my internal staff feedback and received the same circular, stupid, repetitive reply which completely ignored the issues raised.
So, happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, and if you happen to be shopping in one of our stores this FD, be sure to be understanding of the poor staff who have no control over the availability of those really cool, fashionable backpacks.
Father's Day used to be one of the biggest times of the year for The Company, a predominantly male clothing and footwear outlet. Used to be. Several things have changed that, more on that later. So, The Company was favoured by lots of dads for their great quality clothing and Australian made footwear. You got what you paid for.
We have a promo running in our retail stores: spend $50 or more and get a backpack (normal RRP $100) in a colour of your choice (10 or so colours available) for $5.
Hmm... how can I go about this without outing myself completely? I can't. I think that pretty much gave it away.
Anyway, we received and were instructed to put up the posters drawing attention to this great offer about a week or so ago, maybe 1 1/2 weeks ago, I don't work that often anymore, so don't take much notice.
Background info-
The retail stores have had similar offers in the past, what, last year now? I've lost track of time, people and promos at The Company... Spend $100 or more, get the backpack for $5. It would be advertised and invariably bring in lots of customers. The Company, in its infinite wisdom, decided to keep the offer ongoing, so we often had stock of backpacks to offer with high sales. Most stores had plenty of them, as the staff often didn't bother offering them to customers who spent over the requisite amount.
Retail stores only ever stocked the backpacks in navy and they were not a 'stock' item, ie they weren't in regular supply. At my former regular store, we had sold out of most giveaways and promo items, so had them sent over from bigger stores with more stock and less inclination for turnover...
As our customers get stingier, so do our staff. So many people just don't feel that the customers 'deserve' the giveaways and special offers. I am also of that opinion, sometimes... though I do try to reward the good ones!
Here are some reasons why we have stopped offering giveaways (apart from it cheapening our reputation)
- There are now the types of customers that ask for free gifts with any purchase (say $20 tshirts) 'as they got one last time'. These parsimonious types get a stare from me and no freebie. Or a curt reply, "No, that's only if you spend $200 or more" insert smirk depending on mood...
- Then there are the ones that are delighted when you offer them a freebie. Of these types, some will then ask for something APART from the selection I have offered. 'Can you throw in some socks instead?' or 'How about a free belt? Come on, they're the same price' Others will take so long deciding and tossing up between colours, etc that the store fills up with customers which try to catch my eye or get my attention. Don't make me regret my offer nitwit. I have other customers to serve and tasks to complete.
- People coming back with 'faulty' giveaways and demanding replacements/repairs, etc and just being generally difficult.
- People coming back to exchange freebies.
- After a big shopping spree, customers feeling sudden buyers' remorse and returning items without freebie. So it all seems like a scam, though they may indeed have been genuine in wanting the items purchased for themselves/husband, etc. That and the fact that they have wasted our time serving them.
*because they've lowered the minimum spending amount to qualify for a freebie, we have a lot more customers who could previously never afford to get a "quality The Company" backpack/etc and are more stingier than the ones of FD two years ago. The minimum spend amount then was $150. Now it is $50. See why?
Anyway, back to the promos... Earlier this year, our clearance stores had some good promos going on with said coloured backpacks. I don't know what the spending minimum was, but it was pretty good for them to be selling lots of backpacks as well. I even saw some on eBay... dodgy...
So, bottom line: The Company giveaway backpacks were navy for retail stores, coloured for clearance stores. Neither of the two types of stores were kept in regular supply of said backpacks after the promo.
Enter 2006 Father's Day promo-
What a scam.
We have as far as I know, still not received any backpacks. I was working at Innaloo yesterday, nothing received. Nevertire nearby also had not received any. Unless there was a huge delivery today to fill all the backorders and projected rush in the lead up to FD on Sunday, I can see a lot of angry customers. We do NOT receive stock on weekends. We had already all sold out of our meagre existing supply of navy ones and staff had to explain that again, we have not yet received any coloured ones yet, and began to take backorders.
We were reassured on Monday that backpack supplies were imminent and were indeed coming. Many more prepared customers have already bought their FD gifts and the ones that only wanted to spend $50 to get the backpack were understandably pissed. Other people, on hearing that we have not got any stock, will not care. Others still will ask for an alternative, say a free shirt. What the!? Get out of my store!
This is just like the previous sale we had, which was so popular also because it offered a particularly fine looking, expensive 'giveaway' promo. Minimum spend only $100, not hard with everything on sale, but hard because no stocks of said sale items.
What is similar about both sales is that we had a selected promo item to be sold when a customer spends over a requisite amount. Problem is, both promos were advertised and in both instances, we were never supplied with adequate, or more stocks apart from what we already had on hand from a previous promo. Which was not much. What happened with the last promo was that the clearance stores, which for some unknown reason also had the promo items, had to send them to us late in the sale period, as The Company couldn't get their act together and send us enough stock in time. All this transfer of stock between stores can't be cheap. They kick up a stink when we don't send discontinued stock in one consignment. Now they're getting clearance stores to waste time and freight sending us their stock because The Company is in damage control. There is too much sending of stock back and forth.
So the only customers who actually got the special offer promo items last catalogue were the ones that came in early (say, the first 2 days) and the ones that were lucky enough to come in at the end of the sale. The majority of customers who came in early-midway through the sale missed out. I have stopped taking orders and backorders for stock, promo stock is (usually) not to be backordered under any circumstances, as there is little-no chance of getting more stock in.
I am fortunate enough to have today (Friday, 9AM-9PM trade) and tomorrow off. I will get to work on Sunday, Father's Day though. It will certainly be interesting to see if the clearance stores have sent us whatever backpacks they had leftover, and if we will indeed receive any at all, as some staff have been taking backorders for them. I'm more cynical than that.
Though I can understand their frustration at the false advertising, I can't do anything to appease their anger except offer them a feedback form and phone number and email address in order to make sure they are heard. Hey, I know how you feel. I know exactly what the situation is, I have written through several staff feedbacks, but they don't listen to us. I tell my customers that, and encourage them to go write some feedback, because The Company certainly doesn't care about us. Heck, I've even been known to go onto The Company's website and write through customer feedback myself!* It's all published for the world to see, positive and negative, so for a short time, I was infamous!
*Using pseudonyms of course, and for the record, it was similar to my internal staff feedback and received the same circular, stupid, repetitive reply which completely ignored the issues raised.
So, happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, and if you happen to be shopping in one of our stores this FD, be sure to be understanding of the poor staff who have no control over the availability of those really cool, fashionable backpacks.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
The inner workings of The Company
When I first started at The Company just over 2 years ago, it was well regarded in the retail industry. I would tell friends I worked at The Company and they'd respond: 'Wow, isn't that place really expensive?' Or, having never heard of The Company or being unfamiliar with its products, I would explain that it's an Australian company, some products are made locally and the men's and women's shoes range from about $60-$130. Shirts and pants around $60-70. Pretty reasonable, so I thought at the time. I used to be proud to announce that I'd got a job at The Company.
Our target demographic was middle aged, maybe 30s-50s, and we had quite a loyal customer base and many customers, especially the men, would "only wear The Company shoes/shirts" according to their wives! Customer service was paramount and we were all well trained at being able to offer excellent service and product knowledge. I was impressed. There were not many other stores that I knew of that would require its staff to know about clothing fibres and materials, construction methods, sole materials, fittings and the like. We are expected to offer this kind of service and knowledge to each customer we serve.
However, though the people in upper management haven't changed too much (as far as I know, they are very secretive, more on this later) The Company is now moving in a different direction. We have two kinds of stores: smaller retail stores usually located in shopping centres or shopping strips - full price items, full service stores that offer lay-by, orders, and superior customer service and then there are our larger clearance stores usually in outer areas (think Kmart size, in rural areas) - self serve, different ranges of stock, 'what's there is what you get' and discontinued and damaged stock. Clearance stores are supposed to only carry discontinued items sent from the retail stores. That is why they are so heavily discounted, right? Not all sizes or colours are available, it's just the luck of the draw. At least, that's how it was when I first started.
Now for some incomprehensible reason and seemingly in blatant disregard of federal legislation and fair trading policies, The Company has decided to bring out the SAME stock in the clearance stores as the retail stores. So now they are in direct competition with us, though we are in fact one and the same company. We just have hugely different prices. Yes, that's right folks, same products, different prices. No, the stock at clearance is usually not faulty. For example, early on in winter this year, we had men's suede jackets in retail stores for $170. Fair enough, a cow (or 2) had to die for that jacket. In the clearance stores, which are inching closer and closer to us, geographically, they were selling for $100. Is that the price you put on a cow's life? Anyhow, the main problems with the changing nature of the clearance stores were:
Take for example any designer store or regular boutique like Wayne Cooper or Marc Jacobs or whatever. They have retail concept stores in prime positions in shopping centres or shopping strips in the city, etc. They all stock new season stock which is full price and rotated regularly, so say, once a particular dress has been in store for 5 weeks or what have you, they then move on to new styles and send whatever is left over of that style of dress to their clearance stores. The clearance stores are in outer areas and/or in warehouses to keep costs down. They stock gear that has been discontinued, right? Fair enough. Not all sizes are available.
As the stock in clearance stores is heavily reduced, obviously they will sell well and be popular, seeing as it is the same quality and has the same 'brand name' and reputation as what you are buying from the boutiques. It's just a matter of whether you can get your size/colour/etc in what's available. Yes, you are paying our wages by shopping retail and paying for the higher overheads like rent, fixtures, etc. So, seeing this, The Company has figured that they could probably increase their profit margins by turning over more stock in the clearance stores. How do they do this? Bring in more stock, regular supplies and sizes, popular, current season stock, and heavily reduce it. Advertising helps as well. I must admit, they have been quite successful in this aspect.
So the clearance stores' sales have taken off. Bright idea: let's open up more. That'll further increase profits. But what to stock them with? There can only be so much 'discontinued' or past season stock with so many retail stores. So they decide that the clearance stores must sell something, so for some asinine reason, they stock them with the same products as they do us. Obviously, that has killed our sales. With the opening of more and more clearance stores, and some in ridiculously close proximity to the retail stores (try 400m down the road), it is only understandable that there will be the inevitable customer confusion and loss of sales.
So what has The Company done to remedy the situation? Close down the retail stores, as they're not making money. In the past month, 2 retail stores in Victoria have been shut down. One of them was a flagship store in the biggest shopping complex in the Southern Hemisphere. Sure, they increased the lease (exponentially, one would imagine), but to not even relocate within the shopping centre and shut down completely will lose a lot of customers, new and old. I'm sure our competitors will have no trouble finding more loyal customers.
Countless other stores interstate have suddenly disappeared without a trace. Browsing through The Company's website will alert you to the confusion faced by customers as they go to shop at their favourite store, only to find that it has disappeared and there is no notice of where it may have been relocated to or why. The Company's response to the customers' comments were that there will be a clearance store opening nearby (but not as conveniently located) shortly. This does not bode well with us working in the retail stores, especially when we know or think that our lease may be up shortly...
At the moment, The Company has decided to not only focus on the sales and success of the clearance stores, but of course, not ignoring us completely, have decided to attempt to increase our sales and patronage to our stores by lowering prices and having regular sales. Needless to say, this has brought in a completely new breed of customers. Ones that won't pay $60 for a shirt, gasp when you respond that the jacket is indeed correctly marked at $180, ask when the next sale starts and ask for discounts on socks and undies. It was only 2 years ago that a sale was a privilege and were few and far between. We didn't need to have them all the time because we knew that our customers would come back for the same styles of clothing that they're comfortable in, even if it be the exact same pair of pants or shoes he'd bought 2 years ago. 'He only wears The Company jeans, so I just need another pair of the same style please'. Customers were polite, understanding and willing to fork out the money for their quality goods. Our catalogues advertised new stock at full price and people would still come in to buy them. You could count on us to have all the pants at $70 and all the shirts at $60 or whatever. People were happy with that. We didn't need to ply them with cheap gifts as incentives.
Right now, with most stock being marked down at our retail stores (I know, because we spent hours repricing them) and the arrival of new, sometimes skanky, poor quality clothing, our individual sales have dropped. Thus, the commission earned by retail staff has also dropped. The retail stores are now not in direct competition with The Company clearance stores, but it looks like we are now trying to compete with Best and Less, Big W and other 'value' department stores.
Thing is, once you lose your reputation as being a prestigous, quality apparel chain, it doesn't come back easily. I used to be extremely proud of working at The Company. Now I just question where it's headed and whether we'll all have jobs in the next few years.
Our target demographic was middle aged, maybe 30s-50s, and we had quite a loyal customer base and many customers, especially the men, would "only wear The Company shoes/shirts" according to their wives! Customer service was paramount and we were all well trained at being able to offer excellent service and product knowledge. I was impressed. There were not many other stores that I knew of that would require its staff to know about clothing fibres and materials, construction methods, sole materials, fittings and the like. We are expected to offer this kind of service and knowledge to each customer we serve.
However, though the people in upper management haven't changed too much (as far as I know, they are very secretive, more on this later) The Company is now moving in a different direction. We have two kinds of stores: smaller retail stores usually located in shopping centres or shopping strips - full price items, full service stores that offer lay-by, orders, and superior customer service and then there are our larger clearance stores usually in outer areas (think Kmart size, in rural areas) - self serve, different ranges of stock, 'what's there is what you get' and discontinued and damaged stock. Clearance stores are supposed to only carry discontinued items sent from the retail stores. That is why they are so heavily discounted, right? Not all sizes or colours are available, it's just the luck of the draw. At least, that's how it was when I first started.
Now for some incomprehensible reason and seemingly in blatant disregard of federal legislation and fair trading policies, The Company has decided to bring out the SAME stock in the clearance stores as the retail stores. So now they are in direct competition with us, though we are in fact one and the same company. We just have hugely different prices. Yes, that's right folks, same products, different prices. No, the stock at clearance is usually not faulty. For example, early on in winter this year, we had men's suede jackets in retail stores for $170. Fair enough, a cow (or 2) had to die for that jacket. In the clearance stores, which are inching closer and closer to us, geographically, they were selling for $100. Is that the price you put on a cow's life? Anyhow, the main problems with the changing nature of the clearance stores were:
- they stock the same current season products as we do
- they are heavily discounted (40% or more)
- they have full size ranges, and plenty of stock
- they are advertised in campaigns as being new in and heavily discounted
- THEY GET THE STOCK BEFORE WE DO!
Take for example any designer store or regular boutique like Wayne Cooper or Marc Jacobs or whatever. They have retail concept stores in prime positions in shopping centres or shopping strips in the city, etc. They all stock new season stock which is full price and rotated regularly, so say, once a particular dress has been in store for 5 weeks or what have you, they then move on to new styles and send whatever is left over of that style of dress to their clearance stores. The clearance stores are in outer areas and/or in warehouses to keep costs down. They stock gear that has been discontinued, right? Fair enough. Not all sizes are available.
As the stock in clearance stores is heavily reduced, obviously they will sell well and be popular, seeing as it is the same quality and has the same 'brand name' and reputation as what you are buying from the boutiques. It's just a matter of whether you can get your size/colour/etc in what's available. Yes, you are paying our wages by shopping retail and paying for the higher overheads like rent, fixtures, etc. So, seeing this, The Company has figured that they could probably increase their profit margins by turning over more stock in the clearance stores. How do they do this? Bring in more stock, regular supplies and sizes, popular, current season stock, and heavily reduce it. Advertising helps as well. I must admit, they have been quite successful in this aspect.
So the clearance stores' sales have taken off. Bright idea: let's open up more. That'll further increase profits. But what to stock them with? There can only be so much 'discontinued' or past season stock with so many retail stores. So they decide that the clearance stores must sell something, so for some asinine reason, they stock them with the same products as they do us. Obviously, that has killed our sales. With the opening of more and more clearance stores, and some in ridiculously close proximity to the retail stores (try 400m down the road), it is only understandable that there will be the inevitable customer confusion and loss of sales.
So what has The Company done to remedy the situation? Close down the retail stores, as they're not making money. In the past month, 2 retail stores in Victoria have been shut down. One of them was a flagship store in the biggest shopping complex in the Southern Hemisphere. Sure, they increased the lease (exponentially, one would imagine), but to not even relocate within the shopping centre and shut down completely will lose a lot of customers, new and old. I'm sure our competitors will have no trouble finding more loyal customers.
Countless other stores interstate have suddenly disappeared without a trace. Browsing through The Company's website will alert you to the confusion faced by customers as they go to shop at their favourite store, only to find that it has disappeared and there is no notice of where it may have been relocated to or why. The Company's response to the customers' comments were that there will be a clearance store opening nearby (but not as conveniently located) shortly. This does not bode well with us working in the retail stores, especially when we know or think that our lease may be up shortly...
At the moment, The Company has decided to not only focus on the sales and success of the clearance stores, but of course, not ignoring us completely, have decided to attempt to increase our sales and patronage to our stores by lowering prices and having regular sales. Needless to say, this has brought in a completely new breed of customers. Ones that won't pay $60 for a shirt, gasp when you respond that the jacket is indeed correctly marked at $180, ask when the next sale starts and ask for discounts on socks and undies. It was only 2 years ago that a sale was a privilege and were few and far between. We didn't need to have them all the time because we knew that our customers would come back for the same styles of clothing that they're comfortable in, even if it be the exact same pair of pants or shoes he'd bought 2 years ago. 'He only wears The Company jeans, so I just need another pair of the same style please'. Customers were polite, understanding and willing to fork out the money for their quality goods. Our catalogues advertised new stock at full price and people would still come in to buy them. You could count on us to have all the pants at $70 and all the shirts at $60 or whatever. People were happy with that. We didn't need to ply them with cheap gifts as incentives.
Right now, with most stock being marked down at our retail stores (I know, because we spent hours repricing them) and the arrival of new, sometimes skanky, poor quality clothing, our individual sales have dropped. Thus, the commission earned by retail staff has also dropped. The retail stores are now not in direct competition with The Company clearance stores, but it looks like we are now trying to compete with Best and Less, Big W and other 'value' department stores.
Thing is, once you lose your reputation as being a prestigous, quality apparel chain, it doesn't come back easily. I used to be extremely proud of working at The Company. Now I just question where it's headed and whether we'll all have jobs in the next few years.
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