Pros
Enjoyed working with many of the staff and customers. Our first District Manager wanted us to succeed and treated us fairly. She was interested in promoting managers from within and training them to be competent. Sometimes we actually had fun on the sales floor. Most of my staff loved to work as a team under leadership.
Cons
Corporate is completely disconnected from the store level. In over three years we never had a visit from anyone above the regional level and this is a smaller chain. The regional manager would visit rarely but more often would send emails IN ALL CAPS to spur us on to sell more like we were idiots. Ironically, top performers were not valued (i.e. no $$) although there were rare product giveaways. We would receive a different directive several times a week, demanding more sales, while corporate got bonuses and partied on. Once they even posted photos of everyone at corporate having a fabulous libation fueled Halloween party during business hours. They would waste the store management’s time (there was a monthly conference call where a high level corporate manager literally read the catalog aloud and we all looked at the pictures) and then tell us how we had to cut payroll. The culinary centers bleed off revenue, and retail is expected to make up for it (although we are always told how much they contribute to sales – not enough to pay for themselves however). The catalog (on line business) gives free shipping but not return shipping, so their sales look great and ever-increasing while retail absorbs the returns. During holiday there is a knee jerk reaction to copy every sale a California based competitor offers. For example, the company actually scheduled a floor reset after store hours on Christmas Eve one year in response which, not surprisingly, was bad for morale. SLT promotes the idea of being a “Trusted Authority” but then hired outside managers with little to no expertise in the market. A new under-qualified district manager was brought in to clean house, but not because employees had underperformed. He actually violated a pretty basic HR tenet when he told one of my staff to “hang in there” because it was going to take him time to “get things done.” Some of the most successful and productive managers in the district were targeted. Corporate buyers were never held accountable for “bad buys” of which there are many. Once again, retail bears the burden – it was always our fault things didn’t sell, even when it was obvious customers did not want them. We could count on the fact that they’d move on to yet another initiative (the Gift Registry is one of their favorites) and the stuff would end up on clearance. Many of our customers knew just to wait and eventually they’d get the stuff cheaper. The corporate visual chiefs ordered signs that cost a fortune and took valuable payroll hours to draw, but no one was held accountable when they were deemed a failure. Inventory control was non-existent. Product would get dumped on the retail stores (one thousand corn shuckers anyone?) without any demand. In contrast, a cooking class would promote a product like duck fat and there would be 1 jar in the store. Then we’d have to painstakingly write contact and order information into a book, call when it eventually came in, place it on a shelf and find it when/if the customer came back for it. The level of technology (or lack thereof) resulted in many wasted resources. IT spent their time putting out fires and often getting annoyed at the messenger (i.e. the retail people who needed help) because the POS was completely antiquated and there were no back-ups. When the power would go out due to storms, we were told to keep the store open without any lights and hand write all of the sales with no regard for loss prevention or security. Finally, pay is low as are raises (30 cents per hour for an entire year for a top rated assistant manager – I am not making this up). Giving employee reviews was always painful because people couldn't believe how little the company valued them. Managers are told to deliver and corporate looks the other way as to how they achieve it. Bonus levels are often unattainable so some managers cheat to achieve goals (one gave away large discounts on $3000 coffee machines). Email lists are gathered from outside sources to make forecast goals. Employee safety is routinely risked; basic ladder safety is ignored. Managers were required to spend valuable time off the sales floor doing shipping (esp. during holiday) instead of hiring a shipper. I often joke that I am now qualified to work at the UPS store thanks to SLT.