Unhappy Retail Sales People

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: Quadruple post! Suck it!

What a whore.

Just wanted to add.. I do not work in retail.. but in this political/commerical climate.. most big companies treat their employees like liabilities, not assets.

As for upselling, Friend of mine used to manage a gaming store. he did very well, with them meeting their sales quota and then some every month.

Then they got forced to sell this widget that was supposed to clean up scratches on CDs and DVDs. They had tried them, they didn't work, but they had to sell a couple hundred a month or there would be penalties.

2 months later, my friend quit. The stress of selling those stupid widgets and his regional manager coming down on them for not selling them was too much.

A year later, the store was closed and gone

madmallard wrote: In reply to Bobzilla: here's the deal: Many jobs are bearable or even fulfilling despite not being a chosen career path. Retail is not one of them. You must either like what you're pusing ALOT, or you must like customer service ALOT. If you don't like one or the other, you will be a miserable worker. And customers smell miserable workers a mile away. They know you're apathetic and they know the only way they'll get results outta you is to escalate being advasarial, usually rudely. Its sad, but 9 out of 10 times it works (coming from a previous sales manager for Circuit City, I can tell you about some failed policies....) This extends to the retail management level too, and their treatment of workers. In my experience, sales and location managers for retail are among the most incompetant group of people by far. This is for 2 main reasons: 1: they are using this lower middle management job merely as a stepping stone to get out and into upper middle management. They focus only on the admin work and couldn't care less about customers or workers. 2: anyone who had a love for customer service or the product they are working with has been doing a good job, and usually have been hired away at better pay out of retail already. Any manager I knew that was worth anything got hired out of retail within 2 years, and the ones worth nothing trying to get out usually either got out or were turned over by 5 years.

tHAT IS no excuse for being rude to another person doing their job.

In reply to gamby: I made my point, which is that he was a hotheaded mouth breather who couldn't back up anything he said and used his position to be a little martinet and dictator.

Anyhow, the point I was trying to make with that post was this: I understand where SVreX is coming from; but the fact remains that there are some seriously dysfunctional work environments out there. The only way they are going to get "fixed" is to get bought out and have a top down ownership->management change.

In reply to Bobzilla:

unforunately, the excuse is that it more often than not gets you results...

Brett_Murphy wrote: In reply to gamby: I made my point, which is that he was a hotheaded mouth breather who couldn't back up anything he said and used his position to be a little martinet and dictator. Anyhow, the point I was trying to make with that post was this: I understand where SVreX is coming from; but the fact remains that there are some *seriously* dysfunctional work environments out there. The only way they are going to get "fixed" is to get bought out and have a top down ownership->management change.

Why fix them?

Why not let Darwin do his job?

Are you suggesting that there are bigger incompetent dysfunctional companies that will do just fine when they gobble up the smaller incompetent dysfunctional ones?

Ooo, Oooo, Oooo... then we can have REALLY huge incompetent dysfunctional companies gobble up the big ones- and when there are no bigger more incompetent more dysfunctional companies to do the job, we can all trust the government to solve the problem!

That's like all the worst of socialism all wrapped up into one!

If ya treat yur workers like total E36 M3 it's highly unlikely they'll give a flyin' berkeley about their job.

Are you talking to me?

In reply to SVreX:

No, just in general to the thread

but if you take it personal, OK too

Oh. OK.

Nope. No reason for me to take it personally. I've got a 30 year track record that I'm not the least ashamed of.

Be happy to introduce anyone here to anyone that has ever worked for me. I'll let them speak for me. I've got nothing to hide.

Always treated them with a great deal more importance than I treat myself.

In reply to SVreX:

I agree with what you said, but I made that comment in regards to your comment regarding taking personal responsibility to make things better. Sometimes, it just isn't going to happen without a major overhaul, and often that overhaul just isn't worth it.

Much like rusty cars, if there is too much rust in the frame it's just better to part them out and scrap the rest.

In reply to gamby:

Holy hell, that sounds damn near like my wife's current work environment. If she made as much as you did, it would be even closer.

I say current, because she's leaving at the end of the month, to pursue a better opportunity.

SVreX wrote: Always treated them with a great deal more importance than I treat myself.

Wow. That is really saying something.

SVreX wrote: Always treated them with a great deal more importance than I treat myself.

Most managers (the one's I've encountered, anyway) do not think this way. Your attitude is refreshing.

This thread reminds me of something I realized quite awhile ago: if you are a slacker in college and don't go for a degree with a job at the end you end up in sales or management.

In reply to MrJoshua:

My communications degree is what landed me in retail

SVreX wrote:

Why fix them?

Why not let Darwin do his job?

Are you suggesting that there are bigger incompetent dysfunctional companies that will do just fine when they gobble up the smaller incompetent dysfunctional ones?

Ooo, Oooo, Oooo... then we can have REALLY huge incompetent dysfunctional companies gobble up the big ones- and when there are no bigger more incompetent more dysfunctional companies to do the job, we can all trust the government to solve the problem!

That's like all the worst of socialism all wrapped up into one!

I work for one of those huge dysfunctional companies. Harrah's Entertainment is/was the worlds largest gaming company. Until it went private, it was run pretty well and the employees were treated decently. It then went from being a public company to a private one and bought by a holding company who did not have the first clue how to run a casino.

Now, if not for bad morale, we would have none at all. My own department, for example, has only 9 people in it. That is the bare minimum we can get any work done. And even then, our director, rather than fighting to keep our work or trying to get more.. gives it away to other departments..

He does this because managment gets their bonuses based on how much they can save the company. He already laid off everyone he can.. so now he is getting rid of whatever work he can. As a "casual" (on call) employee.. I have no say at all.. but I have noticed that my own boss, rather than allotting hours to everyone, he and the other full timers tend to do 8 to 12 hours of OT a week.. all because they do not want to use the on calls..

gamby wrote: In reply to MrJoshua: My communications degree is what landed me in retail

And as much as I hate to admit, this proves SvRex's point.

I have a PR degree, am under 30, and am strikingly close to $30/hr living in OK.

The flip side is, I don't doubt SvRex's personal attention to management, but he fails to see that because HE doesn't do things that way, no one else does.

Bobzilla wrote: I'm talking about the customers treating the retail people like trash. The working environment is one thing, customers that think it's OK to treat the workers like trash and it;s "cool" is what I am referring to.

TV and the internet has perpetuated the culture of bad behavior. I'm no sociology or behavioral biology major, but people seem to adopt the habits and behaviors of their influences, whether they are one's peers or people seen on TV. There have been times that I have read a lot of Vonnegut's books in succession, and my perspective became a lot more jaded, my mental dialogue became more curt, in the sometimes sing-song cutesey, sarcastic nature that Vonnegut writes in, etc..

Now, imagine if someone's influence is from The Warped Reality Channel, formerly known as The Learning Channel.

Isn't that the truth. Then there's all the 'how to get exactly what you want' books that flooded the market a while back. The technique involves starting in on the sales grunt then bumping up the food chain. The problem with that: if this happens enough times the sales grunt loses his/her job due to an excessive volume of customer complaints. It has nothing to do with how they were actually doing their jobs.

z31maniac wrote:

gamby wrote: In reply to MrJoshua: My communications degree is what landed me in retail

And as much as I hate to admit, this proves SvRex's point. I have a PR degree, am under 30, and am strikingly close to $30/hr living in OK. The flip side is, I don't doubt SvRex's personal attention to management, but he fails to see that because HE doesn't do things that way, no one else does.

I have no degree, and while i don't make $30/hr... i do average in the 20s.

z31maniac wrote:

gamby wrote: In reply to MrJoshua: My communications degree is what landed me in retail

And as much as I hate to admit, this proves SvRex's point. I have a PR degree, am under 30, and am strikingly close to $30/hr living in OK. The flip side is, I don't doubt SvRex's personal attention to management, but he fails to see that because HE doesn't do things that way, no one else does.

I don't understand what you are saying. I'd like to. Care to try again?

Last week 1 rim was missing tire weights so I call NTB. Nope, it balanced out and doesn't need any. I then look later and see they are on the inside of the rim. Cool.

Seven days later the wife carries a weight into the house wanting to know if my sons car lost this weight thingy since he is headed back to College in his Sentra and in her mind a tire is going to blow out doing 70mph on the highway because of this missing weight.

Nope, it fell off your wheels from last weeks new tires. So I guess a trip to NTB is due tonight. In a wierd way I find this funny.......

MitchellC wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: I'm talking about the customers treating the retail people like trash. The working environment is one thing, customers that think it's OK to treat the workers like trash and it;s "cool" is what I am referring to.

TV and the internet has perpetuated the culture of bad behavior. I'm no sociology or behavioral biology major, but people seem to adopt the habits and behaviors of their influences, whether they are one's peers or people seen on TV. There have been times that I have read a lot of Vonnegut's books in succession, and my perspective became a lot more jaded, my mental dialogue became more curt, in the sometimes sing-song cutesey, sarcastic nature that Vonnegut writes in, etc.. Now, imagine if someone's influence is from The Warped Reality Channel, formerly known as The Learning Channel.

I tend to be a lot friendlier when I am reading Vonnegut.

Oh, and I hate retail sales, retail sales people, all of it. I research stuff before I get to the store. I try to buy everything from stores that have almost no staff to bother me. Either that or I order it online.