Renata Rudoy M3
Gosh, where do I begin.
2) Speaking about this prior job still haunts me to this day as it was the worst experience of my life.
I was working as an assitant manager at Journeys (the shoe store). As a manager we were required to work a minimum of 6 days a week with a minimum of 45 hours. This was the first dissasisfaction I encountered. Overtime is great however I was working on comission and overtime pay was based on how much you sold, some sort of chinese math they called it. All in all it was about $3 an hour extra to my paycheck when I worked over 40. However to my dismay, I worked 65+ a week. I had one day off which really I used for sleep. No life whatsoever.
Second dissatisfaction was that Journeys was all about sales goals, wether or not it was realistic wasn’t of any concern to corporate or my managers. They had 3 strict rules. 40% of your sale transactions had to include 2 or more pair of shoes. 10% of your sales had to include an item other than footwear (backpacks, watches, laces, shirts) and 5% of your sales you had to sell socks. Some seasons are slow for sales and some people just don’t want to buy any socks. But, as I said before, this didn’t matter to corporate. Employees were straight trash to them. If you didn’t meet your set goals for the month for whatever reason you’d get written up and and after 3, fired (which happend to me). I was working for the company for over two years as a manager and they got rid of me just like that because I didn’t sell an extra 5 packs of socks 3 times.
Third dissatisfaction was the work environment. New York in the winter gets cold, maybe not as cold as Alaska but its still pretty darn freezing. They had a rule that the store front doors had to stay wide open if the tempeture was 30F and over. They can be closed if it was below 29. The whole winter the doors were open in 30 degree weather. We would all work in our winter jackets, you could actually see our breath while standing waiting for customers to walk in. I eventually developed bronchitis and was sick for over a month. But once again, employee comfort or health didn’t matter – it was all about money money and money.
In my opinion, for Journeys to become a better company everybody in cororporate should be fired including the CEO and they need major reconstruction. There needs to be people on board who give a s*** about employees. I think they need to start there. Then move on forward to fixing the expectations of employees in regards to sales goals.
I was 23 at the time and if I knew what I know now, I would’ve sued them. Talking about my experience still gets me emotional because no employee should have been taken advantage of like that.
From this experience, I learned that to make employee’s happy it’s best to have a work enviornment where everyone feels appreciated.