5 years employed, Started out fine, but eventually went rapidly downhill
Pros
You make good friends quickly. Dealing with customers face to face can increase confidence.
Cons
Currys is obsessed with insurance (Whatever Happens) and extras, fair enough this is what makes the most profit, but so does making a high amount of overall sales. You are constantly harassed to sell the Whatever Happens insurance, which is maybe necessary for some products (PCs & Laptops), but not really for others, (TV's, which hardly ever come back faulty). In addition to this, you are constantly harassed to sell overpriced extras, for example, "high end" HDMI cables for TV's, which are mostly completely unnecessary for the customer, so you are forced to outright lie about their effectiveness. The biggest problem by far is that the company now works on a nonsensical points system, where you have to hit a certain amount every month to avoid being given a warning (called "Capability Process"), which is basically a three strikes, you're out system, this leads to staff avoiding customers as they don't want to risk their points total being hurt, which will obviously damage sales for the store, example, someone could sell £10,000 worth of product in a month, but be below points total and get warned, but someone who sold £2,000, but they had above borderline points, will not get warned. Pay is terrible in proportion for work done, staff are constantly being pushed for the above reasons, but the pay rarely goes up far beyond minimum wage, and you are constantly told about bonuses for high sales, but they rarely ever materialize, a few years ago, another staff member and myself sold 50 insurance deals between us in a month, the two highest in the store, but between us we got something like £40 bonus that month, and this was before the points system was even introduced. Advancement opportunities are on occasion given to undeserving members of staff, or promotions are given that make no sense, once in my store, a cashier with no prior sales experience was given a promotion to Sales Team Leader, despite there being many other viable candidates. Also, in terms of training, staff are often forced to travel large distances to another store for said training, instead of bringing the trainer themselves to each store, as the company they has to pay travel costs for the staff travelling, so the company likely ends up paying more.
