Disappointing, decisions were made by senior management with no first hand experience in store.
Pros
keep relatively up to date with technology, learn a reasonable amount about retail. i learnt alot about business during my time as a business advisor - lots of overtime. Nice colleagues.
Cons
The work and life balance is poor. To progress up the ranks takes far to long, despite being a colleague who could do everything in store from sales to customer service, warehouse etc.... I only got a remotely significant pay rise £0.30 per hour extra 2 weeks before I left after 6 years... store management seem to have no control over payrole in there own store. The way to get paid was to complete training and go to workshops but the workshops were few and far between and very hard to get a place on. Pressure - of course there is pressure on sales staff, it retail, however the quantity of targets is just silly and far to much to think about when your having a conversation with a customer. colleagues will give stuff away just to hit random targets, the amount of different ways stores and colleagues would play the numbers just so they don't get in trouble with senior management. For example store hits targets but has low margin, this store and manager are praised for making less money. Store exceeds its margin and sales target but doesn't hit all its figures - there told its unacceptable. It gets to the point where most colleagues will just send customers to other stores even though they have stock, just to avoid a bad sale. - this happens a lot.
