Not many benefits, low pay.
I accepted a Key Holder position at Earthbound while trying to escape the toxic and draining work environment at my previous job. I was a frequent customer and was encouraged by the Store Manager to apply while shopping one day. It was a very small pay decrease from the job I had before, but it was worth it to leave that particular job.
I honestly have no complaints about the first three-four Months that I worked at Earthbound. The coworkers and customers were great and carried a positive energy with them. I looked forward to working every day, even when I was tired.
Anyways, a few months pass and one of the other Key Holders quit suddenly right before holiday season; after we recently let go of another associate the week prior. So with two people gone and holiday season approaching, we began hiring. We added two Accociates and another Key Holder to the store roster. The new Key Holder is when major issues started to arise.
From the moment my Manager interviewed her, they were friends; which wouldn't be an issue if they could keep that friendship from negatively affecting the environment at work. Her and the other enployees were trained and began working two weeks before Christmas.
Holiday season made it hard to see some of the red flags because of the volume of the store, but after the season was over and the store slowed down they became very obvious. I noticed she was deliberately taking sales from other associates and going blatantly against many of earthbound's policies.
Earthbound has what's called a "Nomadic Selling" approach; which is in place to let the customer shop at their own pace without the pressure to buy anything. According to Nomadic selling, employees are available to customers as a reference when they have questions about merchandise. It also encourages the worker to connect with the customer in friendly and engaging conversation, which opens the door to share your knowledge of mercandise in the store when invited or if you're asked to. Nomadic selling is mainly in place to connect with customers and to make them feel more like a friend and less like a dollar sign. The new Key Holder basically decided to ditch this policy and tried to hard-sell every customer who came to the door to the point that some of them told me they felt very uncomfortable talking to her. She would demangingly Intervene conversation and sweet talk them with obviously ingenuine compliments to persuade them to buy. Additionally, she deliberately went and took customers away from other associates who were engaging with them; often taking credit for the sale from the other associate. It was literally impossible to talk to other customers without her rudely interrupting and taking credit for the sale of they decided to buy something. She also tried to tell everyone (even workers of higher seniority than herself) how to do their jobs; and acted as if she knew EVERYTHING about retail. Often times, her advise about how to do your job was against company policy and didn't align with Nomadic selling. And all this wasn't because she didn't know better; she DID know better but was unwilling to chang and closed-minded to any type of correction or advise.
Concerned about this and having been negatively affected myself, I tried to talk to my Manager about this situation. I was merely listened to and told that she would talk to the new Key Holder. She didn't, and I knew it was because they were best friends and hung out outside of work all the time. For the next few weeks, the same behavior continued and three sales associates approached me and were frustrated for the same reason. All three also talked to the store manager aboth their frustrations, but still no corrective action was taken for the new Key Holder. In fact, the Manager praised the new Key Holder and put her on a pedistal... all because she was my Manager's best friend. I was also treated passively by my Manager after voicing my opinion.
I felt as if I had no value to my store and to my Manager anymore. I could talk to her about the situation until I was blue in the face and my voice still wouldn't have been heard. Meanwhile, I watched as the store's morale as a whole plummeted into a downward spiral as a result of the tension that the new Key Holder caused. I knew that my other coworkers felt just as voiceless as I did, which is one reason why morale declined at the rate that it did. My Manager and the Key Holder's friendship caused other people to lose hours, lose sales, and in some cases even get laid off. There was obvious favoritism which made people not feel valued and caused the environment of work as a whole to go drastically downhill.
Eventually, I decided to re-enter my previous career field and move out of State for a new opportunity; so I gave my two weeks and moved away. I had a way out, but unfortunately some of my former employees didn't/still don't. I regret not taking this situation to the District Manager or reporting it to the Better Business Beareu, but it's been a few months since I've left so I feel like I'd just be kicking a dead horse to go out of my way to do that.
It just goes to show that one bad apple can ruin the whole bunch; just like one entitled 20-year old Key Holder with delusions of grandeur can ruin a workplace by fraternizing with the Manager.
