Pros
The pay was better than any other job I had ever had, in fact, even two months after leaving, I am still getting checks in the mail (delayed bonuses maybe?). Retail Sales Consultant was my job. Starting pay was $12.87 plus commission for selling cell phone plans, insurance, digital life, u-verse, etc. I took home an average of $3,000.00 per month. The work environment was air conditioned comfort on carpet. Co-workers were very upbeat and helpful. Raises came every 6 months at fifty cents per hour, plus a .16 cent COLA raise annually.
Cons
Now the bad, which outweighted the good--enough to leave the company: hours were awful. Had to close every shift, like 10:30AM to 9PM, and work every weekend, holiday, and 2 days off per week were almost never together. Stress came from constantly changing sales metrics, micro-managing managers, ever changing technology, angry customers, surveys, secret shoppers, and the flawed OPUS tablet system going kafloowee in the middle of complicated transactions. In order to advance out of the store and into corporate, you had to be a super sales person and get promoted to assistant manager (the lightning rod for angry customers). Some reps had been there for over 5 years, and weren't getting promoted. Corporate treated store sales staff like pawns; they were generally nice to us face-to-face, but the ever changing rules betrayed their true view. Training was on-going and daily, but you had to use your tablet while on the sales floor, so training was interrupted constantly by customers walking in. Finally, we had to outright lie to people in order to get a premium sale of u-verse, direct tv, or digital life; mostly it was keeping deal-killing information out of the conversation. It was like being a used car salesman.
