Pros
There's a high salary and incentives relative to other retail employers. ($9-$12 per hour non-commission base salary +$3 per credit applications). The employee discount is just 20% but it comes off of EVERYTHING (including clearance) and coupons will work with employee discount as well. Excess hours (24+ hrs per week for part-time employees) In-store Loss Prevention team
Cons
EXTREMELY understaffed. Only 1 person works an entire department at a time (even during busy holidays). No on-floor training and computer training is archaic. POS user-interface was developed in the late 70s (at the earliest) and is confusing at best. -'f1', 'f2', 'total', 'enter' keys are the most primarily used keys to submit data (rather than just 'enter' - all POS functionality is performed on an adapted keyboard with about 30 extra keys (from a standard qwrty keyboard) -As only one person works a department at a time, there's little time to maintain the shop floor or provide fitting room attendance. Sales Associate must clean out fitting rooms, open/close registers, solicit credit, achieve hourly sales goal, maintain department, take go-backs out onto the floor, provide customer service, answer phones among other tasks all by themselves on major sales days. -An item-locator was only recently added to the POS System and can only be used if an exact item is on hand. (ex. if a customer would like a Ralph Lauren top in an 8P instead of and 8, and your specific store doesn't carry Ralph Lauren petites, you have no way to assist the customer) -Because the company is too cheap to upgrade, employees are unable to provide full customer service and many sales leave a sour taste in the mouths of both customers and employees - no accountability for under-performing staff. - no standards for store recovery - management has no sales/credit goals - store is BEYOND dirty (carpets are never cleaned--even when known "accidents" occur) - many racks have castors broken off and are propped up on register tape - many racks are held together with ribbon from wrap stands - regularly scheduled outside of availability - difficult to ask off or call-out as the store is so understaffed - inflexible scheduling