Be warned! If you become an Assistant Manager here, I have a few lessons for you I had to learn the hard way. These warnings are specifically for the Morganton/Hickory NC area although the company as a whole has a high turnover!
1. Make sure to ask to meet the staff that you’ll actually be working with, it’ll make all the difference on your first impression of what the workplace culture will actually be like! I only interviewed with the district manager and trainer. Once I met the actual staff I had to work with, the entire mood changed! I experienced a lot of racial micro-aggressions, unprofessionalism, hypocrisy and laziness from my Store Managers and one of my trainers.
2. Although you have the title “Assistant Manager”, it is just you and a Store Manager in the store. I was led on to believe I was in a leadership position working alongside a Store Manager over staff, but that is not the case! So make sure you’re working with a great store manager with actual professional management skills, otherwise you might end up being treated like the Store Manager’s personal assistant doing the dirty work and their scapegoat when something goes wrong like I was.
3. This particular district, if they don’t like you, for whatever reason, they will attempt to manage you out. Which means making your job more difficult and having you document your progress as a legal justification for terminating you. Luckily I’m a hard and professional worker because this little trick of theirs did not work. I ended up being with the company for almost a year before I finally found something else and quit!
4. The company looks and sounds professional on paper, but on the actual district and store level, they are not! They are not preparing the Store Managers (who you will be working under) for actual leadership positions. A huge evidence of this is that the managers don’t even train you, you’ll have a trainer travel to you for that and leave once your training is over. Unless you get lucky and you work in the same store as your trainer. This creates an environment of entitled Store Managers who are protected by favoritism and having longevity with the company. There’s only “slap on the wrists” if they do wrong in this particular district.
5. Know your worth. If you’re interviewing and you know the pay is low and they try to entice you with annual or performance based pay raises, don’t settle! I was “meeting expectations” at the end of the year and I received a thirty cent raise. Even “exceeding expectations” will be less than a $1 raise.
6. This is a dirty, outside and at times dangerous and sketchy job. They don’t disclose or elaborate on this too much during the interview process, so allow me to. Don’t let the temperature controlled office setting fool you. Especially if you’re the Assistant Manager. You’ll spend majority of days outside cleaning out every storage unit on these gigantic properties the second someone moves in or out, rain or nighttime, which can be full of pests. Homeless people sleeping on the property or inside the units is a huge thing, which can be a dangerous, dirty or awkward situation to run into. Creepy/sketchy things do happen. There are most days where you’ll cover the store alone, so keep that in mind. This particular district, I was consistently working by myself not even a full week out of my training when I was told it would be at least a month before that happened. You are this company’s pest control, landscaper, handyman and plumber because they’ll do anything to save a quick buck. If you like your personal space, too bad, because you are required to drive customers in the front seat beside you in a golf cart to their storage unit. You also have to do bill collecting calls for customers who haven’t paid their bills, so be prepared for some seriously angry customers because they can’t get in their units or their items are being auctioned off! But again if you have a great Store Manager that views you as an equal, then you won’t have to worry about all the dirty work being put on just you.
7. As an Assistant Manager, know that majority of your days will be spent covering other stores. I was told maybe a day or two I will be covering my neighboring stores, which are each thirty minutes away from my home store. In reality I spent three out of 5 days every week at these other stores and I had no control over my schedule or where I would be. You’re basically a pawn piece for these managers, you go where they want you to with little concern for how you feel about it.
