Staffing - You are not given enough hours to schedule part time employees, so you are left to perform all managerial duties (Marketing / Payroll / Interviewing / Inventory / Sotcking / Receiving Shipments / Ordering Products) while you are the only employee in the store. This can become very frustrating, especially in a high-traffic store because you never feel like you are able to catch up. On several nights a week, you will find yourself in the difficult position of running out of hours for staff, having to send them home, and then closing the store for the last couple of hours of the night by yourself. This will give you several 50-60 work weeks to ponder your career choice.
Turnover- Turnover, at all levels, is beyond ridiculous. I had no less than five different District Managers during my three years as a Store Manager. Each one of these were, seemingly, more clueless than the next. I understand that you need to recognizeand reward seniority, but not if the most senior people are incompetent.
Inventory - Quite simply, the most baffling procedure at any company that I have ever worked for. I am sure that things have changed since my time, but we had to manually enter in SKUs that were called out by other employees. This led to several inventory nightmares. Lack of flexibility. My store was shut down for remodeling and moved to another location in the mall. This, of course, was to be done in one night, after hours wihtout fail. Three days later, we were to perform a full inaventory. Awesome.
Subs / Res - Corporate's goals for Reservations and Subscriptions is so unrealistic, it is almost funny. I was there at the begining of the Subscription craze. Seemingly, corporate would take the previous week's numbers, double them, and then expect you to hit them.
Budgeting - The year after the PS2 release, I received our weekly budget and noticed that it was at least five times higher than it should be. They (Corporate) decided that they would take what we made the previous year during the week of the PS2 release, and raise it for the following year. FYI...The PS3 was not being released that week and I was grossly under budget.
