Somewhere along the line the company was turned into a retailer who created an environment where stores and staff were not so much concerned with sales or profits but two or three sales performance numbers. In essence I was being rewarded almost solely for increasing my percentage of game reservations, magazine subscriptions, & positive customer surveys but not for actually increasing sales. Sales and profits are of course looked at to some extent by upper management but I have never received a coaching or negative performance evaluation for poor sales. However I have been forced to write up and terminate many employees who were good salesmen and saleswomen because they did not successfully sell a magazine subscription to two or three out of every ten customers in my store.
Since the individual, store & district rankings depend so much on these specific sales figures, it is actually in my best interest to turn away sales that might cause my store's profits to rise but my percentage of products reserved to fall. In other words I have become a "more successful Store Manager" by referring many potential customers to our competition if they simply want to buy a product from me without placing a deposit on a title that's being released at a later point in time. I received flak from my superiors for running my store with a focus on sales and received praise when I turned to run it with extremely high pressure sales tactics that turned away customers. I now have less and less people shopping in my store and for that I was rewarded with a raise for "improving" my store's performance. I cannot understand where that makes any sense in retail.
I also take issue with upper management taking advantage of a store manager's salaried status to work them to an extent above and beyond what is listed in our job description. It is not uncommon for me to work 8+ hours alone without any break before an employee arrives to close out the store for the night. The extended hours we are required to work also lowers my effective pay rate per hour to lower than what most Assistant Store Managers and Senior Game Advisors make.
Payroll restrictions also leave the store significantly understaffed which increases external shrink losses and puts myself and my employees at potential risk on a daily basis. Many nights a week I am forced to leave my store in the hands of a single young employee even though my location is considered to be in a rough neighborhood because we simply have not been given enough payroll to ensure adequate staffing levels. This is despite the fact that my store is highly ranked and brings in millions of dollars in sales every year. To add a final insult to injury, my store typically will receive an extra eight hours of payroll per week compared to one of our other nearby locations that's in a far busier location. In other words, compared to other stores, our payroll sitation can actually be considered good.
