Despite what I was told during recruiting, it is a long process in getting promotions within the company. I have been with SW now for nearly 3 years and within the whole district there have only been a handful of Manager or Sales Rep job openings in which I could have applied for. I applied and interviewed for two manager jobs and one rep job. All of the potential promotions were also targeted by many other people who were both in and out of the district. Needless to say, I was not given the promotions and was told different reasons why I didn't get the job for each by my District Manager. Basically, there are not that many job openings in a given year, and the ones that are, have many people applying for it. One other thing about SW that bugs me is that during recruiting I was told that the management team was able to run their store pretty much the way they want to. "It is almost like running your own business." Is what the recruit told me. That statement could not be further from the truth. SW has many rules and regulations passed down from the corporate headquarters. Basic pay, store hours, inventory, selling events, pricing, margins, and several others business aspects are all pretty much controlled by SW corporate or district. The main thing that bugs me is SW charges the stores 1% all the inventory they have at the end of each month. This expense affects how your yearly numbers turn out. Also, there is a major push by the District to keep inventory low. However, frequently the stores are forced to take overstock items from the main distribution center. No matter what the products are, the stores have to take these direct shipments, which most of the time are products that do not sell very well and the stores are stuck with them hitting their inventory numbers for months.
