Pros
Helping moms make children smile.
Cons
The company is reorganizing after a buyout two years ago. However the vast majority of the store level and district level leadership remains in place. These remaing managers are more concerned with playing politics and attempting to protect their jobs than executing the new leadership's vision for success. There is no system for tracking the actual hours worked by salaried managers. Salaried Managers fill out a management time log, but that information remains at the store level and in never transmitted or reconciled anywhere. This means that the controlling authority (the GM) is able to work half days as compared to what they are actually scheduled. They are free to not work at all, and then claim a week later that they did work according to the schedule. This has led to serious abuses of sick days, eto, and vacation days. The ASM is expected to be present the entire shift, and frequently exceeds 60 hours per week compared to the GMs 35-40 hour weeks. Complaints of abuse to higher are simply routed back down to the GM's in question which typically results in action against the reporter. I have personally watched disciplinary actions against hourly associates for 1-10 minute late arrivals handed down by a manager that consistantly cheats the company out of 8+ hours per week. The hourly associates see this and it does nothing to help store morale. Additionally, the GM is the only one that is bonused at a variable rate that can be sizeable. Combine all of these points and one is left with some seroiusly disgruntled employees. Plan o Gram documents frequently do not agree with graphics installation instructions, the layout pictures typically violate the standards of excellence for merchandising, and the layouts usually will not agree with the product list as shown in the diagrams. Store hours have been cut to bare bones staff resulting in a closing staff for three people for a 100K sq ft store. This is a constant complaint by shoppers on our satisfaction surveys. At my store we usually have less than 400 hours to split between the entire staff. Salaried managers make up this shortage by working extra hours. Special projects are also frequently mismanaged by corporate from the beginning. I was allotted 80 man hours to reset and create a section of improved and new aisles. The right size shelves were not shipped to begin with. The proper shelving uprights and base decks never arrived. The right plans were not published to fit my store layout, the new product still has not arrived, and we have ordered the correct material twice now. This was supposed to be complete 20 weeks ago.
