Customer and Associate interaction - This is a pro and con because of the many, many gray areas in policies and the ability for supervisors to "interpret" them, resulting in inconsistency, which can then be used against your own performance if you try to anticipate what they will do next time around.
The Open Door is a joke. While the company would like you to think it is some great bastion of hope, I can assure you it most certainly is not. At store level a good manager can utilize it effectively, but at higher levels there is no way to protect yourself against the overwhelming amount of CYA that goes on. Good luck to you if you try to use it at levels above the store.
Think your years of loyal service matter? They don't. One supervisor's opinion is all that is needed to boot you out the door. It didn't happen to me, but I have seen it happen to many others.
The company pays well, but what they expect you to do changes based on the tons of email and other myriad micro-managerial direction from every level up, making it near impossible to plan effectively.
All this while the company still lacks focus. Two years ago they pissed off customers and sent them away in droves. Meanwhile the multiple levels of middle executive management spent all their time trying to CYA and blame the stores for all those problems while corporate cruised along on the Titanic, ultimately firing hundreds at the HO.
The customers were still running this year when they slapped them and associates across the face with some seriously piss-poor purchasing and merchandising decisions, clogging the stores with crap and then denying them the markdowns needed to get rid of it. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Market people CYA'd and put more burden on the stores, worsening the situation by putting all their eggs into the "save payroll" basket, further sacrificing much needed associates to help customers. As if Store Managers can't tell the difference between something within and not within their control.
So now a redux and what is old is new again. Millions wasted on re-tooling again this year that is on-again off-again. Then there's the ever-revolving door at the Market and Executive Mgnt levels while they desperately throw money and scramble out 100 different directions to attempt to stem the loss of same-store sales. Who will be the hero?!? It's a free-for-all.
