Cookaholics Bulletin Board

They are definitely "over structured" in many ways, i.e., what needs to be done daily and checked off the list, but not when it comes to personnel.
I definitely had this as part of my retirement plan and would have stayed on despite what I saw as bothersome, if my back would have cooperated.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and impressions. I'm sorry to hear about your back. I'm going through the interview process at our local store. They don't seem very "modern" in their ways or very organized either. There are too many "managers" and not enough direction...a classic "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario.

I'm on the fence about working there. A couple managers, who are really just the more senior sales people, are downright rude to colleagues. Some of the sales staff seems unmotivated...just bidding their time until they can get a sales job with a better salary. I haven't met the general store manager yet.

This all may be particular to my local store. I've shopped in SLTs in other cities and had better experiences, though didn't interview for a job with them.

Finally, I'm a little shocked at the low salary...$9/hr. High school kids working in mall clothing stores earn more than that in my area, and get good discounts. SLT is high-end retail and I would think they'd be interested in paying better in order to get and retain employees who are knowledgeable about their expensive cookware.

Not only is their hurly salary absurd (which accounts for an extremely high turnover), they really want you to "sell, sell, sell" with no commission or bonus program. I think thier business model is still in the dark ages.

I'm sorry to say that your experiences SLT are actually pretty typical of chain retail these days. And it's only getting worse. It used to be that the central offices at least wanted managers who could think on their feet, but increasingly, they seem to just want managers who can implement systems. It's the system and the script that are supposed to make the store work, not a knowledgeable and empowered staff. Too many chains want ALL decisions to be top-down and they want interchangeable employees. As you point out, valuable employees need to be treated better and that negatively impacts the bottom line. It's the McDonald's model. McD's doesn't care about their immense turn-over because they have no employees that can't be replaced quickly and cheaply. Most chain retail stores are now striving to do the same.

And for people who shop at these stores. This is why the service is so bad and the employees seem so uncaring. You can't care too much about helping customers when you have absolutely no power to do so. It just leads to frustration and depression. Even directing someone to the correct area of a store is practically a monumental task in a large store that changes floorplans and stock every three months. Save your breath complaining to the staff. They can't do anything, and you'll just make a rather crappy job that much more miserable. The manager might be able to do better, but believe me, there's a 3-ring binder in the office that outlines exactly how much s/he can do for a customer. It's little wonder that they start to lose it, too. Between the rock of the dispirited employees and the hard place of a corporation that thinks that pizza parties will solve morale problems and customers still living in the dark ages of expecting actual customer service, I'd turn plenty cranky, too. Not to mention that these unempowered managers will most certainly take the blame when things go wrong in their stores. Who wants to live with the knowledge that they can be fired for problems that they have no power to fix?

In case you can't tell, I'm ecstatic to be out of it.