Don't work for this company. - Recensione dipendente - Barista/Sales Associate presso Books-A-Million

If you have worked any retail job, you are aware that an associate position will come with many negative experiences with customers. That is par for the course for any customer service position. However, this company has severely restricted the capabilities of the sales associates, meaning that the likelihood of the customer becoming upset is increased. The store’s prices are higher than the prices on the Books A Million website. This means that you will often have to tell customers that, in fact, you do not match the prices of your own website. As a sales associate, you will not be able to perform a return; you will need a manager. Returns themselves are laborious processes that can take up to ten minutes to complete; and you are required to take down all the personal information of the customer, including their street address. Needless to say, many people do not wish their personal information to be taken down by every store they visit. As for the expectations of the job itself, to begin with, you are required to sell a barely-worth it $25 membership card to customers, as well as a set of three magazine subscriptions disguised as a risk-free trial offer (the intent for which is clear; the customer will forget to cancel their subscription and will be quietly billed without notification). Despite receiving minimal training for this, it became clear very early that this was the MOST important part of this position. The store operates on a week-to-week goal for membership cards/magazine subscriptions, and because of this, there is a constant threat of the store not reaching its goal — a PERPETUAL, unending crisis. The management, who all appear frightened by their overseers, are forced to reinvent their strategies for selling these magazine subscriptions (which are then translated into uninspiring pep-talks to the sales associates), as if it is their fault that customers do NOT WANT these magazines. The bulk of the magazine subscriptions our store made were when teenagers would use their parents’ credit card to buy something — and fall for the “free magazines” pitch. Many angry phone calls have been received by parents who found bank charges after letting their child use their card at Books A Million. Despite this constant pressure to perform as a salesman, this is a minimum wage position. Your “commission” for selling membership cards and magazine subscriptions are as follows: .16 cents per magazine, and .50 cents per membership card (no extra commission for convincing the customer to enroll in an automatic-renewal for their membership). If you think this sounds low, it’s because it is, and most of the time you won’t receive it, as your commission is reliant on THE ENTIRE STORE reaching its goal. Yes, that means that if you manage to reach, or even exceed, all of your sales goals for the week, you will most likely not receive any commission because the other sales associates haven’t met their goals. As a top performing salesman at my store, I sold at least 5 times as many subscription cards and magazines as my coworkers, and still rarely received any commission. Also, being a top performer, I was often expected by management to carry the entire store in order to reach its goal. And on the off chance that I had a day in which my numbers were lower, I was asked to explain why I didn’t sell as many membership cards and magazine subscriptions as usual (most often in a scolding or whiny tone). These are petty guilt trips, plain and simple.