Good company but watch out for how commission is handled. - Recensione dipendente - Marketing- Und Markenmanager presso Dillard's

Every couple of years, upper management tries to figure out ways of taking commission dollars away from shoe associates. It is a "draw against commission" system. Remember this means every minute you are not assisting a customer with a full priced shoe, or ringing up a customer with a full priced shoe at the register, you are being charged by Dillard's to be there because you must pay your draw back. This is not a knock, it's just the way a draw works. Years ago, they decided that shoe associates made way too much money on busy "sale" days, and on sale shoes in general, so they SLASHED the commission rate from 9.5% to 3% on the "deeply discounted shoes" taking away big commission dollars. Then over the years they nickel and dimed what % discount constituted a "deeply discounted shoe". These shoes are placed by the many hundreds up to 1500 pairs on my sales floor, on special sales racks, which are atrocious to maintain, because female customers tear through them like it's Christmas every day. Though I have too much integrity to not help a customer in need, the vast majority of shoe sales people across the country at Dillard's stopped assisting customers with "on-sale" shoes, because the commission rate became so small that you could not pay back your "draw", meaning you actually lost money by assisting a customer, and instead needed to focus on full priced shoes. So in other words, Dillard's "charges" the commissioned shoe associate to do all prep work for sales shoes (a vast amount of work-hours) and sale days, and to maintain the messy sales racks, and to assist customers by trying to solve problems like missing or mis-mated shoes and to just sell them in general. Imagine working hard trying to sell a customer a pair of shoes, spending your valuable time with this customer, introducing them to 2 pairs of shoes, one of which is full priced and one of which is on sale. If they ultimately decide on the full priced shoe, your commission is about $10. If they decide on the sale shoe, after a half hour, your commission is 60 cents. Therefore you actually paid Dillard's to be at work because, again your draw must be paid back, and the customer wisely decided on the "better value". Which brings me to New Year's Day. This is by far Dillard's biggest and busiest day of the year. And my deepest sympathies to Dillard's but, yes, a medium to poor commissioned associate, at one time, had the ability to earn $300 to $500 dollars on that one day alone and the "good" associates can earn $1000-$1500. When Dillard's realized how popular and successful this one day of the year was becoming for Dillard's, someone in upper management woke up and also realized that commissioned associates were being rewarded for this success as well. A couple of years ago, another "new" commission structure was set up, that started on New Year's Day. If the price of a shoe or boot, and the additional New Year's Day discount, combined, equaled a "deeply discounted" shoe price, the shoe associate was now additionally penalized down to the 3% rate. WHOA!!! That was a big penalty. This was also kept a secret prior to and on New Year's Day, from the shoe associates. I know this because a manager let it slip to our co-worker the day before and then realized what he had done. He had been sworn to secrecy on this matter and in turn swore the associate to secrecy. If this had gotten out, management knew there would be a mutiny and every shoe associate would have called in sick for the busiest day of the year, when they found out their paycheck had been cut in half. The associate then explained the situation the day after, and had us all check our numbers from the day before, and sure enough paychecks were all cut in half. They were right about one thing. If they did not keep this a secret, there surely would have been a walk-out. Finally I recommended a female friend for the Men's Shoe Sales Associate position. She single-handedly turned that department around numbers-wise. She was consistently ranked #1 salesperson in our district. She was rewarded for her hard work and excellent numbers by Dillard's hiring more people to her department because it only made sense that since she increased the volume in the Men's Shoe department so much that she couldn't possibly keep up. She now works far fewer Saturdays and Sundays, and this former #1 in the district, maybe the division, is now ranked 35th and can't catch a break.