Bealls Reviews

Pros

They are flexable in giving employees time off for family and other matters. They provide support to employees through their assistance programs.

Cons

Pay is below industry avaerages, limited availibility for promotions, mileage rate far below national average, very limited 401k matching, LP management required to work a lot of nights and weekends, limited technology to perform job functions

Advice to Senior Management

I would like to see management communicate changes to employees in the field better. Management should take the time to better understand the stores outside of the state of Florida.

Pros

Although you must be available to work weekends and nights, the work is easy and your work days go fast when it is busy and in season. The employees work as a team and pull for each other. There is always something to do, to a fault. Management gives incentives for getting e:mails and credits.

Cons

Management shows favoritism. The corporation gives away the store and looses money by accepting returns for everything, even shoes that have been worn. Management changes the rules daily and does not back up their staff when they try to enforce the rules at the register. Management constantly brow beats the staff to get customers to open credit cards and get down right mean when quotas are not met. There is never any adequate supplies for employees to do their job and the technology they have is outdated. The pay is very low and there is no opportunity for growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop showing obvious favoritism towards employees. Corporate needs to reexamine their business plans. Think outside of the box to bring more customers in during the off season. Get rid of gift wrapping. Get out of the 50's business plan and into the new millennium.

Pros

You get a paycheck and benefits and have a job

Cons

initiatives change to frequently; you make as much or less than hourly associates when you work 60 hours a week or more which is all year, they under staff in all areas (because of budget) communication about merchandising and operations is spotty at best; emails are only answered by regionals when it is convenient; action is not taken until a figurative fire needs to be put out

Advice to Senior Management

Really seek feedback from mid levels for improvement, as an investment not as lip service/facetime with sincerity

Pros

Besides a paycheck and insurance, there really was nothing to keep me with this company.

Cons

Area (mid-level) managers were left to run the store in the absence of our store manager. She constantly came in late, left early - if she showed up at all. And, when we got a bad store review she wrote all of her mid-level managers up for not running the store right. WHAT???? Insanity. We (mid-level managers) had put up with a lot, but this just totally pushed us over the edge. I am absolutely disgusted with what we were put through. This company is totally unethical and unprofessional. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. I feel sorry for the poor hourly people that work there. Morale is awful in the store. When I tried to bring up these issues to our corporate human resources office, I was interviewed by our regional operations manager at our store and was told "put my big girl britches on" and basically deal with it. I have never been around such unprofessional people in my entire 15+ years in retail management.

Advice to Senior Management

Mid-level managers run your stores. You need to treat them with respect. We are given huge businesses to run with high expectations, yet no staff. Get real. Things will never be the way you want them without an investment in hourly staff to get the tasks done. Visual regionals are given the power to run the stores? Very strange. In my two years with Bealls, I was in your Leadership program yet never was offered any kind of advancement, other than a panel interview with absolutely no follow-up by anyone. How are talented, educated people expected to stay with a company when morale is terrible, pay is below industry standard, and there is not even a path for advancement? Everyone knows it's not what you know but who you know that will get you ahead at this company. Absolutely ridiculous. I have had enough!!! I feel sorry for the managers at my store I had to leave behind. They are miserable.

Pros

Opportunities for quick advancement, decent co-workers, never a lack of things to do, supportive manager, happy with the location of the store.

Cons

The cheapest company I have ever worked for; when you read the first page of the employee handbook outlining how much they make in profits per year, and then look at your paycheck and "benefits" it's impossible not to feel insulted. The company is obviously not interested in retaining decent employees - even the District Manager has suggested that we move to a more progressive company, as he is planning on doing!

The stress levels are off the charts and are made much worse by the ancient registers and returns process that slows service to a crawl on busy days and frustrates customers and employees alike. This has to be one of the only companies that still issues handwritten return slips and uses a dot matrix printing system. There is no excuse for not having modern POS systems when the company is making money hand over fist.

Employees are expected to get an astronomical amount of people to sign up for the Beall's Private Label Credit Card, and yet the savings are ridiculous (10% - big deal) and when quotas are not met, managers are punished by having to work 6 day work weeks to make up for their failures. Very old scanners and printers, things rarely work properly, I feel like I work in an antique shop!

Shrink is out of control at stores, yet employees are not given the proper tools needed to prevent such issues. Get with the times!!

Advice to Senior Management

The leadership needs a complete overhaul!

Pros

good co workers to work with
upper management willingly to work with employees
room to work in other departments of the company

Cons

In some of their positions the pay rate could be higher
The benefits the company offer could be better that what they are

Advice to Senior Management

I think that some of the management team should could out into the field more often to see the daily struggles some of the employees deal with.

Pros

the discounts for the associates.

Cons

pay isnt the best for a clothing store

Advice to Senior Management

hmm

Pros

Co workers created a since of team work.

Cons

Hours were always changing and salary not in line with other companies.

Advice to Senior Management

More open conversations and information.

Pros

Steady work, always something to do as far as your day goes. Co-workers are great and work well together in most cases.

Cons

Management tends to ignore the great potential of their employees. They should not be berated over and over for the same things. They understand they are a dime a dozen but do they need to be treated that way?

Advice to Senior Management

Your employees are your most precious assets and they should be treated as such. They have ideas that can be useful to co-workers.

Pros

Large corporation with decent entry level salary.

Cons

i worked in the distribution center in Manasota Park in Bradenton and the layout of the inside of the building was not design for safety and maximum efficiency for the volume of pallets of merchandise circulating inside. The firm who design the convoyer area mess it up and that building has supporting poles that are at the wrong place for a distribution center (before it was a Tropicana building i read).

There was only one man working on maintenance on duty per shift and was already overload doing machines & convoyer repairs all the time, leaving other safety issues unfixed. The concrete was in poor condition where the steel carts roll in the spur department and hard to push when loaded and was driving the employees exhausted everyday, more than it should have been normally on flat or patched concrete. The old IBM computer system was good for salvage because often down, the workload was immence especially in the last hour of the shift.

The supervisor was making meeting almost everyday blaming employees and announcing new rules or policies and saying "if you don't want to do it the door is there" ! In the other building on 38th Street the Human Ressources department was not aware of what was said or going on there exactly.

Their firing policies are among the most severe in Florida if caught at anything even minor and they have a tendency for blaming the employees for anything like safety, minor injuries, toilet cleaness, red light flashing on the alley you work because need help during a rush time, pallets that are defective and often break down or simply no more room avaible to keep going. The forklifts pass at full speed within 1 or 2 feets of each workers 50 or more times per shift because the main alley was too narrowly design, if you need to drink you have to walk 100 ft to get to the water fountain that most of the time need a bottle replacement because they are not smart enough to buy a permanent filter fountain dispencer and waste lot of money buying bottle water...and for every pallet you complete you must shrink wrap it manually almost a hundred per shift, very hard on the back and if you hurt yourself like a hernia they will fight your case fiercly i have been told ! And they underestimate this recession because now they are in financial trouble i read, i would not be surprise they come with some announcements in the coming year...

Advice to Senior Management

Stop managing like in the 50's or 60's, buy new computers, give customers what they want not big brand names they can't afford, buy wisely, don't accepted a refund after 10 days from bad customers, invest a little more in safety prevention for your distribution centers, don't believe everything your safety guy say he is not that experienced and try to save his ass, close the looser dept stores, stop useless party, give a good annual raise, start doing exportation of your goods in other countries or sell them to Wallmart !