Big 5 Reviews

Pros

Pretty simple job without much sales knowledge

Cons

Boring job without much growth opportunities. Day in and day out you will be doing the same tasks.

Advice to Senior Management

Make their employees feel more valuable and provide some type of incentive.

Pros

Great people. Great way to improve sale skills. Learn a lot about the items in the store. Reasonable hours for employees.

Cons

No commission, have to wear shirt and tie while making minimum wage. Not always the best quality items sold at the stores.

Pros

The Health Benefits are great.
You get to ski for free at Mountain High and get discounts at Snow Summit and Bear Mountain.

Cons

They don't care about your hard earned Education.
They put you at risk climbing ladders all day.
They don't provide enough training before your Management Training exams because they are too concerned about sales.
They make you work every weekend.
They will use u for sales and shoe rotation and right when it is time for promotion they will find a way to get rid of you.
They are an Outdoor store, but you will never have a chance to go camping working for this company.
They will force u to learn to sell guns even if u don't like firearms.

Advice to Senior Management

This is advice to the District Supervisors. Don't push your store managers to the point where they are using their Manager Trainees as slaves. Store Managers, treat your employees like it is REI. You are an Outdoor store and that is why I applied. Train and prepare them for promotion and not just for sales.

Pros

Flexible schedule (great for students). Pretty laid back atmosphere. The employee discount was always nice, especially when it came to shoes and clothing. If you're athletic or like sports it's a fun place to work. They're also a fairly conservative store -- I liked the dress code. It's not like SportsAuthority where you wear khakis and a polo. It's shirts and ties for the guys and business casual for the girls.

Cons

I want to start by saying that a lot of this could just be my last Big 5 location and may not necessarily hold true for all Big 5 stores. Mgmt was largely incompetent at my store (I learned more from the mgr of a store in a neighboring city). The mgr was very much a hypocrite and poor at training his asst mgrs and mgmt trainees...It was borderline awful. As a company, Big 5 is kinda behind on the times, but they seem to be catching up (they're doing radio ads in CA and I heard rumors of TV ads). They also now have Twitter and Facebook. Big 5 as a whole is a good company, I'm sad that mgmt at my store was so bad.

Advice to Senior Management

Just keep a closer eye on who you make store managers. Upper mgmt seems very disconnected from people at the store level; it's like they don't understand the store aspect of the company at that level. Corporate seems too afraid to reprimand or fire the bad store managers due to legal ramifications. I fear it's going to end up hurting the company financially.

Pros

Big 5 gives someone a good opportunity to get into management and learn the retail sales trade. The insurance was free to employees which is rare today . Advancement is easy if you are motivated.

Cons

The work hours and days off were very different and working at 6 various locations in a short time is not uncommon. Wages were below average for the duties and responsibilities expected.

Pros

Trying to find some
You do not pay for insurance
If you do not like having to think for yourself, great place.
If you do not know how to spell or do complex math, this job is for you

Cons

The list can go on and on. They only want people to do as they are told without questions.
Ideas and concerns will be over looked.
The more your nose gets brown the better.
Never file a workers claim they will fight you tooth and nail.
God forbid if you make a human error, write ups abound for frivolous reasons.

Advice to Senior Management

Loose the tie, quit thinking every employee is a thief, stop making rules and policy up as you wish. They even tried to make me clock out to speak with human resources.

Pros

experience and management is nice plus retail experience is hard to come by easy job friendly customers and the company name is well known

Cons

sometimes work is repetitive moving up is based on age and pay raises are not often hours are also cut and shifts can conflict with school and other things

Advice to Senior Management

focus on employee satisfaction get to know employees reward high sales reward good behavior all this will better improve customer service and satisfaction

Pros

A good place to learn operations, but they're careful not to reward your performance.

Cons

Worst in class pay schedule.

Advice to Senior Management

Your retention would be great if you didn't think insuring someone's family was the same as paying them.

Pros

You get a discount of the lowest price of the year on any given item + an additional 10%
Pretty good about job flexibility of schedule
You get to see the newest athletic shoes and equipment
Some members of management are easy to get along with, some co-workers are great, too.

Cons

Other than the pros mentioned not much else to brag about at Big 5.

Low pay, even for retail. I was given a "top rate" of $9.15 per hour because of my extensive retail experience. If you are hired as a Manager trainee the pay is around $12.50 per hour.

If you are full-time, also a management trainee, you have to pay union dues to the Teamsters and they can be pretty excessive.

It's a slow place to work most of the time unless its in the evenings or on the weekends. If you are working the day shift, expect to do nothing but projects such as putting on new prices on the never-ending over-lapping sales. If you are lucky you might get a fun project such as putting together a piece of exercise equipment or a bike.

It seems easier to be a manager fresh off the street than internally, which makes no sense because if you are a good employee, you should be promoted. Someone off the street can have no experience, but be considered for a management trainee job without seeing the person's work ethics.

Men have to dress in slacks, dress shirts, and ties...a little out of place in a sporting goods store.

Hours although flexible, can be minimal, but if you are on your manager's good side, you shouldn't have an issue about hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Its the 21st Century and since when do ties belong in sporting goods? A more casual atmosphere could help to make the environment a little better for the employees. Especially when time comes to do the project work or take heavy boxes out to customer's cars. Although pay is low, a little more for tenure and knowledge would go along way; maybe a top rate of $10.00 rather. If that is not possible, than some sort of commission would help. Is the union really necessary in a retail job? In my 2 years time there I have not seen the union utilized at all and they just take the massive amounts of dues from the full time employee. Do something about the music, too, it puts most people to sleep!

Pros

Great for sports enthusiasts, golf, camping, and baseball. A place to apply your knowledge.
Great job for college students because of high level of flexibility.
A friendly laid back environment most of the time.

Cons

Insufficient product training is provided to Sales Representative.
You will be mostly expected to sell shoes as that is the greatest revenue source for the company.
No commission is offered regardless of performance.
Promotions are a rarity. After two full years of employment I received only one raise which was not even half a dollar.
Unless you apply to this job as a manager trainee don't expect to receive any raises, bonuses, benefits, or incentives to go above and beyond.
The discount for employees is 10% of sale items and 20% of regular priced.

Advice to Senior Management

This company needs some serious changes in the way promotions are done. Weekly ad up and ad down is outdated and a time consuming way to promote items on and off sale. There needs to be more incentives for the Sales Representative to perform their work well. This store is lagging way behind industry leaders with no online ordering. Also better product lines could be another improvement.