Pros

i get to be around tons of books

Cons

management never encouraging - constantly berating employees as a tactic to increase their sales performance
the air conditioning is broken (creating a 85 to 90 degree inside working atmosphere with no moving air) and has been for months on end and neither the store nor corporate is willing to fix it regardless of numerous employee and most importantly, customer complaints

Advice to Senior Management

care about your employees - they are the ones who keep the customers coming back - berating them doesn't encourage anything but bitterness and discord

Pros

Fairly quick career advancement, employee discount is decent, the people you work with are usually pretty good.

Cons

I've never worked for a company before, that treats the people, that make their moderate success possible, so poorly. Management is constantly being threatened with "coachings" if their store doesn't continue to make an ever changing discount card percentage. I've seen great members of management terminated because their store missed a few weeks of their Discount Card percentage goal. We are forced to badger and harass customers to buy the card, sign up for a "risk free" magazine subscription, fill out a survey, get an email,buy an overpriced fresh baked cookie or buy a voucher for a book that you could get cheaper at most anywhere else. In an economy where people are lucky if they can afford to buy a book, this company isn't satisfied with these loyal customers just shopping and buying their products. They want more more more. Most customer's just want to buy their books or coffee quickly and get on with their day, but it isn't possible at BAM. They have to sit through 5 minutes of commercials from the associate or barista before they allowed to leave with their purchase. The customers, in my experience, do not appreciate the constant demand for more money. In just 4 years the card has gone from $10 to $20 with no extra benefit except a free, cheaply made tote bag as added benefit. It seems that until the customers in mass finally start saying no, that these greedy practices will continue.
        On that same subject , it is amazing how BAM makes millions of dollars every year from the sale of the magazine and discount card programs but they are still one of the lowest paying retail companies in the nation. The company has frozen all raises for all associates, managers included, but yet the company can afford to give the CEO a bonus of a million plus dollars.

Advice to Senior Management

Your associates and managers are the people who have brought this company to the point where they have no debt. You should thank them by paying them at least a comparable wage. Your discount card program does benefit the customers but you have made it to where selling the memberships are more important than customer service and actually selling books. We lose very good employees, who excel at their jobs as booksellers and customer service representatives, because they cannot fast talk a customer into spending more money. Treat your employees with respect and stop the constant threats, without us and them, you wouldn't be where you are today. Learn what it's like behind those registers or cafe counter. Get out and see your stores as associates, run a register or make some coffee. It might open your eyes.

Pros

Employee discount and book check out program are pretty much it at this point. You could get better perks most anywhere else.

Cons

Pushing management and employees to the brink on the Discount Card and Magazine for Millionaires program. Reminding the managers almost weekly of how bad unemployment is in this country right now, to illustrate how lucky they are to have jobs period. A company that is proud when it cuts the hours for a store, but increases projects. Managers end up doing all of the work here because that one employee you can afford on the sales floor needs to stick right by the register so they can greet each customer as they walk in, but still ring people up, too.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't be proud that you cut salaries in the store, but increased projects. Don't brag that we haven't laid people off in the field, when we have in fact cut everyone's hours, to the point that some quit, because they couldn't afford to live on the small number of hours we had to cut them, too. Don't be proud that you made money, but squeezing even more out of a already worn out staff.

Pros

Employee discount (20%) is okay but all the books are still cheaper elsewhere

Cons

Professional back-stabbing, gossip, favoritism, extremely low pay, constanly changing schedule and hours-cutting.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit that Magazine-for-Millionaires program. Everyone knows it's a scam and our customers resent being tricked.

Pros

love of books, great customers, can move up management chain quickly if reasonably competent

Cons

too much emphasis on discount card program instead of actually selling books, not enough salary dollars allotted to store to staff adequately, pay competitive salaries or complete assigned tasks, zero budget allowance for training new employees, outdated computer systems, unreal expectations and micromanagement by home office, atmosphere of expendability of all employees regardless of experience or past performance, one-way communication stream from home office to store level management

Advice to Senior Management

there is too much to even touch the surface here

Pros

many people want to work there because they love books. it is nice to have an employee discount and access to check out books. jobs allow for a lot of merchandising and opportunities to be department heads allow employees to learn a lot about one area (like kids book or gift items). after asking for training, i was taught about the different departments in the store - resulting in promotion.

Cons

communication from corporate is unrealistic and ineffective. small payroll budgets make hiring good employees impossible, few benefits, corporate does not listen to store level management on differentiation of stores that would make it compete locally - all decisions are company wide and seem to be made without walking into a store and seeing how long things take to be implemented and what impact, if any, they have. zero time for customer service do to constant merchandising and discounting moves, putting out inventory and scanning every book for voids monthly - all on a skeleton crew. management has to work 60 hours to make up for constant budget cuts and increased "projects".

Advice to Senior Management

listen to your store managers on what might work in their market, offer better benefits and better pay, find a brand identity and market it, make every store as important as the others - the farther away you are from birmingham, al the dustier, more poorly staffed, and disorganized the store is. the discount card program is ridiculous - grocery stores and borders offer it for free. now bam's is as expensive as b&n's while b&n markets itself as a luxury brand and bam markets as a warehouse store for cheap books - the target customers don't understand paying that much for a discount card and hate being pressed by desperate employees who need to shove the cards down your throat to keep their jobs.

Pros

The coworkers and the customers were a pleasure to be around, and the environment lends itself towards making connections and sharing ideas.

Cons

The pay is generally horrible at store level, from management down to basic bookseller (a Southern based, non-unionized company), along with increasingly impossible expectations from senior members of the company (i.e. performing the same amount of work with fewer people and hours of operation, increasingly difficult sales expectations, etc.)

Advice to Senior Management

I would love to see Mr. Anderson and his corporate board attempt to sell their discount cards and 'risk-free' magazine subscriptions for a month, and I would love for them to feel the pressure that comes from the fear of losing a job that might pay $7 an hour (or whatever minimum wage might eventually be), because they didn't meet their weekly quota of discount cards and magazines. I would love for them to better understand the unfairness of continuing to hike the price of the card, along with the weekly percentage expectations, while simultaneously cutting the commission percentage rate of each card sold, all so they can make even more gross profit and congratulate themselves at the end of the fiscal year with a hefty bonus for an accomplishment that they didn't earn. I would love for them to realize that every employee at store level contributes more direct company profit than their upper-management business brokerings, and through that realization, actively reward such accomplishments through better pay/commissions and improved benefits (as opposed to the annually deteriorated, yet increasingly costly health plans they proffer every year).

Pros

book check out, flexible scheduling, is actually kinda fun at times.

Cons

discount card, upper management has expectations that are sometimes either unrealistic or just dont make sense, which isnt surprising consider how few of these people have actually worked in a BAM store. compensation sucks, better set you salary in stone, they will try to pay you as little as possible. dont be a GM- unless your no longer interested having a personal life.

Advice to Senior Management

come and work 1 week in a mid to high volume store and THEN tell us how to schedule and accomplish tasks.

Pros

First of the month 30% discount, 20% the rest of the month. This is the only thing really that makes the job worthwhile. But always watch out, if the item has a larger discount with the member discount card use that first!

Cons

Well first of all if you end up dating someone in the company, expect one of you to be relocated. Nepotism of any sort is frowned upon by the company unless you are an Anderson. Secondly, the pay is horrendous and now it is even worse since the company is cutting hours even more than they did before. Chances are the hourly cuts are going to make getting any benefits a thing of the past. The supposed "flex budget" the company is using now doesn't take into account that there actually has to be employees on the clock to shelve the books and then find them again for the customers. Thirdly, the discount cards and magazines. With the economy being as down as it is, I think the worst thing this company did was raise not only the price on the discount card but now they are raising, yet again, the percentages for the cards and magazines goals. In the past I never had a problem making the goals of these, but I had to talk unil my mouth was literally numb some days. For some people who struggle with these sales, they will probably find themselves job hunting very soon. :(
Finally, I have worked retail in the past, and I have never in my life been treated as badly as customers tend to treat us in these stores. And no matter what, you have to smile and bear it or fear a corporate complaint....which means termination. I have been yelled at, snapped at, and cursed at, sometimes just over something as small as being out of java jackets or sold out of a new hot best seller.

Advice to Senior Management

Get into the stores, especially the ones struggling to meet your so called "metrics". See why they are struggling. Try to sell some discount cards to people who are budgets but still need to buy the summer books for their childrens' educations. When was the last time anyone at corporate worked in a store? Did any of them?

Pros

The only saving grace to working at this store was the employee discount and being able to borrow books - otherwise I'd have run screaming long before I did.

Cons

General manager of the store was completely ineffective - assistant managers did what they could to cover but that can only go so far. GM had zero respect for employees, pay was extremely poor, and although they claimed to be flexible with your schedule for classes/etc, be prepared for harassment if you need to do so in a way that might possibly lead to some slight inconvenience for management.

Advice to Senior Management

the constant pushing of discount cards/magazines (that they swore up and down wouldn't be required when they launched it - immediately followed by required percentages) made customers irritated and employees miserable.