Borders Reviews

Pros

Customers, co-workers, employee book renting privileges

Cons

some management but what job doesn't have difficult people

Pros

The joy of selling books to people who love to read, the company's caring attitude towards its employees, particularly in the '90s.

Cons

Unfortunately, the struggling economy, coupled with questionable business decisions had the company scrambling to stay afloat, eventually filing for Chapter 11 in 2011.

Advice to Senior Management

Begin again, starting smaller and keep in mind what brought the company success at the beginning: an appreciation for people, books and community.

Pros

Eclectic customer mix, interesting workplace if you enjoy reading

Cons

Management could pay more attention to staff

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your front line employees

Pros

Fun co workers, got to spend a lot of time around books, decent discount, occasionally met awesome customers.

Cons

No benefits for part time position, managers were basically useless, upper management ran the store into the ground.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote employees from within instead of hiring management from outside.

Pros

Colleagues were personable, dedicated, and extremely hard-working. The product mix was fun to work with and systems development to support work dramatically improved over the final few years.

Cons

Anyone remaining during the final days of the company was stretching capabilities to the limit due to numerous rounds of staff reductions as company's financial difficulties began to mount..

Advice to Senior Management

Not enough "listening down."

Pros

The People. The product. The customers.

Cons

Could be stressful at times due to the uncertainty of the compaies fate.

Advice to Senior Management

Wish they could have saved her.

Pros

Casual environment, very intelligent people and challenging but enjoyable work.

Cons

The company is not longer in business.

Pros

Was a good place to work if you liked books. Store operations area was stressful. Enjoyed the travel related to the job.

Cons

Company went under, very disapointing. I would like have stayed longer. Management tried way too many different concepts to make it work

Advice to Senior Management

They should have gotten an internet presence sooner. Too much focus on building large stores. Shouls have stuck with core business.

Pros

You can't. They went under. Don't get me wrong. Some days I hated my job but in general I liked it. I enjoy sorting things and I like helping people when I can. Mostly it was the people I worked with that made it worthwhile. It was a more laid back atmosphere overall and my coworkers were a lot of fun. Many of the managers and supervisors were personable and easy to talk to.

Cons

They don't exist any more, so it doesn't really matter. I suppose the pay wasn't too great, at least on my end. By the time the store closed, i only made 50 cents more than the current minimum wage. Not to mention, towards the end they started to focus more on driving sales. For me that was annoying, particularly when they wanted to promote something specific. It was actually kind of sad to see what had been a promoted book a couple of months ago end up as a bargain item because they tried boosting the demand beyond what the demand actually was. There was also a fair amount of turnover in the Store Managers.

Advice to Senior Management

That depends on what you mean. There was only ever one manager at the store I couldn't stand and he was fired after about a year anyway. I tend to get along fine with anyone, even if not perfectly so, but he was something of a control freak who wouldn't get his hands dirty with grunt work, even though pretty much every other manager was willing to help out on the floor with customers.

On the whole, I blame HQ which made lots of clueless decisions leading to their eventual downfall. The last CEO or two might have been all right, I don't know, but I do know they shot themselves in the foot for years with bad policies, sloppy paperwork, and a lack of focus on the future. They always seemed to be behind the competition and breaking up their previous partnership with Amazon didn't help them any.

Pros

If you like books, it's a great place to work because you're surrounded by them and will continuously learn about new ones.

Cons

Our store was run by people who seemed to enjoy telling others what to do, and made a point of doing it as often as possible. Seemingly menial tasks could take ages because of the need for proper protocol.

Advice to Senior Management

Streamline how the individual stores are run. There was so much protocol to get through sometimes that it would've been far easier and more efficient to do things our own way.