Books-A-Million – “Observations”

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).