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.