Books-A-Million – “Every company has cons...you just have to focus on the pros”

Pros

The book check out program and the 20%/30% employee discount is also great, especially for people who absorb books the way I do. I also enjoy the community/educator's program because teachers have a lot of trouble getting books for their classrooms. Helping them out is especially fullfilling because we're helping to educate our community and showing that as a store/company we care about growing future readers. Getting experience in the cafe was great because you really gain a lot of coffee/tea knowledge. The customers can be a pro and con, but on average, they are pretty mellow and are really excited and grateful when they get the title they're looking for.

Cons

I understand and support the discount card program because there are tons of stores/restaurants with some sort of reward program for their customers. The money made is used by the company to grow and sometimes even give perks to the employees that work there. However, if a store who usually does relatively well on their numbers has trouble, job threatening is not the way to raise morale in the stores. Trying to sell something and be happy and enthusiastic about it is harder knowing that if you don't make your percentage you could be job hunting next week. It sets everything on edge and it's harder to get the fun, relaxing atmosphere back into the store. The associates in a store are a big part of the atmosphere and customers can tell if the employee is stressed or unhappy.

Salary constrictions are also a pain. A lot of companies use flex scheduling (salary dollars based on the sales for the week). It's harder for stores in our retail situation because we have a lot of work to get done. Along with customer service, we are expected to have alphabetize, well merchandized, clean stores. That's hard to obtain when on the average day you only have 8 people working all day. Not to mention getting out stock, performing monthly inventory tasks, and special projects that come up. It usually falls on the GM and the AGM who usually work around 55 to 60 hours a week in their store on salaried pay. We all try to schedule for the needs of the store, but usually that's greater than what our budget allows.

Feedback is wonderful. However, grading us on how often customers fill out a survey is ridiculous. A lot of people throw receipts away and never once consider going on the website. I think winners of the gift cards should be posted in the weekly BAM advertisements we email to customers. That way they know they can win and will maybe fill more excited about filling out surveys.

Advice to Senior Management

90% of your employees are really doing all they can to make sure we meet all our goals. We put a LOT of work into these stores everyday so our customers have a good experience and so that when/if you come around, you can see how much pride we take in our work. We would like for you all to be more understanding