Hollywood Video – “Hollywood or Hell? It's a tough decision...”

Pros

The co-workers are usually awesome. It's akin to having war buddies-everyone is stuck in the same bullcrap drama you are, so you have people to relate to. Some of the customers are awesome. We get more praise from customers than our management, which is really sad.

The only real perk that's used at Hollywood is the free rentals. If one rents movies frequently, then it may actually be worth some of the horrible things we deal with. However, if someone is like me and rarely uses said perk, then it's wasted. I wish we could trade in the free rental perk for a raise.

Cons

There is a total lack of intelligence where our manager is concerned. She's great as a co-worker, but as a manger, I'm pretty sure a dead animal can do better. There is absolutely no feedback, it takes literally MONTHS for her to do things she's promised to do within the next few hours. She leaves rude notes to employees concerning job performance, but when confronted face to face, she smiles and tries to laugh it off, saying everything is fine. All the problem customers are directed to me because I have better customer service skills (and considerably more patience). She takes every weekend and holiday off even though half the staff has missed important holidays with their children. (She has no children, just two dogs who she calls her "fur babies".)

Corporate management is a complete JOKE. We are lied to about charity work that the company is supposedly doing for terminally ill children. (Did anyone see the article in The Oregonian regarding playguards? Google it, it's worth it) We are expected to lie to customers on a regular basis. We are forced to make around a hundred cold calls a day, pretty much begging old customers to return by offering free rentals to them. Late fees are a joke. Nobody is required to pay them if they don't want to and anyone who calls corporate with a complaint, (even if they're obviously lying) will have late fees removed, free rentals added to their account, and sometimes get free gift cards.

Our corporate office has completely screwed up everything about our job and we've lost hundreds of customers because of it. However, we're expected to sell about nine times as much crap now as we did when I first started two years ago. We're required to constantly pester customers in the store, trying to get them to spend more more more, all while only having maybe twenty copies total of the "hot new releases" that everyone wants.

Hollywood spends SO MUCH MONEY on total crap trying to push the latest sure to fail promotion that we get just a few copies of movies that our remaining customers want.

Advice to Senior Management

1. Do not spend another dime on promotions unless it is for a movie. Nobody wants to buy a freakin playguard since it's not going to the terminally ill kids anymore. Please actually send us more candy so we can push the bundle promotions. Please buy more copies of movies that people actually want to see instead of wasting your money on stuff that won't sell.

2. Please look and see who is actually doing the work in the stores. Reward those people accordingly. Get rid of the dead weight.

3. Please learn to pay us for ALL of the time worked. We've had to get supplemental checks two out of the past three paydates because we're getting shorted about twenty hours each. Get it together already! We've had employees quit because they're not getting their checks! We're down to four-count it- FOUR employees to run a 7 day a week, 365 day a year movie store.

4. Please be timely in granting raises and make sure people are actually receiving them on their checks. Paper promotions are great and all, but when you need money, the check is the only thing that matters.

5. For the love of all that is holy, please get rid of those damned lasped and birthday calls! Like I said, we're a 4 employee operation and we do not have time to do your useless dirty work. Nine times out of ten, it's a wrong number or the number is disconnected. Have those calls automated, like the other ones you so love to use.

6. How about providing REAL training to your employees? It's all nice that we know how to set the wall, but if we're not taugh to handle certain customer situations, you lose money, we lose patience and you lose employees.

I could go on for hours, but this is just a basic list.