Pros

As a store manager, I make my own schedule and can leave work whenever I please. This makes it convenient for family/personal issues that one may have. Pay is okay for what I do. Over the last several years, OD has lost market share to Staples and some to OfficeMax so stores are not as busy as they used to be which equates to less work. If you don't mind kissing up to the RVP, DM, & LP manager, your life is pretty good. (i.e. calling for unnessessary advice, thus giving them the feeling of importance.)

Cons

We have to deal with daily "emergency tasks" that have to be done "or else". The tasks are not that big of a deal but they are a nuisance as many of them are inaffective to driving sales. Payroll cuts are another weekly occurence. But as I stated above, we are less busy so we just deal with it. With the current state of the economy, we don't know how secure our job is. This affects almost every job out there though. Also, OD focuses too much on upselling on technology items. It is more beneficial to me to not sell the item, rather than selling it without a warranty or service. As my Dm states, "just stay under the radar". Since everyone struggles with hitting the numbers, my theory is to stay somewhere in the middle.

Advice to Senior Management

Just look at sales and margin!!! Who cares if a sharpie display has the wrong bin labels on it??? - as long as it is selling - who cares! (Sorry, I just had an RVP visit and this was a topic of conversation!) Upper management is looking at any type of follow through as a way to blame low sales on the manager. When in fact, we spend senseless dollars on "middle management" positions. LP audits are a joke the way payroll is right now. We could scale down the LP managers (again) and only audit once a year. Audits affect your yearly review- which affects your raise. Well, we did not get a raise last year and may not this year, so what's the point?

Too much emphasis is focused on pleasing the RVP, DM and LP manager .... and NOT the customer!!! The customer is what keeps retail alive. If you ask any manager out there, they will tell you that we spend most of our day working on pleasing the DM instead of the customer.