Family Christian Stores Reviews

Pros

Able to openly share your faith.
A good amount of paid time off.
Great people to work with.
I had the best manager I have ever had.
Pleasant customers for the most part.

Cons

Constant push to sell more.
Rules, rules, rules...
Senior management in Home Office often seemed to have no grasp of how things actually worked in their stores.
Poor pay. Most start at minimum wage or close.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be wise to give the people who actually work in the stores some input on what is going on and listen to their suggestions.

Pros

It is a great store. The product is relevant, and life giving. Customers are pleasant. There are MANY ministry opportunities to get involved in. Easy to ask for time off.

Cons

Sales goals for $5 items are unnecessary.
Not enough encouragement from upper management to lower levels.
Store manager is good, District manager focuses on metrics more than overall sales.
Difficult to sell World Vision sponsorships.
Constant fear of losing hours or even job if sales goals aren't met. (I understand the point of goals)
Could easily sell a $15 DVD but pressured into selling a $5 instead.

Not enough encouragement given when goals are met. Constant (sometimes extreme) pressure to do better.
Store could look good and sales be up, DM still complains about the little things so that he has something to say needs improvement.

Advice to Senior Management

The point of the business is to make money. The purpose of the metrics are to drive sales. If a store is excelling in sales, but metrics are down, find a more constructive way to communicate to the sales team.

Pros

The clientele was very friendly and the work atmosphere was very relaxing. I never had a bad day of work while I was there. Also, flexible employment made it very easy to schedule hours as a full time student.

Cons

Compared to other jobs that don't do all that much work the compensation is pretty low. Again, its a good first job for a high school student or someone just old enough to work but not enough to support oneself.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to have more continuity with the store managers; the location I worked at went through three different managers in about as many months

Pros

Benefits
Customers and staff
PTO
Promotional Product
With this company that's all there really really really really is for Pro's.

Cons

I was always told to speak the truth, so here we go! As I sit here mind you I haven't worked for this company for a while, I still feel sick to my stomach for how they treat their employees. I have been told by the DM that I work for her 24/7. So she was telling me that she owned me. Truly the only thing that kept me going everyday was seeing my regular customers with smiles on their faces. They were happy because of the great customer service they received on a daily basis. If only the DM and Upper Management saw this MAYBE they would change their tune!! I understand about impulse buying principles and where you need to place those objects throughout the store, but to have EVERYTHING at the register is a bunch of crap!! If I was a customer I would be annoyed at how many things they make you try and buy as you are LEAVING!!! The metric system they have for this company is a load of cow manure..they give you the same $5 items to sell OVER AND OVER!! So when you are a customer trying to leave the store with a purchase of $20 and even that is over your budget, they make you feel horrible and pissed off by the time you are leaving.
I know that employees that work at the Corporate Office feel differently about their work environment than we do. My suggestion is you come and work in the trenches and TRY to make these metrics that you place on us every month!! Give us the opportunity to grade YOU and write you up for not making World Vision or MOB'S...WV is a great ministry but it's not the best ministry of choice for certain stores. My old DM does not live out what I believe to be the best way to motivate her managers. There were SOOO many days that I didn't want to come to work because of the nasty emails that she would send out on a DAILY basis. Most people would be happy if your store did well on sales that day...not this company..they only care about those four metrics!! To me the only thing Christian about this company is the merchandise in the store and sometimes the sign out front (that's if it is working)...

Advice to Senior Management

The CEO/COO/CFO/CMO--ALL RVP's and DM's need to come work IN the stores on the registers and see if they can meet those unrealistic numbers they place on their stores EVERY DAY!!! I will bet a lot of money that 90% of them would be written up in the first month alone! You also need to have training for your DM's to learn to motivate their managers instead of degrading them and threatening their jobs every week. Also, CLOSE your dang stores on Sundays so everyone can spend time with their families. If you truly want to live out your mission and Family is first...act like it!! You might keep great managers around if you did that!! Managers shouldn't be working over 50 hours a week and getting paid like crap!! They are the heart and soul of your Company and you need to treat them well. Your company has already lost a lot of loyal customers due to the way you treat your Managers!! Lastly, give your hard-working managers a RAISE or BONUS...THEY DESERVE IT!!!! Take away a lot of your extra perks you get at Corporate and give back to the stores!! You think that 30% discount for the employees is great...you are giving out coupons to the customers for the SAME DISCOUNT!!!! So now you are taking away a perk for the employees!!!!!

Pros

Work with a majority of positive customers.
Work with World Vision to help sponsor children.
Employees are mostly positive and fun to work with.

Cons

Very low pay.
No raises.
No benefits.
You have force all customers into buying 3+ items when they're in the stores.

Pros

My staff
My customers
PTO
James Fund
All the books to read

Cons

50 to 60 hr weeks
Heavy workload
unrealistic sales goals
Upper management lack of understanding and support.
Making us push World vision on people when they don't even know how the program really works.
They think its a child sponsorship when its really a community sponsorship and the child does get any of the money. All the money goes to that childs community,
Your pretty much a corporate slave. There is no "Family" in Family Christian
lack of raises
lack of bonuses
lack of any performance rewards
But if we miss goals we get warned and than written up.
I could go on forever!
The only reason managers stay is the lack of job opportunities right now.
Family Christian knows this and takes advantage of it in every way!

Advice to Senior Management

Happy Employees will result in happy customers.
Show us that you give a crap and give us raises and a bonus that we more than earned.

Pros

great place to work for fun and to learn more about the products.
people was great to work with,, would go back but not enoughe to soupport my family.

Cons

way to much to do not enughe pay, I was running the store when maneger was not there and i was getting less then min,wage. when asked to raise pay corporate denied.. there is really no achevments just a lot of work, and alot of goals and when you dont hit the goals you here from corporate.one time reginional email the manager and basicly said if you dont hit goals your out!!!! its amazing that its a christian store but its still run by greed.

Advice to Senior Management

if you cant handel alot of work then let them know, and dont be a keyholder,
cause its same hours same pay but less work.

Pros

There were some positives about working at this store: my co-workers were all good Christians, as were most of the customers. The 30% discount was nothing to complain about either, especially if you like to read as much as I do, and both yourself and your family like Christian music.

Cons

However, these were where the positives ended. I had read a few employment reviews before accepting a position here and had disregarded most of them as "these are just people with a holier-than-thou attitude who think a store with the word 'Christian' in its name shouldn't worry about making a profit"; I had worked retail for a couple of years elsewhere, and knew there were goals that needed to be made.

Working here was stressful. I held another retail job before and during my employment here, and while it could be stressful at times, the "Partners" here were put under pressure that I hadn't experienced anywhere else. The $5 items were a fairly easy sell most months, though the company often set us up for failure by putting the same ones at the cash registers month after month, to the point where most customers had bought all of them, or had at least seen all of them before. I often felt silly steering a customer away from a more expensive item that might have been their "ideal purchase" by showing them a $5 that was close to it--sure, I saved them money and I'm happy to do that (at least if that was close enough to what they really wanted anyway), but I could never figure out why I exactly the company seemed to want me to sell a $5 item over other, much more expensive items.

There were other items that they had every month that were more expensive, and often pre-buys. These weren't too bad, most of the time. Though depending on the item, the goal would often be way out of reach.

The worst, as many people I've seen reviewing this company have said, were the child sponsorships. A great idea, in theory, sure. But selling sponsorships as an impulse buy at the register is *highly* unrealistic. I have had instances where I've sold $30 or even $40 items at the register at other retail jobs, but asking someone to commit to the same every month in a 5-10 minute period is completely unrealistic. Many would want to research the charity, as many like to do these days. Even parties who were very interested in it would say they wanted to discuss it with their spouse first.

The worst part of these goals was that they were a way of scaring the employees. I was a basket-case for a month or two. I think I got written up at least twice, though I'm not entirely sure. But so did most everyone else in the store. A lot of us felt like it was an excuse never to give anyone a raise--ever. There were people who had worked there for many many years and had never received raises. Unfortunately, their penchant for writing people up for not achieving near-impossible goals causes awkwardness for those of us who are former employees who are now applying for jobs, as I found out today: some places ask specifically if you have ever been "written up", and many of them don't do much to find out the scenarios behind those write ups.

Another telling thing I found about this company was the behavior the district management and above compared to that of the district management and above for the secular store I worked for at the same time. A few months before I left my position at FCS, my mother passed away suddenly. I received a sympathy card from the district manager of my "secular" employer. At FCS, I received another write-up, even though I hadn't been present for much of the month. I know it's a business, and every business is different, but if I had been an outsider, I would've expected this to occur in the opposite manner.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your employees better. Happy employees will make much happier customers, and happier customers will create more profit in the end. If you're going to write-up people for not making impossible goals, at least reward them when they actually do achieve them. One of the biggest problems I had with FCS was that many of the things I was asked to do went against everything I had been taught about how to treat customers prior to working there. Stop shoving everything down their throats at the cash register--it causes long lines and frustrated customers, especially during the holidays. No one is going to be interested in listening to an employee talk about sponsoring a child after waiting in line for 20 minutes waiting for everyone else to hear about the same.

Pros

Enjoyed learning about products and sharing product knowledge
Other managers were inspiring
Employee discount and free promotional material
Small staff

Cons

Impossible to accomplish store resets in one day
Too many tasks piled onto one another
No one to train new employees
Worked long hours and extra time and purchased material with my own money, the budget was so tight all the time.
In congruent messages based on the focus of the company by upper management.
No positive feedback given even when exceeding store goals repetitively.
And the list could very easily go on and on.

Advice to Senior Management

Day to Day the rules changed to the point where it wasn't even worth paying attention to. The ability to give success was completely undermined by aggressive upper management.

Pros

45 Hour work Week and benefit package was ok.

Cons

Horrible place to work! Everything is sales, sales, sales, sales. Did you know that if you did not get a world vision sponsorship a week, that they will write you up? Asking a customer to committ to supporting a child from a third world country, for $35 a month with a years commitment! Most people that shop there can barely even support their own family let alone supporting a child from another country. I had to terminate good employees due to this.

Advice to Senior Management

Get your act together. If you are going to have "Christian" in your business name, you need to stop doing business they way you are doing it. Nothing "Christ Like" in the way you run your business.