In recent years, corporate forced us to cut payroll so drastically that there was not enough people to help customers. If you had to check on a product in the stockroom, it was a major undertaking as you had to find someone to cover the sales floor. Not that we had anything in the stockroom as we were constantly out of essential school supplies. When Steve Clemente took over as SVP, he brought all of his buddies from Target in and put them in all the key positions in Nebraska. Local purchasing was therefore eliminated and replaced with a "template" for ordering. It was embarrassing to run out of staplers, hole punches, Sharpies, filler paper, spiral notebooks, on the second day of class. If you called corporate directly, the buyers were very rude to you and woyuld say that WE should have told them to order more product.
There are far too many VP's and none seem to be aware of the daily functions of the store. They badgered us about payroll cuts yet we would suggest that they shorten store hours, they ignored us. When you had excessive losses due to theft because there was not enough help on the sales floor, they assumed that you weren't being an effective manager in your scheduling. They would constantly roll out new programs that essentially tied up customers at POS causing complaints. Half the time these programs were flawed and caused more problems than they were worth.
About a year ago, they rolled out a program called "Salary Plus" which was an underhanded way to screw you out of money but make you work more. My pay was cut by about a $1.50 and replaced with a new "base pay". The perk they claimed was that you would get this base pay regardless of whether you worked 40 hours or 32 ( as if that would ever happen!) Besides, I thought that was what vacation & sick pay were for. If you worked over 40, you got a whopiing 50% of your calculated hourly rate from your base pay. During bookrush, you may work 70 hours but only see about $100 extra buck on your paycheck. Hourly employees were paid minimum wage regardless of how long they worked for the company. In years past, we would have students working for us seasonally and over the course of 4 years. This was always appreciated as they didn't have to be trained, and you were aware of their work habits. With most places in the area paying at least 50 cents more per hour, we lost that luxury.
Managers were not allowed to make decisions independent from corporate yet always had to take the heat when sales were down.Suggestions were disregarded and you were told to chalk it up and deal with it. If you had to issue a disciplinary notice, you had to first submit it to corporate so that HR could review it. If you needed a reapir, you had to call Nebraska Total Facility and wait for them to find someone to contract. This usually took weeks as opposed to a couple days. Utilities were frequently shut off as corporate would not pay the bills on time.
