The Working World

Welcome to the dark ages of retailing

It has been awhile since my last posting. The reason is that I have been too busy to write and somewhat embarrassed to admit what I have been up to. As most of you know life in the new depression has been rough to say the least, and like many other self employed, independent fools I decided that I would attempt a part time job. How bad could that be? I thought, maybe two days a week, I can handle that. BOY was I wrong!. Months ago a good friend of mine told me of a retail merchandising company [who shall remain nameless] that was hiring part timers to maintain large manufacturers in-store displays. This company had been sending me Email notifications of openings in various areas throughout the country, so the day that I received one for the Philadelphia area I said OK let me give this a try. They sent me an online test to evaluate my interpretive reading skills, and my familiarity with retail practices and fixturing. After subjecting myself to this humiliating and asinine set of questions and "What's wrong with this picture" tests I hit the submit button. No less than twenty minutes later the phone rang..Mr. Kriaris? asked the excited voice, yes I replied, we have never had an applicant as qualified as you [that should have been my first indication that this job was not for me] really I said, well I've been in retail for a number of years. that’s clear from your test scores, he said. There it was I landed a job in an hour...pretty good I thought. being unaware of the horror that lay ahead.

They can't give them away

A few days later I spoke to my D.M. [District Manager] A chirpy lass with lots of spunk, I hate spunk, [the second indication to bail]..She spoke fluent corporate. We will send you your orientation kit and your hand-held Device…Device? What kind of device is she talking about, it couldn’t possibly be the first thing that popped into my dirty little mind, so I let it pass, She went on and on about Call Reports, weekly conferences calls, and a thousand sites on their links that will answer all my questions and how I will assigned a mentor, A mentor? I think I’m a little old for that, but I kept my mouth shut..

Yet they keep building new ones

I made it clear to her that I wanted the minimum number of hours due to the fact that I still carry a client load. Oh yes we can do that she replied. I will send you this weeks Call report that outlines your store visits for the next week….as she tried to say goodbye, I asked...How much does this pay? Oh, I almost forgot,12 dollars an hour, she chirped like it was great…I wanted part time work not volunteer work, I thought, but again I remained silent.

In a matter of hours my "Call List" showed up. A call is the listing of retailers you are expected to visit by any given deadline, but most are within the week for "product maintenance" The retailers are varied but the products like Hewlett Packard and Sony are carried by numerous retailers and are their clients. Essentially you are performing the same tasks over and over in different stores who carry their products. The list of retailers reads like every strip center in the country. Walmart, Kmart, Kids R Us, Office Depot, Rite Aid Drug, Circuit City blah,blah,blah [certainly not places that I frequent]. After reading the call list the fact that each visits length had been pre-determined,caused me to seriously regret that I had accepted this job. Not only had the performance of the duties on the site but also the driving time and fuel expenses had all been neatly laid out with “not to exceed time limits” unless approved by D.M. I will site an example and remember the pay rate is 12 bucks and hour, a job that 30 miles away at 32 cents a mile and 20 a minute install time comes to $10.40 in gross pay with no consideration for Philadelphia traffic, which has become impossible.. 60 miles in Phila. is 2 hours easily if your lucky. In my pre-recession days that would have been @ 45.00 per hour = $135.00. Lest I forget, the costs of leaving home to arrive at your first destination is considered “driving to work” and NOT eligible for reimbursement. What a RIP!.. I can stay home and follow up potential jobs by phone and eventually make 6 times that. This was a mistake…..but the story does not end here.

Roosevelt Blvd in the Un-Great Northeast not my favorite drive.

In the hand book it points out that you are responsible to introduce yourself to the manager of each store you visit and engage in conversation to seek possibilities of more and better exposure for the clients product. In order to increase sales. What a joke, so everyone makes more money than I do….NOT ON YOUR LIFE! for twelve bucks an hour? You have to be kidding. Not only are you suppose to increase sales you are asked to take along Windex and paper towels to clean the products you are attending, a service that cleaning companies charge more than twelve bucks an hour for. All of this you are suppose to perform while sales people stand around and cruise for potential date material,[especially in Wal-Mart’s audio dept.] After you have completed said tasks you are then required to take photos and fill in report questions recounting your experiences on your hand held Device. A six year old blackberry with an attached pointer, that was a great deal of fun. These devices had obviously been through multiple owners and been the subject of fits of rage more than once [even I threw it across a parking lot] They were conveniently equipped with batteries that held no more than five hours charge, a problem when one is trying to knock out nine stops in a eight hour day. When I asked for a car charger I was told that they are unavailable, that’s real helpful I thought, fine, I’m going home... and its not to charge it up and come out again, I assure you. Maybe you should take your Device and put it where I originally assumed it belonged.

This used to be a market..I wasn't cut out for suburban living

That’s the end of the first week. The following week I received a call report that went on forever, with a happy little note from my D.M. stating that it was not as long as it looked because a number of tasks were located in one store. That made me feel better, sure it did, not really. I was still behind on the first weeks list. Determined to stick this out until I had received my first paycheck,[to see what one really makes doing this] I took a deep breath and through my self back into the battle. By this time my D.M. had stopped communicating with me and turned me over to my “mentor” Jack was a retired Viet Nam vet who tried to answer my questions but frankly could not. I think it was because I made too much light of the exploitive tactics within the companies structure. I must say I found this concept of mentoring nothing more than a corporate ruse to save money on training and exploit other employees who received nothing for their time in training new inductees. Jack and I had only one session together when we pushed shopping carts around a super market as he explained how to attach suction sign holders to dairy cases. I will concede that I actually enjoyed the super market visits, firstly it was cold and comfortable and I found that the employees by in large were knowledgeable and pleasant. Not to mention the covert consumption one could commit while pushing that cart around.

My idea of Hell on earth

The second week dawned with me still behind schedule and receiving emails to that affect from my D.M. who would remind me daily of the closing date. It was becoming painfully clear to me that this “part time” had become “full time” I had been postponing a call to Toys R Us [my least favorite next to K Mart] The list of duties was absurd, first an inventory count on video games that was endless, next was a count on collectible trading cards [on subjects that I had never heard of... all that Anime stuff ] which also included removal, packing and shipping back to manufacturer dated and expired whatever [which meant utilizing the devise in scanner mode] this I truly hated, the thought of struggling through this with the device was more than I could stand. My attempts at a rapport with the manager on duty were useless, she knew less than I ....[but what does a 17 year old know anyway]  and she was on register duty [due to salary cutbacks I’m sure] ..Ok then I will give the video games a try, the Device kept returning to my instructions to build a relationship with management, which really pissed me off, so instead I went to my car and faked the whole inventory, there you go, this is what you deserve. I skipped the trading card thing altogether and went home. I simply stated in my report that..... NO MANAGEMENT PRESENT...I’m sure that this method was used by others put in the same position by the devise, which makes it painfully clear that the info gathered for the manufacturers is useless. The services that my employer claims to provide to their clients is for the most part a falsified.

When I arrived home I found my first paycheck in my mailbox, this is going to be the deal breaker, I’m sure, I mused to myself and sure enough it was. There in black and white; GROSS PAY $80.00 ,NET $64.32….and that included mileage. That amount barely covered the fuel it took to perform these tasks not to mention all the prep time spent on Map quest trying to create a logical route to all the locations. That’s its, I resign! ....Before I could inform my D.M. that it was over for me I read another call report that she had sent me, I had neglected a Rite Aid Drug store some 30 miles from my home for a 20 minute call,[all of $4.00 pay] isn’t that a shame? I wonder how that happened. I wrote her a polite Email note saying that I regret that my other work makes it impossible for me to continue this endeavor ...Thank you very much, That signaled the end of my corporate career.

I must share that this was an experience that I will never forget. I have a new appreciation and respect for those who must support families and mortgages in this sort of employ. I also have a renewed contempt for those who take advantage of others less resourceful and talented than I. My working career has always centered upon that 1% of privilege and wealth, serving their favored speciality retailers. This interlude has given me another view into the retail sector and its practices in areas other than my own small niche. No matter how tough the past few years have been for me, many out there have it far worse than I. I have always managed to keep a few “irons in the fire” and am extremely fortunate that some how I can always pull one out when needed. Even in the worst of times