Pros
Do you love micromanaging? Do hate technology? Do you love spreadsheets? Big fan of arbitrary goal posts? Keen to make as little money as you can in a role? Love watching your sales reps make more money than you, while you write your 2552th performance review? Do you enjoy the sensation of regularly pulled ligaments & rapid joint damage? Well boy, you're in luck. This is the job for you! For the low, low rate of sub £30k a year, you can take responsibility for a entire building, a team, and a series of unfortunate events. Sales declining? Team struggling to hit their figures? Country in a cost of living crisis? Well Mr Topps doesn't give a proverbial! Make that Year On Year Growth happen or be prepared for even more paperwork! Because as everyone knows, tying your most experienced people up with excel is the best way to make more money off your clients. So instead of getting out there selling as hard as you can, you'll be working on the pc all day, waiting for reports that won't load and trying to avoid the urge to bludgeon yourself in to unconsciousness rather than wait until the next ice age for knock off Microsoft Office to load again. In the words of one of Topps' IT wizards, "it's a miracle it works at all really, the software was never meant to do what we do with it. There's so many plug ins and add ons that it's basically held together with duct tape and cable ties" All on machines that have the computing power of a potato. And then when you finally have those reports loaded, documents written, sheets in hand, you'll spend your time sitting minimum wage staff down to tell them their average transactional values aren't high enough. Let's have a conversation about how we'll ask people if they want a branded bottle of floor cleaner, or a new bucket, and sign the day away on the line to call it done. See you next week to do it all again. That not magically making the figures work? What's a recession after all. Don't worry, your boss will be popping by to support you. But wait, that support starts to feel like a interrogation. Then the paperwork comes out - remember, you really do have to love it. Don't fret, you'll get back to trying to get some work done once they are out your hair. Hope you like lifting, because you'll be handballing every single 25kg box one at a time - yeah, you'll ache. But hey, it's a free workout. As in, it'll work out all your joints to the point they ache, constantly. Make sure you brought a clean shirt with you, because over summer you still need to get it done and guess what - there's no air con. So after the first pallet you've got a sweat on, by the third you can feel it trickling down you. You check the temperature thinking maybe you're working too hard and should slow down... It's 27c in store. No wonder you're melting. So you stop. But now it's not getting done. If it's not done, people aren't called. If people aren't called, it's not collected, and if it's not collected, well you make no money. And next week, when they turn up for the next regularly scheduled pencil pushing exercise and they climb out their nicely air con'd car to walk in to your literal hot box building, pointing out how hot it is like you'd not noticed while you were dripping sweat across a pile tiles... Well, then you get another fun conversation with more paperwork.
Cons
Seriously though. This company used to be quite a nice place to work. It had a good atmosphere, with a team approach to work that was competitive in the right ways. Then they started buying all the competition. Now the originals - the showrooms - look dated, run dated, feel dated, and are literally falling apart. Signage cleaning is too expensive. Tins of paint cost too much. Staff welfare areas? Never mind BYOB, it's BYOT. That's "Bring Your Own Table" , because they won't provide one! (no, I'm really not kidding.) and it feels like we're all a burden on this multi-chanel, multi-Business owning group. No one actually listens. You'll get all sorts of spiel, but the end result is always "just hit your target and it'll be fine" Cool. Great. Will do. No amount of super service will bring people back when they realise the prices are up to three times what the competition ask for literally the same damn tiles. Then comes your income. The reason any of us work at all. Well, you'll be bottom of the barrel. Lowest tier of retail store manager. The best part? Your DMs barely make less than you, since they got a pay rise and you didn't. Your senior sales team? Yeah they make as much as you. Congrats, you're a manager making less than a good salesman. But it's safe work at least? As in, it's impossible to be fired? Yep. Bodily safe? No. Nowhere near. You'll be understaffed, permanently. You'll be scheduling lone working. They'll tell you it's against company policy, but that's just the official line. You won't have enough staff to cover holidays, sickness, or even just every early open or close. I don't know a single person in the company who's not been injured at work somehow. Multiple times, usually. Thanks to the insistence everything is handballed, after a few years you'll start to notice that ache in your knuckles. That twinge in your wrist. Throb in your shoulder. It'll pass. But it'll be back. Eventually, it'll be there for good. Congrats, it's probably arthritis. Handballing dozens, to hundreds, of 25kg boxes, without the option of proper lifting form - how can you do anything but pinch grip them when they have to be stacked tight against each other - will take it's toll. That's just assuming you never have a actual accident. Broken toes, ripped ligaments, wrecked rotator cuffs - all things I've seen over the last few years. Everything is heavy, and getting heavier, and there's absolutely no plans for more mechanical support to prevent this. As a Store Manager, you're expected to assume the roles of a Sales Manager, a People Manager, a H&S Manager, a Professional Hot Glue Gun Tiler, a Merchandiser, a Logistics Manager, a Personal Development Coach, a Tile Expert, a Adhesive Expert, a Tool Expert, a master Salesman, a Mathematician, and a Math tutor. And you get the pleasure of doing it all for about £14-15 a hour, post Mr taxman.
