Payless ShoeSource Reviews

- If you are working for this company in the U.S., they will pay you a pittance for all the work that is demanded of you. - The SMILES sales system. This method of selling is so incredibly pushy, it has sometimes aggravated the customers I'm talking to and has discouraged them from making a purchase. Additionally, customers know you are trying to upsell to them to the nth degree; they're not stupid. Most customers are more than happy to be acknowledged/greeted, then left alone to shop. Being so heavily involved in aggressively selling to customers can take time away from you to complete all the other tasks demanded of you. - Chronic understaffing of stores. Payless is very stingy with their payroll system; there was many shifts that either myself, my manager or my assistant manager were required to work by ourselves for a few hours. If my store was really quiet, I wouldn't have had a problem with this; however, my store was a flagship store and was inside one of the busiest shopping centres in my location. Working by myself for a few hours made it difficult to attend customers using SMILES, unpack shipment, de-tag/re-tag shoes AND clean up mess. Also, shoplifting was a big issue because of this. - There is constant pressure to achieve sales goals (...which is normal in any sales job, really); the difference with Payless is that achieving the sales goals would sometimes be out of your control. Sometimes people just wish to purchase one item instead of two, or they might not want insoles or waterproof spray. Conversion rates were always the worst; whole groups of adults would come into the store and only one purchase would be made for whatever reason, making the store's conversion rate very low (and then we'd be berated on it). What are we supposed to do...start charging a "just browsing!" fee? - Redundant de-tagging/repricing of stock. Set a clearance price and stick with it! Customers get confused and angry when prices of the stock they want constantly go up and down and it's down to sheer luck as to whether they get it when it's cheap or expensive. - Unpleasant upper management that play favourites with store managers. - Having such a small staff team. Whenever someone couldn't turn in for their shift, it threw a whole spanner into the works and my managers would have to scramble to find someone else on short notice. - No paid overtime. Many times I had to stay back after closing in order to finish tasks so staff wouldn't have to play catch-up the next day. I would consider this the absolute worst part of the job.