Complaint Review: Dillards - Prescott Arizona

I am currently employed by Dillards and have been for approximately 7 months now. At first, I looked forward to the new opportunites, or so I thought. I am admittidly new to retail, but I am not stupid nor ignorant.

In training we shown how to run the register and covered the basics of taking payments, sales transactions, and such.

We were given a checklist on which we had to mark down each subject as covered. It got quite confusing as the order wasn't really in accordance to the list.

Now to my real issue here. Sales quotas, employment and pay contingencies, and credit application demands.

In training it was not mentioned with any degree of clarity, nor was it in the final interview and paperwork session that I HAD to maintain a set SPH quota to maintain my hiring rate of pay. We were NEVER informed about the company's emphasis on credit applications.

Promoting upselling and tutorial videos, as well as shoplifting were covered in depth. Again, NOTHING on SPH or credit applications.

There are monthly, 3 month, 6 month, and yearly reviews. I didn't know about pay cuts and/or the meaning of staying rate to rate. Nobody in the class of new hires with me did either.

I know of many store associates that have recently had pay cuts of .90 cents per hour due to quota drops.

Yet, our workload to maintain our department is insane as the associates must keep up the sales quotas, both individually and dept wise. Some days the personal quotas are near $2,000. At that includes having up to 8 associates scheduled that shift. Markdowns, merchandising, inventory prep, display maintenence, recovery and 'special' area manager designated projects routinely, and to his/her detriment, keep him/her away from the sales floor and making the allmighty sales. The set quotas are based on sales from this time last year.

Also, in my short time, the pressure increases to get credit applications. In the last 2 months a manditory class has been established for those who do not get at least 1 credit application that month. This class is scheduled very early in the morning. "jokingly", haha, we have been told it is our 'punishment' for no credit applications. Daily notes are left at the register stations listing those who have and have not gotten credit applications. We are compared to and reminded of associates who are getting them on a regular basis. Some notes have been of a threatening nature in reference to being forced to take the class. It is more akin to being sent to the corner. It is something that is out of our control. More successful areas have a different spending clientel all together, but that is not given consideration and any mention to that effect is ridiculed as an excuse for not doing something right.

It is part of our job, we are told. I have not found that anywear in my employee agreement, and it was never covered in training!

I will say that the management is fair and open door. But they have to maintain Dillards edicts. The economy and spending are down and in a bad way. Most days now an associate may average sales that can be counted on one hand. There are the department favorites who are consitently the top 2 sellers, they also have the favored hours, opening all thier shifts. They will hedge out fellow associates to garner more sales.

In less than one week, these 2 verbally attacked me in front of customers for hogging sales or being on his territory. They were spoken to, and it was let go. Huh? Behaviour that is grounds for immidiate termination in other fields.

when they were spoken to, they went on tangents about me and what I do or don't do. As if they were validating thier behaviours. I ended up feeling like the one doing wrong. These two merely felt threatened and had no qualms about being nasty to cut me out. They do it to others. It is allowed because they are high performers in sales.

Back to credit applications. People are saying NO. That is if there are any customers in the store to ask. Times are bad. personal spending is down in liu of gas prices, consumer debt and the mortgage crisis.

I know that management knows this, but yet they keep up the pressures. Some of the area managers that must do thier part in these pressures are barely in thier early 20's with little to no prior management experience. Older and more experienced and seasoned employees are disrespected and our thoughts and opinions scoffed and and ignored. We have been forced to come to work sick with the reminders of terminations. 3 tardies result in termination.

For the most part, my co-workers are hard workers who take pride in department appearance and quality customer service, but these efforts carry no merit. Only sales count for anything. Associates that have been there for years are not any higher on a pay scale, if not lower, because of not meeting sales quotas. Again, no merits for overall performance in other ways.

I would not recommend this employer to anyone. I will be job hunting. I am the sole support of my son. No raises on the horizon at this rate.

For all intensive purposes, sales associates are no more that generators of the holy dollar sign with which to fuel the greed of the Dillards family and the GE Capital Financial Bank.

Why do sales associates pay for Dillards deal with this devil??

Anonymous

prescott valley, Arizona

U.S.A.