Pros
Nice caring family atmosphere amongst staff in the store I worked at.
Cons
- Always short staffed. - Expected you to work overtime without getting paid - or for you to work extra hours, get promised those “extra hours back”, and that never happened. - Never felt respected by senior Management, no one ever listens. - At the start of your shift, if you were told you were going to be working on the tills, you’d be there for the entire day (except for your break). Very tiring and would often cause you to make mistakes with all the concentration you’d need for the screens. It was a complete embarrassment too, because the tills would often crash, meaning you would need to rescan every item of the customers’ shopping. Head office would not, and still have not, invested in newer computer systems for the tills. They are still using Windows XP (this launched in 2001 - making their till systems 18 years old). - Offers would never come off at the till point, generating many complaints for customers, and extra waiting time for customers because a member of staff would have to find the details out, then change the pricing on the till. - Sparks “reward” system is a complete waste of time. Every time customers shop, they earn points on their Sparks card, but you can’t actually do anything with those points. It’s not like the Boots advantage card, where you can spend those points towards products. It’s just a number on the account (a bit like how working there, makes you feel just like a number. You’re not valued at all). The points system was originally in place so customers could go for “experiences”. Every customer I asked, that had never happened. The company filmed a fake promotional video for YouTube, showing a couple going wine tasting abroad. That has never happened for anyone else. - The current CEO, Steve Rowe, needs the sack... * Ever since he came into power, he removed privileges for staff (some stores not even having a canteen now). *He also removed in-store music to cut costs. Try working an 8-hour shift in a food hall listening to the sound of the noisy fridges! If it was a quiet day, the time used to fly by, and it was less depressing when listening to the music. Most customers I spoke to told me they preferred the music (only around 2 preferred the music switched off). * To also cut costs, Steve Rowe has reduced the protection of staff by removing a Security from smaller stores. We would often have shoplifters come into the store, with very large bags, load them with clothing, steaks, meat, alcohol - anything worth a lot of value. We’d try to approach these shoplifters, but in the end, it was “why should we?”. The company wouldn’t reward us. They don’t care about spending extra for security guards, so why should we care if money walks out of their business? Plus it was very unsafe - any of these shoplifters could have had knives on them. * With Steve Rowe at the helm, it has only been doom and gloom, and all about store closures too. If he bothered sorting his business out properly, he’d realise he didn’t need so many store closures. - I’d hate to see this 135 year old business go under. Look how far it has come - from a market stall in Leeds, to what it was before Steve Rowe started to slowly destroy it. What would Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer think about their business today?!
