A few suggestions for you:

I wouldn't post your store location. I work on the presumption that all managers and supervisors know about this site and that some of them, at least, monitor it. Look at the left side of the screen way down at the bottom to see who is online. It usually says there are 1 or 2 members online and anywhere from 12 - 30 guests. Do you want to guess who some of those guests are? Some of them have to be Borders managers trying to get a feel for what the employees are saying or trying to find out what their own employees are saying. Keep your store number and location to yourself.

As for your status, if you are training full time, it is a safe bet to assume you have been hired for full time work. In the store where I work, part-timers are trained on part-time hours and full-timers are trained 8 hours at a stretch.

As for whether or not you were hired seasonally, you should assume you were not hired seasonally. Even if they say you are seasonal, Borders has such high turnover that you may be able to turn a seasonal position into a full-time position continuing after the holidays. In the store where I work, anyone who actually comes to work on time, on the days they are scheduled, and for more than a few weeks, is considered an old-timer. The most senior full-time bookseller we have right now has worked for Borders for less than two months. A couple of part-time booksellers have been around longer, but due to the high turnover we are working our full-time people to exhaustion and they are leaving along with all the ones fired for cause.

If this is what you want, learn during the training and on the job, show up on time, show up on the days you are scheduled, and do the work that is expected of you. Chances are you will have a chance to apply for a better job in Borders soon, if that is what you want.

Good luck.

Sorry to take so long in answering your questions, but you must already know what the last week has been like. Slightly busy. There are several promotions available in Borders for booksellers. Any move to the cafe is just a lateral move. But, any move to a supervisory position is a promotion. Depending on the size of your store, you probably have at least an IPT supervisor, cafe supervisor (the one case where a move to Cafe is a promotion), operations supervisor (sometimes called the office supervisor or office manager), music or multi-media supervisor, training supervisor, and a merchandising supervisor.

Management is one step up from supervisor, but that structure is changing over the next few months and you may actually see one manager leave by April because their position was eliminated. Store and district management have some flexibility with what they do with the management changes, but after the changes, some stores will have only a General Manager, and Inventory Manager, and a Sales Manager. The Operations Manager (also known as the HR manager) is being eliminated in a lot of stores, with those responsibilities being split between the remaining managers.

Some stores put the special orders clerk (SPO clerk) in IPT and some stores put the person in the back office, still supervised by the IPT supervisor or the inventory manager. SPO clerk is usually a slight promotion from book or cafe seller because there is usually an increase in pay. There is no supervisory responsibility, but the hours are generally better. The Corporate Sales Representative (CSR) is definitely a promotion because pay goes up, job responsibilities increase, and performace expectations increase. The CSR title is staying in use although the program name is changing from Corporate Sales to the Group Savings Program. Big stores with big corporate programs have a Corporate Sales Coordinator. This is a salaried rather than hourly position and has the cache of management, although there are really no store management responsibilities.

Technically, Borders has a policy that you have to be a seller for about nine months before you can be promoted unless someone in district management signs off on the change. The general managers probably do run potential promotions at less than nine months past their bosses at district, but if Borders tightly enforced that requirement, there probably wouldn't be any supervisors. No supervisor in my store (I am neither supervisor or manager) worked as a seller for more than five months and some worked for Borders only about two months before being promoted. Of the three managers we have, one is a career Borders employee with many years of service, one came from outside Borders with other retailing experience and one was promoted from seller, although he had several years of previous experience.

You can be promoted if that is what you want. You won't get much more money, but you will get lots of additional responsibility. It's your choice.

Good luck. Just hang in there during this holiday rush. Things will get better.

I agree completely--screen names should provide the anonymity needed here. However.....

There are Borders supervisors who are members of this site and that's fine; they are hourly employees and fully entitled to participate in any potential union building. But, a comment was made here a few days ago by someone other than me and while passing through the office the next day, I chanced to hear a supervisor who I have heard express dislike of unions say something to the effect of "I heard someone say last night....." and then go on to say word for word what had been said in the post in question.

We should not be paranoid, but I stand by my opinion that managers and anti-union supervisors are monitoring this site. In that light, I still feel posters should be careful about identifying their store or anything that identifies them personally.

Although some stores still have people devoted mainly to spo, there is no position called "spo clerk" anymore. They are just IPT. And IPT doesn't get a bump in pay. The only ones who make more are the ones who were SPT in the past and were grandfathered in with the structure change in 2001.

Worthmore, do you have a schedule printed out for each day? Where is the SPO clerk listed? In our store, he's listed under IPT and does such duties as he's available to, though most of his time is taken up with special orders.