you are not alone. our kickass hard working SPO IPT person never has enough time to do their job. they are on register or the floor all the time. special orders account for a big part of our sales, so i don't know what the hell they are doing.

As the CSR in my former store, I had lots of opportunity to watch the SPO clerk since his desk was just across the office from mine. Management forced him out because they thought he was ineffective and should have been doing the job in less hours than he was (he was scheduled full-time as a SPO clerk and was working about 34 or 35 hours a week). SPO represented over nine hundred thousand dollars a year in sales for the store, but management was convinced it could be done part-time. They made things so uncomfortable for this 12-year employee that he quit. The job went to a young woman from IPT who was told to do the job in 20 hours a week. That actually worked for a couple of weeks with me helping to get the backlog out and sellers calling customers to notify them their books were in. Within a month, the new SPO clerk was using almost 40 hours a week to get the job done. Obviously, it was a full-time job to start with. The IM was giving the new SPO clerk grief for not doing the job in less hours.

Maybe I don't think like a BINCHEAD, but an almost 8 million dollar a year store doing almost a million a year in SPO ought to be able to dedicate a full-time employee. SPO was generating one-eighth of all sales in the store.

Same thing happened, though, that happened to you. Most open orders were ignored. Customers weren't notified of product that did not come in. Sellers tore open newly-delivered boxes to get product if a customer was in the store (didn't leave notes for the SPO clerk, so she didn't know what happened to books that were on her invoices). I'm gone now, but I imagine the store will not do almost a million in SPO this year. How can they when management won't recognize the program is a cash cow with very little cost to the store?

Cheap is right. I was a CSR making goal most months and usually well over goal. I got an "exceeds expectations" on my appraisal (which seemed right based on my performance) and a six cent per hour increase. Six cents per hour! I told the GM she could keep it, gave notice, and left with reemployment rights. Not that I would want to return to Borders under the current conditions.

I enjoyed Borders and enjoyed my job when the managers who did not know how to manage themselves would leave me alone. I took a CSR position that had not made anywhere near goal in years and turned it around while answering almost all backup calls to the floor and being scheduled for floor time more often than I thought was necessary. Did anyone say thank you? No. Never. It was just "spend more time on the floor" and "spend more time out of the store" and "spend more time supporting the company". I'm sorry, but I thought adding to the bottom and top lines with sales the store never had and wouldn't have had without me was supporting the company. Didn't those profits make it possible for Ann Arborites and district and regional staff to have cushy jobs and place unreasonable demands on store staff? Didn't those profits make the difference several months so that the leadership team made bonus for achieving overall sales goals? The sales staff never got anything because the store never made over 103%, but the leadership team was making bonus every month for making 100% of goal -- an achievement they would not have enjoyed in a couple of months without my CSR sales. But, no, they never said thank you because that is not the Borders way. The leadership team (and I use that term very loosely) had been trained to beat down initiative, discourage happiness among the employees, and demand so much of severely underpaid staff members that people were quitting even before they had other jobs. Most felt it was better to be just plain broke than broke and unappreciated by those who were making bonus every month. That is Borders today -- not the place it used to be and probably not the place it may be in a year. Who knows what the name will be then. Let's hope the new owners--and let's hope there are some new owners very soon--realize you can't run a store without employees who are well paid and trusted.

Our store isn't much different. We've had a lot of turnover for SPO employees in the last year, and none of the new ones get properly trained or backed up. Half of the time, SPOs that are in sit up at the registers while cashiers ignore them or are too busy to call. Or, they are left for the overworked SPO person to do.

Part of the main problem is that Borders won't invest in any newer technology or software. TLU is a joke from the `90s, and Title Sleuth/Borders Search gets worse with each incarnation. Even the public library here has automated call services to let patrons know when their holds arrive. Would it be so hard for a multi-billion dollar international corporation to get software that was created after 1989 and some computers that actually run correctly?

Investing in technology will result in increased profits which means more stores, more employees, more compensation, etc. However, I doubt any of this will trickle down to the workers who actually deserve it. Everyone in retail who has to deal with the public is severly underpaid.