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8%

heron's picture
Mon, 06/30/2008 - 22:36 — heron

I would like to know if raising the BR signup rate per employee to 8% is just my region, or if it is a company-wide thing.

How subtle. Creating an impossible goal and being able to fire most of your sellers will give Borders the excuse it craves somehow to not link cutting almost all Sellers with the rollout of the new Borders.com.

Why does a store need Sellers?

To find titles! Right? News Flash: there are no titles left in the stacks, and the ones left are faced out. Nope. Don't need those whiny, expensive Sellers anymore!

Why else have a Seller on the sales floor? To do Orders! Umm...yeah customers can just do that themselves at the PCs or kiosks.

Customer Service? Bah! The customers can just serve themselves! No more complaints about bad service!

Am I paranoid? All this makes way too creepy an amount of sense.

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Thu, 07/03/2008 - 23:11 — WinterWolf

BR is a "low fruit" type of metric to measure employee performance. Its much harder for GMs who spend little time on the floor to actually know who can and cannot sell. Also, their bonuses are tied in part to BR so of course GMs will push this.

During my last review, BR signups and scans were 100% the metric used to award raises (tiny as they were). Forget helping the customer or knowing product, that did not matter. I know one store that had a contest for most BR scans that went on for 3 months. For three months effort the winner received a $10 EGC. Mind you, the winner also had to ask repeatedly AFTER the contest was over
what the prize was and wait 6 weeks for it. Sure seems like the GM was concerned about the employee (/sarcasm off). Borders wonders
why moral is low? Look no further than you local management team.

Tue, 07/29/2008 - 06:10 — Nocturne
Nocturne's picture

8%? The BSR district here has a 10% minimum signup rate.

And no, Heron, you don't sound paranoid. Not to me, anyway.