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Working at borders cashier through management

Thu, 07/10/2008 - 03:36 — katied75

I'm currently a stay at home mom to two young children. In two to three years I'd like to go back to work full time. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and a background in teaching, but I'll looking at other fields for a future career.

I am possibly interested in creating a career as a Manager of a Border's store. I am actually thinking of applying now as a part time cashier to make some extra spending money while I'm home with my kids. I have nights and weekends available. My thought was that eventually I could work my way up the chain to assistant manager and eventually Manager, hopefully coinciding with my timeline of going back to work full time.

What I'd like to know is

First and most importantly: What is the salary range for a Manager? I'd like to know both starting salary, and the salary of a Manager that's worked for the company for 10+ years.

1. What is it like to work at Borders, as a cashier, assistant manager, and manager (since eventually I might experience all 3 positions)?

2. Is there just one Manager for the whole store, or are their managers of each department?

3. If there are Managers of different departments at each store, what are the different responsibilities of each Manager?

4. What is the schedule like for a Border's Manager? Do they make the schedule? How many hours per week do they work?

5. How much vacation time does a Manager get each year?

6. How flexible is the schedule (being a mom I have to think of sick kids and important school events)? Can I schedule myself time off if necessary and if made up during other hours?

Having only briefly worked retail in my life I'm not familiar with many retail practices. However, I did enjoy my brief time working in a store and think I could enjoy a career working at Borders.

Thanks so much for any replies and information. I truly appreciate it!

Katie

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Thu, 07/10/2008 - 19:19 — WinterWolf

Keep in mind that retail is one of the lowest paying of all professions. A couple of years back the Wall Street Journal did a comparison of revenue earned by the average employee in an industry. Retail employees average 250,000 per employee (I am doing this off memory so may be a bit off), computer industry employees average 600,000 and oil industry employees average 825,000. This average included all levels of staffing. From this you can see that retail is a labor intensive business that has a much smaller ROI. You can expect that the experience levels and skill sets will be less and the compensation at every level will tend to be less.

Starting salary for Borders tends to be minimum +0.50$ for cashiers. If you move to cafe or loss prevention you get an extra 0.50. Supervisors make between 1.00 to 1.50 more an hour for much more responsibility and a very inflexible schedule. Think of it this way, there are fewer people to backup the supervisors (average 5 to 7 per store) if something goes wrong. Assistant Managers are the next level making between 30,000 and 35,000 a year depending on location and negotiating skills. General Managers can make about 50,000 and 60,000 depending on bonuses and such for what is supposed to be a 40 hour work week. The goods ones put in as much time as it takes, the bad ones will find every excuse to be out of the store (or hide in their offices for hours on end). Considering the financial situation that the company is in, there are caps to what is going to be made. Many employees found themselves getting a 1% to 2% raise in 2008 (works out to about $200 a year) and then lost their monthly 30$ gift card (thereby actually reducing their wages by 0.25$ a hour).

There are supervisors and assistant managers with different primary areas of responsibility.

Vacation time does vary depending on how long your with the company.

If you can, I would look at a job that tends to develop skills. At Borders you'll learn some very basic sales skills but don't expect to be mentored or nurtured along the way. The current Borders training program is sparse at best. The good news is that there is a whole business section to look through. Oh, and during the interview if the GM is clueless about the business section and would rather spend all their time in the romance section......RUN.