Remember that episode of Buffy where Cordelia's dad lost all the money so she had to work as a 'name tag' girl at a clothes boutique? Well that's what she called herself, a name tag girl. Which is what I used to be, minus being poor and actually having a name tag *shudders at the thought* Some ... Read review
Advantages: discount on products, easy work Disadvantages: pay can be bad, boring, stupid customers
...is often paid in most shops as double time. Great!
Hours: They vary.The same time Borders is open although sometime we have no staff due to the fact there is no-one able to work. I did Saturdays 11-8 and someone else (manager or full time girl) is in 9-6. I did the occasional evenings 6-8 in the weekday and the odd Sunday. Or say I'm at college and they asked
for me, I could do say 2.30 till 6. So nothing is set which is good! ...boring when you have nothing to do. When you have dusted a bit and done fill-ups and the shop is quiet. To occupy yourself I recommend a book or magazine discretley behind the till or doodling. Or just have a walk around the store. Or even better, go to the staff room.
Stupid things customers do: Watch their annoyoing little brats drop stuff on the floor and not pick it up, standing by the till when there is a sign right in front of ... more
Remember that episode of Buffy where Cordelia's dad lost all the money so she had to work as a 'name tag' girl at a clothes boutique? Well that's what she called herself, a name tag girl. Which is what I used to be, minus being poor and actually having a name tag *shudders at the thought* Some stores ie Next or Monsoon don't have name tags, just little tags with the company name/logo on them. I personally don't like the idea of random people knowing my name!
I worked at Paperchase (an upmarket fashion stationary store, see my review on it) on Saturdays as I was a college student. I loved working in a concession store as your tills are done by your host store (in my case, Borders) and you don't always have to have someone on the shop floor as you can put the sign up instructing customers to pay at Borders till. Another advantage is that customers often just go to the Borders tills to pay! If someone is off sick you don't need to go in.
My shop called us sales assisants but there are many other names: sales advisor, sales assiociates or in the USA: retail sales clerk. The term cashier refers to people in supermarkets or Boots for example who just operate the till. Other terms for us include 'lady/man behind the counter,' 'girl/boy on the till,' shop assisant or sales girl/boy.
How to get the job: Look at the company's internet site, in the local paper or ask in store directly. Many advertise jobs in store.
The job itself involves: working the till (its very easy on the new tills once you get the hang of it) doing refunds (if you have authorisation to) being nice to customers and assisting them, taking customer orders, dusting, putting out new stock and helping with deliveries. All the more challenging stuff eg figures, ordering is done by the manager. If you work for somewhere with heavy products you'll have to do quite a bit of lifting. Luckily I didn't, everything was quite light.
Customer Service: you will get told all about this and get a little book (induction pack) on it. Depending on what company you're with they might be strict on this. Working in a concession I wouldn't be able to greet everyone who walks in, I've never called someone sir or madam-never had need for it. Basically I just tried to smile and make eye contact and be friendly and polite. If I had a nice friendly customer I do have a little chat. Most of the time they come to the till, I would say 'hi' or 'hello,' scan their items, say 'That'll be £---- please,' take their money or card, pack their items, hand them their change/card and reciept 'There's you card and reciept,' or'there's £---- change,' or put the reciept in their bag. Your meant to say some kind of goodbye eg 'thankyou goodbye,' but recently I've been saying 'your welcome' instead as it feels a lot less submissive! I got a lot of people asking me where things are, or get questions about the stock in Borders. Again you have to answer their questions in a polite and friendly manner ('As I work for the Paperchase concession I do not deal with Borders stock so I suggest you go to the Information Desk, just over there')
Our company manual (not really a manual just a few sheets of paper) suggests a few things to say: "Thank you for shopping at Paperchase," and "We look forward to seeing you again soon," and "Goodbye have a pleasant day." Whenever I say to a customer 'Have a nice day now,' my collegues just start laughing and say I sound patronising. I'm just following company guidelines so by saying 'Hi how are you today' etc it adds a bit of fun to my day to see the puzzled faces of the customers. Sometimes if I was in a bad mood or didn't like that customer I really couldn't be bothered to say anything.
Customers: Most of them are nice and a few are quite stuck up. My pet hates were talking on their phones, flinging the card or money at me, not responding to my greeting or not smiling back at me. This one man was like 'Why are your diaries not reduced? It's the 10th of January! Good luck selling them,' flung them down on the counter and left. How rude! It's stuck up people like that that annoy me, I always stayed calm and didn't say much to them, maybe discreetly roll my eyes, it's not like they can write to your head office and complain! Or if they did, nothing would happen to you anyway! Some of them just see you as a mere, dim shop girl instead of many sales assisants being college or uni students, either doing the job to pay for uni or to buy more clothes with/entertainment/job experience to put on CV. Customers will often leave Starbucks cups lying around, put magazines down in the concession and let items fall on the floor without picking them up or leave the shop looking very messy. Would I go into their workplace or home and do that? We're here to provide a service to them, not be their servant! Plus it's all bad karma for them...We had this particular demanding woman who is always coming in a Mrs S. She annoys all of us soooooo much, expects you to know everything about stationary and run around for her. We always wrote it in the diary if she comes in...'today I had a Mrs S day...'
Answering the phone: The phone rings, Borders answers it and if needs be, transfers it to our phone by the our till. The correct way to answer is 'Good-morning, Paperchase, ----- speaking, how may I help.' What a mouthful! I've only had to do this about once though. Whever the phone rang customers looked at me as if to say 'aren't you going to get that?'
Uniform: If you work in a clothes shop you have to buy the seasons current clothes but you get around 70% off. I got to wear black trousers and a black shirt with Paperchase on the pocket. How flattering! We can dress our uniforms up though. I wore nice jewellery and my Gucci watch, did my hair and make-up well and made sure my nails look good. This gives the company a good image, having smart, well groomed staff and makes you feel good at work! And wear flat shoes! Despite being in uniform most of the time I still had customers asking 'do you work here?' Recently I took to wearing a short-ish skirt with tights and ballet pumps (very 'in' this season) and having my hair down. It really does make you feel better wearing lovely clothes to work!
Other Staff: Manager,full time girl and 3 part-timers. Everyone is lovely, thats a bonus and we have all the Borders and Starbucks staff to talk to. In the massive Paperchase stores of course there are many more staff.
Money: I finished up on £5.15 an hour, you can expect to earn between £3.80 and £9.00. You can work your way up to senior sales assisant/superviser and assisant manager at some places before becoming a manager, followed by area manager. We got a 50% discount and 25-30% on Borders products. Sundays is time and a 5th which was £6.19 for me. Bank holidays is often paid in most shops as double time. Great!
Hours: They vary.The same time Borders is open although sometime we have no staff due to the fact there is no-one able to work. I did Saturdays 11-8 and someone else (manager or full time girl) is in 9-6. I did the occasional evenings 6-8 in the weekday and the odd Sunday. Or say I'm at college and they asked for me, I could do say 2.30 till 6. So nothing is set which is good!
Boredom: Yes it can get very very boring when you have nothing to do. When you have dusted a bit and done fill-ups and the shop is quiet. To occupy yourself I recommend a book or magazine discretley behind the till or doodling. Or just have a walk around the store. Or even better, go to the staff room.
Stupid things customers do: Watch their annoyoing little brats drop stuff on the floor and not pick it up, standing by the till when there is a sign right in front of them saying the till is closed and asking them to pay at the main tills, taking ages to walk out of the shop when its one minute to closing time, presuming you know all about the Borders stock and lots and lots more.
Conclusion:
Personally I would hate to do it full time, I'm off to uni and never want to work retail or customer service again apart from the fact I have been invited back as a Christmas temp which wouldn't be too bad.
This is a typical student job and its good for decent money, work experience and extra hours during holidays. I've been honest in this opinion especially in the customer part. I've never been upset by a customer or verbally abused at all, they just annoy me sometimes but they are in the minority.
My advice is to work for a good company, with decent pay and products you actually want a discount on! Oh and make sure the uniform is ok too. It annoys me when you're meant to show enthusiasm for the company and products when I really and truthfully don't care-to me it was just a part-time job.
Advantages: Experience, confidence gaining if you are young Disadvantages: pay, being asked to do everything, need good memory
Right. Not sure what I should be saying in this opinion, but as I asked Ciao to put it up over a month ago, I feel I should take advantage of actually having something to write about. Left. Sales advisor is basically a posh name for shop assistant. I have worked in a garden centre (uncle Aspen will be pleased) for eight months where I gained some great experience as a part-time student earning some extra cash.
Country Gardens was who I worked for, ... ...role included basically all aspects of this job title, including physical and mental work as well as the key word when communicating with customers, ‘politeness’. I will break down the job into a couple of separate parts and give my opinion of them, as well as some ‘advice’. This coming from an eighteen year old, you will probably laugh at me!
Physical
********
Sales advisor, as I said, is a glorified name. Nowadays, people ...
danradders 08.08.2001
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Advantages: Chance to progress, Different work, Meet new people Disadvantages: Low pay, working weekends.
...not more. A lot of shops do pay a lot more than the minimum wage.
***BENEFITS***
Most companies give you discount if you work for them. Different companies have different discount policies.
***WHAT IS EXPECTED OF A SALES ADVISOR?***
- To help customers to the best of your ability to help meet targets and deadlines
- Reliable as well as flexible
- If you are full time, most jobs WILL require you to work weekends
- Cash handling (such as processing ... ...appearance
- Stock Replenishment
- General House-keeping duties
- Over-time (especially at busy periods such as Christmas and sale periods)
- Good time-keeping
***DEALING WITH CUSTOMERS***
I suffer from low self-esteem and have confidence issues so I am a quiet person, so at first I found it quite difficult to approach customers and ask them if they needed any help. I soon over-came this and I am now confident in helping customers to the best ...
kiss_me2070 16.10.2007
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Advantages: You meet nice people, lots of time to think, pretty girls in short sportswear, these kind of jobs are very easy to get, management don't usually have the intelligance to question it when you decide to pull a sickie. Disadvantages: Boring, soul-destroying, mind-numbing work, stupid customers, ugly women in short sportswear, everyone else has pulled a sickie too, so you have to go in anyway.
...leaving. The thing is, these shops will always employ students, because, by and large, students who are forced to work there are desperate enough to do anything, and that is also why JJB's pay structure is so shoddy.
The job of a sales assistant is simple: stand around, look pretty (easily the most difficult part of the job for me, not least because of the STUPID blue uniform we had to wear. It looked like the shop was staffed by Smurfs), politely ... ..."In the shoe section." "Where's the till?" "Just directly in front of your face, madam"), and generally not let too much merchandise get stolen. For anyone with the merest iota of intelligence, it will be difficult, purely because of the simplicity and repetetiveness of the work. However, it can be bearable (just) if you allow yourself to invent as many ways around the actual bad stuff as possible. For a first job, it's ok, especially if you think ...
spacemonkey 09.08.2001
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I like to be busy all the time, so when I was offered the chance to be on a planning committee for a national conference, I said yes. At the initial meeting, we were trying to come up with slogans and one of the (later discarded) ones was “x (the organisation’s name, which I probably shouldn’t give away for some utterly unknown but not doubt existent legal reasons) – does what it says on the tin.” Fair enough, you might say, don’t most things? Well, ... ...is engraved with the immortal words “Zoë Page Customer Services Adviser” and yet somehow since I’ve been back at work after the summer, I’ve spent a lot of time doing work that warrants a different badge – a “Sales Adviser” one to be precise. My very first job was in a shop, back in the days when I lived at home and when £3 / hour was considered an absolute fortune (at least by my friends who earned, on average, less than half of that). Now I still ...
zoe_page 16.10.2001 (23.01.2004)
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Quick review of Shops Sales Advisor
i have been working in retail for the last 8 years, and i love it, there is no place like the stage floor, as i would call it,
so, your downstairs{or upstairs}wherever the office may be, and your getting changed, and the last thing you do, is say a little prayer, so you dontloose your cool on the scene, and as you walk up, you feel this emotion and passion, you just know that retail, and what you make of it, is the best place and most vibrant place you can ever work in, nothin stays the same, day by day things change..i love it, this is what makes me tick..best of all, THE SEXY WOMEN THAT TRY ON THERE BRASS. ...
adrian1982 09.11.2007
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***APPLYING FOR THE JOB/INTERVIEW***
I applied for a full time position as senior salesadvisor. I handed in my cv and I got a call asking to go for an interview. My interview lasted just under an hour as they ask lots of questions and get to know you. I was then asked to go for an hour's trial in the shop to see how I got on in the environment. I was asked to price cards and put them out in the appropriate place. This hour's trial, showed them how quick I was at doing this task and how easily I could find where the items went. It also showed my interactions with customers and health and safety as well.
I applied for the job as I have worked in the same environment before and I was with the company for over 4 years, and I loved ...
kiss_me2070 04.12.2007 (23.02.2008)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Paperchase
