The truth always comes out.

Ok, a friend of mine works retail. Kind of sad I know. He has been telling me what has been going on at his work lately. Kind of hard to believe, but it isn’t surprising either.

He works for a very very large retailer, you should be able to guess which one. Like all places of employment it seems to be filled with your typical slaves. People who have no desire or motivation to leave for a better life.

Note: My friend works there because he likes the steady paycheck despite the fact he is a professional writer. He is a bit warped, what kind I say.

Well, he was telling me how screwed up retail is in general. Here is just a few things he told me lately.

1. Store runs out of latest DVD release. He got sent to competitor store to buy all the copies of that DVD so the store could claim they are always in stock of everything. The store sold them at a loss to also claim they are cheaper than the competitor store.

2. Security has theirs hands so tied, shoplifters don’t have a need to worry. You can only be stopped between the inner doors and the outside doors. If take a swing or get angry they will let you go. If you steal less than $25 dollars they won’t even call the police and will let you go. If you have a child, they will let you go regardless what you steal. If security doesn’t keep you in their sight 100% after you put something in your pocket they can’t stop you. They can’t chase you once you leave the building.

3. The company forces other companies who want them to sell their products to reduce the size of the bag, so they can keep the price the same instead of raising it. That way they will still seem cheaper then anyone else. If the company refuses they will take the items off the shelf and then tell all their customers that the manufacturer is the reason they are out of the item.

4. They are so afraid of being sued that they will give their customers ANYTHING. All you you have to do is call management and they will give you 10% off of any item just because you want to complain, regardless the cost of the item.

5.  If you decide you want to get a soda and bag of chips, or food out of the deli and eat while you shop, you don’t have to worry about getting in trouble. The store knows people do this. They expect it, so if you decide not to pay for your snack they won’t even worry about it. They call you a “Grazier”, and do not consider what you are doing a crime.

6. The back to school supplies they sell every year, they basically pay for part of them for the customers. All the supplies have a negative markup on them, so the store is basically pays part of the cost for you so they can get you in the front door. In turn they are saying they are cheaper than all the other competitors.

7. You can return anything. Most stores have a policy about having a receipt and/or only returning things within a certain time frame. The company my friend works for does, but doesn’t. As long as you complain enough you can return anything even if the store does not sell the item or never ever has sold the item. Just complain enough to the management, they are ordered to give your money back on anything.

Now you are probably wondering why I made this post. The point is to show what extremes a company will go to get you in the door and to spend your money. They will do unethical things, lie, allow bad customer behavior and even promote it.

While they do all this, their employees get treated badly. The company will discriminate if you have an FMLA filed, discriminate if you aren’t on very good terms with the store manager, and denied promotion for either. The list goes on and on.

At this retail store, they even consider other outlets (of their own store) to be a competitor.

Regardless of what business you are in, how you treat your customers and employees will determine your long term success. Don’t think you have customers? Every business has customers.

How you treat your employees can be as important as how you treat your customers. Your employees are the front line, the buffer between you, the company and your customers. If your employees aren’t happy, what makes you think your employees will do what is in the best interest of the company? Loyalty, if you treat your employees bad, why should they be loyal to your company?

From what I have heard so far from my friend, you can see this company is struggling to survive. They have a high employee turn over rate, high thief problem, and high customer dissatisfaction due to poor products and in stock problems because of the demand they place on companies who make the products.

In other words, they are worrying so much about the bottom line, that greed is going to cause them to fall.

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