Who here is excited for the "new and improved" payroll cuts and weekly assignments? Lol.
Real smart forcing out all the store staff right before grad season. Real geniuses working in the HO, let me tell ya.
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You email your RM that you're out sick and it becomes his or her problem to figure out. Either they'll go work or the store will just be closed, I guess. If they don't want our PT staff to work, they're going to have to deal with the consequences. It's that simple.
What happens if the store manager takes a vacation or gets sick? Are we allowed to go over hours? There are not enough hours for there to be two people there for most of the week if that were to happen at our store. The ASM would have to work an 8 hour day without a break. (I don't think that's legal?)
Silly store managers. You are supposed to take care of all the work that keeps your stores running when the store isn't open. From open to close, you are to strictly serve the customer.
Indeed. And that's not counting all the GM stuff, too. Snacks to put away, shirts to be hung, customer service issues to deal with ("UPS lost my package!", "I need to exchange this!", etc), shelves to restock, price changes to complete for 90% of the store, dusting and vacuuming and taking out trash and so on. None of those tasks are reflected in sales reports.
So let's talk about what all happens in a store. We manage at the minimum, 2 two textbook cycles at a time. Adoptions to returns. Now, don't forget about the orientations, graduation, AR collections, Inclusive ACCESS invoicing and ringing the register. Not even mentioning the 30+ different company systems that we have to maintain. But hey, payroll is calculated based solely on the non-digital transactions that happen in the store. This would be fine, if we weren't the digital product support center. "I didn't get my email - I need my code now". We have to look up their number in OMS, because they don't have the information they need, we then have to go to SODA and reprint their order, we then have to scan the the receipt onto a jump drive, then we have to take it to a computer to email it to them. All the while they are on the phone so we can make sure they get the product. But hey, payroll is calculated based solely on the non-digital transactions that happen in the store. Anyway........
Some schools may be okay with a deterioration. Mine is not. My campus cares very much about their commission check. They care very much about their image and, like it or not, the store represents the college. If Follett continues to decline and the service we provide can't be maintained, they absolutely will look for alternatives. (Whether those alternatives will be any better is not up to us to decide. If B&N can make better claims, or tell better lies, they will drop Follett.)
And Follett is, ostensibly, concerned with keeping contracts, which is why we have to send weekly updates to our campuses. But their actions -- cutting payroll, getting rid of knowledgeable staff in favor of temps who know absolutely nothing about the business or even the campus itself, etc -- don't support this. Every year this gets worse because the leadership has had no interest in actually fixing anything or steering the business in the right direction. People thought EK and his new team would miraculously fix everything, but I'm afraid these deeper payroll cuts are an even worse sign of things to come.
And I'm not necessarily arguing with you or dismissing what you say. Just venting. Obviously every campus is different and maybe some people are lucky to have campuses that don't care, but mine absolutely does, and this BS just makes it harder and harder to do my job. Though, I did submit some new applications today, so maybe soon this will be someone else's problem lol.
This is very tough for the large stores with high theft. My shrink is ridiculous because my store is huge with only 2 employees at any given time. During certain parts of the day there is only 1 person here which is at the register. There's no going back and forth to help a customer in text and forget shipping Efollett orders. Our shipping/receiving area is in a whole another section. Home office really has no clue.
The point is that neither the university or Follett is interested in you succeeding. Follett has been on a decade long staff/payroll reduction program and the new leadership seems to want more of the same. At the same time we see no surge in universities wanting to return operations to campus control. You are in-between 2 institutions that seem fine with the the deteriorating status quo.
I hate to see good people get caught at the intersection of diverging priorities.
Yes, campuses "outsourced" the running of their campus stores to Follett, likely for a number of reasons. One of which, presumably, is the ability to service their campus -- that means not just students, but also parents, staff, faculty, alums, etc. If I have to turn down doing a book event or tell a professor I don't have time to speak to them or tell or campus contact that the store will be closed if I'm out sick because we are literally no longer allowed to use payroll to cover those things, then we're no longer servicing our campuses as agreed upon.
It’s the nail in the coffin for me, see ya later Follett
Yes, still waiting for the answer.
Did they buy the business with a plan to sell off bit by bit and recoup investment + profit or did they buy the business to make it relevant and profitable (for the investment company) again?
With red hot inflation you will see no pay increases at Follett. If you want/need to make more money you will need to move on. Promote to a higher paid position (at a different company) or retire.
Hey @jmv+1fNY5jQV
The very people that you will not be able to serve are the same people that outsourced the store to begin with.
I'm so happy to see the new leadership team making meaning full changes. Maybe it's not the leadership maybe it is a dying industry.
They really don't have a clue. When's the last time an RM, GVP, or C-level person actually stepped foot in a store? They haven't a clue. I can't wait to start declining events, canceling meetings, etc because I'm alone in the store. It'll be a great look when a campus member calls the store and I have to tell them I can't talk because I'm the only one here and I've got customers I need to ring up on the register. It's insanity. Follett is going to cut themselves right out of business when campuses see that we're no longer capable of taking care of their needs.
What a joke. Do any of these people who strictly just look at numbers actually know the amount of work required it take to keep our doors open? I believe it was already said, Old Follett, New Follett, it's the same sh!t. Cut payroll in the stores and hire more VPs.
Micro managing at its finest.