retail merchandiser

merchandiser

brand ambassador

visual merchandiser

warehouse worker

Crossmark Australia

Very little training to begin with so it can be very stressful when you don't have a clue what to do and if you don't decide to quit after that, you basically have to guess and hope for the best! Work colleagues are pleasant but there have been many incidents where I was paired with someone only to find out that the task had been done by the other party and I'm told that "the store already completed it". They must not have realised I have access to their report on the app🙄. I see it as stolen money from me. Communication from management is terrible and so is the treatment. Only those who don't rock the boat, stand up for themselves or those who go the extra mile and almost kill themselves trying to fix the many crises get praised but if management have to actually put in some work and do their job, you in a "general" way (no names mentioned) get shamed on the company chat platform. The amount of time you spend chasing after store management and trying to get planograms and tickets printed is insane but don't dare ask to be paid for that time! No, you are told to leave after a certain amount of time if you haven't had your docs printed by then. Not only do you lose your pay for the day, petrol and travel time,  just getting ready for work for the day too when you just have to turn around and go home again without pay or compensation. Its an impossible situation which usually results in just not claiming the 30 minutes it takes almost every time you need tickets and planograms printed when no one wants to know about you. Very poorly managed indeed. 

You will work and be paid for the "minutes" that you work. So, a task can be 25mns long, however, you may spend half an hour or more *reading all of the briefs* --that is, *how* you will do the task. Reading the brief is inclusive of the hourly rate, therefore *unpaid* in reality. You will have to ring and justify if you do indeed need more time to complete a task. Ringing for time extensions is also unpaid 'work.' The (work and reporting) process is based on a deficit culture, that is, if you stuff up, you will not be paid properly.  

Store management can be extremely difficult. You will spend *unpaid* time locating the people, negotiating and spending your time setting up various P.O.S, displays etc then to find it has all been trashed or removed the week after. Store managers can be downright nasty and treat you like rubbish.

Crossmark management are ok, but you are largely on your own. 

The reporting process on your own phone is absolutely terrible. 'Storetrack' crashes frequently and saves all of these images to your photo storage.
You will also receive copious amounts of point of sale to your place of residence. (More unpaid work organising all of this).
You will be doing big amounts of driving, in your own car. You will navigate unpleasant car parks in the heat and other extreme elements. 
The job is also very physical.  
The job is thankless- and this is one reason why there's such a high turn-over of employees. 

You choose when you want to complete your tasks, however management may allocate more hours to you than you have specified in your 'availability'.

The App is clunky and crashes often.

You need to spend a fair amount of unpaid time reading job briefs, because the work is always changing. The variety could be a positive to some people.

Some of the budgeted time frames from brands (clients) are ridiculously short. While some people may be very efficient and quick workers, in reality when you factor in things like travel, finding a park, waiting to sign into store, tracking down management for approval, and locating stock - these tasks can very easily stretch out and go overtime.

An unprecedented amount of promotional material will be delivered to your house each week, to be taken into the stores you are working.

This may just be a personal thing, but I do not enjoy being the person who irritates store managers by taking them away from their jobs and having to ask them a million questions about different product placements in the store. Only to find they have ripped down most of the ads the next day, anyway.

If you are outgoing, love retail, rushing around and doing physically demanding work, then you could be happy with the company. You don't have to deal with customers.

What I thought was an amazing opportunity, turned out to be complete opposite.

- My 'training' was spent outside while the area manager smoked cigarettes and chatted about life. 
- Turn up for a job, wasn't in their system which means it wasn't at any of your other stores - BOOM whole days' pay gone. 
- DID NOT LISTEN TO AVAILABLITY HOURS/AREAS OF WORK - for a company that prides themselves on 'flexibility' they were awful at loading you up with work and ignoring your availability as it is loaded in the app, expected to work it into your schedule when you are available which was impossible. 
- Constantly asked to complete 20-minute tasks ONE HOUR AWAY!! 2 hours round trip for a 20-minute task - that says it all right there. 
- Got annoyed when I was turning down work when I wasn't available and started giving me nothing or one or two jobs a week - Talk about petty but would still continue to complain about lack of staff.
- Absolutely not worth the energy, go get something with a real company this one does not care about you and your boundaries at all. 
- Ended up getting a full-time job and they were happy for me to leave, but continually look for more staff and continue complaining that they 'had to do everything' yeah, you're the ones getting salary and can pick and choose your jobs. 

I started in the field Merchandising and picked it up very quickly. Its a very flexible and autonomous job. I was supported throughout the whole onboarding of the job. They provide loads of training, including paid online training and 2-3 weeks hands-on training with a team leader until you're ready to work independently. We schedule all our work on an app called StoreTrack where you can also see when you get paid, utilise and upload media required for your job and communicate. Not shortly after I started merching, I got offered an admin role as apart of Crossmark's recruitment team and learnt a lot within the first week! It was supposed to be a 3 month contract but I've been asked to stay longer. Within that admin role I've been recruiting now covering the VIC state. Within the 5 months I've been with Crossmark, I've learnt so much and had so many opportunities to grow, improve my knowledge and skills and to boost my resume. Management have been so kind and accommodating to my workplace needs and things I don't feel confident in, providing lots of help and training to me.

This job is such a waste of your time which you are not paid for. 
You can’t see what each task involves until day it is due to be done on your schedule. They never allow enough time for each task so you are required to email and ask for more time while you are there (taking up more time) it’s not and instant reply so you carry on in good faith with the task only to be told no more time is allowed and you’ve just done that task for free.
I was told I could schedule my hours (between 2 - 30hours, over 3 to 4 days) which was untrue, the days I had other commitments my schedule was loaded up by someone in head office I was told. 
I had put my availability from 8.30am to 2.30pm and was often auto scheduled 8-9hours of work, on top of the unrealistic time frames for each task. My manager was extremely unhelpful and rude. I returned all the deliveries when I resigned and they were sent back out to me, my manager told me not to return them as it made her job harder so they’re still sitting out the front of my house, boxes and boxes or company’s merchandise all going to waste

*receive work schedule on Friday for next week, plan my week according to priority and time given per job. Go to planned store on planned day, do planned work within deadline and report back to H/O while in store
*be friendly with management no matter what :)
*got along well with management as I had to phone everything through like when extra time was needed in-store, product not arrived etc.
*got along well with co-workers even though we didn't work closely we still made time to meet for coffee once a month
*hardest part of this job was to find product which was delivered to store as you race against time and most of the time you cannot find your product and run out of allocated time per job and missing deadlines!
*dealing with people, seeing my product in store and being flexible with my hours

Interview process was seamless but once signed up was very overloading with no check in from area and or manager. The set up was confusing but once  sorted was organised but not 
Misleading like they wanted to help but not Lack of communication from management or nothing for days  
While a few staff members were absolutely amazing and supportive 
Task overload even tho you put your times that you can work, no time to read a brief and or fill in the paper work all in your own time not get paid for 
All phone base 
Didn’t feel like you could take a break either 
Solo work with no hands on training 

I actually enjoyed the physical labour and my direct team leader was amazing, however management is abysmal and observing how my team leader, myself and co-workers are treated is demoralising.
Having to check pay on every single instance and having to escalate it to be fixed because it is never correct is very wearing, in fact I contacted Fairwork on several occasions because of these issues and others, unfortunately for the team I worked with I left before there was a resolution.
Lastly rules constantly without prior notice, leaving staff feeling like they are always in the wrong and there is never encouragement or praise for a job well done.
The budgets they expect us to work under are unrealistic.

The Merchandiser role sees you working alone 90% of the time. Work is given out and reported back electronically and you generally have a window of a day or two to do each task.
This gives you good flexibility to plan out your week around other work, which is needed if you require more than the 15-20 hours per week of work that the role usually offers. 
Rearranging product category lay-outs (Planograms) can be the hardest part of the role. They're often psychically taxing and if help from other team members is not arranged, the larger ones can take a very long time.
Other than that though, the day to day is pretty good. Ensuring that the products you look after are looking their best in store is your main priority and the large amounts staff you interact with across your territory is a nice perk of the job.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Retail merchandiser 1816 salaries reported	$32.81 per hour
Merchandiser 225 salaries reported	$32.78 per hour
Brand ambassador 39 salaries reported	$36.60 per hour
Visual merchandiser 5 salaries reported	$32.79 per hour
Warehouse worker 3 salaries reported	$33.38 per hour

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