assistant buyer

marketing coordinator

customer service representative

team member

demand planner

Spotlight

I worked at spotlight for a little over 7 years. I had 5 store manager And double that in department managers. With the exception of 2-3  all the rest treated employers horribly or had favourites if they were there long enough.

Sometimes they would openly and publicly be little and bully you. You can even see this behaviour in the senior corporate people who visits the store. 

If the manager doing the roaster didn’t like you they would cut your hours or change you to a department you didn’t know with no training so when you made a mistake they would write you up enough times so they could fire you or hope you’d just give up and quite. 

They introduced this new training program which is just tests on the computer it’s  manatory but it’s a joke. The managers have a percentage to meet and sometimes they do the test for you or give you the answers! Your not assisted or encouraged to learn about other departments which makes it hard when they don’t put enough people on so you have to float between different areas

God forbid they make a mistake with you pay! You have to check every week. They frequency miss pay you cause they would have gone over budget for the fortnight. It took over 6 months to get a review of my pay slips and even then they declined to pay me over 5 hours of work.

Towards the end of my employment I was very sick. I got no help or empathy for my situation. all I got in return was a warming and the managers gossiping to other team memebers
 

They only good thing about spotlight is most of the everyday employees who work extremely hard for no rewards. I have work with some of the most generous, caring and supportive people.

I’m grateful for the employment but there is point where your mentally and physically health has to be more important then meeting the weekly sales!

I worked at Spotlight for 3 years, for the first 2 years I was treated with respect and kindness etc, however, once the store went under new management the environment changed. Each staff member was treated with disrespect, the manager was unprofessional in terms of the use of his language (using profanity, especially in front of the 14 year olds), his tone, his lack of basic kindness. Each day you went to work, you wouldn't know if he would be in a bad mood or a horrible mood, if it was a bad mood the rest of your bad would be spent being treated as less of a human. 
He would put people in roles and not teach them how to do said role. Over the first few month to a year, more than 10 employees, not just casuals but also part timers and full timers left this spotlight store because of him. 

The store went to down hill when he started and not just employees would tell you this, customers have been vocal about this as well. He only cared about the figures, not about the employees making the sales, he doesn't understand that to do your best with the figures you need to have a happy team, good team moral. 
 
However, the coworkers on the shop floor are lovely and supportive people and show be commended for staying at that place. I was a hard working employee and my management before him always said so, they wanted me working everyday for as long as I could. Towards the end of my employment with spotlight, before I quit, I was treated with so much disrespect, however, I still did the most I could while I was there and always completed what needed to be done. The job made me miserable, going in was the worst part of my day, the only goodish days where when he wasn't there. 

I started as a casual sales assistant and ended as a part times dock supervisor.

A typical day in my roles in  Sales at Spotlight would be characteristically busy. I could be required to be deployed to  another section of the store to assist a customer. Therefore I  have to have a sound knowledge of all the stock; not just the stock in my department - Furnishings.  My usual tasks comprise assisting  customers in a timely manner as efficiently and quickly as possible.  This requires me to often provide advice as the color and style selection  and the ability to cut fabric accurately as well as calculate measurements for curtain making. Additionally, I  have to provide advice re sizing for Ready made curtains as well and knowledge about fabric choices.  I also assist with Tracks and Accessories necessary for window coverings e.g roller blinds, vertical  blinds, eyelet curtains etc.  I also take down particulars for customer orders and enter the information on the company website so it can be ordered over the internet. I then record the information manually to it can be tracked by other colleagues in my absence.  I process all sales atthe Point of Sale terminal.  The job is varied and always busy. There is constant tidying to be done and stock management such a removing all deleted products from the floor.  I have to process Lay By payments and make sure it is all labelled correctly.  I have to also organize Stock Transfers to other stores in the Spotlight company over the internet and keep a manual record.  The most important task is to assist the general public so they can get what they require promptly and leave feeling satisfied with  the service they have received.

Usually i would start of at the frnt counter serving customers and packing any online orders and doing refunds. Then if someone else was with me i would start stacking shelves and putting items away.  Great place to work, lovey coworkers, great benifits. But the customers were horrible. Telling me how to d my job, telling me the price of something is not correct, even thouh they didnt look at the price, picked it up randomly, or was looking at a sale sign that was for something completly different. Once had a customer talk about price matching due to Australian governmental laws because where she got it was a different price to what it was scanning up as. That time where she got it was not actually were it was meant to be and the night shift had put the wrong label there and i was blamed. I have had various customers told me to give them a free bag as we only sell bags, change the price, put their items back in their trolley because they don't want to carry them, come help them find something that is in stock somewhere else that is the same price and item as a clearance box, which i do not control and much more. You do get some great customers that absolutley make your day and make you smile, but you also get a mental strain from some of the horribly rude customers with absolutly no manners. 

I've worked for spotlight before, and was treated with respect and understanding of my role as a single parent, had great sales training, a good manager, your colleagues become your allies because you all work so darn hard, and it's a delight to help customers.
However, after returning to the company a few years later, I've been met with some horrendous upper management. Not the lower-level management (Although some store managers can be a bit mean, I understand their doing their job.), or even the regional managers. I'm talking about the ones doing the sales training. I have never come across such a negative person in the workplace ever. There is so much about bullying in the workplace, but to have upper management regularly participate in that culture is disgusting. Like, narcissistic,  school yard bullying, making people out to be liars, because she's trying to look good. Honey, you could never look good even when you talk about how "rich" you are. 
I was eventually dropped, due to only being available during school hours, which, from a company that started out with a single parent, is so darn pathetic. I also wasn't paid the last few days I worked. So there's that.

Arrive 10 minutes prior, get dressed and ready, clock in on the computer and make my way to the front counter. When it is busy I would stay on the counter for hours, but when it was quiet, go tidy up, return items handed in to the counter to their original place, help out in other departments if staff were running low, set up decorations and stands for upcoming events e.g. Halloween, Christmas, Easter.

I worked at 2 Spotlight stored one of which had amazing managers, who were a little younger and more relatable, as well as showed equal respect to everyone in the workplace, however my previous store had some very unkind managers who didn't make their employees and even customers feel comfortable. (That is why I changed stores).

The hardest part of the job was most probably being moved around from department to department some shifts when there were not enough staff to cover the work. It felt rewarding being able to help but as I was only properly trained in one department I had to quickly learn everything about the rest of the store (which in turn was great but was very difficult to do at the start).

The management at the Glenorchy store is horrible. Extremely cliquey. They do not care if you are literally in the hospital they will ask you to leave and still come in to work. 
Horrific treatment to staff. Casuals treated like robots. No training at all, managers will throw you under the bus if a customer is nasty. You will be expected to do the work of 2-3 people. Again no training on any of the products or even WHERE anything is. 
They expect you to attend "morning huddles" before you start, unpaid. If you do not, you will get in trouble. They might adjust your timesheets. No overtime, because they might alter the timesheet so you do not receive it. 
No care for personal life or any responsibilities outside of work. If you are not available 24/7 they will cut your shifts.
I would warn anyone thinking of applying that it is not worth it. 
The mental toll from horrible customers is bad enough, when added with mistreatment from management, horrific. 
Many employees have submitted HR complaints which never get followed up.

Spotlight was generally a very enjoyable place to work, as it is a store filled with a busy workplace environment centralized on customer service. This enabled me to develop excellent customer service skills and retail knowledge as well as various other skills that come alongside everyday activities (cash handling, night-fill etc.) I got along with the vast majority of my co-workers as they where very welcoming and helpful during the earlier months of my employment. Management would generally be poor as there was no store manager during most of my employment so the department managers over saw and where responsible for each of their own departments. This caused a lot of problems and tension between some of the departments due to lack of communication and team work, which led to many of the casual workers (such as myself) losing shifts. This meant that the full-time workers where gave more hours to compensate for any delays or mishaps between departments.

I asked during the interview if there would be training provided and was told yes. Instead I was immediately shoved onto the front counter and expected to learn on the fly. This led to a lot of mistakes and angry customers. There was never enough staff, I was often drowning in customers, bogged down by complicated tasks like lay-bys and returns as the only person on the front counter while a line gathered. While they were flexible with scheduling shifts around uni, there was a period during which I wanted work and went two months without a scheduled shift. Management and staff were changing constantly due to the poor work environment. We attended team meetings outside of work hours that were over an hour long, but we were not paid for attendance. I won a prize for selling the most bags, but after asking several times over many months, I never received it. I was very glad to leave. 

Spotlight overall as a company provides a great range with ever evolving styles, in sync with current trends, Quality of product is sufficient and product access has been advanced with the new addition of e-commerce ordering online. However much of the staff scheduling is very much null as customers are slowly becoming less of a priority in store, as less staff are put on to assist with customers needs. This is due to the increase of expectations for store merchandising and stock inventory control per team member, which becomes less achievable as one team member is now expected to take on the equivalent of four team member's job roles. With too many changes in direction and company focus, it makes achieving every day jobs, quite a challenge, as staff are constantly confused with the multiple changes in policies and expectation alike.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Assistant buyer 3 salaries reported	$62,667 per year
Marketing coordinator 4 salaries reported	$57,250 per year
Customer service representative 4 salaries reported	$26.75 per hour
Team member 3 salaries reported	$28.33 per hour
Demand planner 3 salaries reported	$85,000 per year

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