retail sales associate

sales assistant

store manager

it support

Bed Bath N Table

Firstly, I want to stress that every person I worked with was lovely, smart and would help one another. Except for management.

The job itself is 80% physical. I would come home after every shift completely wasted and spent (and I am a very fit person). 100 boxes a day would roll through the doors every morning and you MUST unpack and flatten every one by the end of the day, otherwise you're in trouble; it takes hours to unpack and flatten 100 boxes and if its not done, another 100 more will pile up the next day. Not everyone ends up unpacking stock, because we got so busy with customers and some staff would rather disappear completely to up their KPIs.

This is not fair as it is everyone’s responsibility to unpack and there’s no attempt by management to change this or make it fairer. 

Ideally, BBNT should be employing strong guys to do all the unpacking/ movement of boxes as it is hectic; that way we retail assistants can concentrate on delivering service.

The back room is tiny for the amount of stock held and a nightmare to find homewares. Finding one small glass apple can turn into a 15 minute wait, wasting both staff’s time and the customer’s. 

And on top of all of this, you need to somehow deliver on your KPIs. KPIs are very high and demanding, but BBNT’s way of measuring KPIs is flawed because whoever ends up behind the tills at the busiest time tends to get stuck there processing every single sale which gives them the biggest numerical advantage... Some of the staff were lazy and hung around the till for that reason. 

But aside from all of this, the worst part of the job was the management. Everyone loathed the manager, including neighbouring retail shops in Hobart and some of our customers too. One customer asked us when the manager would not be in so she could feel comfortable enough to shop with relaxed staff! The manager has been here for around 9 years and seems very friendly at first, but disagree or get on their bad side (or go on a booked holiday!) and they’ll slash your hours to next to nothing. I was witness to this so many times with many colleagues and one of them who ended up crying about how they were spoken to by them. The manager looks down on people including staff who did not appear a certain level of class and heard them call my colleague "low class" for the way they wrapped an item — it was ridiculous and it wasn’t in a joking manner... And because you fear your hours being cut for speaking up, you find yourself powerless to complain to management, unless you have the courage to speak to someone higher up and deal with the consequences later.

Assistant manager however is exceptionally lovely though, but overall very high turnover of sales assistants every year. 

I would not recommend working here to anyone.


Bed Bath n Table, Where do I begin.
Do you wanna work for the fast fashion of homewares then you've got it.

This job was the most physically and mentally demanding retail job I've ever had, on an average weekday Mon-Fri You are expected to work in an understaffed store with dangerous conditions. On an average day 25-50 Boxes of stock would arrive blocking shelves and disrupting customers. These heavy boxes would all have to be unpacked daily and stored in the already full storage areas. Stock would be stacked up to the roof and multiple items fell on me at my time there. This would be 10x worse during Easter/Xmas as festive stock meant glitter everywhere and triple the amount of stock unpacking and sorting. Not to mention the overload of customers during this period, as people need decorations.

The worst thing would probably be the managers and also lack of management at the same time, managers would be very pushy and micro-managing constantly for quite a simple job. Literally anyone could do this Job yet they treated it as rocket science. Strict break times (unpaid), expected to constantly be organising stock and doing the entire stores Visual Merchandising (Until the one a month VM visit where they would abuse the workers for not keeping up). I'd say each store only had 6-12 People working at the location max, with only 2-3 Working on each day. Managers would hoard shifts and the Rosters were very confusing and bad. In addition, were expected to constantly change signage, change displays of 30-60 Bedsheets to different areas of the store, and weekly change multiple beds on Monday morning to fit the weekly VM guidance, (Every part of the bed had to be ironed and would take up to 2 Hours every Monday to do.) In addition the main way Head office or Managers communicated with us was through the stores computer, where we would have to print out receipts that contained emails, which was truly inefficient. Were also pressured to sign up people constantly to the BBNT rewards program, and would be berated for not meeting store budget or sign up quotas. Another weird rule was to not drink/keep water bottles on the floor, it had to be kept in a cupboard in the store room.

The most enjoyable part of the job was chatting to co-workers and customers, unless of course the head office would send people to snoop and see if we were on our phones, chatting or god forbid leaning/sitting when the store was empty.

The staff discount is alright.

During my time as a christmas casual there wasn't a manager or assistant manager. An assistant manager was only found in February at the end of my term. In the meantime responsibility fell on the workers to organize the store and rosters during the whole chaotic christmas period. Occasionally a manager from another store would come in to help but it was the team who carried the store through the hectic christmas sales. Casuals underwent brief training about facing and merchandising the store but any product knowledge after that was found in my own time or shared by my colleagues. 

The pressure of obtaining sales after the christmas rush was terrible, colleagues making customers wait for them to serve despite other attendants being free. Colleagues also avoided 'small sales' to keep themselves free for a bigger sale. Despite this team members rarely met their personal budgets, mainly due to a lack of actual customers.

I was not kept on as a permanent part-time assistant. I felt I had the best grasp of the products, provided excellent service, contributed a lot to the store. I was constantly available and reliable and made it known that I wanted to continue on in the position. My downfall may have been that I'm not an aggressive seller nor was I connected within the store. 

I have since learned that seven of eight workers in the team have left, including the assistant manager, and they had gone through multiple managers within a short span of 7 months.

The best part of the job was looking at the lovely products. You still couldn't afford them even with staff discount but it was a nice surrounding.

This is still the best job I've ever worked in. I loved everything from the customers to the products. The regional manager for my area is extremely fair and does her Job well. Pay Is fortnightly and unless you're a manager or ASM then they only hire casuals. I left because there was so much drama but besides that I would go back in a heart beat. There was never a day I didn't enjoy working until there was drama but it wasn't work or management issues it was just staff. The interview was cool, it was a group interview with written scenarios and you had to present what you would do in your chosen scenario to the regional manager. I had extensive training from the regional manager, we were to do weekly styling sessions to help with selling & reccomending products to customers. KPI's were made known and performance reviews were done monthly, there was always drama about others "stealing sales," This wouldn't happen if people paid attention to their customers. Overall I loved my time there. I contemplate asking to go back but with young children I think I want to wait until they are both in school.

A typical day contained merchandising shelves and restyling displays; unpacking and refilling stock, sales, and transfers between stores. It was fast paced and enjoyable.
The culture instore was awesome, with team work encouraged by fantastic store managers, and a great environment within which to work. Lots of happy banter, and healthy competition. 
At the tIme of my employment, the upper management was awful. They were based interstate, and had very little to do with team members in real time. There was no compassion or understanding toward ANY team member, and unfortunately,  not for team members who had difficult circumstances.  Despite wonderful fellow team members, staff would leave the company to escape the upper (State) managers. 
This part of the company culture is purely anecdotal,  and should NOT dissuade you from applying. It is one of my fondest work memories.

Being at school at the time I was unable to get efficient hours that I needed. But a typical work day at BBNT was relatively good, it was a small quiet store so not much to do on an average day. I learned when selling an item I need to know everything about that item, its "backstory" basically in order to fulfil the customers needs and wants. The management was good as well, quite strict but in a working environment its easy to handle and work with so it didn't bother me. The hardest part of the job was keeping up to budget, as it was a quiet store there weren't many customers to help out or work with so our budget for each individual team member fell behind and was quite hard to master. I did love working in an environment with such amazing stock and also working in retail its very big on customer service which I absolutely love.

Been with this company for years now and initially loved this job. In recent times the company has done a complete 360, staff hours are unnecessarily cut so expect shorter and much less shift work- all while being told to still complete the same amount of work load and budgets. Absolutely horrendous and inadequate training for new team members. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve trained without it being in my job description. Also extremely VM based with little to no training provided for staff members apart from a little booklet. I dread going in to work during Christmas and Easter periods because the stock handling quantities are absolutely ridiculous for the amount of staff members on the floor. and speaking of stock, the amount of unnecessary plastics and waste that this company generates is astounding.   

This is the WORST company I have ever been employed with. management do not care about their employees they only care about the money they can make. HR do not care about the safety of staff and let repeat offenders keep their jobs after mentally, emotionally and verbally abusing team members. While they pay is great, the up and down of shifts and the taxing mental load is not. never in my life have I been pushed around like a chess piece more than I have here. The reginal mangers are assh0les who promise things will change and get better, but they are really apart of the problem! Mangers will use you in their own little games and play you against your other team members. I love the friends i have made but cannot under good will continue to work here and act like it will get better. please do not work here. 

Working and bed bath n table was a horror show. Competition was extreme. All is well if you sit around the middle of KPIs, but don't fool yourself thinking that being a great seller will get you anywhere, the higher they are the more they will try to push you out. It's the lions den. 
Hourly rate isn't too bad, could definitely be better considering the stress levels you have to endure. Management is savage, higher management just seems to encourage the negative behaviours of store management. Not the environment to work in if you actually want to help customers and have them walk out satisfied, instead staff are encouraged to sell sell sell, but heaven forbid if you try help another staffs customer.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Gave me a job after covid. paid on time, gave me an insight into national retail after 20 years away.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The massive amount of stock expected to be unpacked on any given day. One day we received 120 cartons right on top of stocktake.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
in my store there were a couple of nice girls but there was one bully who after a matter of months got the better of me and l left. Manager wasn’t concise but she left not long after me. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
High stress to achieve KPI’s and massive amounts of stock handling

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Retail sales associate 9 salaries reported	$29.11 per hour
Sales assistant 6 salaries reported	$30.00 per hour
Store manager 3 salaries reported	$62,000 per year
It support 1 salary reported	$70,000 per year

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