Pros
I've made some friends there.
Cons
Your company is aiming for the lowest common denominator. Either you have deliberately chosen to do this or it's just occurring as a natural result of your ineptitude and contempt for your most valuable employees. You would think that Spec’s would honor and reward their commissioned sales staff…they don't-quite the opposite. Commissions on items go down, never up. The home office is manipulating this, it is very demoralizing for the sales staff, and it leaves the company with a dead stock problem because the sales staff abandons the item for something else which pays a better commission. The message from management when confronted with these instances is basically “suck it up, sell more”. Except the customers aren't coming through the door so how can you sell more? Management is a joke on the local level. I cannot speak to what's happening in their home office except that it's widely known in the company that nepotism is the main problem along with the promotion to senior positions of incompetent fail-upward types. Regional management runs on the less is better approach because of their bonus structure-don't fix this, don't improve that because it will cost money that will come out of my paycheck. People that need to be fired aren't. The only way to get fired is to get caught stealing. This results in store managers and assistants, even DMs who should not be employed remain so. Incompetence, Terrible customer complaints, Humiliating your coworkers and underlings, Sexual harassment and drug use? These won't get you fired. Turnover for staff that don't earn commissions is astonishing. Pay starts at abysmal rates at or just above minimum so that they only attract and subsequently hire people who are in transitional stages in their lives or are desperate for any kind of work. Raises are infrequent at best. Break rooms are atrocious and meals are not provide or even discounted. “Benefits” are a joke with the exception of paid vacations. Before the ACA dragged them into the modern era, Spec's only offered actual health insurance to their management and best salespeople. Now if you're a full time employee, you have to stitch together a couple of plans they offer to meet the federally mandated minimum to comply with the ACA and then you're stuck with a huge insurance bill every month because their incompetent HR department couldn't negotiate a better deal for their employees. It's not rocket science people. It's just bad all the way around with this company. I wouldn't recommend working here to anyone but my worst enemy. I mean that.