Half Price Books reviews

Benefits have reduced, environment can be difficult, deal with some really awful customers, see lots of used, dirty material come through the door. It's a love/hate relationship! Hours can be grueling as evenings and weekends are required, along with many holidays. Only days the stores close are Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was with the company for 15 years and started from the bottom. Promotion only comes through the ranks, so many times you are dealing with a manager who got there because of seniority. I am a college educated individual with years of business experience. The upper management is failing their people. Not enough structure or training for any level. This began as a hippie vibe company and at some point went corporate, but only some got the memo. There are a few good people left, but sadly this company has lost a lot of great employees for many reasons. I finally had enough at the store manager level and left. Happier than ever and never have a moment of regret. Be wary as you enter this vortex!

Management is quite awful depending on where you are. No place or person is perfect, of course. When I first started, there were problems, but many were minimal and involved things like keeping up with paperwork, or addressing poor employee performance, and our location was hugely successful, with numbers consistently growing. Several years in, a new store manager took over and the store has suffered because of it. Nearly all of the original staff have left because of the conditions of the overflowing inventory and dealing with the manager's micro-aggressions. Other stores sometimes fare better, but unfortunately mine suffered as the grievances with the manager went unchecked, and this ended up affecting operations at the store and staff morale. There is a constantly changing and demanding schedule. You know this going in of course, but it can be a con if you have a family. You can be working full weekends during sales, week-long stretches before having a day off, and shortened lunches when it's really busy. There is also favoritism shown in which employees get vacation, when, and for how long. There's quite a bit of favoritism across the whole company, from the stores, to the warehouses and above to HR. This can heavily effect one's ability to be promoted, despite their qualification for the job. It can also leave a lot of legitimate criticisms largely unanswered and thus create worse problems at a store level. These problems more often effect booksellers or temp employees.