I have been there for three weeks now, and I am already about done. Buckle is a company that has, somehow, against all logic and reason, figured out a way to be anti-sales while operating a business model that literally depends on... sales. It’s a place where effort is not rewarded, success is seen as a problem, and the best salespeople are treated like a threat rather than an asset. It’s an upside-down world where mediocrity is cherished, revenue is an afterthought, and “fairness” matters more than profit. Buckle is not just a bad place to work—it’s a walking case study in how a business can shoot itself in the foot, reload, and then do it again.
🚨 The Crime: Punishing Performance
Buckle does something that defies basic business sense: It penalizes its top sellers instead of rewarding them. You could sell $2,600 on a Sunday while the second-best person barely cracks $1,100, and instead of management recognizing you as the store’s MVP, they’ll nitpick something absurdly irrelevant—like your Units Per Transaction (UPT)—to avoid giving you actual credit.
Sell too much? You’re getting your hours cut.
Outperform everyone? They will “spread hours evenly” to make sure the lower sellers get their “fair” share of commission.
Consistently bring in massive revenue? Expect to be micromanaged about your sales techniques because you didn’t hit some meaningless internal metric that has no correlation with actual profit.
It’s not enough to just be a great seller. You have to be a great seller in the exact way they want—even if their way is worse for the company and worse for the customer. It’s like watching someone refuse to take the winning lottery ticket because they didn’t scratch it off in the “right” way.
The Absurdity: Overhiring to Justify Cutting Your Hours
Here’s the kicker: Buckle overhires on purpose.
Not because they need more employees. Not because business is booming. But because management has somehow convinced themselves that hiring more people (who don’t sell well) and cutting the hours of the best salespeople is a good business strategy.
The logic is so broken it deserves an academic paper:
Hire more people than necessary.
Cut the hours of top-performing employees to make room for underperformers.
Watch as revenue inevitably suffers.
Blame top performers for not following the rigid “sales process” instead of acknowledging the real problem.
It’s the equivalent of an NFL team benching their best quarterback because the backup needs playing time—even though the backup can’t throw a football.
🤡 The Outdated Sales Tactics That Make Customers Suspicious
Buckle still teaches a high-pressure, outdated, car salesman approach to selling. The kind that customers immediately recognize and resent.
They want you to aggressively push items in a way that feels unnatural.
They want you to force additional pieces into the sale, even if it doesn’t make sense for the customer.
They act like today’s consumers—who have access to online reviews, price comparisons, and instant information—aren’t smart enough to realize what’s happening.
Once customers figure out you work on commission, they immediately become skeptical of everything you say. Instead of fostering trust and letting top sellers use their actual skills to close deals organically, Buckle trains people to sound robotic, disingenuous, and desperate.
And when customers compliment you—telling managers that their best sales guy is a natural, that he’s the reason they bought, that he could sell an eyeglass to a blind man—do the managers praise you? Do they recognize your value?
No.
They see it as a threat.
Instead of learning from their top performer and making them an example for others to follow, they’ll instead say:
"Well, you still need to focus on getting your units per transaction up (your "IA"). Make sure you’re filling out the SPG form right."
This is the equivalent of an NBA player dropping 60 points in a game, only for the coach to say:
"Yeah, but your assist-to-turnover ratio wasn’t great."
At some point, you realize they don’t actually want salespeople. They want obedient little robots who follow their script—even if it actively loses the company money.
🛑 The Bottom Line: This Job is a Trap for Anyone Who Actually Sells Well
Buckle is the worst kind of sales job. It’s one where:
Hard work is punished.
Mediocrity is protected.
Management actively undermines their top earners.
Success is seen as a problem instead of an asset.
If you are a real salesperson—someone who thrives on closing, who gets a rush from making the sale, who wants to actually contribute to a company’s success—this is not the place for you. The company hires way too many employees, not because there is an actual demand for more workers, but because management insists on ensuring "everyone gets hours." It doesn’t matter that half of them don’t deserve those hours, don’t sell well, or actively drive customers away—the hours are split regardless of merit.
Go work somewhere that values what you bring to the table. Because at Buckle, the more money you make for them, the more they’ll find ways to cut you down. You could sell glasses to a blind man, and they’d still tell you that you need to follow a useless SPG form.
