sales associate

Garage

I have worked with this company for over a year now and it has been an absolute pleasure. The management is relaxed as long as you don't slack off. If you are good at keeping busy and staying on task there is no micro-management which is always good. I describe my experience as relaxed yet busy at the same time because it fluctuates during different seasons of the year. Some days are quiet and boring and other days there is lots to do. Garage is super flexible with hours and understanding if emergencies happen. 

I have made life long friends who I see outside of work. Not only that but I am pleased to consider my managers my friends as well. 

Each employee has a sales goal every shift. When a customer is asked who helped them it is put into our systems to calculate employees sales as well as how many emails and loyalty accounts are given. The company used to have a spotlight program that gave employees a bonus if they made 125% of their sales goals in a month. Due to covid this has stopped but the sales goals have not. We also have a school reimbursement program that helps students who are in school. This is amazing but it isn't well run. I applied and never received any sort of email or confirmation and have spoken with others who question if the program is still running due to covid. Never confirmed.

I recommend working here if you are a student not looking for a lot of hours unless you are interested in management. Hours are very inconsistent which is quiet unfortunate. One week you can work 30 hours if you pick up shifts and the next week you can work one, three hour shift. Hours can be available throughout the week to be picked up. I find that these issues are not due to management but because of the company. 

The company begins new initiatives without considering employees and without sorting through any hiccups. We began a chat system and are expected to help customers online while working in store. This can cause issues with theft as employees may not be fully tentative. Employees will also begin a chat with a online customer then get a full wave of in person customers and abandon the chat without a thought. They also somehow changed our capacity of 25% from 14 to 18 which is inconsiderate to employees. It also doesn't add up due to the fact that we have 2-5 people working throughout the day which means the capacity should be changing but is not.

Overall I recommend with Garage as it is a super fun place to work and can be super chill. Just seems like the company needs to figure out how to take care of employees more, keep things consistent and more organized.

Typical Day:
Come into work 5-10 mins early, put on your name tag, meet up with your current manager on duty(SM, VA, ASM, KHs) to find out what your sale goal is, any promo updates, what the store focus is today  and what zone you're in.

Management:
If you are the Store Manager, it gets very stressful as there are a lot of things you will need to take care of each day (Visual, Markdowns, monitoring PT Sales Associate on the floor, monitoring KPIs, pushing sales, coaching, paperwork, etc) while trying to hit your sales target.

Assistant Managers probably have it the best as they are in between a regular sales associate but have minimal management duties to maintain their sales.

Keyholders have the second toughest position in the company as they need to maintain a high sales efficiency but juggle the combined responsibility of a Store Manager and Assistant Manager.

Workplace Culture:
The core basis of the culture is to provide a memorable connection with your clientele but in the end it is all about upselling as much as possible. The Regional Managers are tough on the District Managers to push sales aggressively and keep up with the kpis** as the District Managers are tougher on Store Managers to do the same. There are unrealistic guidelines to follow (Rachel, Alexia, My360) to obtain a great sale to the point you are harassing and annoying your clientele with the endless amounts of recommendations and suggestions being made.

Overall:
Great place to work as a part timer, to build up your sales skills and your social skills. You definitely need a lot of that in order to survive here. Organized company, trends are normally up to date, some are questionable but if you know how to sell an eraser to someone, you should do well. There is a lot of room for growth surprisingly. 

Mediocre for Store Management Team. If your Store Manager is well organized and well trained (through and through), then it'll be a dream to work there but if they're disorganized with very little training, the team will not be happy. Forget about your time offs, there are so many black out dates that you won't be able to travel any where unless you're a PT or KH. So before you apply, don't forget about that and don't be surprised about it!

(this is back in 2015, seasonal) 
The job seemed nice at first. Read that the wage would be competitive but was not. It was minimum with maybe a few cents more? I didn't expect too much though because I didn't have a background in fashion or sales. Was happy I got the job, but once I met everyone, I knew it wasn't going to be good. Actually became depressed again because the girls there were so fake, didn't seem to want to connect, too competetive for nothing. I don't remember there being commision... Just favouritism. Poor management communication. 
To be fair, I was going through a lot of stress from everything in life so my performance declined. I tried my best but eventually got worn out. Had major depression and a bf that wouldn't stop harassing me during work. Semi hostile managers (due to bus transit problems and me not being able to consistently hit the targets because I didn't agree with being pushy like the others...and a poor credit tracking system) , Nobody helped me through it. In the end I was let go, I was actually very relieved, sad, but the weight was off my shoulders. 
I was an avid shopper before I worked there. Then I stopped going to that location because I was too traumatised.
Maybe it's better now that it's renovated and at a bigger location. Though seems like one of the managers stayed and one of the fake girls is still there after its been yrs .. Lol. Birds of a feather flock together.
Oh and, there were girls stealing a bunch of clothes in the back locker room. I wasn't part of it. Thry really needed to implement better security. 

I worked at Garage for 2 years, and enjoyed my time, however the management is sloppy. They dont allow employees any ability to request time off. The company uses sales quotas as a tactic to drive up productivity, however this leads to competition among the girls the entire shift. Your sales are put up on a board in the back room for everyone to see, and if you do bad your name is highlighted in red. These sales are measured by if a customer says you helped them at checkout, these leaves girls competing to make sure the customer says their name at checkout. All throughout the shift you hear in your ear piece that you are falling behind, and they say if you make a certain sales quota you get a bonus on your paycheck (I never got this bonus despite my name being put on the board saying I made it) The break room is an absolute mess, and is not at all how a typical break room looks, gross microwave and uncomfortable chair (pretty sure it was legit one chair at max 2). the ear pieces employees are supposed to wear are always broken and its usually a fight amongst girls to wear it. Shifts are usually only a few hours, and at minimum wage you end up paying more for a bus pass than you make, Christmas shifts are insane and extremely long, and after christmas expect shifts to drop to only a few hours. Did not enjoy my time at the company and would not tell someone to work there. (The only positive are the other girls that work there, the one thing I loved about this job was the fact they only hire really sweet girls, if you want a job that you can make a steady $150 pay check at every two weeks and make some quick friends this is the job for you)

1) A typical day at work: 
- Prep talk before being assigned to zones of the store
- rotating zones in between shifts (front/middle/back/fitting)
- Greeting customers and letting them know about promotions etc. & suggestions
- actively/ constant folding, hanging, organizing, sizing, customer assistance ( rarely any breaks) 

2) What I learned: Social skills through interaction/ Customer service 

3) Management: They were alright, but should work on scheduling better

4) Workplace Culture: I agree with a lot of what the company's values are ( stated on their site) and their success and improvement as a company. Friendly for the most part. Some cattiness, and stealing ( which was found out and delt with.

5) The hardest part of the job:
- exceeding sales goals. Achieving was normal. Also having my sales getting stolen from me and put under someone else's name and claimed as " competition" when sometimes it's easier to remember common/ shorter names( Some people also look alike..).
- pulling my own name tag lanyard from the tangled pile, hanging from a hook.
- standing/ walking all day.

6) The most enjoyable part of the job: 
-Meeting sweet customers, mostly shopping for others and talking to them about their day. Also helping others with suggestions.
- meeting friendly employees

Typical day at work would be open or close store, end of day balancing or deposits, make floor plans and daily sale goals, customer service, cleaning duties, stock, visual merchandising, coaching staff.

I learned to be a better manager and also learned that it was not a position for my self.  I learned how to make daily floor plans and sale goals.  I learned a little bit about visual merchandising.  I learned how to prevent loss prevention.  I learned how to coach employees this to was not for my self. 

Management in store was great, but upper management I did not agree with how they go about trying to get rid of an employee that has past the probation period. To me it seemed very dirty and two faced and nothing more then just a head game. 

As for the co-workers, they where great! Sure we had our misses here and there but the over all picture I really enjoyed working with most of them.  Lots of hard working and ready to learn young females!!!

Hardest part of my job was being assistant manager, I could not fit into that role and realized that I am better as a full or part time employee then management, it's just not for everyone.

Most enjoyable part of my job is seeing how happy my customers where with my help finding them the outfits they have been searching for.  It always made my day when I heard them say "Thank you so much for all of your help, you where great!!"  

I started working here in the summer. Honestly its had its ups and downs. I'm a very introverted person so I'm not sure why i applied to one of the biggest malls in my province but I did. They stress alot to wear ONLY Dynamite or Garage when working (this is normal) but the thing that did stress me out is the training. I swear to you I got horrible training by 6 different people. They all told me different things on how I should do stuff and would penalize me when I did it wrong WELL OF COURSE I HAVE 6 PEOPLE TELLING ME 6 DIFFERENT WAYS ON HOW TO WORK. 

Honestly please only work here if your comfortable with being bossed around you def need commitment or youll get mad and overwhelmed. this job is very good for school because u get about 2 shifts a week which is chill but like no money sometimes .. also they stress sales goals alot but we dont do commission so dw too much about it

the interview process is also really easy but i would recommend waiting until national hiring day for garage because thats when u have the best chance its usually around back to school. if u do apply online like i did youll get a call to interview in the store. the interview was more questions about my availability and scenario questions

the discount is 50% but its only for u not friends n family (makes sense)
pay is minimum wage.

As a store manager get ready to work doubles all the time along side childish teenagers who believe they can do no wrong, and do nothing but gossip and complain all day.  
You'll be be paid a low salary so all those doubles that you pull will be for free. 
If you don't mind babysitting your uncommitted, unprofessional staff whilst working for a retailer that sells attractive, but low quality clothes then go for it.  However keep in mind this company has massive turn over even for retail.  In my 20 years in retail I've never worked anywhere that is so consistently short staffed with such sour disgruntled staff.
They have multi layered systems for doing everything, 1 million forms and steps, and still in the end the result is mediocrity. There is a lot of wasted time and material in order to do things according to policy.
The bonus is also garbage if you can even make it as the targets are so high.
You can do better than Dynamite/Garage. 
Be patient, and look for something better.  It's a very cheap company in every regard. I would refer to my overall experience as 'ghetto' 
Garage/Dynamite is the ghetto of retail.

Desirable company to work for with good employee discount and benefits as management, however, very poor wages in comparison to similar retail position.
Daily tasks were easy to fulfill and the product was fun to sell, however, management was very disorganized. As a reliable and responsible management member, I constantly had to pick up the slack of others and work became very frustrated as I was trying to complete my tasks as well as the tasks of other management. I was acting visual assistant for 6 months without pay or job title on top of my actual title of assistant manager. I enjoyed the work I did but there was little reward when I was picking up the work of those who could not time manage and felt they could burden others with the tasks they chose not to complete. 
Our district manager had a similar lack of organization and it had its effect on those who fell into her direct line of duty. Had I worked with a different management team and received the support necessary to run the store I would not have felt the need to resign when I did.

The job itself is not difficult. It's pretty basic retail - working the fitting rooms, selling on the floor, cashing people out, tidying up at the end of the day, helping with stock etc.  They do really push for you to meet sales goals (even though it is not commission based) and email capture targets which does add stress to the job and a sense of competitiveness amongst the team. 
Management was the worst part about this job and overall made working for Garage a negative experience. They created a culture of exclusion and picked favourites. It was also a very cliquey environment and if you were not friends with certain people you were treated differently. It was very unprofessional and management would bring their personal feelings into the workplace. 
You are required to wear Garage for the uniform which is okay as long as you fit into their limited sizes. 
They do want you to have good availability with your schedule however, they cut hours a lot based on how much money the store is making so shifts can be cut entirely or they will send you home early. 
 Overall the job itself is good but workplace culture and management can definitely be worked on. 

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