Great colleagues but limited advancement and long hours - Assistant Manager Bargain Books Employee Review

I cannot speak for the retail location but the shipping center at Lousma is a stellar operation run by a lovely group. Company events occur every few months and lunch is ordered in for employees on occasion. Great job if you want to throw on some albums or podcasts and get to work. Friendly, sincere coworkers.

Not a ton of variety to the daily objectives, but this could be seen as a pro too.

Great for book lovers, and the fellow employees (not management) were super friendly, which made all the difference. 50% off books purchased. Usually kind and loyal customers.

Management was awful. Super controlling and would treat staff so badly to the point of having panic attacks. Surveillance was a huge problem (we would be monitored on CCTV cameras and would be reported if we, as staff, were having a conversation when there were no customers in the store or all the work for the day was complete), as well as a bad contract. Despite being hired as booksellers, we were expected to take on far more responsibility than that—roles that the manager or assistant manager should have managed or hired more staff specifically for cashier and stock duties. There was no place to sit and eat lunch, and the Willowbridge centre would chase staff sitting outside on lunch breaks and would make us sit in the loading zone, where the trash gets dumped, which also had no seating. Even the workers at Checkers got a designated area to sit during breaks/lunch. We had a deduction in pay if we arrived 5 minutes late, even for reasonable reasons, while we were expected to clock in 30 minutes early and would have to stay well past closing time (6 pm) even when the manager left early. This extra time was not included in our pay, and we were not allowed to add it to our timesheets. The store needed more employees, as it is a huge store (242 square metres) that was previously run independently, and so once ownership changed, a lot had to be fixed/changed to comply with the BB franchise standard. Unpaid sick leave. The manager would berate staff in front of customers. Despite her saying that new ideas to improve the store and the business were welcome, they were absolutely not, and if they were, the manager would take all the credit. I resigned 2 months into the job, and following that, at least 2 more people resigned and reported the manager to the head office. The manager/company only cared about meeting the target and did not care about the employees at all.