retail sales associate

sales associate

sales specialist

guest experience sales specialist

warehouse associate

Bob's-Discount-Furniture

Working at Bob's Discount Furniture provided a mixed experience, with some positive aspects but significant challenges. While the friendly sales and office associates, as well as the understanding customers, were a bright spot, the issues I encountered made it a difficult environment overall.

Pros:
One positive aspect of working at Bob's Discount Furniture was the opportunity to collaborate with friendly sales and office associates. Building relationships with supportive colleagues created a sense of camaraderie and made challenging situations more manageable. Additionally, the understanding and cooperative nature of many customers added a level of satisfaction to the job.

Challenges:
However, several significant challenges made the overall experience at Bob's Discount Furniture frustrating. The office associates faced issues of being underpaid and overwhelmed, which affected their motivation and job satisfaction. This disparity in compensation created a sense of unfairness and led to difficulties in attracting and retaining talented individuals.

The inefficient delivery system and inaccurate scheduling procedures were another source of frustration. Learning the delivery system was time-consuming, and even with experience, scheduling merchandise accurately remained a constant challenge. Insufficient training and support exacerbated these issues, resulting in mistakes and reduced customer satisfaction.

Moreover, micro-management from managers created a stifling work environment. The lack of autonomy and trust hindered creativity and decision-making abilities. Instead of fostering growth and productivity, this management style contributed to employee dissatisfaction and, in turn, high turnover rates.

The company also faced ongoing supply chain issues, causing delayed deliveries and unavailable merchandise. This led to frustrated customers who frequently canceled their orders. Dealing with these supply chain challenges further burdened the office associates and contributed to the overall stressful atmosphere.

Conclusion:
While the friendly sales and office associates, as well as the understanding customers, were positive aspects of working at Bob's Discount Furniture, the challenges I faced outweighed these benefits. The issues of being underpaid and overwhelmed, an inefficient delivery system, micro-management from managers, and ongoing supply chain problems created a draining work environment. To improve the overall experience for employees and enhance customer satisfaction, addressing these challenges through fair compensation, comprehensive training, a more empowering management approach, and resolving supply chain issues is essential.

According to Bob's no matter what's happening in your life, on your first year you are only allowed for 5 days of personal days and 1 week vacation. If your PTO is used up everything counts as a write up against you whether you are calling out sick, personal issues, court date, medical appointment or whatever the case might be counts as a non excuse absence and is a write up. Bob's Discount Furniture work life balance and  time and attendance policy seem to be in line with modern day corporate subjugation.  
They have again an outdated tech platform combined with outdated time and attendance policy which they are implementing in a highest Metroplitan area in the east coast. NYC is not Salem New Hampshire Bobs. 
Moreover I also need to mention that while working at Bobs, I had a terrible experience with H.R. First of all they remote, based in NH, completely detached from physical stores reality. They are extremely hard to get a hold off. At times I had to email twice or 3 times just to be heard on matters and issues that happened in the workplace. And Finally, H.R has no follow through or people skills ever will get back to you on a report or complaint made by employees of showrooms. I worked in Staten Island for 1 year and transfered to Ceaser Brooklyn and worked there for only 4 months, with even more horrible experiences, because they transferred me out of Staten Island 10 days before the C Bay Brooklyn store opens, I was sitting home for 10 days waiting for a new store to open with no communication from H.R or store manager and for those 10 days Bob's asked me to use my PTO.
I used 10 days worth of PTO to wait for a stupid delayed new store to open. And all this could have been avoided if the communication was a open and transparent between store manager and H.R and guest ex specialist.

Finally you need a strong MENTAL to work at bob's no wonder why some of their location in NYC were UNIONIZED. Their time and attendance policy is beyond me. You can get drunk and smell alcohol on the job with no repercussions unless you are caught red handed by a vote, whereas if you run late 2 or 3 minutes it's a write up per their attendance policy. So sad. 

As an Office Associate part-time worker at Bob's it was very busy. At times there were phones ringing and customer's waiting for you. As an Office Associate you had to answer phones, take payments in person and over phones, take complaints from clients, learn Bob's way of the computer, Bob's way of answering the phone, opening and closing of the office with handling of cash, credit cards and checks. Setting up invoices the "Bobs" way. Making sure the Bob's Café is clean and filled with candy, etc. at all time.

You need to be quick and a multi-tasker and you need to be accurate as you are scheduling delivery dates, changing orders, using postage machine, selling items at times that are in the store, photocopying everything, balancing your cash drawer as you may be collecting over $1000 in cash and making sure customer's come first. At times, you are the only one in the office and if it got busy, that would create a problem. I felt that there should always be two associates in the office regardless of whether it was a busy time or not because you could be on the phone with one client for awhile.  

Upper management in this Bob's store was excellent. Sales personnel were all very nice but also under stress and, therefore, at times may not be that nice. 

Immediate supervisors were not very compassionate as they also were under stress and if you were not accurate could cause major problems with delivery and/or orders.

All said and done, this is a busy job and if you can handle the stress it was actually at times fun. The best part is the free candy, ice cream and cookies. The worst part is the pay...at $12 an hour it is not worth all the stress of running an office the way they want it run. Far too many rules and no time to learn them all. There is far too much to do and learn for such a meager pay per hour. I worked for a law firm with less stress and was paid double that hourly rate.

Bogus culture, management is incredibly biased. Store manager created incredible gap between sales staff based solely on her own racial and age preference. Spoon feeds certain sales staff that she hand selected from other company and has alienated the rest of the staff. No one is happy, web orders, phone orders and other give away orders have become the sole descretion of store mgr and office personnel.Company culture is a joke, supposed to have so much integrity, supposed to have an "open door" policy but no one dares to complain because all have seen what happens to those who rock the boat. Store manager will not promote anyone, or allow people to transfer,  makes empty promises w/no intent of keeping them. Terrible, horrible management. Store mgr talks behind one of the other mgrs backs because she does not like him, also has zero confidentiality and blatantly talks poorly about certain sales associates. Ironically the one mgr she talks the most smack about is the one who actually tries to help sales associates get goof and close sales. What started out to be such a promising, fun career path has become a dead end and now the rumours are circulating that the company has grown too fast too quickly and they are laying off sales and office staff in Cali stores and want to hire only part timers to cut costs. Seriously messed up situation, so many people signed on to this company out here on the belief that what we were being told was the truth. The curtain has been pulled back and theres just a sad little man behind the curtain, no wizard at all, everything was just a lie. I truly feel duped.

Bob's is a great company with an amazing culture.  The people are what makes Bob's such a great place to build a career.  You are not just a number, regionals take the time to meet their teams, understand the challenges at the local level and bubble up ideas and concerns to our home office teams.  If you are not selling at Bob's, you're supporting sales and there are tons of people supporting sales.  Through all the disruptions the pandemic has caused in the global supply chain, the massive increases in the consumer demand for products, Bob's teams are working tirelessly to secure furniture and products from existing vendors and forging new relationships to get our customers the products they want and love.   
I love the open door policy here at Bob's where you can literally reach out and chat with any leader and share comments, questions and concerns.  There is a great people first culture here and there is friendly competition and camaraderie.  There is growth opportunities at all levels throughout the organization.  The training team has don an amazing job at developing a blended learning approach with instructor led virtual training and on-demand training as well.  Giving back is a huge part of why I came on board.  Bob's gives back to the local communities we live and work in and they also give us the opportunity to roll up our sleeves and pitch in.  Safety is a core value at Bob's and they have gone above and beyond to ensure that our customers and employees alike are safe.   

Overall I am very happy that I made the move to Bob's!

They have average products at decent prices but it's tough working there:

**company pays small commissions and small salaries; even to much needed office employees.

**killer hours; including mandatory weekends and holidays are too much and only a 30 min. lunch? Unheard of.

**their financing is a rip-off to customers, hard to get repeat business.

**customer service department misleads and often incorrect. make you look bad on front of customers.

**management has a "hands-off" approach to mishaps; their customer service is the worse ever.

**a lot of commission stealing when salespeople are off; make you unsecure about your colleagues.

**managers are incompetent; they pay little attention to customers & employee's concerns and way too much attention to their monthly bonus.

**other than a pat on the back for a selective few during their meetings, they have little rapport with employees. Their sale contest incentives are embarrassing:
1) Get out of jail 1 hr free card; which allows you to leave home one hour early when things are slow without pay.
2) One or two $1.00 scratch-ticket/s for the Illinois State Lottery
3) Or a pat on the back......how encouraging eh?

**employees come and go like a revolving door

**not for a serious career oriented individual

**a lot of bickering and gossip among employees; often with manager participation-it's a turn-off.

**deliveries are frequently a disaster; hurts your pocketbook through many chargebacks.

**a lot of bad blood on the sales floor; stealing of customers is ridiculous and much too frequent.

**better off flipping burgers**

my typical day at work consists of completing the cafe (washing dishes, making coffee, supply restock), completing the available reports on BobBoost (and continuing them as they pend thorough the day), taking Customer Care calls and warm store transfer calls in order to help customers find the best plausible solution with issues regarding their order or account. 
Everyone is very informative & empathetic when it comes to learning styles (I am very hands on, and need visuals). If I don't understand something immediately, or why it's being done, I can explain why I don't understand it so another resource such as a coworker or even manager sometimes can break it down for me. I'm not afraid to ask questions to enrich my understanding. In recent work experiences, I've found that sometimes people get frustrated with you if you've been shown how to do something (no joke) a single time without an explanation as to why you're preforming a particular action. The thing that really stands out to me is that the associates here are empathetic, and not afraid to help out others in order for them to learn. I've really learned that if everyone knows how to do their job than the less work there is for all of us, and certain people are not baring all the responsibility. I feel that learning here is incentivized by rewarding good outcomes with reassurance (criticism is constructive if the outcome is not what we were looking for), and I feel like this creates a very healthy and opportunistic work environment (especially for new associates such as myself at that time).

I've worked for Bob's discount furniture for over 2.5 years by myself  unloading the truck and building and assembling furniture to be placed on the showroom floor. In between doing customer pick ups on most occasions 5 or more at a time. The managers would be doing nothing and rarely helped me. Since reopening from the pandemic the amount of merchandise that came in weekly was outright ridiculous for a single person to do and I couldn't take lunches because of the amount of work that had to be done yet managers would take their long lunches and that was allowed. For the past 9 months managers would come in late and I'd be outside waiting for them to arrive. Naturally I would clock in and asked them to correct my time and that never happened. This was a constant thing at least 3x a week and I wasn't paid for the time they failed to correct. I did everything in the store for managment, salespeople and customers. They'd have me go to customers homes to build furniture and never compensated for travel or overtime. Managers don't care about anyone but themselves as long as the work gets done and they meet their sales goals and commission. Managers are self centered and lazy. They don't believe in rolling up their sleeves and digging into work yet criticizing how I have too high standards. That was a statement from management. Upon my departure on March 6th I still haven't received my remaining vacation time and no one from Human resources returns my call's. I didn't Fail Bob's discount furniture they FAILED ME.!!!!!

Everyone starts out as a part-time employee and when I asked why, I was told by the office manager at that time, "It's because of Obamacare."  Although I did learn a lot working for BDF as an office associate,  unfortunately most of it involved what not to do rather than what to do which would prevent errors from being made if given the correct information in the first place.  In that regard, training is minimal at best unless the company chooses you to attend a week-long training that is conducted sporadically.  I was employed there for eight months before they held one and from what I was told by my manager, it was the first one in two years!  You are expected to hit the ground running, which is not a bad thing; however, you most likely will not have all the information you need to perform a specific task but are expected to do so AND correctly anyway.  An office manager told me she prided herself on "not showing you what to do; I'd rather you figure it out yourself," which again is not necessarily a bad thing but when you are a new employee, it is very difficult to figure out what to do when you have minimal information.  I was actually told by a co-worker after only six weeks on the job that "I'm not allowed to help you anymore" when I asked for her guidance with something I only partially did once weeks before.  I really did enjoy my job but it did not turn out to be what I hoped it would be, and much of what I was told did not come to fruition. Very disappointing.

I was with my location since we had our grand opening last year. I spent weeks training ahead of time at the location they rented for us. During the final day of training and the entire week of grand open almost every meal was catered by Bobs and it was the best experience with a company I had ever had, it really felt like the company cared about us, if it was willing to spend so much money on its employees and invest so heavily in their training and success. Unfortunately this did not last, as the months went by we started losing managers, and the people who were hired our brought over to replace them did not do this company justice. The culture of this place became so muddled in profit that the ideas of teamwork and leadership fell out the window, it became a numbers game. The current management at this store does not care about the well being of their employees, only about how much furniture they can sell for as little effort as they can give. After grand open, new employees in all departments were hardly trained at all, then expected to be held accountable for their lack of training. Scheduling was a mess. Certain managers would manage departments that were not theirs and that they had no training in. It was a complete disaster for all the employees involved. The turnover rate at this store is monumental, and for good reason. Overall the COMPANY seems like an amazing one, but the location I worked at has been one of the worst experiences of my life.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Retail sales associate 26 salaries reported	$16.19 per hour
Sales associate 4 salaries reported	$18.75 per hour
Sales specialist 25 salaries reported	$56,700 per year
Guest experience sales specialist 2 salaries reported	$15.00 per hour
Warehouse associate 3 salaries reported	$16.58 per hour

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