cake decorator

shift leader

sales associate

general manager

shift manager

Great American Cookies

As a formal ASM, all management above me was poor, management as well as associates had a high turnover rate, more money should be offered for what you had to put up with there, hard work is underappreciated, money was always missing, working for the company as a whole is an absolute joke and waste of time as there are no benefits, no flexibility - especially when you have kids and a life outside of work to have to take care of. Drama in the workplace was also an issue that I got tired of. I was never properly trained to do my job and when my GM quit and I became acting GM, I learned how to do my job in a month and a half and completely turned the store around for the better. I feel I proved myself worthy to become the GM and was never given the fair chance to do so. The company brought another manager in to take over, she ran half of our staff off and when left with 3 employees, we had to figure out how to make the store run between us and the allotted hours given as well as our schedules outside of work. The reason I left is because I was told I could not be granted the time off requested to be out for my son’s surgery that had been on the calendar for months prior due to staff shortage. That wasn’t my problem and because I resigned from my position immediately, I was not and am not able to ever be rehired. Though I tried to fight the company’s decision, corporate would not reconsider even after all my time, hard work, sacrifice and dedication to the company because they simply do not care.

A TYPICAL WORK DAY
My shifts lasted three hours. With the extremely rare exception, I would weigh out 30 lbs boxes of dough into smaller amounts depending on the current needs of the cookie shop. I was the primary cookie cake dough roller, so I hand-rolled the dough to the right dimensions.

WHAT I LEARNED

MANAGEMENT
My two managers were very gracious and easy to get along with. They were sensible even as they expected a lot. I'd happily go to work for them again.

MY CO-WORKERS
Most of my co-workers were excellent. The hard times came when some of the new hires were rather immature teenagers (this is not a knock against teens - I think teens are great! - but unfortunately, I did encounter some less-than-appropriate attitudes from these ones, in particular). But my original crew that I started with gave me a sense of feeling like I was part of a team and not just another co-worker. Occasionally we all went to the local IHOP to hang out and we had great times playing a limited version of truth-or-dare. Much less on the dare...

HARDEST PART OF THE JOB
When the monotony set it, and feeling like I was stuck at a dead-end job.

MOST ENJOYABLE PART OF THE JOB
When I successfully rolled out 90 lbs of dough in 3 hours. Knowing that I was solely responsible for rolling out all the dough for the "record" double-layer cookie cake which was somewhere around 20 x 30 feet (I may be way off, but it was VERY huge).

I was very excited about working there, especially since it was my first job. I had to quit because I had been promised more hours. The assistant manager was supposed to let the GM know that I’m improving on my timing when scooping cookies. My hands would bruise from rolling the cookie cakes out with my hands. The cameras don’t work. My reasoning for pointing that out is because when no one is out front working with me I was the one to keep my name signed into the 1 and only register. When business started to pick up and get busy then a coworker would come help and take over on the register while I would get the customers goods ready for them. The assistant manager had told me that I would “help with sales and help them go up” but the GM had told me when I had quit that I “was not helping and if anything made them go down, and can’t give more hours” my hours started out 15 hours in July to 12 hours in October which is why I had to quit. I don’t go to school, I need an actually decent job to help pay the bills and get food in my stomach. I was robbed of my time and worth the whole time I worked there. I was always on time and hardly ever called off work or ever had to leave. I had been late about 10 minutes and my break had been taken from me. We were given 30 minute to 15 minute breaks, they wouldn’t break it down the 10 minutes I was late to let me get food in my stomach. 

When I first started, it took some time to learn things, but my manager at the time was extremely helpful and caring. Eventually got sent to another store as time/experience progressed. Night and day difference. Everything was entirely focused on making things fast even if it meant taking shortcuts. They even try to understaff as much as possible to save money. Manager did everything possible to avoid refunds (normally expected, but to lie and refuse to cooperate is a whole other level). Too much work and little pay. They start using you when you work hard and you take the blame for any of the manager's mishaps. It's difficult when you care about the customer, but management/owner doesn't. It's all about making money, desperation. I did enjoy decorating cakes/cookies and coworkers were the best. The work culture is there, otherwise, it is painful.

Owner is greedy and doesn't know how to run a store. Profit is the only thing on their mind.

Customers don't always make it easy, but management is the deciding factor on customer satisfaction.

A typical day at work consists of preparing several cookies, brownies and cakes. After food preparation and merchandising, clean up would take place. Some employees would clean right away while others would not. Stocking of appropriate cups and lids as well as packages for the cookies is also necessary. There are slow days and there are busy days.
I have learned how to decorate cookies and cakes using several colors and ideas. Seeing how happy children become when they look at the cookie store is so exciting.
Management, or lack there of is not good. The cookie store needs a full time manager in the store, but the owner refuses to make a decision on whether or not he/she wants to have one. Having a business degree, I could name several issues within the management but the main issue is lack of communication and trust in the employees.
Co-workers are great. All the girls have a good time decorating and working together.
Hardest part of the job is trying to perfect decorating. Although perfection does not come in straight lines, as an artist it is hard to perfect frosting. :)
Most enjoyable is definitely the children that are excited to purchase a cookie. Without the happy children, the regular customers and the new ones, the job would lack fun.

I love to bake at home so this job was a great fit for me. I loved opening the store up in the mornings and closing it down some nights. When I'd get to work I'd check the inventory and stock everything in the windows so people could see what we had to offer and I'd have to count out everything so that I would know what all I had to bake for the day for my shift and make sure the the next shift had something to start off with. Rolling cookie cakes out flat and making sure we had plenty in stock so if we got an order for one we would be ready, and making the brownies although they were sometimes very messy was also always fun. I learned how to decorate the cookie cakes and applied those skills at home, which was great practice. If I had to close the store I did everything the same as opening only difference was cleaning everything at the end of the night, counting down the register, and putting all the baked goods in our air tight stock closet so that everything would stay nice and fresh. My co-workers and manager were all very nice and helpful in everything, they taught me so much. There wasn't anything really hard about this job, the boxes of cookie dough were very heavy but I managed to always get my work done. I loved everything about this job. I would love to do something like this again, I enjoyed it very much.

I was hired with a promise of a 6 week period of training and getting comfortable in my role as general manager before being thrown in on my own. I got 1 week of training that barely included manager responsibilities. It was mainly scooping cookies, making ice cream, and serving customers. After another week of setting the brand new store up, we opened with an entirely untrained staff save for 2 people. I was given no vendor list to order supplies and stock. I was given no invoices to put in reports. I was given no direction as to what the owner wanted with the closing paperwork. I was given no filing cabinet and a safe that was too small to fit anything in. I was fired after one week of opening because I couldn't read minds and train myself. I have years of managerial experience but I was fired because they found someone they wanted more and used their lack of training as an excuse to replace me. Absolutely no job security. I was blamed for not "taking initiative" by somehow finding out what vendors we use when stock started getting low even though I tried. I trained the crew as much as someone that worked there one week could. We also had a skeleton crew and I was blamed for being short because I made the schedule. I can't close with 8 people like they want when we only have 11 employees.

Responsibilities included: Open and Close Store,  providing exceptional service to our customers. 
The daily operation of the store: maintaining inventories, store appearance and completing daily 
paperwork. Answering questions and resolving customer inquiries and concerns. 
Ensuring a clean, well­stocked store.  Making sure POP material was displayed in a timely manner. 
Organized merchandise to appeal to customer. Hired, supervised, trained, evaluated, and developed 
Store Team Members on GAC operating practices and procedures.  Ordering merchandise,  record 
keeping to include payroll, scheduling and cash register deposits and receipts, Monitor and take action 
on P&L statements.Unload and organize merchandise from delivery truck, organize stockroom to best 
suit our store. loss prevention efforts.  Following and implementing all National, State, Local and 
Company policies and procedures.  
Hardest Part of job Keeping good employees, needed to be able to give $, could not, not in budget.
Most enjoyable, Being part of customer's big events.

Working for Great American Cookie Company was a great experience for me.  I learned the retail business in a pleasant environment.  The store was located in the Mall of Louisiana and the customers came from every background you could imagine.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with the public and was very good at dealing with customers; in fact, this was my favorite aspect of my job.

 I managed several entry level positions, which was probably my most challenging responsibility.  Most of my employees were either College Students or High School students.  Getting them to understand how important it was to be on time and to actually work the hours they were scheduled; would have to be my biggest challenge.  After the store upgraded to an automated time keeping system, employees that punched in late were red flagged on my email instantly and the issue was addressed the day of the offense.  This helped me to encourage my cashiers to be more punctual.

Overall, this was a Fun job and I enjoyed my time with the Cookie Company.

The Great American Cookies location in Perimeter Mall was far and away the best work experience I've had. On the weekends we would usually expect a busy day, but that was a sharp contrast to the weekdays, especially weekday evenings. The management at my location were great people who genuinely cared about their people, and went far beyond the "extra mile" to make sure that their employees were happy, successful, and productive. I worked there for a little under two years and throughout that time, I had to change my long-term schedule four times to accommodate my changing class schedules at college. My bosses were more than understanding of my situation and went out of their ways to make sure that my education progressed unimpeded. On more than one occasion, our GM covered my shift for me during emergency situations when I was unable to provide a cover of my own. I would absolutely recommend working for this company. I keep in touch with many of the people I worked with at this location, and I am absolutely thankful to them for the opportunity to work for and alongside those people.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Cake decorator 63 salaries reported	$12.31 per hour
Shift leader 58 salaries reported	$10.64 per hour
Sales associate 25 salaries reported	$12.42 per hour
General manager 7 salaries reported	$42,929 per year
Shift manager 11 salaries reported	$13.14 per hour

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