sales associate

sales

store manager

sales professional

warehouse associate

High-Point-Sales-&amp

Delivery  Contractor

Delivery drivers/helpers are not employees per Mattress Firm.  Mattress Firm subcontracts their deliveries in many markets to 3rd party logistical companies such as Top Hat Logistical Solutions.

Despite the fact you are supposed to be an independent contractor, Mattress Firm controls every aspect of your job.  Examples are Mattress Firm routes your truck, Mattress Firm tells you what time to start your route.  Mattress Firm has a dress code for their contractors, including telling the driver/helper what color shoes they can ware.  

Mattress Firm uses customer satisfaction surveys that are done by telephone and are automated. Mattress Firms survey has a scale of 1-9.  The guests are not informed during their survey call that a 7 or less is a 0 for the delivery team.  In most company's on a scale of 1-9, scoring a 7 out of possible 9 is a solid score.

Not in the Mattress Firm world.   Mattress Firm does not incentivize  the guest taking the survey in any substantive  way.  If I eat at Whitecastle and take their survey I get 2 free hamburgers.  At Mattress Firm the guest gets a thank you from  the CEO that is pre recorded.  In some markets if a delivery team gets a score of 5 or less Mattress Firm does not pay the delivery team for the delivery.  In fact the delivery contractor can be charged up to $10.00 more than they were paid, for the delivery.  This means you could lose far more than you were paid in the first place.

In past years Mattress Firm would remove bogus surveys from the delivery drivers weekly/monthly  cumulative scores.  Examples of a bogus survey include but are not limited to deliveries which were made on time, but the guest erroneously believed the delivery was late, problems the guest had with their product, mattress/box spring, adjustable base or so forth.    In these  situations  even though Mattress Firm has verified the guest have an erroneous score, not having anything to do with the delivery teams actions. Mattress Firm currently refuses to remove the negative surveys from the delivery teams cumulative score.

Delivery teams can therefore suffer hundreds of dollars of lost compensation in a month and can lose up to 250 per week per truck in our market.  All of this can be based on a bogus survey.

After 3 years of service to Mattress Firm, we are continually treated unfairly based upon surveys that Mattress Firms knows of should have known were erroneous.  In our opinion after having made more than 25000 deliveries for Mattress Firm, the surveys are used primarily to ensure delivery teams do extra work in the guests home which they are officially not required  to do per Mattress Firm written delivery policies page 2.

Examples would be where a guest orders 1 set of bedding but has multiple pieces to move or haul off, or the guest needs modification of their existing bed frame so it will accept their new adjustable base,  or the guest needs existing furniture or other items moved or relocated so their new bedding can be placed on their designated location.

  I have had guests demand that I move their old bedding to an offsite storage facility where I drove 2 miles to take their old bedding.  The delivery teams are dammed if the do, and dammed if they don't.  Take extra time to help a guest and it can make you late for your deliveries, if you politely refuse the extra work you will likely receive a negative survey that in addition to lowering your cumulative score, can cost you hundreds of dollars. My delivery teams and myself  have done thousands of extra tasks in guests homes. and are rarely compensated anything for our efforts.

Turning now to work hours, anywhere from 8 to 14 hours per day.  Delivery routes routinely exceed 300 miles per day and sometimes are in excess of 400 miles.  The contractor is normally paid virtually nothing extra for these incredibly  long routes. Some king mattress can weigh 250 pounds or more. Exchanges make up about 10 percent of your work and no extra compensation is provided for the bedding and adjustable  bases which are exchanged because a guest decides they don't like their original bedding.

Compensation is paid on a daily basis.  Delivery teams in most markets are not paid anything extra for delivering adjustable bases which can weigh more than 200 pounds each.  Some days teams deliver up to 10 adjustable bases.  While Mattress Firm allows 45 minutes  to deliver an adjustable set, 3 times longer than the standard  allotted time of 15 minutes, the delivery team is not paid a penny extra for these beast deliveries.   Many times guests purchase multiple sets of bedding or multiple adjustable sets and the teams are paid 1 stop for a 10 or more piece delivery.  Same thing with store transfers, teams can deliver 15 or more pieces of bedding to stores and are normally paid 1 stop.

Turning now to old bedding of the guests.  Delivery teams are required to bag and tape all old bedding and return it to the Mattress Firm warehouse where it is likely sold for recycling.  Even though delivery teams are not compensated for the haul off service. Forget to bag or tape a hauloff and you could be charged almost $50.00.

If a team accidentally misses a stain or imperfection on an item that is being exchanged, the team or contractor can be charged hundreds for this easy mistake.

In conclusion Mattress Firm has some smart and caring people in their operation.  However, Mattress Firm has forgotten that delivery teams need to be treated well and compensated fairly for their work.  The delivery team is the last person the guest sees prior to the next possible purchase, but Mattress Firm pays barely above minimum wage to its delivery drivers.  If your reading this review please know this is someone who cares about Mattress Firms success but who is tired of being taken for granted.

What is the best part of working at the company?
If you like sitting all day just waiting for a customer to come in then there’s plenty of that for you.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Trying to serve abusive, entitled customers.  Dealing with various necessary apps needed to sell mattresses that frequently don’t work.  When a system doesn’t work you must call the IT department which is usually in another country.  The app may be needed to close a $3000 sale and print a receipt.  Sometimes the IT department can’t fix the problem
for days.   A customer spending $3000 wants a receipt.  They want a FAST ending to their transaction.  Mattress Firm has more stores more mattresses and more sales sure but they do not fix problems that have been around for decades.  They refuse to create a healthy working environment for their employees to work and succeed in.  

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The sales teams can be good or bad.  Sometimes they are overly competitive and there can be back stabbing in order to be the Top Sales person.  I found the culture to be about money.  if I’m selling well then I’m getting emails from senior managers that are on vacation or their weekends off.   It’s a hard pill to swallow that the money makers the actual sales teams can never get a Saturday and Sunday off unless they call in sick.  All of my team members were able to sell six figures per month.  So why does it matter who’s on the floor or not?    I mean, seriously doesn’t everyone deserve a weekend in the summer?  How is it right that a district manager gets to have their weekends off?  That they can bring. Their children into a store on their work days but a store manager or sales rep can’t have a Sat or Sun off ever unless they call in sick?  The culture is definitely not about the employees at all.  

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Open the store and participate in a mandatory phone call meeting. Wait for customers to come in and do a number of “Tasks” that are sent to you.  Each task typically requires photographed proof that it has been done.  There can be 20 tasks and some require multiple photographs.  Imagine getting on ladders and putting up signs onto huge widows.  They Must be Perfect or you are required to redo the task.  Toilets too!!  Every task must have proof.  You are treated like a child or cog at the lowest point of the ladder.  At the same time expected to sell $100,000 in beds per month.  If you can’t produce six figures each month and be $1 million writer then you’re getting no respect anyways.  And if it comes down to a customers word or their entitlement their abuse the customer is always right.  The company does not choose to see and write firm and clear policies as to how to handle abusive customers.   MF says that they will not tolerate this type of behavior.   However, it is quite common for customers to swear at you and threaten you over a pillow or mattress.  Typically MF would rather give a boundary less customer something free then tell them they are no longer allowed to shop in the store.

**Positive Aspects**:
- **Colleagues**: The team atmosphere among associates is exceptional. They are not only skilled professionals but also friendly people who contribute to a positive and collaborative work environment.
- **Work Environment**: The overall vibe among associates is supportive and conducive to productive teamwork.

**Areas for Improvement**:
- **Management**: There is a significant need for improvement in management practices. Current leadership tends to overlook employee well-being and contributions, often treating team members as mere cogs in the machine rather than valued individuals.
- **Communication**: There are substantial communication gaps within the organization. Effective and transparent communication is crucial for operational success, and its absence has led to unnecessary complications and misunderstandings.
- **Workload and Compensation**: The workload is disproportionately high relative to the compensation offered. This imbalance leads to employee dissatisfaction and burnout, which could be mitigated with fairer pay and a more manageable workload.
- **Management Approach**: The management team's approach is overly stringent, treating routine tasks with undue seriousness. This adds unnecessary pressure and hampers productivity, making the work environment more stressful than it needs to be.
- **Employee Retention**: The demanding nature of the job, coupled with inadequate compensation, results in high turnover rates. New employees often leave shortly after joining due to the challenges and the perception that the pay does not fairly reflect the work required.
- **Staffing Levels**: The organization is highly understaffed, often requiring employees to perform the duties of two or three people. This further exacerbates the issues of workload and stress, making it difficult to maintain high levels of productivity and job satisfaction.
- **Onboarding and Training**: New employees are often thrown into demanding roles with minimal support, leading to high turnover. The lack of structured training and support makes it difficult for new hires to succeed and feel valued. Additionally, it takes months to add new employees to the crew, which strains existing staff even further.
- **Organizational Complacency**: The company appears comfortable with the current situation, relying on long-term employees to carry the extra weight caused by understaffing. This complacency prevents necessary changes and improvements that could enhance overall operational efficiency and employee satisfaction.

**Overall Experience**:
While the interpersonal relationships with associates are a highlight, the overarching management issues, communication failures, and workload-compensation imbalance significantly detract from the overall job satisfaction. The high turnover rate among new employees, chronic understaffing, prolonged hiring processes, and poor onboarding practices, coupled with organizational complacency, underscore the need for substantial improvements in these areas.

If you’re at one of the top selling locations you can easily make over $75,000.00 maybe even 100k, it just depends on where you work. Your managers will tell you that it’s about taking advantage of every customer that walks in and that those salesman at the higher volume stores would put up the same number at the stores that are less volume. 

This simply isn’t true because most of the time customers at higher volume stores already know what they want and you don’t have to convince them to buy it. So whoever is there at the time will reap the benefit, whether they’re a terrible salesman or a great one. Also if the customers that come to the lower volume stores don’t have the money/credit to buy the higher priced bed, it doesn’t matter how good of a salesman you are.

It can honestly be frustrating when you haven’t had a single customer come in to your store all day and you see another store has sold over 30k that same day. Management will only see that you didn’t sell anything & you will look bad when it really isn’t your fault. You can’t fully control who walks in/ doesn’t walk in

You are paid based on the gross margin percentage of the entire sale. If the total percentage of the sale falls below a certain point your commission is reduced dramatically. The problem is there is always a sale going on and the sale always takes away from your potential commission. 

Your manager will tell you to add accessories & that will help increase your margin, but if we also always have a sale on the accessories how much is that really helping? The answer is very very little. 

It is pretty easy to learn how to sell mattress products even if you’re new to the industry. You do receive paid training. This job is perfect if you are a college student or someone who doesn’t have a huge social life outside of work. Do not think you’ll be off on the weekends, it simply will not happen. 

Overall, Mattress Firm is a pretty decent place to work, the work is far from being difficult, but your money is based on your location & the work/life balance isn’t good at all. You will pretty much be by yourself most of the day just waiting for somebody to come in unless you’re at a higher volume store. You could take advantage of this by doing some homework/ studying if you’re in school, researching, watching Netflix, or whatever you want really. Moving up in the company is possible but only if you’re selling higher than the historical average at your store & are well liked by your managers



I actually enjoy the job culture and the benefits of the training.  The training program is great.  
I'd never been in sales before working here, but had done a lot of things and all of the stuff I was able to bring to the table really helped me to connect with people and build rapport with customers.

It isn't hard to move up in the company as long as you are able to improve and do well in sales.  However, if you are stuck in a slow store (like most of the market will be) then it will be hard to actually  get into your commission pay.  It seems to me that there is always a promise of doing better "when"... "when you get your own store" "when you get a busier store" "when this person leaves and creates upward movement"... etc. etc.

In most markets there is maybe one or two busy stores and the rest of the stores are not very busy, so the people that are in those busy stores are making money, but the rest of the people aren't making as much, if any commission really.  You are guaranteed an hourly rate, but it definitely is not enough for the hours you work.  

I actually ended up learning a lot about sales and at least now I know if I ever need a job, I can be a sales-person.  

I think the company culture is fantastic for the most part but I think the district managers and area managers should not be able to "camp-out" at the high volume stores while all of their store managers or managers on duty have to go "man" the stores with very little traffic.  

It seems to me that they are just taking money out of the mouths of people (especially since the district managers automatically make commission on everything they sale).

The working hours were also very long.  For anyone with a family (especially mothers), it is next to impossible to maintain for any length of time because it will cause problems with family.  If I continued to work the over-burdensome hours of 55-65+ hours a week (every single week) then I would probably be divorced.  It was too much for people that weren't married, much less doable for anyone with other commitments.

If mattress firm expects to keep talented, committed, and dependable people, they definitely will have to fix the schedule and they will have to make it more balanced across the board so that three people aren't pulling in 90% of the sales while the rest of the market is just sort of sweeping up the scraps of the rest of the market business.

I loved most everything about this job. Working with the public mostly on a one-on-one basis is nice since multiple customers at once are a rarity. The compensation is excellent given the light workload if you know what you're doing. (Mattress Firm also offers excellent pay during a six-week training period.)  

The company is massive, encompassing over 2,300 stores and a huge corporate-level presence. This can be both good and bad. The good includes a generous compensation package and plenty of back-end support for computer system issues and dependable delivery of products sold. The downside of this is a corporate culture that can be oppressive, with endless sales events and redundant training requirements. Feels like lots of people at the corporate level are more justifying their jobs to their superiors as opposed to helping anything. 

My severance came due to shifting corporate policy that served a company cutback trend more than common sense or fairness. Such is often the case with large businesses, of course. They can be too big to fail or be reasonable. On the plus side, advancement could be in the cards for you if you don't mind the corporate game although current belt-tightening may be an issue.  

Working at Mattress Firm on a day-to-day personal level was usually a delight. My direct supervisors and co-workers were almost always helpful and enjoyable. The dress code was reasonable, even permitting certain blue jean varieties. The primary downside was the hours.

Forget about weekends or (most) evenings off. Oftentimes, shifts of eleven straight hours were required. Time off was tough to use in practice because the city-wide workforce could affect everyone. If two or three people were out, others were shuffled to stores to cover shifts. Working at one particular store location was the usual, but hardly a constant. (I covered over six different ones in just over three months on the sales floor.) 

I was ultimately dismissed for dubious corporate cutback reasons. At first, I considered appealing this decision to corporate higher-ups but reconsidered the next day. While Mattress Firm can be excellent to work for in a certain way, I decided I'm better off plying the trade in a less corporate environment. (Not to mention actually having weekends and evenings off was a welcome change!)





You often times will work alone for a full day meaning you are unable to leave or else you can get in trouble.
Any store you work at you take ownership of the store as if you are the manager of the store and you will have to handle any phone calls and customer issues, tagging, and store cleanliness often times on your own. 
After training, you are often sent to slow stores which is a double edged sword since you won't have to deal with as many customer issues (every call is a customer issue). This is good since you are new and inexperienced at first but if you are at a slow store, you won't gain the experience and repetitions you need to get good at the job. It takes a long time to learn how to handle these customer issues which can cause some dissatisfactory customer issues. Best advice I can give is don't let customers walk all over you but make sure that you set good expectations for the customer and follow through with any promises you make for the customer (ie. you don't have an answer for something, you need to get back to them etc.) and this should make everything go smoothly.
People skills are very important as it is a sales job and you will meet all types of folks on the job. Your sales pitch will eventually find a rhythm and might feel repetitive after some time. 
Many long-time employees in the company (10+ years) who stay for the paycheck but can help dealing with issues. There is no right way to deal with every issue so it's important to feel confident in everything you do and keep good relations with other stores and flagship stores to ensure success. (Employees and management are typically very nice and accommodating)

While I was there there, there were a lot of company wide changes from the employee website to the Point of Sale software, to increasing store hours. Constant changes that are core to the work flow can cause many compounding issues making your life harder.

Perfect job if you love working with people and have a big personality. If working with people drains you emotionally this will not be a good fit for you. Also if you have a side hustle, you will have enough time at work to balance your other life goals. 

I really enjoyed working at Mattress Firm as a Showroom Sales Representative. (It was Sleepy's at the time.) However, t's not for everybody. I was there from 2005-2008, and I was in school 2 nights each week. So I worked 4 days, 10+ hours each day - A full-time schedule, but on 4 days.

The pay is draw against commission, but the commissions are pretty good (Generally 5%-10% - I'm not sure if this has changed with the change of ownership.)  You will usually be in a showroom alone (unless it's a very big store). This means you do have to close up to take a break, so you'll want go at an odd time when clients wouldn't usually come! Also, vacations and days off can be hard to schedule. When a client comes in, you must be ready to give them all your attention and close that sale. Otherwise, you won't survive here. Also, if you are working with another Sales Representative, make sure you are very clear about the deal you've made to split sales that day. There are a lot of sharks who will try to steal your sales, but if you can work with trustworthy people you really will make more money in the long run.

My District Managers were great, and I liked my Regional Managers too. However, our local Regional Manager really gave the "best" stores to men, which is part of why I left in the end. (I really liked working for him, but this was a definite flaw.) This is a heavily male-dominated company, and as a woman you do have to be strong to hold your own. From one region to another this may vary, but the company was over 90% men at the time.

I left mostly because I was graduating college, but also because there wasn't really room to move up. Even if I'd gotten a District Manager role, the D.M.s are run ragged and often make less than the Sales Representatives. For a single person pursuing a degree, this was a great job and I loved it. If you are depending on a base salary for survival, this may not be a match for you. But if you are willing to work hard, cultivate your leads and referrals, give clients your cell #, and hustle, you can do really well here.

If you think about applying for this job, just know that you can never truly understand what to expect when you walk in. There are false promises being made when you apply for the position in terms of policy, pay, and work-life balance. The amount of overtime for this job is beyond ridiculous; you should never expect to go home at or before an 8-hour day, even when promised or planned for holidays. The GM has continously set up the workers for failure over and over.

The only pro's about this place is the coworkers you work with. Every single person at this job are more than capable in their abilities to find another job that would pay them better, treat them better, or outright give them a better work-life balance. There are better opportunities out there for you if you think about applying here. For the dispatcher/router position, please know that it is not an entry-level job. They treat it as such and that is why they consistently fail on acquiring talent for the position. For the warehouse position, you will be overworked and underpaid. There are no incentives for you to do more than the minimum, as the company refuses to create a program to reward employees. You can pull 7 routes a day or 3 routes a day, it makes no difference as you all make the same due to the same title. This company does not provide pay raises or performance-based raises. 

All in all, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of awful, embarrassing, and outright horrible stories that I could tell you from my time here. Your best option is to stay away; a company this desperate to find employees has its reasons. Upper management is severely out of touch with how to run the day-to-day, and unfortunately, it's the workers who suffer.


**During peak COVID, this company gave out a one-time payment of $1000 to warehouse employees for working thru the pandemic and keeping the company afloat. Then, at the end of a unusually successful year, they refused to give raises due to giving out this $1000 payment and called it a "bonus."**

The Sleep Train has a pretty great culture which cultivates team work, having fun, and career long learning (personal and professional growth). The company promotes based on your abilities and chooses the applicant which will bring the most to a position, rather than basing decisions off of tenure. The chance for advancement is great with the ability to step into management position rapidly if you take the job seriously and put your best foot forward each day. The employees at the company are treated with respect and viewed as the reason for our companies success, and rewarded for their hard work - especially those that perform well in sales.

If you struggle in sales, you are given multiple opportunities to improve and training to do so. Rather than other sales/performance based companies that cut your position quickly if you struggle.

With any company there are going to be positives and negatives. First thing to be aware of is that you are applying for a retail position. This means you will be working retail hours which include weekends and Holidays.

There can be a bit of down time in between helping guests. On any given day you could be busy from the second you walk in the door to when you clock out and head home.....or you could have a block of 3 hours of down time before another guest walks in. This means you'll need to bring a good book or movie to work - or even better - spend your down time researching the industry, sales, competition, and looking for ways to improve your sales and make more money.

You need to have a strong mind and stay positive. Those that become pessimistic often go into their own downward spiral. Guests can feel when you are not genuinely positive.

The pay is above average, but you can certainly make more at one of the competitors in the industry. Sleep Train invests money into their employees in other ways, for example, you will get additional benefits (Fun events like company picnics, paid community service days, district dinner events, Employee Ownership, health benefits, 401k with 10% employer match, lots of contest with great prizes, career growth, better training, etc).

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Sales associate 53 salaries reported	$68,095 per year
Sales 10 salaries reported	$61,400 per year
Store manager 8 salaries reported	$63,978 per year
Sales professional 1 salary reported	$55,000 per year
Warehouse associate 2 salaries reported	$18.75 per hour

Working at Mattress Firm: Company Overview and Reviews

Mattress Firm

Mattress Firm Ratings

Popular jobs at Mattress Firm

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected