assistant store manager

store manager

assistant manager

sales

retail assistant store manager

Lids

The store I worked at was a Cardboard Heroes that Lids bought out. They bought the store almost two years ago and it's getting ready to close down. 

Most of my shifts were spent cleaning racks and straight outs with Windex, which were ironically assigned on days the store manager was off. Also spending hours folding shirts perfectly with the size sticker an inch from the right side of the shirt with the fourth letter of the sticker right on the crease because that's what customers looked for. 

As the full time assistant manager, I rarely got Saturdays off. I maybe had 3-4 off in all of 2015. So be prepared to work most Saturdays while the store manager chooses if they want Saturdays off or not. This job isn't suited for someone who is married and has children. If you aren't married and have children, this is the job for you. 

The district manager couldn't differentiate the "C" logos from the Reds and Indians. They also thought that an Eli Manning jersey was a Peyton Manning Colts jersey. This job is supposedly for sports fans with retail experience but you can coast on whatever is spoon fed to you or whatever teams are popular in your area. You won't hear from the DM much unless you get an erratic phone call or email asking you to do something asinine within a certain amount of time. During visits, you may get a high five. 

Sometimes the store manager would get sent away for a week or so. This happened almost once a month. It doesn't matter what's going on with your life or schedule because you don't have a say in it so your schedule is going to change with maybe a day's notice. It's good for the part timers because that means they'll get more than 4 hours that week. 

Don't expect a raise. I emailed my DM about it and got flat out ignored. I worked for the company for nearly two years and got no reward for staying in a company that has pretty high turnover from what I've read. In fact, there was talks of the full time assistant managers getting demoted to part time "to create more room for advancement within the company." Or they just didn't want to offer healthcare to too many people. I don't know if that position got eliminated or not because I quit before anything else became of it. 

For a company that wants to keep shrink low, they'd only really want to invest in any kind of security other than "excellent customer service." They can send employees off to other stores with their board, food, and mileage expenses paid but they can't invest in a security sensor at the door and security tags for merchandise. Doesn't make much sense to me. Some stores have cameras but that's mainly to observe the actions of employees. I was told to treat every customer as if they were thieves and stand no further than 8 feet away from them to make sure they aren't stealing merchandise. You can't accuse them stealing or do anything to detain them. All you can do is give them greet customer service and hope that mall security can get them and your merchandise before they leave the property.  

Before Lids bought the company, there would be signings with former Ohio State players as well as lots of autographed merchandise. The back case of the store was dedicated to said merchandise and other cool items. Lids wanted us to put socks and sportulas in place of these items when they were gone. 

On a positive note, it was cool talking sports with customers(because I actually am a sports fan with lots of retail experience). It was fun teasing each other if we didn't like the same teams or liked rival teams, etc. They made the job fun in between cleaning racks with Windex. 

The 40% discount off merchandise was very generous too. I spent way too much money but also saved a lot with my discount. 

There's lots of cool merchandise in-store and on the website. 

But yeah, not a great company to work for in a management position if you have a family or life outside of work.

This is the WORST company to work for. I don't know where to begin, but I'll start by saying this company expects so much from you and pays you very little. All this company cares about is making big time profits. They require stores with embroidery to maintain 7% of their sales on this part of the business. All they stress is embroidery 24/7. As a matter of fact, the district manager in this area acts as if embroidery is the only part of the business. The company is so greedy with the profits they make from embroidery cause we do the designs and the threads are really cheap. Then they force us to sell this membership card that most customers already have. Remember, in Vegas we get a lot of tourists and they only come out here one or two times a year so it doesn't make sense to force a product down their throats but this company insists that we do.
Next is the management above the store level. These are the people who are over paid and yet it is us the store employees who bring in all the money for company. We bust our tails everyday and yet my DM gives her district no love but criticisms on every store visits. I bet this happens with every districts after speaking with a few store managers in Arizona and California. These DMs think they know it all. They would fail so bad if they tried to manage a store for a month and let's see if they could managed 7% embroidery since all they care about is stitching.
These DMs are so stingy when it comes to yearly raises. All they ever say is show me the numbers. The sales associates and key holders are a very important part of the staff and they never get a raise. Thus, this company is so tight it doesn't even buy us a holiday lunch in December. I 'm talking about one lunch a year and it thinks this will break its' bank. What a STINGY group of people and yet we bring in so much money for them in December.
Then it's the recruitment part that they require us to do each week. We have so much work to do each week yet they want us to look for people who they never intend to hire in the first place. It's bad enough that stores barely have enough hours to operate on and they want us to cut current employees' hours to accommodate new people. I hated this idea that's why I neglected to look for new people. Also, the DMs would have these open interviews knowing they don't have any open spots. They wasted all my time and other store managers' time for conducting these interviews. More importantly, the DMs wasted peoples' times who came out for these interviews. This just proves the company is always misleading. It will tell you to work hard and promise you a promotion and you never see one. I was with the company for over four years, led the district in sales increases in each of those 4 years, had the lowest shrink percentage all four years, always maintained 9% in embroidery and yet the company never selected me into their DMIT program after I asked for this promotion many times. After several discussions and promises and no results I decided I have had it with all their lies and moved on.
Bottom line is I would never recommend this company to anyone. Lids is full of lies and loaded with greedy management people starting with the DMs. They will work your tails off and pay you minimum wage. The company cares about one thing and that is profits. It doesn't care about their sales associates. It cares about numbers more than the people who are actually bringing in money to the company. These people all have the same mentality starting with the corp people in Indy down to the DMs at the store level.
DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE I DID BY WORKING FOR A COMPANY WHO ONLY CARES ABOUT NUMBERS AND VERY LITTLE ABOUT THEIR STORE ASSOCIATES.

I started work at Lids on a small hat kiosk in a high-theft area. My only duties were to guide customers to any products they wanted, answer questions, and complete sales through a Point of Sales system. Managers were usually very relaxed, and the level of professionalism expected of you was minimal at best. In contrast, District or Regional Managers were often extremely strict and expected company policy to be held to every point.

This made it difficult to know how to advance in the company. Personally, I tried to follow all company policy as expected by the District Managers. Working above the levels of my coworkers, picking up any shifts asked of me, and even completing the duties of an under-performing (and eventually fired) assistant manager did not get me any kind of attention for moving up in the company. After asking for a raise, I was promised a small one, finally lifting me from the minimum wage I was receiving. Even then, it took over two months for the local manager to fill out the one form required to advance my pay and position to "Keyholder" status.

Lids and their parent company Genesco continued to fail me as more and more hours were cut. This was not due to missing budgets, but in fact, due to exceeding predicted sales. The company was continuously cutting more and more hours to see how few employees could be scheduled (usually one at a time, no matter how busy the mall) while still meeting goals. Due to the extreme openness of the kiosk and the high-theft area, a single employee often found themselves acting more like a security guard than a sales associate, and any losses on their shift were held heavily against them, despite the stand being severely understaffed by the company.

Upon moving into a Penn State dormitory, I transferred to a nearby Lids location that "had been holding an opening for me because they knew I needed a job up there." I arrived at Penn State in August, and received my first shift in the new location in October. I went from a nearly full time worker to basically jobless, despite all the company's promises of hours at the new location. Contact with higher level management about issues often took several days to get a response, which was almost always a single sentence hastily typed out through a smartphone email program, dodging questions or pushing responsibilities off to someone else.

This is mostly negative..

Overall the job itself is simple and the most difficult thing to learn is embroidery if your store does that (most do). Learning that is also fairly simple and can be learned in 1-3 days. 

The problem is the machines are getting old and starting to break more often. Embroidery support is no good. They never send out techs to service machines when things break. They except you to become the maintenance tech and they try to talk you through the repair over the phone while your store is open to the public… these stores are small and always in high traffic areas. It’s pretty stressful. You also have to wait ages on parts. So you could be entirely without the machine for days to weeks or the machine could be impaired in some way and slows down the embroidery process making wait times a lot longer. Upper Management does not care, they still expect you to hit their ridiculous goals. The expectations only get worse every year and your bonuses are based off of these goals. They’re basically just taking away bonuses by setting unrealistic goals based on inflated figures.

But wait there’s more!
In 2021 they decided to change point of sale systems and go to handheld devices and took away the blue sales counter everyone is familiar with and installed these odd, small, wooden cube things that are cheaply made and too small. If the embroidery issues weren’t already enough of a headache these handhelds will certainly take care of that. They clearly did not do any testing of these in any store before sending them out to all 1100 locations nor did they do any research other than cost related things. The support department for these devices are not much better than Emb support. Slow and usually not helpful on the first phone call. The devices constantly crash, constant errors, constant headache. You’ll lose a lot of sales because of this and that again takes away from bonuses. 
For the pay it really is not worth the time, effort and constant issues. 

The positive… It can be fun when everything is working properly and/or when it is slow, I liked my coworkers, and if you enjoy sports you get a really good employee discount and an even better discount on the employee site. 

Every Lids store I worked at had a great store manager.  My coworkers at each store were also great people and the job was pretty laidback for the most part.  My managers were all super accommodating, thoughtful and helped me get extra hours whenever possible.  They helped me to grow a lot and made work more enjoyable.  The main problem was with upper management who would threaten us into absurd standards of work.  Their expectations were sky high, while they paid us minimum wage.  They gave me 25-35 hours of work a week, but just barely not enough each month that I could never earn benefits.

Upper management runs Lids in an incredibly exploitative and abusive fashion.  We were at constant threat of losing our jobs for not meeting ridiculous sales quotas.  We were strictly lectured and reminded every day that our (high) performance was not enough.  At one point we were told to hit a sales target to receive our bonus.  We did hit the target as a store, but only afterwards were we told that non-managers weren't eligible for the bonus.  They lied to us to get us to make *them* more money, and went back on their promise.  Upper management at Lids is vile.

I understand having high standards for quality of work, but you get what you pay for.  If you want to do the minimum on wages, benefits, and bonuses then don't expect very good work!  But I will reiterate, I loved almost every one of my coworkers.  And the in-store managers (who actually came in everyday and worked the floor with us instead of sitting in some cushy office across the city) were wonderful, funny, kind people who I will forever appreciate.  I give Lids 3 stars for this reason.  Despite an awful corporate culture and the occasional massive frustration that came with it, I generally enjoyed the job.

I believe Lids has a lot of opportunities for improvement. That said, depending on your District Manager, there can be meaningful opportunities for growth and professional development.

One of the biggest challenges is the company’s training model. Store Managers and Assistant Store Managers are expected to wear many different hats, yet new hires are typically given only two weeks of training before being expected to operate independently. During that time, they are expected to learn multiple roles, including:

• Stocking and inventory management
• Visual merchandising
• Embroidery machine operation
• Sales and customer service
• Store operations and administrative responsibilities

Expecting someone to confidently retain and execute all of these responsibilities after only two weeks is unrealistic, especially when Store Managers are often responsible for both training and running the sales floor simultaneously.

The company also emphasizes hiring quality talent, but compensation often makes it difficult to attract and retain strong candidates. This creates staffing challenges and puts additional pressure on existing management teams.

Communication is another area that needs improvement. Corporate communication regarding in-store projects, HR responses, and follow-up is often inconsistent. Additionally, corporate visits frequently involve new individuals in the same positions, which can make it difficult to build continuity and establish productive working relationships.

Overall, I believe Lids can be a great stepping stone for gaining retail management experience and developing valuable skills. However, there are several operational and organizational areas that would need improvement before I would consider it a long-term career destination.

I worked at the Branson Landing Lids/Cardinal clubhouse from November 11, 2018 till July 4, 2019 and overall it was a horrible experience. I was a single mother at the time and took the job with promises of good pay, flexible schedule, and great training for success in the future of other management positions anywhere. The hourly pay was wonderful $12.50 an hour, but in January of 2019 the company was bought out by another company and they started cutting hours down dramatically! $12.50 an hour don't do you no good when you aren't receiving the hours to match it. My manager would not allow for me to adjust my schedule to the day hours I needed because as he said "It would look like he was picking favorites" none of my other co-workers at the time had children except him and he had nothing but day schedules. He never worked nights or weekends and when confronted about the situation he said he puts in other hours that I don't know about so he can adjust his schedule as he seen fit. He would also clock in and then in a couple hours leave for the day still clocked in. I found out he was doing this because he was having an affair on his wife and was using company hours to spend with his girlfriend and her kids including attending their T-ball and baseball games. He would often ask for me to take care of duties that were GM duties so he could leave early and yet make it seem like he was there performing his work. He would also ask me and the rest of the staff to cover for him when he would leave if his wife called asking for him. Between the inconsistency with the company itself and Management it was a nightmare. 

Man, where to start....

If you like the same old routine everyday, this is the job for you. 
You'll feel like you're in a endless loop of the same thing, it doesn't get any further than selling hats embroidery or lids club cards.

You are expected to keep high numbers in those 3 categories, and your incentive is nothing. The manager gets a bonus at the end of the month and everyone else gets a rousing "good job everyone" (yep no commission) 

It's like any typical retail job, and even then, Lids is really late with trends. When bucket hats blew up they sent us the merchandise maybe half a year later. They have terrible sense of what's "in" 

The district managers have no sense of communication which is another added hassle. 

Customers will be customers.. Not much to say about that.

There's only 1 sale Lids knows and that's Buy 1 get the 2nd half off..


The company has this terrible habit of outsourcing and hiring people to Full Time AM or Managers that have never worked in the company, instead of hiring within. Which is stupid and doesn't commend the hard working people in our district working for a promotion. Sometimes it blew up in our faces, because they were so stressed from so much responsibility along with terrible training so they end up quitting or doing a half-butt job. 

All in all: 

You want a part time job or seasonal, I say, sure do it, don't stay too long you'll get sick of it

To make a living or to "move up" with the company. 
Erase any thought of it, this company is too young, too cheap, and you'll get cut hours. It's just not a good idea.

Hi currently work at lids as a store manager. I started out as an assistant 4 years ago and have been clear with my expectations of what I want to get out of the company far as position. I wanted to be in corporate in Indy to work in the embroidery department. I worked my way up to store manager and have managed 4 stores now. My numbers were awesome and was consistently in the top in our district....i was promised many things and never saw it happen. My dm is a work a holic that cares little of his employees..all of us managers work 60 plus hrs with little pay and consideration to our well being. I am currently 6 months pregnant and since my dm found out I was Prego he told me I was damaged goods and he no longer wanted me in his district. So he promised to get me into corporate by spring. I'm still waiting. Please don't apply to this company as I am currently looking somewhere else. I have been belittled and verbally abused by this company and consistently being lied to....also I had a assistant manager who had sexual relations with my sales associate and I had 4 witnesses to this. I responded right away and my dm tried to justify it and basically gave her a slap on the wrist for it even though our policy says 0 tolerance for harassment. I lost 5 good employees because of this assistants behavior and nothing was done...i spoke to a corporate employee on this matter and he told me lids will do nothing about this to protect there employees cuz they do it themselves. So please choose wisely as I have wasted my time with this place and lids gives there managers 0 control over firing destructive ppl as this that I have delt with.
sincerely
never again

Your replaceable.  No matter how hard you work to improve yourself, upper management just looks at you like your scum.  I was working in a low income store trying to move out and go to a bigger and better store.  But when the opportunity comes, management just brings in an outsider, because they know that they will never find someone to manager your store. 

Training is horrible, they just throw you in a store and say take care of it and make it better. 

Every Monday, you would have to do inventory on all the hats.  Do locate orders, check in product, clean up store.  Once a month, management would send out a new visual display, and after you get the store changed.  Upper management would come in on a visit and say to change it back or move everything around.  Communication is horrible.  

Also LP will come in and fire everyone except the store manager and tell them good luck.  Your DSM will not help you, because he cares about other stores that are doing good, instead of helping out dying ones.  

If your a store manager, everything is on you.  Even if your assistant manager let people come in the store to steal or if he was stealing, they would suspend them but fire the store manager, because its the store managers fault.  Also, they want you to work 45 hours a week and if you work a lot of overtime instead of getting time and a half.  They pay between 2 to 4 dollars a hour.

Every night they want you to take the deposit to the bank.  Our bank was in a bad area.  If you got jumped and or mugged, management would blame you.  Lids does not care about you, all they care about is their money and selling thread and cards.

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