store manager

warehouse clerk

assistant store manager

forklift operator

merchandiser

Paper-Source

The words I always used to describe Paper Source's atmosphere was warm & fuzzy. The customers got a kick out of it. For the most part, it's true as a customer. As a worker, you have to dig deep to find it within you to punch up the creative & customer service skills needed for a job like this. If you can, you'll be satisfied. From my experience, having a sense of comradery with my co-workers from the San Francisco store I first worked at made me feel comfortable working a retail job! But then came other aspects.... 

I won't beat around the bush: I'm a male, black male at that. Not that I want to make a deal out of it, but facing the facts I didn't fit the overall quota of working there. From what I've experienced, white women are the norm of these stores. Sure, being that 'different guy' is all fine & dandy, until it started affecting my position. Most customers would naturally shrug me off & the management would not be too keen on my simple requests to make my workday better (i.e. asking for more than one shift a week & sometimes getting zero because I need Fridays & Saturdays free for my personal work). With increasing pressure from the higher- ups to change the culture into a more corporate one, I feel that a LOT of the 'Do Something Creative Everyday' motto is losing its luster. When I transferred over to a New York store this past summer, I barely demoed or helped more then two people a shift simply because they seemed disinterested in the high priced products. But hey, tourists loved them!

Although I enjoy my coworkers and much of the products , the company is so unfocused. The amount of rediculous tasking they have the employees do prohibits them from doing the most important task of servicing the customer: Building visuals, printing and tiling signage, prepping for workshops, the cumbersome custom print process that is ever changing, taking returns from other retailers, floor sets, changing light bulbs,processing shipment and so much more. They are constantly analyzing different performing indicators but never do anything with the information besides emailing it to stores. If you want higher ADT hirer more people and give them the right environment to sell. Otherwise it is just numbers on a page. Worry about  the big picture of making sales plan, managing the product and scheduling and training employees and customer service....the basics. They are more concerned about conversion counts than they are with actually achieving a sales plan. The systems and processes need work. It is difficult to find information. A revamped website and internal communication site is worse than it was before. IT is poor and there is no loss prevention strategy. Goods are consistently misshipped with no follow up. It is difficult to get answers to basic operational questions and contacting anyone at HQ is prohibited. The first company I have worked for the doesn’t want real feedback from their staff on the floor. There is so much potential and customer loyalty but it feels like the different departments within corporate are not communicating with each other and the stores are left to figure it out.

Working in the store and getting to be creative with customers is the best part of the job. If you aren’t at any kind of management level, it’s easy and fun. However, if you’re a keyholder or above you have to deal with very regular negative feedback and pressure from corporate; they will blame you personally for the company not performing well and only see customers as dollar signs. The pay is abysmal and completely inflexible. Candidates turn down the offer when they learn the pay and then upper management blames the stores. They also completely dehumanize both employees and customers. We were told regularly to focus on making sure people buy the most expensive item rather than the most appropriate one and were told to empty customers’ wallets as much as we could. Most of the stores are understaffed, and corporate will not bat an eye at a manager working an 11 or 12 hour shift as long as the store is open.  If there is a person physically capable of being in the store, they expect it to be open and will threaten your job if you ask to not work the entire 12 hour day. Also, most of the stores do not have store managers. If there is more than one store in a city, the store manager only works in whichever one the company considers to be higher priority, and the ASM or keyholders are expected to run the lower priority store with no increase in pay. However, any success at the lower priority store will be attributed to the “store manager”. Although they claim to be small, the company is still very corporate. They hide behind cute and trendy items and marketing, but the corporate culture is extremely toxic and genuinely bad for the physical and mental health of many of their employees.

I did enjoy working part-time at Paper Source, but eventually left due to having more work at university plus being frustrated at increasing responsibilities with the same low pay. For $10 an hour, I was expected to tidy the store, work the register, help customers (all regular stuff for a sales associate), and in addition, learn how to put together custom print orders (e.g. wedding invitations), teach classes, and make sellable samples for no extra pay or commission. 

Although teaching workshops was fun, it was an hour to 2 hours of teaching 4-8 students, children through adults, in crafts that required a lot of learning and preparation. For $10 an hour. My coworkers would also work directly with couples to help DESIGN their wedding invitations during these consultations that could last over an hour. They would then have to email back and forth for weeks to get these orders sorted out and there were often printing errors and delays that were very stressful to deal with. Again, they did this for the regular $10 an hour. This is a fine wage for just manning the register, but teaching and designing custom stationery are high-skilled jobs that should merit better pay.

We were also often understaffed, as in only two people would be in the store at a time--an illness or emergency would essentially make it so your coworker could not go to the bathroom or take a break for hours because doing so would leave the store unattended. This was not a common occurence, and isn't unheard of especially in retail, but added a layer of stress knowing you'd have to find a replacement or leave your coworker to fend for themselves.

A typical day at work for me always included scanning the store for things that need to be replaced or refilled, keeping everything as neat and tidy as possible, and making sure to interract with anyone who walked through the door. Paper Source taught me that I really do want to work in an environment where I can express myself creatively, for I feel most productive then. I feel happier, thus more helpful to everyone else. I also learned that being an employee to a company means you have a responsibility to do your job and to do it well. Being late is never okay, regardless of the reason, whether it be 2 minutes or an hour. Your co-workers count on and depend on you. The co-workers I had while at Paper Source had all been employees with the company for a year or more. It was almost a clique and I didn't want to get involved in gossiping and such, so that cast me out a bit.
The hardest part of the job was always wondering whether not I did a good job that day. My manager was very nice and willing to help me learn, but was never clear about what was "right" and "wrong," unfortunately it ultimately lead to the end of my Paper Source career. There were many enjoyable aspects of the job. I like to craft, and at the Paper Source there was a "demo table" in the front of the store. It was stocked with mostly all products we carried, and part of our job was to create things demonstrating the kinds of paper we carried or the kind of stamps we had that season. It was all very creative.

If you're anything like me, you may want to think carefully about taking this job. Everything about the store is designed to get customers' hyped and excited to grab things off the shelves, which means: loud music, bright lights, and tons of glittery distractions. As someone who easily gets overloaded with sensory input, I had a headache within an hour of being in the store. The work is also relentless: you're stationed under hot lights, the customer queue never-ending, and each transaction is rather complicated (are you part of our email list? what's your email? what's you're phone number? have you been here before?) and at the end you are meant to evaluate yourself for each transaction. If you don't perform well under lots of pressure, think twice before accepting this job. Employees are watched closely for meeting sales goals and you will be put on the bulletin for everyone to see if you don't make them. You might feel like you're competing against all your coworkers in trying to get the highest ratings. When not at the register, you may be stationed at the front of the store pretending to play with the products (which I found super weird and awkward). Hours are inflexible, pay is low, and management is disorganized and unprofessional (paychecks were once delayed by two weeks because they accidentally paid everyone too much).

If you're anything like me, check out the store first and know what you're getting yourself into. It may not be the job for you.

When I started I liked it and I learned a lot. I got pretty great hours being a seasonal employee and the manger really worked with me when I asked for days off. For months I really liked being there. It was hard when the old manger left the new manager made it very difficult to ask for any time off even sick days. Being a part-time worker it shouldn't be this hard to ask for a day off. Most of the staff here works full time hours while being paid only part time because there is no full-time manager. 
I think if you apply to this job you should be aware you do a lot and don't get paid extra for it. You're expected to wrap, blow up balloons, know all about wedding invitations, ring up customers, answer phones, know all the products in the store, emboss peoples journals, restock, carry heavy boxes, take out the trash, clean the bathroom, help with window displays, sweep, clean, I was even asked to get Starbucks for others working, and you're expected to go on zoom meetings (you don't get paid for them). You might even end up getting texts or calls on your day off especially late at night instead of conversations in person, on the clock, about your performance. Also, If you're not moving all of the time you'll be asked constantly to walk the store regardless of customers or products to restock. The floors are concrete and after a few hours your feet will likely hurt doesn't matter what kind of shoes you wear. It's a lot so I don't recommend for a first time job.  

A typical day at work for me starts off with receiving inventory, as the store becomes busy I assist customers with their projects. Ranging from hand made cards and invitations, crafting projects, scrap-booking, photo shoot back drops and more. I make sure to do this with high energy and full attention and understanding of what the customer needs. I have learned how to build customer relationships, identify the customers specific needs and in sure that they have the best Paper Source experience. Management is supportive, encouraging, models best practices, and always there to assist their employees with information they have not learned yet. My co-workers are great to work with we all work as a team, they are easy to communicate with, they also work hard to assist customers with what they need. The hardest part of this job would be getting customers to join the crafting workshops that we offer at papers source, I believe its challenging because you have to make it relate able to the customers interest and make it sound as exciting and interesting to the customer so they will buy a seat. The most enjoyable part of my job is successfully helping each customer with what they need when they come to the store, also when a customer comes in and seems stressed out about what he or she needs and I am able to make them happy and pleased by getting everything that they needed.

Just got hired a little over a month ago and went through their training and helped open the new store in S.F. Was told I was going to do "workshops" - teaching customers creative paper related crafts. A few weeks latter was notified corporate office has decided not to do workshops at this location (bait & switch tactic). Now today, my hours were cut back to 4 hours per week!!! I was told this was because corporate is only allowing so many hours per week on the payroll.Manager said things will pick in a month or so and I may go back to getting the whopping 13 hours a week I was at (carrot & stick / check's in the mail tactic). Meanwhile, a "We're Hiring " sign remains in the window. They just wasted my time and lied to me to boot. Not mention wasting their own resources in training me just to cut my hours back to nothing a month latter. Such a disappointment. They'll be crying for trained workers in a month or two as the Holiday season hits but I'll be long gone. 

Side note - three weeks ago, a company news letter / memo from corporate  we are all required to read proudly announced the new store and listed all the employees except one...that's right:  My name was NOT on it. Looks like they new something I didn't even back then. 

Side note # 2. All hourly employees have their bags checked at the end of their shift before they can leave to ensure they aren't stealing. That should tell you all you need to know about what this company honestly thinks about them.

Overall, I loved working at Paper Source.

I did have a manager who had it out for me for a while. She refused to acknowledge my endometriosis symptoms and asked me to do very physical tasks on Black Friday while I was in severe pain. She would not provide very basic reasonable accommodations and discounted the high sales I had during the vast majority of my shifts. She then cut my hours to one short shift per week and chided me via email. She talked about me behind my back and overall was extremely immature for a person in her mid thirties.  However, she was definitely the worst aspect of the job. (And luckily no longer works at Paper Source, I believe)

As for the rest of it, I enjoyed the company culture, the products, the creativity and overall experience of the company.  They gave us freedom when it came to adjusting visual merchandising standards based on the size and format of our stores. They did not expect you to be on-call or work overtime (which is something that can be said about NONE of my other jobs). Because the business is smaller and the hours can be unpredictable, it is unfortunately not a job that earns you a steady, living wage unless you are in upper management. However, it was a great part-time job that taught me a lot about management, customer service, adaptability, stocking, sales and more. I would work there again.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Store manager 1 salary reported	$68,000 per year
Warehouse clerk 16 salaries reported	$16.00 per hour
Assistant store manager 3 salaries reported	$21.60 per hour
Forklift operator 8 salaries reported	$18.13 per hour
Merchandiser 10 salaries reported	$1,550 per week

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