demonstrator

barista

event specialist

grocery associate

retail supervisor

Product Connections

A work day started off with clearing the kitchen of the oven and microwaves to free space to walk around. Then I would prepare the products that needed to be prepared before the assigned Event Specialist got onto the floor. After preparing the food I would then set up the carts according to individual demonstration needs. When the Event specialists arrive to perform the demos, energy is very low. The manager of the demo department begins to yell at employees to move faster get out to the floor to perform their demos. This puts people off and they start to shuffle trying get the rest of the equipment they might need to perform their demo; creating a confused mass of people in a kitchen with limited space. Very inefficient; it creates a slow moving process that creates more problems than it solves. Once again, instead of analyzing, understanding, and resolving the problem; the manager decides to frantically yell and demean employees in hopes of them moving quicker; but it ultimately creates more reluctance within the employees toward the work day. At least twice a day I am called to resolve a customer complaint. The lack of structure creates a false lack of boundaries that employees tend to cross when unchallenged and, in this case, they are not challenged. Employees leave their station or exhibit behavior below health code standards or company standards that I report to the manager that ultimately go unchanged or unchecked. The accountability could be compared to a middle school classroom. Management possesses the least amount of accountability; claiming no fault for bad organization or poor execution; while their only idea of fixing a problem is creating another. Management is also unable to balance resources and end up robbing Peter to pay Paul. Almost every day I am demeaned in front of other employees for not completing a task that I was asked to leave to do another task. The company itself has no concern for anything but the product being demoed. They consistently seem unaware of resources and space limits that we face; creating demos that are nearly impossible to perform. Very inefficient demos that require more customer wait time than customer service time. I've personally calculated demo times and product cook times only to find that these events are built to fail based on the time table for each product and what the company expects. All and all the company is severely flawed and would benefit substantially from some organization, employee and resource awareness, accountability, and developing healthy boundaries that are challenged when crossed by subordinate employees.

A typical day at work consists of getting to the store about 9:45 a.m., signing in at Customer Service. Once I get to the back of the store, finding boxes for the current day's event and labeling boxes for future events. After this, get the correct cart out for the day's demonstration, make sure appliances needed for the event (convection oven, coffee pot or electric skillet, etc.) are on the cart, then I proceed to the sales floor to set up my cart which is normally located in the Dairy Department. After set up, I located product and purchase the product with my comdata card, head back to my cart, merchandise product on cart shelves and finally begin preparing samples or product to be promoted. I then interact with customers by promoting the product, telling them important facts (health benefits, ingredients, allegens, etc.) and offering them a sample of said product. I take a 30 minute lunch around 1:30, come back and begin giving out samples again, then shut down at 4:00 and am out of the store by 4:15-4:30.

In this job I have learned how to interact with the public, not let every little comment get under my skin, promote products, manage my time and prepare samples according to health department guidelines. My supervisor visits stores once a month unless there is a serious matter that requires his attention. If we need him, we can call or email him anytime except on Monday's or Tuesday's, which are his days off.

As far as co-workers, I hardly ever have to work with the other lady assigned to my store, we get along well, she's really helpful and works with me if I need to trade days.

The hardest and most enjoyable parts of the job are the same, dealing with the public. As with any retail job, most customers are very nice but then there are those that seem like it is their mission in life to make every store employee miserable. Overall though, I've enjoyed this job, it's just not something I want to do the rest of my life.

When i started at crossmark, i felt like the job would be great and pay well enough at the time. this was my highest paying job at the time, and i was happy to do the work at the time. i started when samples were discontinued due to COVID, and was isntructed to help around sam's club instead. it was a fair job starting out, collecting empty boxes, helping where told, etc. the change happened when the sam's club workers began complaining about what we were doing, not because we were doing bad by any means, but becuase the sam's club workers were shirking their own duties and blaming us for it. this was on top of the fact that all the sam's club workers looked down on us, acting as though we were superfluous and useless, as though our samples didnt contribute greatly to the sales of products that customers werent ready to commit to a bulk purchase of before trying. even the head manager at the club absolutely despised us for no reason. the crossmark manager kept scolding us for "not doing our jobs" and kept telling us that "we should be grateful sams club is paying our wages." this went on and on until sams club put us on our shortest leash yet, having us in a spot where they could watch us constantly while forcing us to do ridiculous hard work where we were constantly unable to do anything else. they would complain if we so much as took a bathroom break, which was met with further issues back on us by our manager. eventually, our manager simply stopped scheduling us without telling us, without warning, and without any options or choices of continuing in the matter. we had to fight just for a single shift after being cut from the schedule without warning, while being treated like the managers hands were completely tied and that the club wouldn't allow anyone to have more than a single shift a week. 

As a Retail Merchandiser, you're responsible for visiting numerous convenience stores/supermarkets in your area (about 500 sq. miles of your residence and 180 stores give or take/all completed monthly) and working on behalf of a client that Crossmark works with. Basically your goal is to increase sales of client's products by informing convenience store managers of new products available at their respective distributors and set up displays in store that would catch customer's attention. You also want to make sure and keep record how many of the client SKU's are available at each store and record that on your handheld and send that data daily to the powers that be. Sounds good? Well it could be if the products you wanted to put up displays for were hot and in demand. This is where it became very tricky and I lost motivation in this job very fast. Our client's main focus was gum and candy. Extremely hard to compete for "counter space" on far more popular products like 5-hour energy. I also dealt with less than friendly convenience store managers who were just miserable jerks and sometimes just wanted me to leave their store and never come back, and I was easy going and never pushy either. It's a very independent job and you'll meet with your supervisor every month or so, the main method of communication was through e-mail and cell phone. I didn't excel at this job mainly due to what I described above and my heart wasn't into it. Some people may like it better than I did. It's really only for people that may need another source of income (like retirees) and find it like a gig economy job - the exception is it's a flat hourly wage.

Each event offers a manual to follow to assist you with conducting the events. They aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Cut up 15lbs of fruit in public? Cut a pizza into quarters so it fits in a toaster oven AND feed it to the masses? Either you are supplied with more stuff than you can use or not enough. Oh, and if there's too much, throw it away, don't take it home or give it to a food bank. Sometimes you'll have a really good product that people want to buy and there isn't any in the store to sell them. Sometimes you get a product that you wouldn't feed to a starving animal because of all the garbage that's in it but they still think you should push people to buy it, And the shear amount of waste; I was forced to throw out over 50lbs of Strip Steak (I'm eating Ramen noodles). I was also told to throw out the fully charged cans of cooking spray, into a compactor, (that's intelligent), I hear one guy got hurt when one exploded.

In the couple of year I worked this job I'll bet I had to train a new ES at least once a season, so they could quit and I'd be offered an even lazier one in the next.

If you are going to take this job, you need to love sales, stupid people, bad instruction, poor management and thinking outside the box and coloring outside the lines.

Kiss your weekends good-bye and Aunt Bessie's funeral, sorry, you have to work. Tell them to bury her next weekend because there's no work for you for the next two weeks.

If you do take this job, do it for the food safety training. It'll scare you to death if you take it seriously. I seldom take samples from anyone anymore, just based on the number of people I've seen change baby diapers or use the facillities without washing their hands and touch the product next to the one I had my eye on.

Really, did you want to get me started?

I was an event specialist for 6 months and then promoted to lead event specialist at a Plano, TX location up until 2 weeks ago when I left in disgust.  I worked very very hard because that is my work ethic.  There are no other reason to work that hard, because there is no other reward for hard work.  There are no incentives.  It would have been extremely helpful if I, or the ES's whom I managed, received some kind of bonus structure, some kind of recognition for meeting or exceeding goals. The rate of burn out is high and the demands of some people in supervisory positions are extraordinary.  When I accepted the promotion, and after I excelled at the testing I was required to pass, I was guaranteed 7 hours per day, 4 days per week.  My hours were shortly thereafter reduced to 6 hours per day with no guarantee of days per week.  I don't know if this was company policy or just particular to my supervisor, who was awful, but I was expected to complete the same amount of work within those reduced hours as when I worked the full 7 hours/4 days.  In fact, additional work was added which caused many hours of overtime that I was not compensated for.  My supervisor was OCD and treated his leads and ES's horribly. He was promoted from lead.....a good thing......but what management training he received I couldn't say.  He was just awful and made the job twice as bad as it already was through coercion and threats.  I endured this for an unlivable wage.This company could be the CHEAPEST company I've ever worked for.  I would never go back and don't recommend this company or this thankless job to anyone.

I worked for a limited time in the Sam's division of Crossmark doing demostrations. The actual job itself was fun, but only when I was out on the floor giving my time to the customers. The current manager, unfortunately is very unprofessional in her mannerisms. From day one, each and every employee approached me to complain about her bad attitude at the workplace...even IN FRONT OF CUSTOMERS! I witnessed this several times, once myself. The pay is ok for the ease of the job. Job security is a joke. For each little mistake you make you are written up. EXAMPLE: I was told several times by manager that if I needed to call in sick I needed to do so at least a couple hours before the jobs start time. Under CrossMark guidelines, if you have a fever, you are to not come to work. This is because you are working closely with both people and food. One afternoon I had to call in for that day because of a fever. I did so in a timely manner. The manager called me back and yelled at me, threatening me to not show back up unless I had a Dr's excuse with me or I would be written up. I was not going to waste my money, or time, going to a Dr for a fever. In the companies guidelines you are told you do not have to have a Dr's excuse for a fever. To make matters worse, the manager is constantly threatening you with writing you up for things that are done, or not done. The first week I worked I sold over 1000% over and above my quota for one particular day. Everyone was commending me for my efforts. When the manager brought up the accomplishment, she shrugged her shoulders and said that it was "just ok". Under current management, you can do nothing right.

This was my first job, and was a wonderful first job. Only worked 1-5 days a week and 6 hour shifts, but most weeks I worked no more than 3 days a week. That makes it really easy to sort out college/education/regular life issues. I loved the people I worked with, they were all wonderful with a positive attitude and I had a wonderful manager. The dress code is a bit strict, but at the same time that makes it a bit easier: it's simply black dress pants, black shoes, black socks, long sleeved white button up shirt, and the CROSSMARK hat and apron. You are only allowed one pair of earring studs, no tattoos or facial piercings showing, and if your hair is long enough it is expected to be up while on the floor. No cell phones are allowed on the floor, either (which is no biggie, considering the shifts only last 6 hours and you have a break in the middle for a 30 minute lunch). Every day we had a "goal" on how many we were supposed to sell. Sometimes the goal was easy to reach and sometimes it was challenging, but it's not like you get into trouble if you don't reach your goal but you tried to. You get in trouble for not trying. You were expected to greet all of the customers and "demo" the product in attempt to sell as many as you can. It's not that difficult, but being a people person is a must. At the end of your shift, you clean anything you used for your demo and make sure everything is in it's proper place. You log onto the computer at the end of every day to log your shift into the computer. The pay was great for the job: $10.50 to $12.00 an hour depending on the product being demoed. It was usually $10.50, but some of the Health and Beauty products I demoed paid $12.00/hour. If you ask me, it was a wonderful job and exceptional teamwork experience.

I have to start out saying that I love the idea Crossmark has behind it, enabling people to try products before they buy them in bulk. There have been a number of products that I was given the chance to try out (as the demonstrator) and have found things that I really enjoyed when I wouldn't have had the chance otherwise. I think it's brilliant, cost effective for families, and helps show people whats out there without them having to commit to something before trying it.

That said, my manager has been one of the hardest people to work for. He's on salary and ends up calling out more often than he's actually at work. He regularly ignores the paperwork part of his job due to his hate for administrative work, and leaves it to the leads who have their own plate full of things to do. WE end up not being able to accomplish our duties because we're too busy doing his and when brought to upper managements attention, it was completely ignored and dismissed. Because the RSE at my store was so relaxed, people got away with murder and the kitchen would become a disaster area on many days when the 3 or 4 responsible employees (out of 25) were on their days off. 

It has great starting pay for a first time job, but there really is little excitement to the job, there's little room for advancement and there's no such thing as full time. You don't get any raises unless you're promoted and promotions are few and far between. There are no sick days, vacation pay, or any other benefits (aside from basic healthcare) unless you have a minimum of RSE position.

I enjoyed being a demonstrator and talking to the customers. However, I didn't like performing the job with Sam's Club. It was too hard on my back.
A typical day of work would start with arriving on time for the huddle before you go out on the sales floor. This is where you find out what you will be demonstrating, like one day I demonstrated pudding and mandarin oranges. Before you go on the floor you get your supplies. I grabbed my gloves, my garage bag, my Ziploc baggie, a couple of spoons, some portion cups and some napkins. Then I would go to where the product is sold and set up at the front of the isle. I'd put my garbage bag in my garbage can, get some of the product and put it on the shelf in front of my unit. Then I would set up to demonstrate.i would hand the customer a portion cups with some pudding and one with mandarin oranges. Every hour you clear the stuff of off your unit and wipe it down. Then return to demonstrating. In the last hour of demonstrating if you have a lot of pudding cups and mandarin oranges, you can hand out the cups. Because we do not keep the leftovers. then you would break down your unit, wash it. Pull your trash, put in a new trash bag, and take you unit back to the cleanup area. You wash your own dishes. You put the barcodes that you pulled off of each package you used. You staple them to the sign that was hanging on the front of your unit.you sign your sheet and paperclip it all together and hand it in.  Once your paperwork has been reviewed you may leave.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Demonstrator 7179 salaries reported	$15.85 per hour
Barista 2525 salaries reported	$15.47 per hour
Event specialist 364 salaries reported	$15.74 per hour
Grocery associate 149 salaries reported	$19.47 per hour
Retail supervisor 153 salaries reported	$45,691 per year

Working at Product Connections: Company Overview and Reviews

Product Connections

Product Connections Ratings

Popular jobs at Product Connections

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected