store manager

sales associate

retail sales associate

technical support specialist

manager

RadioShack

When I first started working for Target Mobile (RadioShack), it was a great company. The pay was good, the store management was fine, and the goals were in a reasonable range.
The job is simple and easy enough... To the naked eye. Selling phones for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, you are Upgrading, Creating New Accounts, and Adding Lines to Preexisting lines. The training is LONG but thorough and it was a little hard to get used to but easy after a while.

But now it seems like this company has made a turn for the worst.
Going through multiple district managers in the time I have been there, all of them were stating they were doing their job but in reality they did nothing but demotivate employees, degrade them (I would know since there was a district manager that said something behind my back which I found extremely disrespectful and unprofessional), make them feel like they are stupid, put them down for things not in their control, and making them/us feel like we are all expendable. I don't think it's hard to see why they go through so many DM's.

Not to mention the lack of advertising for this section of the company. RadioShack has plenty of Advertisements on TV and various other places for their phones. Target Mobile on the other hand has a piece of paper in the Sunday Target ad. There is no sign on a the outside of Target or Inside of Target giving any indication that they sell phones. The only way you would know is if you saw the Sunday Ad, Word of Mouth, or you Walked by the Kiosk.
They don't put ads on the TV because it's too expensive apparently. They said that because the kiosks aren't performing like they should be, why should they give them advertisement on TV or other places?... Apparently Target Mobile is too small of a sector to invest that type of money into.

HEY RADIOSHACK/TARGET MOBILE: Did you ever consider maybe that may actually help your sales considering majority of people that go into Target don't even know you exist?

NO. It is not the employee's job to advertise for your company. You have a market and PR department. THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE THERE FOR.

Maybe if you guys put a little more thought into advertising and a little less effort into talking to employees like they are nothing and worthless, you actually might hit goals! Weird how that works, huh?

So aside from the lack of advertisement and the horrible district managers, what's good about this company? Not too much really.

The pay used to be good but recently I heard from an old co-worker that they changed the pay rates.
And Target Mobile you get paid based on Hourly and Commission.
You start base at $8.18
The SPIFF tiers were actually really great. If you get 70 SPH a week, you'd triple your commissions (Which wasn't extremely hard to hit if you worked less hours and you sold at least one smartphone a day). And commissions would be anywhere from 2.50 just for a simple basic phone on an upgrade to $50 with a new contract and other features. But regardless if you doubled or tripled your spiff, you would still get the regular commission on a phone.
Oh those were the days.
Now from what I am told, they changed the tiers to the following:
If you sell less than 80 SPH a week, you get A ($0.01) PENNY... Yes a PENNY for every phone sold. After 125 SPH, you get $12 per phone sold regardless of if it's a new phone on a new account, add a line, or upgrade (And yes, those all used to have various higher and lower payments than $12.50). And after 160 SPH (Which I NEVER HIT when I worked for the company) you get $22 per phone sold regardless of New Account, Add A Line or Upgrade.
Now I'm not saying that's impossible to hit, but it's pretty hard considering you work for a company where you have to Hawk in a Target where most people that walk in there aren't even in the market for a phone.
My old co-workers paycheck went from a solid six bills every couple weeks to three hundred. That's working twenty hours a week (Target Mobile is part Time).

So now that the main three downfalls of this company have been listed, lets talk about how honest they are.

From what I remember, RadioShack promotes selling with Honesty and Integrity.
But they would always tell me to sell what we have and push a different phone if we didn't have access to a phone the guest wanted (They weren't too good with stocking the most popular phones).
I never did that. I always just told the customer we'll call them when we have it in stock or to just go to a corporate store if they really wanted it that bad.
I only once had a guest return a phone because I actually abided by selling with honesty and integrity where as I knew plenty of people in the company that had a lot of returns because they were just selling what they could.

I could go on and on about how horrible this company is but I think I've said enough.

I'm glad I left when I did and now I know plenty of people among the company who are leaving including store managers.

If you're looking for a part time job, look else where. This company has gone to the dark side where they don't have cookies. I wouldn't be surprised if they shut it down soon.

RadioShack is a great company to work for if you're trying to pick up new skills, want to learn how NOT to run a business, or just want to have a part-time job while you focus your attention on more important and deserving tasks (examples school or a real job). Their customer service standards are excellent, and their components and electronic systems training is good - if you pay attention. RadioShack develops a very active-listener customer service skill set. One must listen and picture the customer's situation and needs, identify potential problems or missing information, and recommend them complete solutions that solve the problems they came to you with - and some they didn't realize they had.

 In a day at RadioShack, expect at least ten customers to come in telling you they "don't know what it's called (or what number it is), but they'll know it when they see it," of which maybe three or four actually are capable of discerning it from the over 9000 other things that look similar to it, but the ones that can't are generally upset that you can't pick something out based off their vague and woefully incomplete descriptions of things you carry millions of varieties of. "I'm sorry ma'am but when you tell me you're looking for a cable, it means practically nothing to me. Is it a power cable? A USB connection? Audio cable? Telephone or ethernet, maybe? WHAT DO YOU USE IT FOR?" Button cell batteries, audio adapters and fuses tend to look pretty similar. As far as button cell batteries go, for car key FOBs, your two safest bets are 2032 and 2016. Watch batteries can be a toss-up but mostly 76 and 357. Expect to be told by 1/5 of your customers how much cheaper they can get (X product) literally anywhere else in town, or from Amazon. On the other hand, you do sometimes get really cool customers that are great to converse with, and often know a great deal about electronic projects. These customers are usually more than willing to share their knowledge with you if you simply ask.

  The hardest part by far of the job is dealing with upper-management decisions, and customers frustrated at you because they don't know how to help you help them. Also, having to take a product return from a customer you told in ten different ways how their idea wouldn't work is pretty frustrating.

 The merchandising and management decisions are made without consultation of your store, and you can expect them to be designed for a store that looks completely different and is stocked in no way, shape, or form similar to your store. Still, they expect you to make do with poorly-thought-out planograms and vague visual merchandising goals. There's no doubt the job requires and refines critical thinking and visual-spatial skills. 

 After the company was bought out of bankruptcy by Standard General, the management decisions seemed incompetent. Before, they seemed deliberate sabotage.

 If you want to work at RadioShack, prepare to have to sell customers shoddy-quality imported from China products at ridiculously inflated prices. Prepare to be expected to pretend to be busy even when the store looks fantastic, you've read all the news and emails, and there's not a customer in sight. Prepare to not get a raise no matter how long you work there, and not get a bonus no matter how well you perform. Prepare to be expected to be a high-quality employee while you're compensated at minimum wage + a paltry commission.

Radioshack is a great company to earn some commission and get your foot in the wireless industry. They push you to cell phones, but expect you to know everything else. Pay is decent, and do not expect to make this a career for yourself, because managers do not get paid well. The store I worked for was fun, the team was well put together, we all got our jobs done. It was fun because it was in the mall. Everything was well, until someone robbed our store for 10 phones, and no one seen it happen. it was our busiest weekend of the year, and we all were busy. A few days later I found out we had no phones, because a customer was trying to commit fraud. Later my manager realized that we got robbed, and we all started to think how it happened. none of us were suspicious of any wrong doing, which made it worst, because radioshack had to blame someone. 
So my assistant manager explained how this happened before, and they let everyone go within 2 months. he was excluded because he was the only one off the day phones went missing. This time all of us were working which means we can all be cut for any reason. I tried to find the phones online on numerous sites, and didn't get any luck. I decided to get cameras in there, and my manager helped me install cameras. I did whatever I could to try to find these phones. We had an employee who was hired 2 weeks before the phones went missing, and she honestly had no business in retail, she had horrible english, and didn't know what was going on. She quit 2 weeks after this happened. Which if it was an employee it had to have been her. but Radio Shack was still not satisfied. A couple weeks later, the two female coworkers ganged up and made up a story that I sent a customers nudes to myself. They told my manager, and he wanted to talk to me, but one of the girls insisted that he'd tell Hr right away, because thats bad. my manager told hr right away, and the next day asked me what happened, and I didn't know what he was talking about. They were talking about something that happened 3 months before, which was when I was adding minutes on a customer's phone, and when I turned on the phone, her instagram was up, which she had pictures of her in exotic lingerie, and these pictures were from her backside. my coworker seen it and was in shock. We talked about it, and I told her I almost threw the phone, because it was just right there. we laughed it off, and forgot about the situation until she brought it up 3 months later and added a twist, that would for sure get me fired. I told my manager what really happened, and he told me he already told hr on me, and that they would determine my fate. He was a good manager, but he lets these girls get to his head. He hires hideous looking girls, and becomes friends with them outside of work with his wife to go to church. 

This place is a fun place to work at, just be careful with the girls, if there is a hispanic girl with extreme acne, glasses, and her name starts with an E, be careful because she is a snake, she would boss you around and thinks shes special because the manager and her are friends, and watch each other's kids. thats actually why she hates me, because i got tired of being bossed by someone who is also a part time employee like me. we got into an argument, and she told me we should agree not to tell the manager, but later she tells him herself. If there is also an ugly girl with deep acne, and her name is a man's name that starts with an A, don't trust her either, she would be friends, with you then back stab you.

As a Store Manager, a typical workday consisted of inventory reviews, effective communication with management, staff, and lateral network, (to include emails, log entries, phone digests/calls, etc.), goals review/establishment, and financials and scheduling -as needed, etc.
PK was essential to ensure that customer's needs were tended-to adequately and correctly.  Also, that observation of a person's actions (to include non-verbals) became as important to the sales process as the verbalization itself.
In management, it was crucial to understand the importance of proper Team development; that any individual exhibiting a cancerous attitude and/or display required immediate attention and/or dismissal.  For myself, Rule #1 has always been to adequately convey to my Team that my job is to make their job easier -so that the customer experience becomes unmatched.
Similarly, recruitment, selection and development of Assistant Managers, team supervisors and leads required pinpoint accuracy.
The hardest part of the job was in the keeping up with the number of reports being either duplicated in request and/or injected, as well as the hours necessary to be effective.
Conversely, the most enjoyable part of the job was in the ideas-generation and development of either product presentation or merchandising detail... ultimately, seeing the many successes earned by a polished Team is quite rewarding.  Being Number-1 tends to drive the desire to go further to an even greater extent.

As a District Manager, dealing with (in some cases) well over 35 corporate stores -spread out over multiple States, the chief focus is on both store performance and individual development -to include Store Managers, Manager Trainees, and even Associates.  Also, at this level vendor relationships become much more important to the business.  Ultimately, it boiled down to creating an effective process of communication where information being passed was not only timely, but receptive (and responsive) as well.
In this position, learning the art of prioritization becomes essential.  The appearance that everyone wants everything, immediately could easily lend itself to a sink-or-swim state of being.  Learning what has priority over another then becomes crucial in moving a district in the correct direction.
In short, although management encompasses fiscal awareness, corporate mission, individual (and personal) training, and sound business practice, still, management is always about people.  Train them right; treat them right, and they will always outperform any projections put to paper.
Co-workers at this level become a major resource in sound attenuation; meaning, they provide the "ear" that is so-oft times necessary for that balanced approach to things to be given fair review.  Their experience and tenured advise provides the counterbalance before one seriously contemplates jumping.
The hardest -and yet most rewarding part of this job is in the challenge of determining where shortfalls exist in a store or individual's performance that has been falling off of their goals and/or expectations.

Working for Radioshack truly helped to enhance my experience in sales and customer service. I would start the day by making sure our sales floor was in order (sales tag, cleanliness, processing orders), following up with my clients and checking our daily goals. The job had a lot of standards that had to be met for sales, metrics were a huge part of it meeting over 15+ metrics for the month. Our main goal was definitely wireless sales and I practiced my transitioning to wireless during every sales. My coworkers and I also knew the value of teamwork even though it is designed to be a competitive field we respected each other well enough to assist in sales and helping to get our customer setup and comfortable with their products.

Since being with the company for two years I began a bit shaky at sales and while being boosted by the support of my coworkers, our store manager and my metrics I started to get more proficient at sales, more than metrics my metrics for the month and being top in sales for various months. I would frequent Radioshack when I was younger so I tried to keep up with the standards of ethics I experience back then which included great customer service, advice and knowledge in our products. For example, on numerous occasions I drove to other stores within our district( Delray Beach-Coral Springs/Ft. Lauderdale) to get the products we didn't have for my customer.

The hardest part of the job was keeping up with our metrics, which tend to change frequent sometimes monthly or seasonal goals. However since the job is oriented around sales it becomes easier to include each part in our sale instance once you get the hang of it and remember to always offer the customer the best experience.

Even though I loved my job, I felt that the company's direction was taking a different turn. Job security was difficult as I would see a lot of firings during the company's financial windfalls. But the most important factor for me was the lack of thought for the customer and employees. For instance, the job went from a commission job to basically an hourly rate driven by the stores overall scores. Our sales practices were also challenged at my store, focusing less on our customer's wants and more on what the stores wanted to push. This was a huge factor in me quitting the job. I feel as though once the customer is forsaken then the entire foundation of a company will crumble coupled with the fact of rapid changes to employee's commission rubric - which was basically removed reducing insensitive to sell but to keep your scorecard looking well. I believe every company will go through it's hardships but coming together as a team and sticking to the fundamental principles of customer satisfaction (giving the customer what they want and treating them well) will keep returning consumers coming back for great service, great sales and a warm atmosphere.

RadioShack is a good company to work for.. Provided you are part time and you don't really need the cash.

The company offers minimum wage to all, excluding the Assistant Manager and up. Even then, the Manager-in-Training still gets paid minimum wage. Though they do offer 2% sales commission on most sales, that 2% won't get you very far unless you live in a high-traffic area.

I understand their view of "You sell more, you make more," and in theory, it seems fair. However, they fail to keep in mind the stores that do not see enough customers to warrant more than maybe $5 commission per day. Additionally, since they announced the closing of 1,100 of their stores (now redacted with 200 planned closings), many customers have avoided coming into a RadioShack, and with good reason.

As assistant manager, I was bumped up to 8.70/hr plus that same 2% commission. However, my position title was changed to Manger-in-Training with reduced pay (back down to 7.25) without so much as a warning. I simply noticed on my next paycheck, 2 weeks later, and brought it up to be responded with an, "Oh, yeah, your store no longer qualifies for an Assistant Manger position," from the District Manager.
All while keeping the same responsibilities, I no longer find RadioShack a company I enjoy working for.



However, on a more positive note towards them..

Many items are quite pricey, but employees get a good discount on many of these items - up to 50% off on many RadioShack branded items. These items are generally pretty well built and worth the price at about half off.

My co-workers are among the best people I have met, and I would probably not mind staying as very part time just to continue my work interactions with them.

The people that come in are usually fantastic. They are generally understanding if an associate isn't quite knowledgable in one particular area, such as stereos or parts, and will help us learn. Their stories are rarely dul. It brings such a joyful feeling when you help someone else learn something new to them, or you hear a word of praise or gratitude.



Overall, if you are offered Manager-in-Training, Assistant Manager, or Store manager, BE VERY CAUTIOUS. Store mangers only get 1.5% of their sales commissions, and expecetd sales numbers aren't too uncommonly near-impossible.

If you are a Store Manager, you will be overworked, and underpaid for the amount of work you do. (And the store will be your new home.)

If you are an Assistant Manger, chances are you will be underworked for the amount of work you do.

If you are a Manager-in-Training, you will be overworked and underpaid.

If you are a Sales Associate, you may be underpaid depending on how much your store manager/ASM/MIT/DM expects of you.

Again, if you don't need the money, by all means, work for RadioShack if you like electronics. It is a fun environment. Much less so the higher up the ladder you get.
But if you have any bills, you better just keep on looking.

On a typical day at work, you will process almost as many returns as you do sales. With each sale, you are tasked with badgering customers with several offers which include offering service plans on every item they purchase, collecting email addresses to send customers a coupon, asking customers to check their upgrade eligibility on their cell service in order to later contact them several times when it is time for their upgrade, trying to upsell the customer on the current battery special and finally asking the customer if they would like to donate to the Livestrong foundation. After awhile you can tell the customers are more irritated than anything because they start to just cut you off as you start asking a question.

The rest of your day will be spent scanning merchandise, rearranging displays for no apparent reason, and printing new price tags off on a regular basis. There will not be a day in which you will not have to print out and put up price tags.

The majority of your time will be spent trying to upsell customers on things that relate to what they are buying. For example, you would want to upsell extra cables or handsets for home phones, along with extra batteries for cordless phones. Half the time, people just want that one part that is $1.25 and don't want anything else. The bad thing is, small sales hurt your performance rating. You will probably end up having one great sale and then 20 small sales that will basically ruin your great sale.

The district management team spends more time degrading associate performance than actually praising and congratulating employees. This makes you not want to work harder because the hard work you already do in trying to close a quality sale goes unnoticed. On top of all the extra things they want you to do, they have very poor benefits and pay. Expect to have minimum wage plus small commission payouts if you decide to work here. If you are lucky to get part time, you will notice it is not worth it as you can make more money by working part time and having fewer sales. THe more sales you make the worse your performance becomes. A part timer who works 20 hours a week and has $1,000 in sales will have better performance than a full time employee who works 40 hours a week and has $20,000 worth of sales at the end of the month, and it is all because the part timers are less likely to get several small sales that will ruin their bigger sales.

I was at RadioShack for just shy of 10 years. During that time I went from being excited to finally be working to dreading seeing the store. When I started I was just a lowly sales associate. My manager saw that I was able to get results. I was promoted to store manager within a year. My first store was pretty nice. Good neighborhood, decent staff, and a bump in pay. But the hours got LONG. I nearly double the number of hours I was working. This was not a good thing for the wife.

I was lucky to have been promoted when I was. At that time the company had a deal that new managers were given a "tenure raise" every year for the first five years. When the last raise came I was in my fifth year as a manager. I got all five raises. Then the company offered another raise that they called "merit pay". This was based on all the activity you personally did outside your store for the district. But your store also had to be producing results. My store was getting the numbers and I was out helping other managers and associates every other week. I earned the merit pay increases both year that was around.

But then pay plans changed. And they changed for the worse. THis became an annual event. From the time I had earned the highest I had till I left the company I had lost a substantial amount of income. I would not have been able to afford another round of pay decreases.

The company also shifted into a different mind set. This change began long before the pay plans began to go downhill. The CEO had once delivered a speech that "...before a company can become the best place to shop it has to become the best place to work." This initiative died a quick and silent death. After this message was delivered you never heard a peep about "Best company to work for" ever again.

Before I left the company tried bringing in Julian Day, the famed "turn-around king" who rescued K-Mart. He tried. He left. He could not get the company to recover from all that had happened in the previous years.

I knew that it was time to go. So I found another job to land into and left. When I did leave the amount of tenure in the distract was severely lower compared to when I was first promoted to manager. When I was a new store manager there were a lot more 'senior managers' than there were new managers. By the time I left we were meeting new managers every month at the monthly manager meetings. Loyalty counted for nothing it seemed.

I gave the "Compensation and Benefits" 3 stars only because they once had a nice pay plan.

I loved working here, I sold more contracts than anyone else in my store, I made great money, had a great time with helping the customers, made my store look fabulous, and worked very well with other employees. I was promoted three times in a five month period of time and was literally a month into my training to be a Store Manager. Then my Store Manager actually came into work one day and handed me his keys and walked out, quit right there on spot, another two employees followed him that week, and it was me "a Manager in Training" and two sales employees. I was told to "act as Store Manager" until the position was filled. Meanwhile I was not able to make sales, phones or general products, I handled all returns, shipping, repairs, customer issues, conference calls, stocked store, updated planograms when neccesary and still assisted sales personnel when needed. I never obtained the title of Store Manager although I did the job, I was never compensated for the managerial tasks I had undertaken. As a matter of fact, my pay rate while I was selling contracts was approx. $13.30/hr, that's Minimum wage (7.40)+Commission. While I took on "acting Store Manager" my pay decreased to my base pay of 7.40/hr due to being unable to be out on the floor with customers. I did this for about a month, and asked my District Manager when the new Store Manager was going to be hired and manage the store so I could continue my training. I was told it could be three more months before someone took over. Within the week I asked for a demotion back to a sales only position and was denied. If I had been a single guy with no kids I may have just hung in there, but I was single and have sole custody of my two children who were 4 and 6 at the time and could not afford to work and pay day care off a purely minimum wage job, not only i was at my store literally from open to close (9am-9pm) daily. I eventually could not afford to drive to work anymore and was fired. I really enjoyed this job and still would like to work there, I have nothing against the company whatsoever and would rate them higher had the District Manager been more serious about his job and cared more for the company than to let good employees go. I am happy and proud to say I worked there at one time.

During my three years with Radio Shack, our district went through 7 different district managers, each one wanting to completely overhaul and change everything just for the sake of changing something.  To add to the stress of the lack of managerial stability, I was personally shuffled around to 6 different retail stores due to a lack of replacement managers being hired to replace the 8-10 managers who were either terminated or quit during that period.  

At one point I was put in charge of a store which only had two part-time employees working at it, and I was forced to either work all day every day, or have the location closed down for parts of the day and lose my job.  This routine went on for several weeks.  I was, of course, paid overtime, which earned me a stern talking-to from our district manager who was requiring every store, as part of the changes he made, to completely cut overtime for everyone except for store managers which were paid salary rather than hourly.  I of course was ACTING store manager, and thus not salary, but the job requirements were the same.

Upon being relieved of my position at that particular store, I returned to my home store, only to find out that the existing manager had hired an assistant manager to completely replace me, which had caused me to not have a position with that store anymore, and sparked a time in my employment lasting about a year where I was without a stable position at any store.

Upon complaint, I was placed in what was widely considered in the district to be the worst store, due to an extreme lack of customer traffic in a job that is heavily commission-based.

After having been injured on the job, my store manager at the time had gotten "tired of having to deal with doctors notes" and informed me that I would not be scheduled at all until I could return to work without any limitations.  Two weeks after this I got a letter from the existing district manager stating that I had "no-call no-showed" for two weeks straight and due to a complaint of this from my manager I was being asked to come back to work with no restrictions or find a new job.

Due to my injury, I chose the latter option, finished out my physical therapy, and I have not looked back since.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Store manager 21 salaries reported	$38,325 per year
Sales associate 15 salaries reported	$8.28 per hour
Retail sales associate 3 salaries reported	$8.53 per hour
Technical support specialist 2 salaries reported	$27.00 per hour
Manager 2 salaries reported	$42,000 per year

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