assistant manager

store manager

sales associate

seasonal associate

sales lead

Things-Remembered

A typical day at work would start with; opening and counting the registers, taking deposits to the bank, reviewing previous day sales and filling in the daily sales log to calculate week to date/year to date sales % to goal. Write out daily sales goal for each employee, based on % to goal for the week, key out any missengraved items in the computer from the previous day. Check the computer for daily emails, or any planogram changes and fix accordingly. Make sure the store is dust free and all products are blocked and faced for store opening. Re-stock the cash wrap before opening; boxes, bags, receipt tape is full. Training and coaching any new staff or current staff (roll playing, coaching, upselling ECT.). Greet customers within seconds of entering the store with a smile and compassion and ask "what occasion are you shopping for". Show them your favorite item for their occasion, then setting them up on their paperwork to engrave. While always adding on additional engraving or designs to their item. Offer them our PWP (purchase with purchase) item at half price with their purchase and add engraving. Show them our sale/clearance section and let them feel free to look for future occasions. At the register, type in all their current information including address, phone # and email address. If they are not current Rewards Club Members then sell them a Rewards Club Card. Making sure to explain the card and it's benefits and doing all of this in a timely matter to move on to the next customer. While being sure to greet everyone that walks in the door even while you're helping another customer. Doing this lets the customer know you care and acknowledge them; this also helps aiding in the prevention of any theft. In between helping customers making sure you have grabbed the items already sold to be engraved and have them set up in the machine. Having their message hand typed and spelling/grammar reviewed to prevent missengraves and company/store loss. Write down sales for every hour in our personalized store sales book. Handling customer complaints as they would arise, and making sure I fixed the problem and our customer left happy. Have a 60 second pow-wow with each teammate as they come onto there shift, giving them their sales goal for the day and any store procedures to be completed. Observe each employees sales on the floor and fill out coaching forms when needed. Complete the following weeks store schedule (do by Wednesday). I have learned in all my years of managing, that communication, accountability and positive reinforcement are crucial to building a great team. The parts I enjoyed the most about my job; were sharing in the joy of our customers wedding day approaching, their mother's birthday or a 50 year golden anniversary to name a few. Or in the sorrow of the loss of a loved one and knowing that a newborn baby's ashes will fit into a small jewelry box. These are the things that made my job so enjoyable, yet so sad at the same time. But always knowing every day we touched someone's life.

After graduating from Bloomsburg University, I was ready to excel and become challenged.  During my senior year of college, I had started applying for Human Resources entry-level positions, hoping that my educational background would help me in that goal.  Unfortunately, a month after graduating, I was still job searching with no luck.  So, I decided to look for a Management position because I had leadership and a management background already.  At the age of 17, I was promoted from a customer sales representative to an assistant manager at Carmike Cinemas and did work there throughout my college years.   As an Assistant Manager at Things Remembered, I was able to promote my leadership and motivational qualities onto my employees.  My daily duties included training new and current employees, promoting responsibility and accuracy with the engraving process, and resolving customer complaints.   My every move at that store was to make sure the displays were fully stocked, set-up accurately, and looked presentable.  Also, I had to make sure that my employees were knowledgeable with the merchandise and taught how to engrave.   I closely monitored all of my employees as they assisted their customers and always reached out a helping hand if need be.   I enjoyed my position mostly because of the great feedback I would receive from my employees and customers.  I wasn't just a manager who stood around and watched my employees work.  It was important to me that I knew and did the same work as my employees.  They appreciated my positive and that I never treated any of them any differently.  Also, when we did receive our inventory, I was able to work in the storage room efficiently because I knew my employees were trained appropriately and could call on me at any time. 
The management team that I worked with was a group of very knowledgeable and pleasant individuals.  We worked great as a team and reached our goals even when days were stressful.  We were great role models for the customer service representatives and allowed them to make engraving mistakes.  Without practice, no one can achieve their ultimate goals.

Unfortunately, this company has cut their payroll to the point where you are almost ALWAYS working alone. This leads to no breaks, irate customers when their items are not done on time, unanswered phone calls, and being cussed at on more than one occasion because there was no one else there to assist people in the store. It is next to impossible to complete all of the tasks you have: tons of busywork paperwork that an updated POS system would be able to auto-generate, shipment processing that cannot be put away if you have an offsite/backroom as you cannot leave the sales floor to do so, display changes that the company fails to fund enough hours for, all the engraving, and now the addition of online purchasers able to pick up in store. There is a bare skeleton crew of staff (when your part-time employees only get 6 hours a week, who would stay?) so you better not even THINK of calling in sick, better to come in and share your cold with everyone.
For a company whose entire business is based on the emotional attachment and sentiment of an engraved gift, you would think customer service would be higher on the priority list than it is. Clearly, it is nearly dead last.
Add that to DMs and RMs who are never trained to do what the sales people do, so the level of expectation is ridiculous and there is absolutely no point of reference for them to understand the difference between working for any other retailer and a retail entity that performs a service...just makes for a difficult work experience. Much of the communication from District and Regional managers is negative and critical, certainly no positive reinforcement or constructive criticism for TR!
The company seemed to have a very different approach in the 90s, when I was a customer rather than an employee, and unfortunately I was unaware of the changes in direction when I got the job. Today is my last day, and aside from some really great co-workers, I will not miss a thing.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Things Remembered Team.
Not only was I excited every day to show up to work, I was always the best dressed(in a suit), and was greeted by happy customers.

I started a few days before Mothers' Day, and was immediately put to work. I was trained to do my job in less than a day, giving others more hours to train on whatever they may have needed work on.
I started as a low Engraver, just a seasonal at that, but was quickly thrown into the exciting job of Floor sales.
Being understaffed on a busy day, my engraving had all but been finished and 8 customers had just walked in. The team usually consists of 2 or 3 people: 1 or 2 engravers, 1 manager/assistant manager, and usually one of the engravers would double as a sales associate. I had only been trained on the engraver, but my MOD (Manager on Duty) was swamped with questions and people needing help, so I jumped off of the engraver and happily helped whomever I could with their questions and would help set them up to go to the resister. Because of this, I was quickly promoted from an Engraver, to a Full time. After about a month, I was promoted again for being a great help in sales. Within 3 months, I was the Assistant Manager and was competitive in my sales with not only my Manager, but the entire store over in Odessa. I enjoyed having frequent calls from the Mangager or AM(Assistant Manager) of the other store, and would have fun trying to outdo the other stores.
I really enjoyed the way I was trained and the respect everyone had for one another. But, with everything so good, something had to be bad, right? Well, customers are very picky about what they want engraved. and if you mess up an engraving on a particular item, you would have to start from scratch. Glass and anything Wedding related was always a bother to engrave, mostly because you had to engrave the same thing multiple times.

With all of that aside, I truly enjoyed every moment I worked with TR, but had to leave because I didn't have time with the move.
If I could, I would go back in a heartbeat!

The job itself was not terrible, it was the supervisors that made this job untenable. Ask a 'master' lead a question and get one answer, ask the same question of a different lead two minutes later and get a different answer. They say one thing and mean another; I recommend getting everything in writing as much as possible. They preach quality but stress quantity. They're desperate to get orders finished and out the door but refuse to hire and allocate people in such a way to make it happen, instead choosing to cross-train people from all different departments when there are still things to be done in those departments (then wonder why nothing is getting done where and when it needs to be). They will put you in whatever department they want regardless of  your wishes (or in my case infirmities [read: back pain]) or what you are good at. Honestly the best part of this job would be the other employees, but management detracts from the atmosphere by micromanaging, hovering, and refusing to listen as well as an unwillingness to learn how to communicate with each other across the same shift let alone 2nd and 3rd shifts. 
They rebuilt the schedule to force employees to work either 10 or 12 hour days regardless of medical appointments and other outstanding obligations and HR gave several employees (including one of the best team leads in the building) a rather difficult time about missing work for said obligations, going so far as to tell one lead who had that issue "tough luck". Those that were able to get 'permission' to miss work were not allowed to make up the hours by coming in another day or even coming in early; you just get screwed. Speaking of screwed, seasonal workers get the worst deal; they come in for months at a time and do the same work as regular team members for several dollars less per hour and then at the end of the season are politely shown the door with a vague "we'll call you". 

They do not treat their employees well and if they offered me a job there again with a $2/hour raise I STILL don't know that I would go back.

Worked for this company for years and constantly found myself wanting to leave each and everyday. When I was a sales lead, my manager would schedule herself the same opening shift everyday and schedule me to close. She would constantly leave early and I would have to manage the store alone. If we got busy there would be hours of product production to be done after close of business. Due to lack of funded hours I was told strictly to clock out at 9:15 each night, but found myself staying sometimes until 11:00 pm or later to finish product production. Never got paid for any of this time. 
When I got promoted, I did get a raise. A year into that I found out that new hires right off the street were hired in at a greater rate than I, a seasoned vet was getting paid. 
I also found myself constantly having to drive around to various other stores in the area to pick up product to fulfill orders. I used my own gas for this as it took a very long time to get the signatures and approval for any gas payouts. 
On Days you were scheduled to open, you could potentially walk into a plethora of online orders to be done within 5 hours on top of the regular days work. During the crazy holiday rush, breaks were something you did not see. IF you were lucky, you got 5 minutes to run in the back room and just breathe. Also during holiday season, you never got a day off and never got to spend ANY time away from work or with your loved ones. 
One of my final straws was when my manager decided she was going to schedule a visual store change from 6 pm-6 am, overnight. She was much younger than I and her body could handle that. Mine could not. I drank energy drinks to a point where I was going to vomit if I drank another sip. All she could say was "Keep drinking more, keep going". I physically could not do it. She did not care. I ended up leaving at 4:30 am after passing out. This job stole my sanity, missed many events in my personal life including my best friends wedding that I should have stood up in, and took every bit of happiness I had for going to a job away. It's not worth it.

I worked at two different locations for things remembered. One was on a military base, another was in a mall. The experiences were drastically different. At the military location it was easy to push the rewards card and the (usually ugly) PWP (product with purchase) as most people came in to get gifts for co-workers who were about to be deployed or relocated. The dress code was strict, but after a $200 trip to T.J. Maxx I had a full Things Remembered approved wardrobe. (black or white pants, black & white top, black shoes, small heels, no open toes)

The machines are easy to figure out if you have any experience with microsoft word, basic photo editing, or clip art use. All of the designs are preset unless they're a special order. I was a certified master engraver after about 4 months of working.

The big shock came when I transferred to a mall location. The inventory was completely different, the policies and procedures weren't followed. (I was amazing at engraving knives, but the mall location refused to let me do it) Also the pay cut. On the base I was making close to $17 an hour, when I went to the mall I was cut down to $9 initially, but managed to fight and win for $11/hr.

The sales goals suck, and this is coming from a former manager of some big retail giants. If you don't PUSH premium fonts, or tacky add-on's, or have a low overall sales amount you're liable to be written up. Which is a lot of times outside of your control. If you're only scheduled during weekdays versus weekends it's hard to nail down good sales.

The most frustrating thing other than the sheer lack of good management were clients not knowing how to spell. If we suggested correcting a word (i.e. they're their there) the customer would flip out more often than not. It was illiteracy at its finest. 

The best thing about this job is I can tout that I know how to engrave nearly everything aside from stone.

A typical day starts by getting up at 4:30 a.m. and punching the timeclock before 6:00 a.m. Most days are 10 hours with appropriate breaks and half hour lunch.

I learned to use the monogramming machines, how to build an order on the computer and save to the system the machines use. Some days I pulled product for orders waiting to be processed by that day's monogrammers.

Management was not sympathetic to the low wages and lack of job security. There are no guarantees of job security at all. It's quite possible to get a phone call at night saying you are no longer needed. It's nothing that you did wrong, they just don't need you anymore. No warning.

My co-workers were extremely nice and easy to get along with. We were all in the same boat!

One of the hardest parts of this job was when there were no orders to sew or build I was sent either to Inventory Control (stocking shelves, unpacking boxes, or filling orders) for Monogramming, Jewelry or Glass products. The absolutely worst part of the job was being sent to Shipping. In Shipping all orders (boxes) going out must be scanned and a ship label put on the box. Then it gets lifted over a bar on the line to head to the truck area. Some of these boxes get quite heavy with all the glass, crystal, etc. After all have labels on them, I would run to the other side of the warehouse to the truck bays to sort the boxes as to Next Day Air or Regular Delivery. The Postal Service items are also pulled out. Then I would start loading the UPS trailer. I am 5' 1" and this became quite difficult at times since the trailer gets stacked to the roof! There was always a time crunch to get the trailer loaded as the drivers arrive at 3:00 each day.

The most enjoyable part of the day was the break time or lunch time with the friends I made.

A year ago, my review of this company would have been positive. I worked here for just shy of a decade. I wouldn't have stuck it out so long if I didn't like my job.

And then everything changed.

Not everyone who has years of management experience is a good manager. This was proven over the past year. New manager, new to the company, and 11 months in is still using the excuse that they aren't trained properly to do things. If it wasn't for the assistant manager, most of the manager's duties would not get done.  If I listed everything that has gone wrong, you would think I was making it up. I have pictures from the past year that I wanted to send to the district manager, but didn't due to not wanting to appear petty. I only hope, for the sake of the co-workers I am leaving behind, that upper management does a surprise audit of that store without giving her time to scrounge the day or two before their arrival to do work she doesn't do normally. I don't think the deposit receipts have been signed off on since May. I even attempted to call the Shrink hotline, but nobody ever came out to the store. The district manager didn't seem bothered that the store manager was out of dress code on almost every store visit. It was abundantly clear that numbers were more important the well being of the staff and the health issues due to the ceiling tile covered in black mold that is still there after 6 months.

That said, the past year has completely clouded my experience with Things Remembered. Where I used to look forward to going to work, catching up with the co-workers, and engraving, I dreaded what issues awaited me inevitably every day caused not by customers, but by the store manager.

I worked at Things Remembered for only about 6 months before i had to leave.  From the moment I put in my application i should have known that it wasn't an ideal place to work due to the fact that all of the staff looked totally lost and the manager at the time seemed to be trying to do 10 things at once and helping customers was not on that list.  An average day there would consist of dusting...a lot of dusting.  Some days I could stock up the cabinets that were horribly organized or go the back room.  I had to learn to do things on my own as there was no training even on the engraving machines.  I saw almost four different managers in my time there.  They stores seemed to hire almost anyone to be honest.  None of the managers were receptive to suggestions or ideas I gave to them and spent more time 'getting something from the back' than working on anything but the main things like opening or closing a register or the store.  At that time I had only public transportation to get me around.  The managers did not work with me on that either.  Instead one of the managers would schedule me on late days or whenever they didnt feel like coming in because there were parties to go to.  How do I know this?  They talked about the partes with the assistant manager and planned how it would all go.  I couldnt argue about the schedule because I didnt want to cause problems and lose my job as I had just become a mother and had several sick family members depending on me.  My coworkers i barely rememeber because they came and left within weeks of being hired.  The hardest part of my job was being able to close a sale when products were advertised but not supplied to the store.  The only part I truly liked was talking with customers and suggesting things to help them with their needs.  I wouldnt recommend anyone to work there unless the company has revamped totally.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Assistant manager 1 salary reported	$14.00 per hour
Store manager 2 salaries reported	$31.00 per hour
Sales associate 2 salaries reported	$11.75 per hour
Seasonal associate 3 salaries reported	$18.33 per hour
Sales lead 1 salary reported	$11.50 per hour

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