Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Also, after you hit a button on the phone, make sure you have DM approval to hit the next button

Quote from an email fwd'd my way:

"Hey all,

All of your studios will need to call/text/email you daily with the number of outreach appointments they've booked for that day at close of business.

You will then call/text/email me.

I will then have to call/email Kellee first thing each morning with the number of outreach appointments booked for the entire territory the previous day.

ALL studios will have a VERY high level of accountability for booking ATLEAST 3 outreach appointments a day. This is what the conference call will be about this afternoon, just to give you a heads up. And home office will have a team dedicated to investigating whether FAKE appointments are being booked...so please inform your people that if found, there will serious repercussions. We will execute this legitimately using all call lists and referrals and acquisition.

If you...or one of your managers are on vacation, someone MUST be in charge of doing this...to begin immediately. You may want to host a conference call or you can communicate with each one on one. But again...this will begin immediately, beginning tonight for appointments booked today.

Just wanted to give you a heads up...and even though this is additional tracking, and will continue indefinitely, I know it will help our business. And there will be 100% accountability for this "Operation Get Sits" program.

Thank all."

Discuss.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup......... EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT.

1st, it was emailing the number of SS cards sold and now its the # of appts made for the week we are in. NO NO NO, not just ANY outreach appt. it HAS to be for the current business week for it to count. Ugh.

We use to have to get 10 a week, that damn near impossible, now its 3 a friggan day.

I sent the company a "Bright idea" submission to oput some commercials on the dang TV and it was shut down..... God forbid THEY do something to bring sits in *rolls eyes*

Anonymous said...

so are you guys getting paid for this? CPI relies on the fact that most employees do not know their rights and will do anything to keep their jobs so they take full advantage by implementing things like this. for instance, did you know that you are required to take a ten minute "rest break" as defined by law in the middle of any four hour shifts? and did you know that if you decide not to take a lunch break and not complain about it, cuz we all know sometimes we would just rather get our work done and not leave the studio, that CPI must pay you an EXTRA hour of pay after you work 8?? Of course most of you do not know this. and why would you unless you research labor laws like I did. oh, and if you are on a work call while not clocked in, you get paid AT LEAST 15 minutes for ea call? i am already involved in a class action law suit against CPI for these offenses and had to be interrogated by their lawyer while being lied to by the company that i had been soooo loyal to for so many years. *jumps off soapbox*
~M~

Anonymous said...

We are a defendant in certain pending legal proceedings relating to allegations that the Company failed to pay certain employees for “off the clock” work and provide meal and rest breaks as required by law.... While we believe the claims are without merit and continue our vigorous defense, the outcome of these proceedings is difficult to assess and quantify and therefore we cannot determine whether the financial impact, if any, will be material to our financial position or results of operations. The defense of these actions may be both time consuming and expensive. If any of these legal proceedings were to result in an unfavorable outcome, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial position and results of operations.

Anonymous said...

"While we believe the claims are without merit..."

This is complete and total BULL!! Just look around this, or any other blog where CPI employees "vent" and you will quickly see that these claims are valid and chocked full of "merit". This is a nation wide complaint from employees coast to coast. Good, hard-working, loyal, honest, trust worthy employees that are trying to provide for their families. They do not have a law degree, they simply trust the company that signs their paychecks to treat them fairly and legally, and with a little respect would not hurt. If these allegations are without merit, in your opinion, then please explain how you justify this most recent expectation of daily correspondence by the manager AFTER they have clocked out and gone home? How do you explain the years of single coverage with NO overlapping shifts to cover required breaks? I am sure you will not or simply cannot respond accordingly due to legal binding, but this is an anonymous forum and the rest of us would love to hear something, anything that could explain the actions of CPI.

Anonymous said...

To speak to "anon 3", who is clearly very high up in the CPI food chain, it sounds like the current SPS employees are getting no support because of the financial situation the company has put itself in, and has pretty much counted itself out of the rat race due to impending doom in the form of a large settlement payout. No more raises, district meetings, double coverage, Christmas bonuses, advertising, per diem, travel expenses, proper training, decent props, equipment repair, or incentives of any kind. Eh...let them crumble. The company has gone to hell in a hand basket over the last few years anyway. Who feels sorry for a corporate machine? Smart people are only loyal to themselves, not companies.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, apparently we get written up if we don't get our 3 appointments per day. No exceptions.
Is that even legal? Can they write us up for not outreaching 3 appointments a day?
I made 50 calls today and was lucky to make 2 appointments. The other 2 I made didn't count for the new outreach requirements because they were offered at the conclusion of a session.
What a load of crap.

Anonymous said...

Just lie...... your DM is not in the studio with you. what the hell do they know. an appointment is a damn appointment and with the crap they make us do we need to take what we can to keep them off our butts.

I want CPI to drowned, then at least i wouldnt have to deal with the crap and i could collect unemployment.

This company has turned me into a lying, scheming, and manipulative person. Someone i know and like will come into the studio and i STILL, for fear of being yelled at, will suck all the money out of them i can. I hate what ive become. I just want to be a photographger!

Anonymous said...

It was hard enough to get the required 10..and now with single coverage..it is going to be even harder. I had an appointment every hour from 10-2 yesterday and we all know, that single coverage..you are lucky if you get to run to the bathroom between customers..especially if you have a cranky child..or an indecisive customer. When I finally DID get a few minutes..I had to session plan. I did call the lists... and I did manage to compile a list of 6 or so people who needed to check their schedules..but wow.. they are SOOOOOO setting us up for failure. Also..I am the associate who has the studio manager with 4 kids who is going through a divorce. Know what she did on Friday???? Put in her three weeks notice to step down to Assistant manager...imagine that! She got the line of crap "OH..but we KNOW you can do it.." Yeah.. we are already 10,000 down for the quarter.. sure..ok. I don't blame her for stepping down. She is going to have to find another job to go along with this one.. and you bet your butt she put in an availibilty slip so she doesn't get stuck with the crap hours either!

Anonymous said...

My "Bright Idea" submission was to attach a bluetooth headset to us...that way we can make outreach calls while we shoot and sell our sessions and deliver out pictures. Naturally we should be able to handle multitasking with 4 jobs at once right?

Anonymous said...

I know someone at Picture Me studios who I used to work with when it was Walmart Portrait. According to her all P.M studios got the Canon cameras, will be getting the platforn we are not allowed to have anymore, have mandatory monthly managers meetings, getting all new backgrounds and they start out at a higher rate of pay than someone does at Sears. It seems to me that for some crazy reason the people at P.M studios are treated like kings and queens while we are being treated like dogs. The one thing the get and we dont ,is the camera in every studio that their DMs and regionals can view right from their laptops at home. Not working? You will get a phone call, Mom not seated by child , your getting a call immediately! I dont blame CPI for monitoring people at those studios since I have seen first hand what lack of work some of them do at Sears as well. I just really feel that its amazing that the DM's there have to babysit their employees instead of doing any work themselves. I would love to know why all their money is being put into the "lower quality" studios and we get crap?

Anonymous said...

so now we are.......
photographers
sales people
telemarketers
secretaries
janitors
and accountants (cause for the life of me i cant get in my head to figure out percentages and plan and "adjusted plan" and whatever else)
all rolled into one job that if your just starting out is barely above minimum wage. if your higher up on the food chain your only incentive is you get to keep your job. yet my kid sister works the drive through at mcdonalds and gets the same pay a xmas bonus and is allowed to be sick. :::gasp::: i could flip a damned burger....id like to see those french fry jockeys take a portrait like i do......and yet we are treated so expendable......why bother. hmmmmm ea district should plan a day where they just dont go in leave their studio close and let someone else scramble to fill our shoes...good luck (insert expletive here)

Anonymous said...

I've said it before- CPI is putting all its eggs into the WalMart basket. Who wouldn't? Sears is dying a slow death as WalMart continues to be a global force.

Anonymous said...

off topic but today i had a family who came in. multigenerational. they dressed nicely for the occasion. i was asked to take some of the 2 teenaged daughters. so i direct them to sit on the floor. bad idea. im suddenly flashed by a whole lot of unnecessariness. why are these 15 year olds in dresses without underwear. im trying to redirect them because their whole family is outside the camera room and i dont want to embarrass them but they cant follow directions. why oh why do i get these people. im like a wierdo magnet.

Anonymous said...

wow, if you people hate your jobs and life that bad... quit. Nobody7 is forcing you to stay. I think that you live to be miserable. Seriously, I heard about this site and thought it was a joke. This is so funny. I cannot believe that grown people really spend their time on this. If you spent as much time on your contact list as you do on here complaining you'd have your 3 appointments and nothing to complain about. Get a hobby.

Anonymous said...

i believe that we are driving our cusotmers crazy by continuing to call them constantly. if I put myself in their shoes I would hate someone calling me over and over and over again. i would not return personally as it would turn me off. our customers no doubt feel the same way based on how many ask me not to call them again. Some are polite about it but most are not. I am also in a low volume studio where my call list has been exhausted. we are also closed on tuesday and are only open until 2 on wednesdays and thursdays. so we have made it difficult for customers to even book when its convenient for them. our bogo customers are complaining about this constantly. i just dont feel that we are getting any help out here. not to mention that we are being pulled in a thousand different directions constantly. its just not fun anymore.

Anonymous said...

"wow, if you people hate your jobs and life that bad... quit. Nobody7 is forcing you to stay. I think that you live to be miserable. Seriously, I heard about this site and thought it was a joke. This is so funny. I cannot believe that grown people really spend their time on this. If you spent as much time on your contact list as you do on here complaining you'd have
your 3 appointments and nothing to complain about. Get a hobby."


yeah i spent 5 hours straight on the phone yesterday. 3 people answered 1 screamed at me not to call her as we have called twice a day every day for the last two weeks. her next action is suing for harrasment as we've gone beyond the telemarketing laws. the other 2 said no thank you they will no longer use our company. (apparently they have the strange notion that if they WANTED an appointment they would call US) oh and FYI ive gone on thirty.....THIRTY job interviews. the employers think i dont have sufficient enough experience in retail seeing as im a photographer. so unless i want to live in a box i;m stuck. thank you for your judgement, your bullsh$# attitude, and blinders. may you be run over by a large bus in the near future.

Anonymous said...

Let me reply to the outreach subject....I think that the call lists are a great way to remind our customers to make an appointment... 1st birthdays are our meal ticket...what mom doesn't want to capture that moment. Huge opportunity... I get it... the customer gets it.. reminders are appointments.. spend money... less labor if associate calls.. The Calls... More people answer after 5pm... so many people screen their calls... leave a message.... we make 20 calls per shift, and the company replies not quantity..quality. How do I do quality when it is an answering machine..
Ten appointments per week is reasonable, Twenty a week per studio equals three hundred a week per district... 300 a week should equal a team of telemarketers, per district paid an hourly wage....but they have a team at home office to make sure we are not faking the outreach we are supposed to get as a studio....where is the reasoning in this?
I can support the concept of outreach, I just can't support a company that won't advertise in the Yellow Pages, but expects the employees to be their advertising agency.. I thought we were supposed to be photographers. "We capture your moments...to last a lifetime"

Anonymous said...

P.S. if you have gone to 30 job interviews and not been hired then maybe you should try a different field. Apparently you either don't have the qualifications or you don't present yourself well in interviews...Good luck in the real world...

Anonymous said...

oh ive gone through the process and been told i'll get the call of when to process my paperwork to begin, for the company (and the hospital) to put on a hiring freeze. the other places were regular retail who passed over me for someone who has put together more plan o grams. anyone who has worked for CPI can sell anyone under the table, but we are labeled photographers and must not have retail experience is the mentality im faced with.

Anonymous said...

i also can understand the need for outreach what i dont understand is the need to threaten our jobs with it. i was hired before outreach it wasnt in the job description. you can be a telemarketer and use the same tactics for more money and set your own hours. i was hired as a photographer, i was trained as a photographer, i expanded with the company guidelines. i worked for 10 hours a week for a few years until a promotion was available in my studio. we've all slaved away did the time. i dont need someone to pet my head and say oh baby you did great but when goals are accomplished they should be recognized. not well you did # 1-100 but missed on number 68 so too bad for you no bonus but you get this cute little sales cert you must sign. the people that have been here for years feel the worst of it. we invested the time only to be beaten down after so long. i personally dont want to start from scratch in a new company but ive missed too many birthdays, family event an lately easters to care anymore. when quality of life is overshadowed by "open availability" you need to reevaluate.

Anonymous said...

“FYI ive gone on thirty.....THIRTY job interviews. the employers think i dont have sufficient enough experience in retail seeing as im a photographer. so unless i want to live in a box i;m stuck. thank you for your judgement, your bullsh$# attitude, and blinders. may you be run over by a large bus in the near future.”

It is sad that the company feels the need to continue badgering the customer. I would say that it will turn more customers away.
The job market is hard right now. Many companies’s are doing interviews, but are actually not hiring. It is called having a recruiting pool to look from, even a year later. I only worked for SPS a week. I was smart enough to get out. I did not agree with many of the programs that they developed. I finally decided that retail was not the same. I choose to get out. I value the time with my family, and really like my nights and weekends free. I wish everyone luck on finding a new job, somewhere they will value your worl

Anonymous said...

I gave 10 years then quit - the best decision I ever made! better pay and NO TELEMARKETING at my new job!