$9.99

One of my favorite photo sessions was with a little two month old baby where every shot I had was great. We even got an amazingly rare smiling photo and a great tummy shot. Sometimes you leave a session and you're really proud of the photos you were able to get, especially when mom was really demanding of the child and brought multiple outfits and had specific things in mind. It's nice to succeed like that.

Then someone pulls out the coupon for the single pose $9.99 package and orders only one picture.

Perhaps it involves magic

I once had a day where I had an appointment booked as the last appointment of the day. They had called earlier in the day and, as people often tell me, said it was the one single time that they could do it.

Their appointment time came around but they didn’t. So I waited until 20 minutes past their appointment time and then called the number on the schedule. I got a family member who told me that they had left the house about 10 minutes earlier.

How in the world can I stay on time and take everyone else back on time when I have people that leave their house 10 minutes after the time their appointment was supposed to begin?

Money.

Your manager is trying to give you as little money as possible.

Every year, upper management gets on a kick where labor is very important to them: how much is spent, what percentage of the sales it makes up, how they can spend less.

They will keep the studio understaffed and try to send you home the moment you aren't needed. If you're on flex, they really don't want to bring you in. If you're on coverage, they really don't want to have to give you the flex help and will want you to shoot sessions 30 minutes apart by yourself.

Part timers, expect to get 15 hours max no matter what your were promised.
Full timers, they are just dying for the opportunity to cut your hours if your sales numbers fall. It doesn't matter that being under 30 hours a week puts your health benefits in jeopardy. If you want health benefits, you better get your sales numbers up.

Your time will never be your own [part 6]

Submission from someone in the know:

"Since the huge labor suit took place (it's still pending), the company has cracked down on labor violations. But this doesn't mean that more people are scheduled so that you can take your ten, fifteen, or half-hour break. No, this means that you have to find a way to take a break, even when you're scheduled alone, without denying any walk-in appointments or making anyone wait. And if you work more than five hours without clocking out for a break, you get written up. Do this more than two times, and (according to the DM), you get fired."

"So the long and short of it is that employees are being coerced into fabricating breaks so that they don't get written up. Consequently, employees are being pushed to spend their "break" time working off the clock so that the company can maintain the appearance of following labor laws. And if you didn't get to take a break all day and dind't have time to clock yourself out while working, the manager might go in and "fix" your time card for you. Time card fraud, anyone?"

Your time is not your own [part 5]

In preparation for tomorrow's entry, I would like to point out the following:

I had no idea that as employees, we were supposed to receive 15 minute, paid breaks for every certain number of hours we worked as is required by law. No one ever told me.

It was not until I was taking an employee through training and heard it on the new training videos that I realized "hey, no one has been getting those!"

Yet I felt that if I were to take the breaks owed to me, I would get in trouble and not be seen as a team player. Working at Sears Portrait Studio, you feel you have no job security and suspect they may be amassing those summary of conversations so that they can fire you [though if they really want to fire you, they can because you'll notice when you signed your application that CPI has the right to terminate employment at any time without reason]. I felt that by demanding my breaks I would just further be encouraging them to fire me so they could get someone that they didn't have to pay for breaks.

It was assumed that around Christmas time, no one would get breaks period, often not even lunches. In terms of lunches, you are supposed to get them "business permitting." This is used as an excuse to withhold them if there are a lot of appointments or if there are a lot of tasks around the studio to be done. Perish the thought they they would bring in another associate to help you.

Testing your patience with test calls

Keep those submissions coming! Here's today's:

"I managed a super high volume studio for many years and was regularly scheduling 8 appointments per hour from open to close during our busiest times of the year. Talk about no room for error!

To kick off the holidays every year, my studio was "test-called" by both the corporate office and the district manager, to ensure no customer was turned away. The caller would usually start with "What's the latest appointment you have?" And you'd better say that would be 8:00 pm or whatever your closing time is, or you would be fired. Turning away a customer is cause for immediate dismissal according to CPI.

I put up with those test calls for years and reprimanded associates who were caught saying the wrong thing. Then I got test called myself one day. The caller twisted everything I said around and kept me on the phone for a good 5 minutes (while there are plenty of things that need to be coordinated in the studio), trying to get me to say something out of line.

With nowhere else to really go to attempt to appease the test caller, I offered to have an extra photographer stay late to accommodate her. As a result, when she reported back to DM, she wrote that I "seemed kind of mean to associates."

Your time is not your own [part 4]

Saturday is the one day you're pretty much guaranteed to work with another person. It is also the day that the schedule goes completely out the window.

Working 2-8pm? Well in addition to having to probably stay late, you may, after planning your morning and planning lunch with friends, get a call that you're needed earlier.

Working 9-1am? This means that you will likely be there until as late as 4pm

You will never know when you can expect to leave and you cannot plan your day around your work schedule. So, even though you're scheduled for five or six hours of paid work, expect to have to keep much of your day reserved for work. Something they don't tell you at the interview.

Death to trees

Closing used to take about 15 minutes. Then corporate extended it to a half hour by enacting a process that involved writing down the same information twice in two different locations and printing out uneccessary reports that could have always been looked up in the future if they were needed.

There are about 900 Sears Portrait Studios in the country. Let's say the person closing makes $9.00/hr, so this 15 minutes costs the company $2.25. Multiply that out to take in account all studios and it costs the company $14,175 a week or $737,100 a year. Not to mention the fact that the 8 extra sheets of paper per studio per day means this initiative uses 2,620,800 extra sheets of paper per year.

And if you ask me, the greatest price they pay is that they're saying to their employees "we don't trust you and so you must stay later to do this paperwork to prove you aren't stealing."

How are things at your old studio?

Those of you that have quit, have you checked in to see how things have progressed in your absense? We got a comment the other day in which the author wrote: "I left the company a year and a half ago and, since then, my old job (Studio Manager) has been consistently posted on the SPS website. They can't find anyone to hire and when they do, they stay less than 3 weeks. I can only imagine what is going on there at the studio."

The word on the street is that all the studios are really short staffed. People have less disposable income these days, so I know sales figures are down by about 10-20% from last year based on what people have told me. The company is holding the staff responsible and turning on the pressure, and as a result, people are quitting. Many studios are looking to hire 4+ part timers for the approaching busy season, and are resorting to calling people that used to work for them years ago in order to try and get some help.

And of course, we aren't interested.

6 poses and creativity

You will always get 6 poses [or in the case of some studios 9 poses] or be in trouble. You are to get six markedly different photos in your fifteen minutes. This job will be sold to you as a job where you can express your creativity, but in the end because of rules and constraints, you'll be doing the same poses every single time whenever possible for speed and efficiency. There are a number of required pose types that you must get each time no matter what. If you get a family that says they only want shots from the waist up from head on and you do that, you will be graded down on photo evaluations.

So once again you have to make the choice: do you make your customer happy or make your boss happy?

Be accused of lying! (one of my favorite stories)

One day my studio manager comes up to me following her vacation

Manager: Why did you put a rush on order number ###### without charging them?
Me(AsstMngr): I didn't put a rush on that order.
Manager: Well a rush requires manager approval and I didn't give it.
Me: I remember I took the photos for that order and put the order through, and I remember them talking about leaving the country soon, but I didn't put a rush on it.
Manager: (getting angry)Well I didn't approve it...
Me: I'm pretty sure I didn't, but I could always be mistaken. If I did, I'm sorry and it's definitely something I won't do in the future.
Manager: A rush order costs the company money and in order to be profitable we need to blah blah blah blah and we can't be giving away rush orders and blah blah blah blah.
Me: Again, I'll remember that in the future.

The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that I hadn't put a rush on that order. So the next day at work I got on company email and did some research to see who actually put the order through. Sure enough, it was one of our associates and the lab hadn't checked with us before doing the rush.
I printed out this email.

Me: (With a "whoops-isn't-this-a-funny-mistake" tone) Hey look Manager, I got on email to look it up and sure enough, it was Associate all along!

(This of course is the part where you would expect an apology. Instead...)

Manager: Why would you take the valuable time to look that up?

"Ok but not great"

Keep these submissions coming and I'll keep posting them. Here's today's:

"You make an appointment over the phone for a woman who says she only wants to bring in her five-year old, who she claims happens to be an angel. You're already pretty busy and on single coverage, but since she is only bringing in one child, and you both know, without saying, that she'll probably just get her one-pose package, you're expecting this to be an easy, no-frills, "in-and-out" session.

She shows up late with not one, but FOUR kids dressed for pictures, because she decided that while she was at it, she might as well get all the kids pictures done. Never mind calling you to let you know, or even to see if extra time could be set aside. Just showing up with three extra kids in tow.

And she also wants individuals of each child, and an outfit change. Except the outfits she wants are still sitting on the clothing rack in the children's department, can she run out and purchase them really fast? And when she comes back she will need extra time to have an internal debate about which outfit she wants to use first, is that ok?

Finally, time for the session to begin! Can we start with the group shot, even though the youngest is extremely crabby?? Oh, and don't forget about an all-girls and all-boys shot, plus every combination of breakdowns possible among the kids. Hey, do you mind throwing her in a group shot and then one with each child separate? And while you're at it, she will now tell you that she changed her mind about the background that she absolutely had to have for the first half of the shots, can we re-shoot everything on another?

And when this is all said and done, she will probably just buy the package of one of the group shots that she deems "ok, but not great", and then make an appointment to bring them back and try for the individuals again."

I know exactly what our submitter is talking about. That's what always amazes me about talking to people about working at Sears Photo Studio: it's the same bad situation nationwide.

People are selfish

I was once running behind so I told the following sit "I'm sorry, but I'm running a little bit behind. It's going to be closer to 10:05 than 10:00."

They audibly and theatrically sighed to have to wait an extra five minutes.

And during their session they wanted to do extra outfit changes, extra poses for each individual child, and had no problem trying to make the other appointment after them far more than five minutes late.

Breaking more rules of statistics

So what happens if your online customer satisfaction score is too low? You tell more people to take it and tell them what to write.

What is the point of conducting a survey if you stuff the box with people that you essentially select to answer the question? That's like going to the democratic convention and polling people to figure out if Obama will win the election.

Documentation

Everything is documented.

Let's say one day you forgot to take out the trash when you closed down the studio.

The next day you will have a Summary of Conversation waiting for you. It will say that it is for "failure to follow proper closing procedures" and if it happens again there will be "further documentation leading up to termination."

All because you forgot a single step of a many-step, half hour long closing procedure once.

Being pushy [Part 2]

Your job depends on selling $120 dollars per sale. You will put people deeper into credit card debt.

You will sell someone something they don't really need and didn't come for. They will say "I'm going to have to work a lot of extra hours for this!"

I once sold $240 worth of stuff to someone who had her current credit card balance written directly on the card in Sharpie: $5,550.00

It's either that or enjoy not having a job.

Make a lot of new friends

Because every couple weeks, someone you know will quit and a new person will take their place.

When I started, there were two girls that had been hired before me. One actually stayed with the company. As you will see, she is the exception.

Girl #2 stopped showing up on the day after Christmas, leaving everyone scrambling and changing people's Christmas plans.

#3 Left after two weeks shortly after starting to learn sales how much the company held you to it.

#4 Quit after realizing I was getting mistreated without me even having to tell her (more on that another time)

#5 Stopped showing up around Thanksgiving time because she couldn't stand having to deal with the studio manager

#6 Stopped showing up because she found the job too stressful

#7 Stopped a couple days into training after realizing the job wasn't for her

#8 Was fired for stealing

#9 Quit to "focus more on studies"

#10 Stopped showing up after about 2 weeks after he started to get written up. Studio manager told me she had expected to fire him soon for sales numbers

#11 Was fired after she attacked a coworker after a stressful night

#12 Stopped showing up after 4 days of training.

And of course I make number 13. But I put in my two week's notice after a year. Almost all of the above named quit before they were around a month.

Keep them misinformed

In an effort to keep your average sale up, you will not tell customers about the deals that are offered.

Our "regular sheet price" is 14.99 in the sense that that one is most expensive and is therefore the one we try to sell regularly. Read your coupon correctly and you'll notice that there are 7.99 sheets. These are for images that come right off the camera that don't include "enhancements".

Zoom in? That brings your price up 7 dollars. Black and white? 7 dollars. Put a little glow around the image? 7 dollars.

If you ask about 2.99 sheets, that's usually a managers special after the first 6.

So if you're getting 12 sheets and don't care about borders, you can pay $159.99 for a collection or you can pay $65.88. Your choice. But guess which one your associate will tell you about.

This isn't something in the sales training manual, but it's something that has to happen. The offical sales training manual says something to the effect of "being a good sales person is offering your customer every product". Everyone starts out that way, but then everyone gets to the point where they are given some sort of "bring your sales up or you're out of here" ultimatum and this is what they have to resort to. I know I did.

Why can't you bring in more money after I ruin things?

I love getting all these story submissions! Here's what today's new submitter has to say:

"We had our district manager come in to "help" with our Santa event one year. Aside from not knowing our associates or how our studio worked, she looked messy and was somewhat awkward and quiet with the customers. She hadn't been behind a camera in so long that we figured keeping her on a sales table or as a floater would work out. Little did we know the extent to which she would screw up our day."

"Let me preface the rest of this story by saying that we had our Santa Event down to an exact science. Our fastest, best shooter was in the room with Santa, and the room stayed the same with very little variance. Santa did not leave that room so that we could get the pictures in as fast as possible. Six poses...ten minutes? No problem, we could handle it. The other room was booked consistently every half hour, for the customers wanting an appointment on that day, but not for the Santa event. With a sales person on each table, one at the register, and one in each camera room, our studio ran like clockwork."

"So there it was: the perfect system consisting of one event room (which had different pricing and its own two sales tables) and one regular portrait room. All the customers knew that Santa was completely booked and that no walk-ins could be made for him. They also knew that if a baby started screaming, they might be expected to wait a few minutes. After all, how often do you get the opportunity to have Santa and a camera room all to yourself? In other words, the Santa event customers were prepared for some craziness. The non-event customers were not. After all, they didn't sign up for it."

"Our district manager decided that she knew a better way to do things. She put herself in the non-event camera room and began shifting things around, moving Santa from room to room in order to push the non-event customers into paying the (higher) Santa event price without knowing they were doing so. As a result, the event room got backed up, our system got screwed, and one of our best and most loyal customers was forced to wait over an hour for her grandchildrens' non-event session. All the while, the DM was taking her sweet time with Santa in the non-event room, shooting substandard photos for customers who didn't want an appointment with Santa in the first place."

"Because of this incident, we almost lost the business of three customers who had come consistently for years, none of us got breaks, our sales were down as compared to previous Santa Events, and Santa (begrudgingly) had to stay late. To add insult to injury, our DM had the nerve to chastise us for our decreased sales on that day. That was four years ago. She is still the DM and delights in coming into our studio, unannounced, in order to "check up" on us and throw away props and other items that make our camera room look "crowded." She denies us money to replace those props and expects us to keep our sales up when we don't have the items that the customers want in their pictures. She is never certain about anything, and seems not to know how to return phone calls, but expects us to drop everything when she decides to grace us with her presence. "

"I love taking pictures, working with people, and training new employees, but this woman makes life at the portrait studio hell. With the amount of money they make, you'd think that they could at least hire clear-thinking people to run the districts."

I'm adding my thoughts to the comments. Why not add yours too?

The Perceptive Computer

On the studio intranet there was a category called "What's In It For Me?" and when I checked it, it would tell me "This listing is empty"

Being Pushy

The company provides you with scripts. When they released the new canvas wrap prints, we got a memo that had the new scripts.

Imagine you're a customer and you've sat down at the sales table after a good photo session with your daughter. You've come to spend about $70 and you've told this to the photographer. This is what the script-following associate would say regardless:

"Mrs. Smith we got such great pictures! I remember you said that her grandmother bought her that dress. I think it suits her personality so well! What do you say we surprise grandma with one of our new canvas wraps as a gift! Would you like it in 8x10 or 11x14?"

These start at $129.99 each.

No one trusts you

Everyone was always suspect.

I can't tell you how many times I was woken up by my phone in the morning asking why I had only done 20 outreach calls. Or why the new shipment of photos (that came in early) hadn't been put away yet.

Things happen. People come up and need passports. Babies get upset. People come in to pick up photos. People call with 20 minutes of questions.

Yet there is little respect for this and since you work by yourself, you don't have anyone to back you up.

I'm a very diligent worker. At a previous job, management gave me awards and recognition for my hard work. At Sears Portrait Studio, I was only met with suspicion.

And so I took to keeping a log of every hour I worked.

Hold events, pay for them yourself.

I know exactly what today's submission by an ex Studio Manager is talking about: at Easter I shelled out thirty bucks for our outreach event and the studio manager did likewise.

She writes, "I regularly bought balloons, cupcakes and goodie bags for the monthly birthday event out of my own pocket. When I began to question upper management about this, they got all shifty-eyed and began squirming in their seats. I was told I should visit bakeries and other businesses in my area and ask them to donate their products for the events. WTF? This is a for profit CORPORATION, not the United Way!!!"

"The icing on the cake was when my (former) DM visited my studio and showed me a photo from the #1 studio in the district from their "Fairy Forest" event. The set up was very elaborate: garden arches, toads, mushrooms, and tons of flowers, etc.

"I said, "Wow, that looks awesome! Who paid for all the stuff?" Of course, DM's whole demeanor changed, and he replied that the studio manager had paid for it, not expecting to be reimbursed. So, that's how she runs that $175 PRS: she pays for new props and decorations.

If things are so bad that CPI can't give the studios a monthly $20 slush fund for events (the equivalent of one set of specs sheets sold), maybe they can apply for food stamps- at least that would pay for the cupcakes."

"Shortly after this conversation took place, I was told I had a bad attitude and the write-ups began... "

Re: "You are encouraged" comment....

Every blog writer loves comments, even negative ones, so let's respond to this.

On my Sept 24 entry, we received this comment:

"You are an idiot. This is a business we are running and most businesses want to make money. Who are you to say how to go about doing that. You don't sound like you want to work. In your world, if the customer does come in, they would have their portraits for free! I could go on and on but you probably won't post this anyway."

I'm unsure what you're responding to: the story submitter or myself for the comment I made following the story. I'll assume I'm the one being called an idiot though.

Yes, CPICorp wants to make money. I would never give away portraits for free. If they had money, I'd be happy to take it. However their business model is set up in a way that can discourage that. Let's break this down.

Let's say you're a high school student [as many associates are] and it's prom season. Your friends are all going to need group shots and Sears Portrait Studio is far cheaper than the photos they take at the dance and the photos would turn out far better and have variety. It makes sense that you would want to invite your friends in.

Here's what should happen:
You invite your friends in and make appointments for them. They can't all come in at the same time so you have to do two different sittings. Each sitting buys the $9.99 package of their favorite pose and a 29.99 cute collage you made up. Those two sales make up $80 that your studio would not have had that week. Your manager thanks you for the extra money you brought in for the company.

Here's what happens:
How many hours you work and how you are viewed as an employee is based on your sales average. If you invite your friends in, you know that your sales average will take a huge hit (To make up for your two $40 sales, your next sale would have to be $240 to bring you back up to $120 average). Yet you invite them in anyway because you really want to take their photos. Your sales average for the week ends up at $90 after some other sales.
Your ninety dollar sales average gets posted on the bottom of the studio's list, serving to make it look as if you have done the company a disservice. Rather than being commended for bringing in sales, you will be reprimanded. Your numbers will fall and that will signal to the company that you aren't doing your job. I know this seems blown out of proportion and for just two sales, but I know that other SPS employees can back up that this is how the company works. They do not care the amount of business you bring in. And yes, they care about how much money your studio brings in, but their perception of you is shackled to your average sale number.

Call this blog sour grapes. Call it an isolated studio. All I have to say is this. I woke up every morning dreading going to work. When people push me and tell me that I'm not making my numbers, that only encouraged me to work harder to try and prove them wrong. Despite this, I have never worked at a job where I was more disrespected. The more I talk to other SPS employees, the more I find this is a nation-wide problem. I currently have daily entries queued up until November 1. I hope the fact that I would go to all this trouble says something about what a truly negative work environment SPS is. If that alone doesn't say it, I'll let the entries themselves do that. I've saved some of the best for last.


[Also note: any comments that show up as removed are always spam comments. I would never remove an actual comment. Call me an idiot all you'd like: consider this your written invitation to get the debate going]

No one cares about you

There was a studio manager that took a failing studio and turned it around to make it even more profitable. So the company said "Hey, we want you to move 200 miles south and do the same thing with a different studio"

Studio manager said "Well, I can't make any promises about what I could do. Each studio is different. I would want to know what I was getting into first."

"Come on down!" they said, "we love you."

And the studio manager went. She took over a studio that was previously known for having a creepy studio manager. That in and of itself would be hard enough, but a competing portrait studio opened up nearby shortly after she took over.

When she didn't produce sales numbers, they demoted her to associate and put her at a different studio.

When your PRS starts to fall

At some point in your career, you will have a bad series of weeks, and your sales average will be low. This will be a conversation. Goals will be set. Write ups will be made and sent to the district manager.

They will decide that you can no longer work the peak hours. Therefore, they will put you on more evening shifts. This means you will have
1) Fewer hours
2) Fewer appointments
3) Fewer opportunities to improve
Your hours will move to flex hours and one of your coworkers will suddenly have her schedule change with two day's notice to take your hours.

Rather than encouragement saying that you can get your numbers up, they will instead issue threats about what will happen if you numbers don't go up and put you at times when people characteristically spend less money.

Good luck.

You are encouraged to bring in less money

Another submission from an ex studio manager who writes:

"My studio was in a depressed, former factory town in the Midwest, and the average customer did not have a lot of money to spend. As with most studios, our sittings were down, but we did a phenomenal job with outreach, some weeks bringing in over 20 appointments from outreach alone." [Note: this is an amazing number. We struggled to make our goal of 10 every week at my studio]

"The average sale from our outreach appointments was only about $55, though, so it usually contributed to our lower average sale. Some weeks, we were bringing in an extra $900 just from these appointments that we worked hard to get, and I made sure to track everything and send the numbers to my District Manager. While many studios had very negative total sales compared to last year, we were able to stay in the positive."

"This however, did not matter because our average sale amount was not over $100. Of course, you want to maximize every sale opportunity, but such an emphasis on the average customer sale does not seem right. With that number looming over your head, when a customer comes in and they are asking you about prices, it gets you thinking inside, “Listen, if you’re not going to spend $100, don’t even bother coming in!” "

I love this story because it so perfectly illustrates the bizarre business model that Sears Portrait Studio uses. I would have loved to invite my friends to come in for pictures but didn't because I knew that it would hurt my job performance more if they spent 30 dollars and brought down the average sale than if they would have not come in all.

Be a telemarketer [part 1]

When you have a spare moment, you are expected to get on the phone list and call past customers. There are approximately 100 people on the list at any given time. Whether or not you make calls is monitored and you need to make at least three appointments per week over the phone regardless of how many hours you work. If you don't, you will be written up.

The people you call do not want to hear from you. They have heard from you before. They may book appointments just to be nice and then not show up. When they don't show up, management will be suspicious and wonder if you are making up fake appointments.

Un-fed babies

New parents have a tendency to bring their babies in for walk-in appointments.

I once had a couple come in while I was busy with another session. I told them I would be able to take them back in twenty minutes once I finished my other appointment. They were in a hurry so they were annoyed with this, but decided to wait.

From the seats they waited in, they could witness the entire process and see for themselves when I was almost through. The five minutes it takes me to ring up a customer is an ideal time to start getting ready.

I took them back at four. I had the room all ready to go and then the mom decided that then was the time to start:
1) Feeding the baby (takes 10+ min)
2) Changing the baby's outfit

And I had another appointment in an hour which of course went back late.

Appointments are jammed together

Appointments take an hour to see through from start to finish (50 minutes of you are lucky). Even when things went great, I would most often get done with one appointment just as the other was rolling in.

Let's break down what makes up an appointment
-Greeting/Asking Questions about session (5 min)
-Photography (15 min)
-Editing (10 min)
-Sales (25 min)
-Ringing out (5 min)

With an hour appointment, you have no time for delays. And yet:
-Parents will take 10 minutes to change a kid into their outfit
-Babies will be upset and need time to calm down
-The phone will ring
-Someone will come to pick up their photos on a non pick up day
-The server will crash
-The phone will ring again
-The mom will take forever to choose her photos
-Babies will be unfed
-Parents will have no control over their children

If one appointment runs late? Well there's no time between appointments and you're all alone, so your next appointment is going to go back late. And that will make the next appointment even later. And then in a space where you had a moment of downtime to catch up, the appointment scheduler will add another appointment.