I am a former employee of a Kay Jewelers store. I have to say I have no idea how the company keeps winning awards for "a great place to work". I was there for a short six months. All in all, the people were great to work for as far as my boss and co-workers. The company does give great dental and medical benefits and 401k. When I was hired I was told that this is not a high pressure sales job. I was very hesitant to take the position, since I had worked in retail sales before and I hated having my DM on my case on a daily basis. I was assured that Sterling was a "different breed" of retail stores. They claimed to value their employees and give constant tools to become a great sales person. The first couple of months were good. I enjoyed it. Then I attended a district meeting with my boss. At first it started out positive. Then the regional manager stated " If you cant be 5 for 5 with your standards every day, week month and for the year, you cannot work in the % district." we were all pretty much in shock. So much for no high pressure. They were basically telling us to have perfect sales standards every day. At first we kinda didn't take it too much to heart, figuring they are trying to shake people up since the Christmas season wasn't too hot. We were wrong. They started really comng down on us. You could not mess up. We were actually told at one point that if we didn't get a certain number of poeple to open up credit applications in a day, we would not be allowed to go home until we did so. Yeah, that's just a tad illegal. My poor boss is only in her mid twenties and was at the point of a nervous breakdown when I left. She was being yelled at almost on a daily basis by our DM, sbout the store perfomance. Even if we had a good day, he would still find something to complain about. The manager's were working 60 hours a week, were frazzled and tired. We were starting to constantly get written up. If we had a big event, and you didn't make your "expected numbers", you got written up. My boss told her boss that she didn't want to write people up for this because she knew how hard all of us prepared for these shows. She told him that we can't force people to buy, and we can't force then to come to these shows. We did our part. We are in an aweful economy right now. The higher up's didn't care what we said. They told us if we were better sales people or standards would be up. They basically blamed us for everything. Now, Sterling does offer to pay for you to go to college. My boss decided to look into this to better herself. She called headquarters to find out how this all worked. She then heard some dissapointing news. They told her that since she had been written up, they will not do any type of tuition reimbursement... Ever. She explained to them that she had been a faithful employee for four years and this was her first write up. Which I may add was for her "Not making her expected sales goal for December". The funny thing is you can get writen up for ANYTHING. If you forget you jacket, they can wirte you up. One wirte up and this can affect promotions, tuition reimbursement ect. That's how they get you. So all in all, I would say Sterling is just like all the other giant corporations. They suck. They could care less about their employees, they use you until you are sucked dry of life and ambition, then they get rid of you. And by the way, their jewelry repair shops are run like sweat shops. They have about 5 people who can't speak english, they are being paid dirt, and forced to work long hours and make certain "numbers" as well.
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