Cons: poor management, lack of training, poor scheduling, misleading promises upon hiring, high employee turn over
I worked a ski and bike shop in Vermont for several years before going to EMS. I was attracted to EMS because of the benefits, reasonable pay and possibility for advancement. They hired me as a supervisor for their Newton, MA store in August 2007. I worked there for almost a year and it was the worst work experience of my life.
The store manager was
– more... inexperienced and did not have any idea how to run a retail store or manage people. I was given no training about my responsibilities as a supervisor and "written up" when I would break silly rules, I had no idea existed. For example, I was "written up" when I left a set of store keys unattended for a short period of time in a staff break room. I was later told this was a violation of the supervisor rules. I was never informed of these rules when given the store keys.
When I was hired I was told I would be doing technical work with skis and bicycles and overseeing the "shop" end of the store, I ended doing menial tasks such as folding t-shirts and hanging clothing. In addition the hours were awkward, some days I would work until 11 at night and other days I would work until 4 in the afternoon. I rarely received 2 consecutive days and off. I would also get frequent phone calls on my days off from the store manager asking me questions that he should have know the answer to. Scheduling was also a disaster. The same managers would get all the ideal hours and days off while the rest of the store was unstaffed and had poor leadership. There were several extremely busy weekend days where the store was so understaffed that no one even got a break during the day. The managers would take the weekends off and leave the store an unorganized mess during its busiest days.
There was also no sense of permanence as an employee. Good employees would mysteriously get fired for seemingly no reason, while mediocre employees would continue on. Often times good employees would get hired with empty promises of raises, promotions and benefits and they would never see them. As a result, turn over was high. EMS also does a poor job training employees. Employees would have little to no knowledge of the equipment in the store. Often times, customers would complain because no one in store could answer simple questions about products.
I was happy to leave EMS and will always see EMS as a poorly run outdoor retail outfit. – less