Sport Chalet Employer Reviews

Fun and friendly atmosphere...would recommend this as a nice place to work

A typical day at work involves helping customers, maintaining sales floor and merchandise, and merchandising in new products.
I've learned a lot about time management and how to work well and communicate with others.
The hardest part of my job is dealing with unhappy and angry customers.
the most enjoyable part of my job is merchandising and putting – more... out new products and making the sales floor look good by making it a place that people will want to shop. – less

Cashiering, answering phones, upselling, and maintain front end.

Its always nice to meet new people and have conversations with a different generation and getting to know about different needs in life.

Fun working environment
Strict goals to be met
Difficult to meet selling expectations

La Canada This was the worst company I have ever workded for, no training management was the worst and the staff members where miserable and complained all day. This company does not care about there employees have not given them raises in four years and work them to death.

Typical day involved selling merchandise in a non commission sales job. Would spend all of my time on the sales floor interacting with customers.

The average day is 100% customer service. Aside from that there is merchandising the product onto shelves and handling new incoming merchandise from truck loads.

great people and managers to work with. everyone was helpful

I have worked at some multi million dollar companies and this has to be absolutely the WORST office I have worked at in my entire life. I have heard how great the retail end is but the corporate office is run by a manipulating self absorbed idiot that knows nothing. She makes sure no one speaks to one another and that every aspect of the company goes – more... thru her, from HR to admin staff she makes all decisions. Every department is told not to interact with one another and when management starts to feel threatened they get rid of you in a snap. Unfortunately this company pays horribly and has even worse benefits if you need work experience this is the equivalent of working at McDonalds in high school. RUN don't stop hear. – less

I spent my first few years as a cashier. Then, I was crosstrained in General Athletics and Bicycle Repair. I left the company crosstrained in three departments Bicycle, Cashiers, General Athletics. My final title was Master Bicycle Mechanic.

Good for part-time money and not your primary income. Great discounts and opportunities to learn about other sports and the people who enjoy them. No pay raises in years is what I was told by coworkers and don't expect it soon it seems. So negotiate high as you can. Great discounts on almost everything so if your looking to get into another sport this – more... is the place to find out about it. Hours get cut major after holidays. – less

fun work place easy to learn and maintain a normal day just consist of sales and employee involvement with customers coworkers are very nice and management is pretty good

Job Responsibilities consisted of customer service, maintaining clean and neat dressing rooms, and stocking. I left this job to go to school full time

Helping customers find what they needed also making calls to make sure product gets there on time

from what i remember if you weren't cleaning then you weren't doing your job....really big store but never any customers.....co workers were the best part but we weren't allowed to talk to them which is weird.

For the time that I had worked at Sport Chalet it was a fun experience. I had worked in the snowboard/ski department and learned a lot about the equipment.
Many people came in and were very friendly.

A typical day at work was to help customers and guide them to the right department. Helped cashiers when they were busy. Management was good and helpful. Ejoyed working with my co- workers.

Let me start with some positives. Sport Chalet is a place with very knowledgeable and friendly sales associate staff who are a joy to work with. The company itself is fairly straightforward when it comes to overtime pay and other important but easily ignored details. The biggest attraction is the discount and pro deals that you can access after three – more... months working with the company. If you're really involved in your particular sport, there is a huge value to that perk, but not enough for me to recommend this job to anyone who has other options.
If you need the money, you're going to take the job no matter what. If you're experienced with retail (I wasn't), you know the standard downsides of this field. Value added sales (read: warranties and credit cards), bad holiday hours, constant blaring top 40 music, zero opportunity for career growth. But there are a few things about Scrooge Chalet that seem to be uniquely unpleasant.
For one, they're a company in survival mode. Like all big box stores, they're facing tremendous competition from online stores who use their stores like showrooms. Corporate HQ (next door to where I worked) puts intense pressure on floor managers to sell products like credit cards and warranties (which are mostly useless due to the store's generous return policy). They frequently send down directives about pricing, store layout, etc with no context or explanation and then get upset when we don't read their minds and do things exactly like they wanted. This stress trickles down to the sales associates. We fill out score cards with the numbers of effort indicators, credit cards and warranties sold and pass them to a manager.
At La Canada, the managerial staff is under more pressure than any other team. There is a constant stream of executives from corporate next door coming to abuse them over recovery (general store tidiness, etc) and stats. But the behavior is still unacceptable from some of the managers, even taking that into consideration. Afternoon hours are usually from 4 or 5 to "close," which can mean an hour after customers leave or 4 hours after, depending on the manager's mood. And at the end of the day, they sometimes give a speech about how we should be thankful for the hours or some such nonsense. You never know your schedule more than a week in advance, but if you ask for a particular day off, they'll say they have a calendar lined up three weeks into the future and need more notice. Everyone is *required* to work Christmas Eve. Enough said.
Even veteran employees are afraid to say no when they're asked to come in on holidays. And most people have been there for years without a single raise. It's really sad because Sport Chalet is a brand with a great story behind it that has squandered an opportunity to have a truly "expert" and content workforce rather than a revolving door of unhappy people. They have great taste in hiring. The people working on the floor genuinely love their departments and have a passion to help customers. But instead of receiving positive reinforcement, we live in an unnecessary atmosphere of fear. I'm glad to be out of this place. – less

A very fast paced enviroment, but yet very fun. Management is always willing to help and work with your schedule. The training that is provided is like no other, all technology that is in a product is covered when attending a training clinic. Just an outstanding place to work.