I am thinking of transitioning into a management role for Borders, but
I was hoping to get some insight about the work environment.

In general, are they understaffed? Does corporate give them enough
work-hours to be successful? (I was at one point a manager for another
retail corporation, but they did not provide or authorize their stores
with enough employee hours to be successful, so it was not a pleasant
experience to say the least)
Do most employees enjoy working there (staff and management, if possible)?

Please include sources or links. Personal experience or accounts are
OK too, as long it is credible! Thanks for your help.

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Request for Question Clarification by cynthia-ga on 10 Mar 2005 08:26 PST

Is this helpful?

Borders Skirmishes (not everyone is happy)
http://www.citypages.com/databank/23/1137/article10722.asp
..."As in most labor disputes, one source of the employees' discontent
is wages. According to workers, salaries range roughly from $7 to
$9.50 an hour. Because there is a surfeit of young people with
liberal-arts degrees willing to sacrifice income for the opportunity
to work around books, Borders has no shortage of applicants. "People
are clamoring for our jobs," says Simone Menier, another Uptown
employee. "We hand out several applications a day." Workers bitterly
note that meanwhile, Borders chief executive officer Gregory
Josefowicz received a salary of more than $1.1 million last year, and
an additional $1 million in stock options.

The Uptown employees also worry about job security. They point to a
company-wide restructuring at Borders in February 2001 that eliminated
the position of assistant manager and made many of those employees
into supervisors at lower salaries. That restructuring is the object
of a class-action lawsuit against Borders in California. "At any time
something like that could happen again, and we have no way to prevent
it," argues Krig. "There's just no recourse at all."

Other recent decisions by the corporation have also fueled workers'
discontent. They point to Borders' embrace of "category management,"
in which publishing houses pay a premium for the right to dictate
where, and how prominently, their titles are featured in each store.
Which means that those end-cap displays and new-release tables are
more and more a matter of bought-and-paid-for publicity, and less and
less a reflection of the community or the personality of the store's
staff. Small wonder Borders' Uptown employees fear they're becoming
mere cogs in a bookselling empire..."


And for hourly employees:
http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/01/06/3ffaae33e58ea
..."Employees also want to remove a cap on wages for senior employees.
Wage caps halt pay raises for veteran employees after they serve a set
amount of time with a company.

Although Borders holds no policy for a specific wage cap, Kirk said
some booksellers stopped receiving wage raises after working at the
store for more than 10 years.

?Thirteen dollars an hour for a bookseller?s job was the top at one
point and supervisors receive a premium of one dollar, so the most an
hourly employee could make would be $14 per hour,? he said.

Kirk said other concerns the striking employees had were better job
security, as well as the ability to have a forum in which to discuss
issues with the store?s management..."

~~Cynthia

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Clarification of Question by odulsmin-ga on 10 Mar 2005 09:29 PST

Cynthia, that is very helpful, especially the comments like this:

"The Uptown employees also worry about job security. They point to a
company-wide restructuring at Borders in February 2001 that eliminated
the position of assistant manager and made many of those employees
into supervisors at lower salaries."

Are any statistics avialable?

I worked at a Borders in New England for about 6 months part time.  I
loved working at the info desk, helping people find the books they
needed.  I also enjoyed being at the register, telling people if I
liked a particular book, or making suggestions.  I hated restocking
shelves.  I've noticed that the big thing in stores today is
restocking shelves during business hours.  Having to climb over boxes
while trying to brouse is not a fun thing.  I also hated when we had
to pull out of date books off the shelves.  This was also done during
business hours, with boxes everywhere.  We'd be given a list, and we'd
have to pull all of the copies.  Of course, there were ones that
couldn't be found.
Our store had a very odd cash drawer policy.  There were maybe 7 cash
registers.  if you ran out of change or whatever, you moved to a
different register instead of calling a manager.  How did they figure
out who caused any differences?
Since I'm a big reader, I thought working in a bookstore would be the
perfect job.  Well, it had its moments, but I would not go back as an
employee.

I appreciate your input! Did you find that there where enough people
around to get work completed?

I continue to look forward to hearing others think too.

I think they had enough employees scheduled, but they had them poorly
distributed.  For instance, you have 10 people working a particular
shift.  Out of those 10, 5 stocking shelves, 3 at info desk and 2
people at the registers.  After a huge line forms at the register,
someone will notice and call for back up.  Again this seems to be a
trend in retail--my supermarket does the same thing.

Thanks!