Who's in charge of who?

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 214

Does your stores go by the chart made by G.O. as to what Management manages who? Correct me if i'm wrong, but it was my understanding that the Sales Manager is over the Specialist, it was set up this way because to many people had the Specialist going in to many directions. The Store Manager, the Zone Manager, the Department Manager, and even the team leader had the Specialist going in four different directions, so the Sales Manager position was created to stop that. I can tell you that it hasn't changed anything at my store. Specialist are being pulled away from doing estimates, pulled away from their departments with customers walking out, to clean, to zone other departments, to stock, and then in the Monday meeting we're ask why our sales are low. Naughty!

I'm not saying that Specialist do any more work than anyone else, but in my store 90% of the time the Specialist close all the major Departments, if they should pull us out of coverage so we could try and do our jobs, most of the departments wouldn't have anyone closing that department. It never fails at my store that customers wait all day, and 30 minutes before we close they come in and want an estimate to re-model their whole house. Back to the main question, does the chain of command work at your stores, or is it a joke like at my store?

Joined: 27 Aug 2003 Posts: 7

hmm never thought of it that way......I'll admit it is easier on me now that we have a good sales manager......BUT...i still think that most of it is the individual specialists.....some of them have the same *problems* as they had before a sales manager......size matters too...when i started I was 1 of 3....but sales have since tripled and now i have 2 other specialists with me+ p.t+ f.t

Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 16

does it work---NO could it work --- YES
Seagou your point is very well taken. At lowe's, the old saying "too many chiefs not enough indians" is in play very well. The specialist is the person who knows the product they are selling in there department, above and beyond the norm. They have the people skills to sell the job, and the knowledge and experience to sell everything they need. I work as a plumbing specialist, and the only way to know what is available to the customer via SOS is to take the time and read the books, and we have a lot. Fashion plumbing is one of the most involved departments in the store with the least amount of tools available. I am glad G.O. finally got the ambition to get us into the 20th century and get the m20 system for plumbing together (now if we can get everything into the 21st century it would be great!).
The problem I have is being one of the only ones in my department that know plumbing period. Therefore, i get pulled away from SOS and fashion to explain to someone how to fix a faucet and plumb in a sink. This has hurt my sales numbers dramatically. I have dropped by almost 200% in sales since we had a big turnover in our department (and store over all). Now i spend most of my time explaining to customers why there isnt universal parts in faucets or why they have to spend the extra couple since on cpvc instead of pvc for their water supply. It is very frustrating.
I have been pulled off of estimates numerous times and told to do freight or zone the department. This is violating the number one rule of lowes...the golden rule
CUSTOMER SERVICE IS THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY.
Doing an estimate is customer service. Placing or confirming SOS orders is customer service. Taking time to learn your SOS items is customer service. I believe G.O. needs to get to the store managers and retrain them to this belief. It should be pounded into them. If you have specialists working at nothing more than achieving there budget that is big $$$ for the store. Figure the math...each specialist averages a $10,000 a week budget. Stores should have around 15 specialists. That is $150,000 in sales.
The specialist/sales manager program is very workable, but the rest of managment must recognize it. Our main goal is sales and increasing them, and that is what we should work for. Most of the time I am the only one in our department, so I have to throw freight, face, clean displays, downstock and take care of customers, which is 3 times the work that can be done in a day.
Lowe's needs to remember, in order to make more money, spend more money. Get people on the floor to cover the specialists so they can do their job and SELL..

Later all
Sunkelowe

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 214

Finaly had enough and let lose on my zone Manager tonight, I'm sure I'll be written up for it, but enough is enough. If I do I'm going all the way to the top with it. After a long day of helping to cover other departments because of cutting hours (we are making budget and cutting more every day) I checked my mail box and had a memo that said all Department Managers would be trained on the check-outs, I handed it back to my Zone Manager and said it was in the wrong box, that a Specialist is not Management. My Zone Manager tried to say that we were in a way Management, my reply was that they better read the policy, that we're in no way considered Management. I think some of these ego maniac Managers and Zone Managers need to look up the word Specialist to see what it means. To them it means we should be able to cover other departments, clean restrooms, unload trucks, load for customers, push buggies, run a check-out, escort customers to the rest rooms and ask if they need help wiping their ass, being treated like crap by customers because they don't have the backbone to stand up for their employees, and on and on and on. And then they have the nerve to ask way you don't make your budget. Evil or Very Mad

There are good Managers and Assistants out there, but they don't last long if they don't play the game. I read this in a message last week ( If G.O. told Management that shit was Ice Cream, would they ask for a bowl)? I'm sure I'll get some hot replies from Management out there for this post, but you need to start taking care of your employees, because they take care of you. When you get that bonus check, don't say look what I did, you should say look what my employees did for me. And if anyone is listening from G.O., you need to get away from the Ivory Towers and find out what's going on in your stores, or is it you do know, but you don't care as long as the numbers are coming in? That seems to be all us employees are, just alot of nameless people with a number, to get as much out of us as possible, then kick us out the door and run another one in.
Thanks for listening everyone, I feel much better now.

Joined: 07 Aug 2003 Posts: 50

CabMan: Stand your ground, but pick your ground (and opponent)carefully. Unless you used profanity, or screamed at the ZM in front of others, it should not be a cause for disciplinary action. But then, I don't know your situation there: do you get along with this ZM, or the SM? Are you a targetted employee? Any writeups? Can you smooth it over, still keep a smile on your face?
Specialists have to have the flexibilty to DISCUSS work with supervisors, to make constructive SUGGESTIONS - managers need smart employees who can contribute, who do THEIR job, and don't try to do everybody else's. And that's how you could put it to your ZM.

This store, here, has slightly increased sales over last year, (although SOS and Installs and Commercial are flat - no staff and no plans to make them grow - adrift..) but has reduced staff from 155 employees to 120 since middle of June. And it has been done callously - Employees layed off/fired in a group on 1 day notice, layed off when they return from 3 day family funeral leave, or when they return from a valid, documented workers comp. leave due to workplace accident. (SM told dept.managers that they won't work here anymore if they file for workers comp. for themselves due to an injury or accident. SM also told them they will work more hours and overnights.....)
Now there are no loaders, virtually no cashiers, no more night stock crew, delivery staff cut, seasonal staff gone in the middle of the season....and what was the result? What was a GOLD customer service store in June hasn't even been on the list since July. Mystery shopper scores, call button times, customer settlements and complaints - all in the crapper. Delivery - a daily headache. And SM and ZM's don't have the skills to get it back with less staff. They are clueless and clumsy. The staff sees it that the $750 paid to GOLD stores' employees was taken right of their pockets by the SM.
It's almost a clone of Home Depot - but each HD has 2 ASM's, Lowes has 6 - (minus the one who got walked out in handcuffs) plus the bunch of trainees (half of whom are rejects from other retailers -fired with cause, and untrainable - but were hired by Lowes to be ZM's). Lowes is so top heavy, and so much a "TOP DOWN" company, and full of managers so-o-o impressed with themselves. It seems the daily store functions are unimportant to GO, and this practise, this attitude permeates district and store level managers.
In short, your DM, your SM, your ZM don't give a shit what you think, or how anything they decide affects you or your job- and they don't want any suggestions, and certainly no backtalk.

Talk nice to your ZM - and just do the cashier training - it comes in handy when you need to get customers out the door, or transactions done, and frontend is unstaffed. It doesn't hurt. and it might be fun.
The corporate performance is great. Must be some stores run by decent managers somewhere. God bless the good ones.

Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 13 Location: Lowes Land

Specialists are NOT management in any shape or form.

Management as defined by the goverment is anyone that supervises 3 or more employees. That is one of the things this overtime lawsuit is all about. Specialists are not considered management by the goverment and do not fall under the variable rate overtime rules. Plus you have a contract with the company to sell a certain amount every week or your out of there. You might want to check your job description and see what percentage of time you are REQUIRED to spend in your department.

The down side is that you may be right but that dosen't mean they have to recognize that you are right. Refusing to get registar trained would be insubordination and grounds for dismissal. Be careful how you handle the situation.

Joined: 05 Mar 2004 Posts: 11 Location: Indiana

For a long time companies developed specific positions of work responsibility and skill sets and gave them great sounding titles, and then the mass change started rumbling across the country and now we are all "generalists" regardless of our titles or assigned responsibilities.

That's a shame. When they take away the worker's pride in their job they lose all the associated benefits (to management) such as morale, integrity and motivation.

In a post to a different forum I gave my opinion of where the country is headed in terms of a two-class society where the majority supports a tiny minority at the top. I guess they want us to become a bunch of moronic robots who just do as they say so they can relax in their luxury and laugh at us.

Self employment is the only area left where you can give your customers the service they deserve and maximize on your potential. Too bad. Lowe's could be such a great place to work if they had working conditions such that people were begging to work there.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating all of us marching to work singing happy songs. But there are long term problems associated with managing people as they do, not the least of which is the overall health of the country. We need to get this mess turned around.

Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 3

all of you have a good point. and I understand what your saying, but zone recovery and down stockings is customer service also. If the product isn't not on the shelves, how is the customer going to get it, there for they come and find any person they can (i.e.- sale specialist, teamleader, zm, dm, anybody). so it does get frustrating, but everone needs to pull some of the weight. Thats what makes us a fortune 50 company. It might sound like I have no Idea were your coming from, I have never been a specialist, but I deal with the all the time in home decor. It is a pain in the ass, but theres time were you need to suck it up and help out.

Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 21 Location: LOWESLAND

I know this is an old post cab but your right in the structure. I went back and looked at the board and yes all Specialist are listed under the Sales Manager.

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 214

Bear,
It is an old post but an important one, it's good it was brought back. It's a tuff subject to talk about without it looking like the Specialist are special, and that's not what I'm trying to say. Every part of an engine has a job to do if the car's going to run, if you take the water from the radiator to use somewhere else the engine will fail. From what I see at my store and read from others we're turning into a great stocking crew with sales taking second place. Sales are good in most stores right now, but they could be great instead of good, if the engine was running like it should. It also seems that the freight is increasing every day, most of the departments in my store spend their whole shift stocking and down-stocking and IRP's, that leaves very little time for SOS and Installs. The answer to more sales is to have enough employees working to take care of the customer, but to make them see that is a lost cause.

Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 21 Location: LOWESLAND

my store it is staffing (except Outside L&G they are staffed and need to be). Our Millwork department is getting slammed and we don't have enough staff to prevent people from walking away upset. We have 2 Specialist, 1 hourly and 1 Department Manager over there. The most you will see at 1 time is 2 people but they overlap each other and that means there was only 1 person, then 2 then back to 1 before the night is over. Mistakes are being made because everyone including the Specialist are too busy trying to get to everyone they can. We are too busy to play Specialist are Special. Hope the staffing increases soon. Lumber is having the same problem. Too many customers and not enough staffing. Too many decks to design and fill to get out for deliveries and yet many times you only have 1 person in that department. Money is out there but we are losing it because of staffing or lack of staffing.

Joined: 05 Mar 2005 Posts: 11 Location: lowes

I keep hearing the management harp on team work and being one store with one goal. The reality is that we are not operating one store. Every department has a manager and employees to run the department. Every department has enough business to support its on budgets. We are operating about ten different stores under one roof and we have the square footage to prove it. Think about this: Management wants us to knock down the walls between each dept, right? If there were real walls seperating each department like a mall setting and each department had a big sign out front that said Plumbing or Millworks , wouldn't that simplify everyones life including the customer. Management would know who needs more help because they could better see where all the customers were. The customers wouldn't be down at the lumber register asking where tha A/C filters were. Makes sense to me!!

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 214

In all my years with Lowe's I've never seen coverage so bad, we're losing money nationwide by the truck loads.

Joined: 07 Jul 2003 Posts: 110

We just started night stocking, and our SM, in his infinte wisdom has decided all opening associates are to come in at 5am (we open at 7) to get all the loose ends tied up, make sure floors are swept etc. Great in theory, but that means we have specialists coming in at five, a full two hours before there is even hope of a customer, and truly, we don't really start with any major business til nine, so there is four hours of no hope of sales for them. YET, the very same SM will have the opening meeting at 7, and bitch and moan about the lack of specialty sales and installs. I swear, where do they unearth these idiots?

Joined: 28 Aug 2003 Posts: 30 Location: #606 Dothan, AL

Well this is my take on things, I AM the Department over Electrical BUT, the specialists are under the Sales Manager. If I have a problem with the performance of my sales specialists(which I don't) All I have to do it take the matter up with the Sales Manager(which is a good guy)

Jonesy

Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 13 Location: Lowes Land

ok simply put it is up2 the store manager...

at my store this is how it flows

store manger
ops manager
zone-sales-hr-lp
department
specialist-team leader
csa

Extra
Admin Dept. Manager-Customer Service Dept. Manager
Head Cashier
Cashier

Simply put, department wide it differs on the department manager

I believe in the tripod...

Dept. Manager is the leader, but he reliquishes power to specialist and team leader ...

why?
because when u go on vacation the dept. doesnt goto hell...

Keep everyone involved, and let them have a little power, and let them make decisions... INPOWER YOUR EMPLOYEES