Why we try to get you to spend more money

Whoops, I'm a little late getting this one up. Sorry guys! Work has been a bit crazy and I have less and less free time lately. I'm going to drop this down to once a week posts on Thursdays from now on so I can write better posts over the course of a week instead of making sure I get them done and out on time.

Anywho... Upselling. Yes. Personally, I don't really mind upselling and I'm good enough at it to be effective. As a customer however, I kind of hate it. But I get why it's done. Just about every store ever has daily goals. Let's say for example we have to sell $1000 of product a day. Just for Easy Math sake. We're open for 10 hours, so Corporate expects sales at an average rate of $100 per hour. Cool. Not terribly hard. But here's the kicker. They want our average amount per transaction to be ABOVE $30 dollars, and the average items per transaction to be above 3 or 4 depending on the time of year.

If I end my day with an average dollar amount of $20, and item amount of 1.5, I get reamed out the next morning by my DM. Whether it was my fault or not. So when someone gets to my register with one $0.99 item, I push things on them HARD. Because I hate getting yelled at for doing my job. I could be having a great day, with numbers of $55 and 9 and then someone comes in and buys that one item for a buck and my numbers fall to like $42 and 7. Then another small sale. Now I'm down to $20 and 5. So now I get yelled at.

I know it's hard to comprehend if you've never been on my side of the register, but for some reason, if I don't hit our sales goal of $1000, but my numbers at night are 50 and 10, I am in less trouble than if I exceed my sales goal but my numbers are $10 and 1. It makes no logical sense. But that is what all might Corporate has deemed to be right. So that's what we follow. And really, you have to TRY not to spend over $30 in my store. It's relatively easy to get up that high.

But Elle!! You're stealing my hard earned money when you talk me into buying more items!!!!
Actually, no. I've been in retail long enough to know when a person can and can't afford that extra 3 bucks. If I know you can't, I don't push the sale. In fact, I may see if I can work in a sale and lower the price for you. Because even though I work in retail, I am a very nice person. I want all my customers to be happy and know that they're important to me. (At least on some level. Some of my regulars I hate, but they spend a lot of money so I appreciate that at least.) When I upsell you to hit those goals laid out for me, what I'm really doing is insuring I have hours next week.

WARNING: BIG OL' RETAIL SECRET AHEAD.

We actually base how many hours we get to schedule employees, based off of our sales. When we miss sales goals, we have to cut hours. Which means smaller paychecks. And sad employees. Who can barely afford to eat food, let alone get to work. And those who sell the best, get the best hours. In case you haven't picked up on it, I'm not a teenager that works in retail. I'm a bonafide adult with adult expenses who just happens to love this field. I have a mortgage. A car loan. Insurance. Credit cards. Grocery bills. Utilities. Etc. I work for freaking $8 per hour. Now I know that if I work a minimum of X hours per week I can take care of my share of the bills for the house every month. But, if we had such a terrible week that there isn't X hours for me to work, just a measly X-10 hours, I'm boned. I'm either not eating, not getting to work, or not having a phone that month.

My sales numbers DIRECTLY impact my pay. I might work for a giant company, but that doesn't mean it's not like supporting the local guy. We have at least three of our company's stores in my city. But choosing store A over B or C makes a difference. The employees over at A are going to get all the hours you made possible instead of store B or C. The money doesn't all just go to Corporate to dole out in an even fashion to all the employees. We have to earn those hours and paychecks every day. So when I pitch our sale at you, and it's only an extra $5... Go for it. If everyone I cashed out in a day added on $5, there would be 10 - 20 hours available to pick up. More hours available means more work and bigger paychecks. Bigger paychecks means more spending and more spending means it boosts the economy. Seriously. Save the economy. Listen to Upselling.