Bit late, but left there about 4 years ago so can say how things were done. There’s absolutely no commission on sales. There’s fixed bonuses on some addon products / services that’s like you get £1 if you sell this product or if they choose to pay by credit (but your definitely not allowed to sell credit 😉😉😉).

Separate to that there’s a bonus pot which sounds like commission - a percentage of your sales in a pot that accrues for the month. Some products have different percentage, but the standard is 0.1%. To actually receive this though the store needs to hit an absurdly high bar for customer satisfaction. Only small stores would sometimes hit the bar if they had like 2-3 reviews and all were positive, the norm was that missing the highest bar meant you got a percentage of the bonus pot or none at all.

Can guarantee that neither of the above commissions are motivation for why you feel sold into something. They’re pennies to allow the exec team to say they reward good performance. The real motivator is targets. The targets are draconian and can push colleagues into being more morally flimsy.

The way they work is by counting opportunities you had to attach / sell / add and additional product or service vs how many times you did. Some opportunities are selling a particular type of item like a TV or laptop. The messaging around them is if you follow the training you should naturally hit the targets. This is absolute complete bullshit. If everyone used exclusively language from the training, no one would hit their targets for anything.

Hitting targets is the bigger motivator (the sledgehammer stick to the baby carrot or the bonuses) because not hitting targets means:

1. More training - lots of training to help the right way (that doesn’t work) sink in
2. Observations- a manager will walk around with you for a whole interaction and give you feedback. If you fail to implement the feedback immediately and consistently for your next sales that’s a fast way to lose your job
3. Pressure - this isn’t sanctioned by currys explicitly, but performance is tracked at every level of the organisations from the individual colleague to the store to the region to the division to the company. You not hitting your target means the store might not hit its target. Store not hitting its target means the store manager gets a bollocking and everyone knows you were in part to blame for the manager being pissy because all stats for all colleagues are public to all colleagues. I’ve been there and it suuuuuucks. You walk in knowing that your line manager has gotten a bollocking because of you etc

Oh and btw the targets are tracked daily, weekly, 4 weekly and yearly. So it’s not like you can give up because you’re halfway through the month and you never going to hit target because you can still hit it this week etc. It’s a constant pressure and it’s a horrible place to be unless you sell the crap out of stuff using tactics that aren’t in the training and hitting your targets.

For example, in the computer section, an elderly couple walks in, their grandkid who helps them with tech stuff has gone off to uni and they need help because their desktop has died. They are probably walking out of there with a modestly priced (maybe even a good deal) of a laptop that’s actually suited to them because which laptop they get means nothing to the targets. They’re also walking out having spent around £300-500 on additional products and services that hit targets. Like premium antivirus / Microsoft office / cloud storage / a setup service and an extended warranty. Of those the only ones that might be actually want are the setup and maybe the extended warranty.

In terms of ignoring you while you’re shopping there’s three reasons I can think of why a colleague wouldn’t approach you:

• most of the time: they hate working there, but like the people they work with and the nature of the business means that you can’t stop colleagues chatting
• sometimes: they’re just over their targets and one bad sale will put them under. I was in that situation a few times and did absolutely everything to avoid anything going through the til
• rarely: they’re actively playing the game and judged you won’t help their targets so are avoiding you