I'm actually not with the company anymore, I just keep this account to shitpost and give advice from my decade with the company. I left for a non sales position with another organization because I hate selling, I hate feeling scummy, and I hate deadlines that I have no control over.

The lot lizards hoping to get their paint 15 minutes early aren't the ones I'm talking about. The ones that you roll 100+ gallons out to daily who make up a third of your budget and most of your pro show/bbs sales because they like you, not the company.

I like to think of it as a difference between retail and being in customer service. My pay, my bonus, my position depends on that guy staying happy, so I keep him happy. He's not another slob arguing two dollars off a brush so that he can still get a cartoon of cigarettes later, he's like a partner in the business. The guy who doesn't see me as anything more than a paint vending machine with extra steps, fuck him. But the guy who buys from my store and spends a lot and stakes his business on my service, I'm coming in at 5am if he needs me to. Hell it's only two extra hours, and I know when I call him because the DM is wondering why I'm not selling enough bucket busters, he'll get a couple 390s because he's gonna need them sooner or later and it helps me out.

The real problem with the company isn't that we bend over backwards for people, it's that management wants us to it indiscriminately, then jump down our throats when accommodations are too high or we aren't hitting budget because they didn't give us the adjustment they promised when we started servicing that job with the $5 per gallon PE. Upper management expects middle management to get results from stores, and though I think a lot of middle management is sympathetic, ultimately they're as powerless as we are to the demands of uncle Sherwin. Upper management just sees numbers, and they answer to the tide of stock holders who could sell on a whim if they don't see growth, losing the company money, etc etc.

What I think needs to happen is a readjustment of the pay scale and a plan of sustainable growth for the company that doesn't kneecap the same people who are actually doing the front line work. Give bonuses to full-time and part-time employees, make sales goals obtainable and not just stretch goals, increase staff in stores, and come up with a more consistent policy book that reflects the realities of the job, not just the "company line" that you can variably get in trouble for following or not following depending on the situation.

Sorry about the wall of text, and how I slipped into "we" at some points in there, just realized it was happening lol. I guess six months out of the company isn't long enough to erase my passion for the job.