Membership Rant

So, today at "the barn", I had to sit with the managers in the office and have a "discussion". Apparently my membership sales are way too low. B&N recently changed it so that the head-cashiers no longer need to track member card sales of the booksellers. Which, is good and bad. Good because it's less work. Bad because the district manager gets to see all the card sales.

Let me digress for just a moment. At B&N, a member card is a savings card. The membership costs 25$ a year. It saves you 10% off at least everything, 20% off ADULT hard-cover, and 40% hard-cover best sellers. It's good online, in the music department, and in the cafe (which is not a Starbucks, but sells Starbucks products). It is actually quite worth it for someone that is an avid reader.

Now, back to where I was going. Well, as a head-cashier, we need to have more member card sales than other people, because we need to set an example. Ok..... Let me just point out that there's at least 3 hours when we aren't actually on cash-wrap, thus making it quite difficult to sell memberships. We have some people at my location that are, ummm... well,... I can't put it nicely. She basically forces people to buy the card. So her sales are far higher than, someone else's. Like me.

Back to the meeting. The managers told me that I need to increase my member card sales. I have to be at at least 2.0% average by the end of February. That's at least 2 NEW cards every 100 transactions. Yeah. Fun. If a customer doesn't want a card, then I'm not going to sell it to them. End of story.