Today the Oregonian posted a story about the utterly ridiculous "Playguard" which was the 25 cent damage waiver that Hollywood Video managers (especially certain district managers) would hold a gun to your head to pitch to every customer regardless of the fact that NO ONE wanted it and NO ONE needs it by pitching to the customer that a percentage gets donated to the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation (which none of us employees had any idea how much of the quarter got donated, nor what this foundation was or did.) I was happy to see the Oregonian pick this up and I hope Hollywood Video will discontinue these mostly unethical practices seeing that only 2.5 cents of any quarter went to the foundation (which I did not know when i worked there). I was under the impression that it was the entire amount. Not only were we not told, but the fact is that everyday I had to step into work knowing that I was going to be taken back to the office and berated over not selling enough playguards. I'm serious, every single day I would get "the talk". And if that wasn't bad enough, the district manager would have whoever was on duty leave him a message at night reporting what percentage of people we had sold Playguard to and if we did not sell a certain percentage then we would have to explain what actions we were going to take to sell more of this obvious scam.
Hollywood Video, I can say this with ease, was one of the more unethical places I have ever worked and I dreaded every day I had to go in. I am glad that this period of my life is over and still feel sorry for those who still have to work under those bottom-line driven policies. (I haven't even got into the fact that we had a quota on candy/soda sales, used DVD sales, etc.) You know what Hollywood Video, most of the time, people just want to rent a video which you already overcharge for, do we really have to ask every person if they want playguard, snacks or drinks, used DVD's, etc? Do we have to try to sell them the entire store?
3 comments:
I currently work at HV, and am totally pissed off at the whole playguard thing right now. I'm basically having to quit my job over it soon.
It's now not only based on soda, pv sales, etc etc...
It's ALL based on playguard sales at my store I work at. I have only 8 hours of work in my next check, because I don't sell enough playguard.
I also work at HV, and I think playguard is the biggest scam I've ever seen. Lucky for me and everyone else in my store, our store manager doesnt do her job right, so my lack of playguard sales doesnt affect my hours.
Why can't Hollywood Video just simply become a better store with better deals than their competitors, instead of having a sales-based regime?
Thanks for this explanation. I always say yes to playguard and on a whim searched for blog posts about it. I don't like going to Hollywood video, but it's the least of three evils where I live.
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