store manager

manager

operations manager

business analyst

retail store manager

I worked here for several years and saw my store change hands on ownership due to the previous owner not caring enough and trying to run the place like his other O2 store (high pressure, target driven).

This wouldn't have been too bad if it worked, however it didn't and damaged the stores name irreparably. He had a knack for walking into stores, pointing to staff and saying 'you, you and you, your sacked please leave' for no apparent reason other than he wanted to save money on wages during quiet seasons. He has also had written evidence placed against him stating that 'If I go to tribunal I don't care, you can't prove anything'.

Now I should point out this owner nearly ran the place into the ground and corporate had to get involved to stop this regularly however he chose to ignore advice on more than one occasion.

The new owner is the brother of the previous owner and he seems more involved, more knowledgable and less unruly, he would come into store and point out things to improve, then collect safe money and leave. This owner also runs Dewsbury, Scarborough, Barnsley and Huddersfield stores as well as having his hands in several others due to them being relatives.

After a few months Bridlington store had a very bad roof leak, this was reported several times to the owner who kept putting it off in total for over a year. This resulted in roof collapses, buckets all over the store, constant wet floor signs everywhere, wet media boxes and wet electronics. Eventually a year later the owner called the guy he originally asked for a quote when the issue first became apparent and asked him to repair it for the same price he quoted a year before!

Now despite this very very poor ownership the store itself was generally a joy to work in, the staff are among the most friendly and outgoing people I have ever met and the systems internally were in general good.

Twice however during my time I was accused by corporate of stealing electronics, both times I was placed on leave instantly and not allowed to gather evidence in store to prove innocence, however both times I accessed UPS logs online and found evidence that items had indeed been accepted by warehouse and were signed for by the same person and then several other items within the same crates had turned up in other stores when searched by serial number. The system works to accuse first then ask questions in an accusing manner without any prior evidence gathering. All information I had gathered was easily available to all staff.

The job itself was fair, however low wages compared to corporate with no room for negotiation and once a year the corporate side pays for a country wide music festival with free alcohol and live bands called CeXfest. Again corporate cover travel costs but only if you are corporate, franchise stores always end up having to make there own way because owners are too tight to pay for a bus. In perspective I earned more than £500'000 in my time there however the owner refused to pay for a £300 coach service.

Oh also, London Rathbone store gets robbed every other week. So be prepared if you are seeking employment there and there are regular emails going around stating men with axes have smashed security glass and threatened staff.

So overall I would say if you are looking at this company, avoid franchise stores like the plague, from what I have observed this is not just my store with these issues. Corporate are the way forward.

Working a CeX is an experience…

The staff there are alright, they’re friendly and accepting and not judgmental people which makes working there slightly better. However, if you’re starting out new, you will 100% get stuck with the jobs that none of the other staff want to which I understand to an extent, especially when you very first start working there but after a few weeks of dealing with it, it’s honestly just really annoying and makes working there really unpleasant especially when it’s closing and most of the staff are just stood at the till chatting but your stuff moping the shop or cleaning up/organising the shelf’s completely alone while the rest of the staff do literally nothing. 

In terms of the working hours, don’t expect the hours they say you’ll be working to actually be the hours you work. You end up working/being asked to work substantially more hours than what you agreed to and the starting/finishing times of the job are painfully inaccurate. For example if your contacted hours in a Saturday are 10-7 there is no way you’re actually finishing at 7. Instead you’ll be stuck there for at least another 30mins to 1 hours extra doing odd jobs around the store. 

Moreover, in relation to the hygiene and cleanliness of the shop - forget it! It’s disgusting, some of the staff who I worked with honestly looked and smelled like they hadn’t so much as seen a shower within the past year. They noticeably stunk of BO and coffee and being stood next to them or talking with them made me feel physically ill because of how sting the smell was. As for the majority of the staff, they weren’t as bad, most however did noticeably smell of body Oder which while unpleasant, was bearable. The only bathroom in the shop was upstairs and how it passes a single safety or hygiene check is beyond me. The shop itself (the floor, shedded and conditions of the products) was questionable at best due to inch thick layers of dust and dirt that coats them. However, the phones/other technology that stays behind the glass is regularly cleaned and kept in good condition.

There are perks of working at CeX though, such as the fact that there is no uniform. You can pretty much wear whatever you want to, providing it’s appropriate and not just offensive which is completely reasonable. This definitely makes the job easier as you feel more comfortable and it makes working there feel more chill.

Overall, it’s definitely not the worst job out there in retail, the staff are decent and the job itself, while physically demanding, tiring and painfully boring, is not particularly difficult due to the fact that the shop is small in size and the main thing you need to to is filing, organising, and sorting DVD’s and games ext as well as working behind the toll which is particularly difficult. The hours are long, the customers are okay. Also the pay is minimum wage which makes working there even more tedious.

If you’re considering working there it’s not the worst place to work but it’s far from being one of the better jobs you can get instead.

This job is really fun and I have really enjoyed working along side my fun/friendly colleagues.  If you love tech etc this is the best environment to work in - and with 15% discount, you really cant go wrong.....can you?

Thats where it ends unfortunately.  The wages are terrible, and you really are under appreciated until you hit a 20k salary at store manager level.  Even as a supervisor you only get 7.25/hr but are taught to run the stores as if the manager was always in (e.g. you do pretty much the same as they do and they are on about £10/hr+).

You have buys and sales targets that the store needs to achieve, and if they are hit - you receive a bonus.  These bonus's are often small, and management rarely receive this unless they hit all targets (but sales assistants only have to hit some - this is because they are often paid less as they are younger, apart from those over 25 who get paid 5p less than supervisors). One target is keeping wage cost between a certain %.  As it stands, it is only possible if you do not bring staff in or not let them go on holidays (yes, your wage cost is affected by staff holidays) - either way your in trouble if you go over wage cost, or in trouble for not hitting targets by saving on wages.  Promotion is not worth it unless you can assure yourself you will get to Manager within the next 3-4 years; as they are valued and paid far more.  Ops managers will tend to lecture you if targets are low etc and are paid a lot of money and bonus's to try and re-educate and get the store back up to speed.  Again, it is impossible to do well in the job due to high/unrealistic expectations as they assume when a store does not bring in enough buys/sales its because of staff, and not the fact that its unrealistic to gauge when a store will be busy or not.

Last.  Customers.  You will often get a mixed breed of customers - ranging from snooty 'im better than you' to the chav/unemployed 'Why wont you buy my stolen phone...'.  Of course its rewarding to have good days where customers are friendly, smell nice and chat politely, but on average its the opposite - demanding money back for electronics they have broken/got bored with, expecting cash like its a pawn shop (complaining when its not enough money) or just generally scammers trying to steal or sell dodgy products.  You will be threatened, called names or even physically assaulted (often by really smelly chavs or druggies who do not get their way) and are REQUIRED to put up with it. 

All in this job beats being unemployed...thats it.

I've worked for CEX for a few years now.
The store I worked for was corporate, with an experienced group of staff that ran the store smoothly. 

All of the staff there had worked there (or in similar jobs) for a long time and were mostly familiar with running the store enough to aid management when required. Because of staff being capable at keeping the store functioning, tidy and generally running well, atmosphere was relaxed. This leads to a decent amount of staff autonomy, where staff (usually) find jobs to do and keep on top of things, though during slower days this can translate to a lot of nothing to be done.

Training has been entirely on the job for myself and most others that joined around the time that I did. 

Typical days are buys and sales. Bigger buys/sales can be stressful, but ultimately there's nothing to take home and your job is firmly left at the store as a retail assistant. Hour long lunches leave a good gap for eating as well as getting errands done in the town centre during the day, which is helpful, though they are unpaid. Towards christmas and during school holidays hours can get intense, working 9am-7pm at christmas in retail can be exhausting, but the pay makes it worthwhile. My biggest problem with the job currently is lack of consistent hours. I cannot live my life on 25 hours a week.

Hardest part of the job is always difficult/angry customers, being a store that can directly affect the finances of customers can make for awkward/stressful exchanges and there's basically no way to avoid this.

Management are capable, though occasionally lack autonomy/cohesiveness which leads to relying on the manager over team leaders for some things sometimes, though this could be argued that this is for the sake of getting an outcome agreed on. Above store management range from aggressively capable and friendly and hands-on down to avatars on email threads, never seen/interacted with by the majority of shop staff.

Benefits are basically non-existent, 5%/15% off new/used items and the two week refunds to original payment (which can be achieved via purchasing online for non-employees). Staff bonus does exist, but targets are getting squeezed now and bonuses are harder to obtain for a lot of stores.

I enjoy the consumer technology, games and media element of the job. It's pretty easy to sell things you know a bit about and have a personal interest in. The job is very relaxed, but the paychecks/hours are what will drive capable staff out of the stores in the end.


As I am a supervisor my typical day involves many things. Opening the store and tills and making sure the safe balance is correct. I am responsible for ensuring that the store runs smoothly on the days where the store manager is of. A typical day would involve selling many of CeX's preowned products including DVD, Phones, Computers etc. As we also buy stock in there will also be similar stock coming into the store which has to be checked before it is bought in. As a supervisor I am responsible for making sure the stock that is bought in by the staff is correct. Other Managerial responsibilities include; making sure weekly stock checks are kept up to date, making sure wages are kept to a strict budget and maintaining store cash levels and banking cash when appropriate.

I leaned a different side of retail in this job as I had never worked in a shop that sold preowned stock before. We are just as focused on buying stock in as selling it which makes it very different to any other job I have worked. Most of all I have learned to be very thorough as ultimately I am responsible for the company's money when buying stock in.

As part of the management team we are responsible for the running of the store on a day to day basis. As we have both stock going in and out it's a constantly changing environment as we had to make sure that as one item of stock was sold, another took it's place. We were also responsible for monitoring our buys and sales KPI's to keep the store running as smoothly as possible. We also have to maintain a strict wage budget to ensure we are not overspending on staff.

CeX has a very unique brand and as such my coworkers were many and varied. I get along well with most if not all of my core team, and during my duties I have had to visit other stores and meet various other staff. 

The most difficult part of the job would be balancing the various tasks; on any given day you could have 4 crates of stock waiting to be transferred in, a batch of price changes of over 500 (CeX changes its prices on an almost daily basis to be as competitive as possible) and on top of that you could have someone bring in 300 DVD's to sell along with hardware that needs to be tested before it is bought in.Getting the balance right so you can be as efficient as possible is vital to this job.

The best part of the job for me is dealing with the friendly regular customers that we often get. They make working there a pleasure on the more difficult days.

arrive to work at around 8.45, cash up the tills and opsn up the shop, there is two parts to this job, there are days when one person is needed to go on test, this includes:
-testing all electrical items before they are brought in to make sure they are in the best working condition.
-controlling the orders made through the online site, getting what is ordered making sure that all the vital parts are with said order and then marking it as found.
-when the vouchers come through we put them through on the till package it up and at the end of a week day we book out the parcels and royal mail come and collect the parcels.

The other part of the job is handling tills, we buy, sell and exchange second hand electrical items, dvd's and games for a range of consoles. At all times we make sure that our shop floor is looking to the best standard, price labels are on show and all of our dvd cases have our 'trade and save' stickers in the right hand corner. When buying in discs we separate the disc from the box and place the disc in a plastic wallet with a label placed in the corner for the description of the disc to be shown when it is placed in the back wall where we keep the discs, in their own category in alphabetical order.
we make sure we talk to our customers in a professional manner and help them deal with any issues they have with any products they have brought from our store or one of our other stores. This part of the job is my favourite as I get to interact with customers, ask how their day has been, and level down to them, ask them if they found everything they were looking for and if not then I help to my best ability to satisfy their needs.

During my time at Cex, management and my co-workers have all helped me build self confidence and I have learnt a lot about the products we work with. I have gained great customer service and also enjoy working with my co-workers, they are all friendly and reliable.

I find the hardest part of the job is closing the shop at the end of the day, if discs aren't filed throughout the day then they are done when we are closing, there is a handover management have to write and if that isn't started through out the day then there is that we have to wait on, we have to then tidy the shop floor and check the tills are all cashed up with the correct amount in each till.

I worked for CeX for 6 months before I left to go travelling.

CeX is great because you are surrounded by like-minded people with the same interests as yourself and you make some of the best friends there (even with management). You get to rent anything for 2 weeks totally free when you work there which is great too.

Now for the cons: 
The pay fluctuates a lot as the hours you get are a result of how well you did the week before (at least in the store I worked at) - so some weeks I would work 23 hours and others only 11. Because of this I could gain or lose about £100 every month. We got the rota's on Friday evenings so you couldn't make any plans for the next week in case you were working. (You didn't know until Friday evening at 7-8pm whether you were working that Saturday or not..) so it can be quite difficult to keep a steady social life and work for CeX.

The buying/selling that you are trained in at CeX seems so straightforward but is actually quite complicated so this is by no stretch of the imagination an easy job, you have to work HARD. But for me at least my co-workers made this worth it as it was just like working in a group of friends all day. 

Lastly, because CeX is a massive company, above your individual store's manager, ALL the people higher up care about is money. We would have situations where the district manager would come in to our shop and make customers promises that only the district manager could keep. So within a few days the customer would come back saying 'that guy/girl the other day said you could do this for me' and no one had any idea what the customer was talking about. Also as a result of this, you have set guidelines to follow and so you would say that you cannot do something for a customer as it's against the rules for us, but if the district manager or someone higher up overheard you saying this, then 9/10 times they would jump in and say 'no of course we can do that for you, it's no problem at all' just to make the sale or satisfy a customer, increasing the workload on yourself by a lot and leaving you looking like an idiot in front of a queue of customers.

Working at Cex is the most stressful work environment you will ever find yourself in. It’s 10x more work than any other retail job. You will be doing multiple jobs at once. And whilst some co-workers are nice, most of them are lazy and slow. And suddenly you realise you’re being paid minimum wage as a 20 year old to do 10x the amount of work that your colleagues get paid more for. Simply because they are older. Giving away more money in a single trade in than you make in a month is disheartening. Management are nice, but the company as a whole doesn’t appreciate its staff. They try make up for it with Cexfest or 10 year celebrations but it is not worth the abuse you will face from the public. Constantly being told the reason you’re not getting hours is your own fault because you aren’t selling enough to pay wages. The wage budget is entirely dependent on what the store makes that day. So hours are constantly increased and reduced depending on the season which makes for a very unstable work life balance. Customers are awful, and whoever is in charge doesn’t think about how awful customers are, they just leave you to deal with it. Online orders have to be packaged behind the till, so customers can interrupt you at any time, leaving you stressed trying to package timed orders. You have to do transfers of stock behind the till, once again you can be interrupted at any time. You have to do price changes in amongst serving customers. And it’s always busy. You will get scoffed at if you don’t finish all of your tasks, as if you can be in 5 different places at once. At any point a customer can walk up to you with a 200 dvd trade in, or 15 items of hardware and that’s an hour of time lost to do your tasks. And customers will sit there in the queue calling you slow, comments underneath their breath. It is the worst environment I have ever worked in, in my entire life. There’s this stereotype that people who work at CEX are lazy, it’s true for some, but majority of people are overworked and tired. Not worth it for the terrible wages.

[short]
Work here if you want to progress quickly or need leadership experience.

Pros
+ good music
+ Fun staff 
+Staff discount
+Good Progression
+No uniform 
+Flexible times

Cons
-Incompetent staff 
-Incompetent management 
-Rude customers
-Late finishes
-Understaff
-Busy
-Lacking resources to complete Job
- Pay 
-No "teamwork"

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[long]

A typical day will include arriving at the store at 09:00 to get the store ready for open at 09:30. 
Sales associates will open till, complete online orders and do a quick tidy of the store before open.

Customers of this store can be partially hostile, if I was to put a percentage on it I'd say 60%. You can usually spot the hostile customers, some are regulars.

As a sales associate you'll be tasked with a secondary job while you are on tills. Either relabelling, Transferring stock in/out, online orders or merchandising.

It often gets very busy, especially on a Saturday.
It is very important that you are able to work under pressure as this will be a theme working here.

As there is a currant staffing issue, the store will often be understaffed. Some staff don't show up, some staff call in sick. This will also be a theme. 

Breaks are usually an hour long, unless you're doing less than 5 hours, I believe.

You will learn a variation of skills, from testing electronics, online orders and packaging.
 
Depending on how long you've been at the store you'll have a chance to become a supervisor. You'll be given the task of running the store and making sure the sales associates are doing their jobs. 

You'll often finish late so expect to finish late. 

Management in some cases be incompetent. However they are respectful and understanding. 

The most enjoyable part of this job is the music. I use to put on a Kpop playlist to get me through the Saturdays.

A typical day at CeX is spent doing a large number of different tasks, mainly serving on tills, buying items from and selling items to customers. A large part of the job is also spent demonstrating specific products, as well as being able to build a rapport with customers, making sales and assisting them with queries about our products - as a happy regular customer base who will continually return to the store is very important to the company. There is also a large amount of general maintenance that such a busy store requires, particularly as all of our stock comes directly from customers through the tills, rather than pre-packaged at a warehouse. This means a large amount of time is dedicated to sorting and putting stock away and presenting items to go out onto the shop floor. Another daily task at CeX is the thorough testing of electronic equipment, requiring a large amount of knowledge about different games consoles, mobile phones, cameras, televisions, computing equipment etc., although it is very easy to learn over time, and the more practice of the role of 'tester' the better the understanding of different electronics, and in turn the easier they are to sell.
The shop environment is a very happy one; each member of staff is valued and mostly given the opportunity to develop and go to help 'build' other stores if they so wish, and tasks are distributed evenly. Management is broken down into different levels of Managers and Supervisors, and although each person in management has a different style, there are very few issues with the way the store is run. Regular CeX Sales Assistants are considered to be a hugely important part of the company - the driving force behind the company's success - and staff are rewarded annually with a completely free 3-day festival just for employees.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Store manager 25 salaries reported	£19,320 per year
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Operations manager 3 salaries reported	£39,000 per year
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