bookseller

senior bookseller

book manager

manager

barista

waterstones

  I thoroughly enjoy my day to day tasks in Waterstones, Whether it be managing my sections or working in the newly opened cafe on the 1st floor.
  I have learned a lot about customer satisfaction and meeting daily targets in my time at Waterstones, as well as time management with my tasks and how to target sale points with individual customers.
  The management in all honesty is not fantastic. Once our stores assistant manager took over during the branch managers maternity leave things really picked up and the working environment became a much smoother and happier process. However, the decisions made by head office and the higher ups in the company, while they may be in the best interest, are not always the correct and ideal ones.
  The people I have worked with in my time at Waterstones I can only hope that I continue to know as the years go on. It has been a pleasure to work with nearly everyone based in our store and gladly call those handful good friends.
  There isn't a particularly difficult part of this job. As long as you can keep on top of book knowledge and do actually do some reading then it is a piece of cake. Not to reiterate but the only real issue occasionally is trying to deal with complex and unnecessary orders from those higher up.
  The most enjoyable part is definitely the customer satisfaction. I take great pride when I have been able to help a customer to my full extent and provide the most positive and effective outcome. The working environment with most staff is also one to be enjoyed, with nearly everyone having similar interests within and outside the job, it makes for fantastic morale. 

I worked as a christmas bookseller 2014-15 in Devon. I wasn't told from the get-go what my pay was, how to find the hours I was doing, the training I received was a video on health and safety made by HMV, then I was thrown in on an incredibly busy saturday. Getting the hang of how to do all the searches for the books is tricky and you're expected to know the floor plan of the store in order to direct customers to their desired books. I rarely left the counter and when I did, I was asked to put stock out without being shown how to do it - what section to put each book in, how to find that section on the database, how to scan it into the system and if it's done alphabetically or by popularity etc. the 50% employee discount was amazing though and it's a nice atmosphere. However, the head office hasn't paid me yet. I wasn't sent my national insurance number until after my placement ended and so they received it after the deadline for the christmas temp payroll. They then said that they'd add me to the february payroll... I checked on the payday and nothing. No pay. Told one of the managers. Next month, still no pay. I emailed the manager a week ago asking her to fill me in. No reply. 
They also offered me a permanent job a few weeks later and then never sorted it out, so I've begun applying to other places instead. the only highlight is the 50% discount and being able to stamp the cards

While working in a book shop is often thought of as a lovely job, times have changed. Since being purchased by an American hedge fund, Waterstones has become extremely corporate, understaffed with more pressure brought to bare on the shop floor. Lots of middle managers dip in from store to store, pointing out what is wrong and everyone is left deflated. Booksellers on pretty much minimum wage are expected to work in different stores and are often having to work on their weekends off because there isn’t enough staff to cover. Likewise working all day in stores on their own. The attitude seems to be that if you want the job then just do it and don’t complain. Poorly trained managers with little experience are heading teams and personal information is left on the computer for anyone to access. I found my entire review for anyone to look through and heard a branch manager discussing someone’s mental health issues on the mobile on the shop floor, including the persons name. These kind of things are unacceptable but seem commonplace. People who speak out are turned upon. Waterstones needs to take a good look at how it treats its staff and start proving the staffing and quality equipment to do the job properly, before they start complaining about their bookseller’s ability to do the job. 

This is an overall review on the company as I've worked in multiple stores.
 Its a retail job that requires you to do your own research/ skill development on your own time to be able to provide the specialist knowledge the company prides itself on. This wont result in any extra money as the company expects you to just be grateful to have the job. If you dont do this/dont have time to do this you will risk losing your job. 
Work days mostly consist of either shelving or dealing with customers (expect a lot of customers to not know what they are looking for/only know half a title or part of the author name/ briefly heard it on the radio or a TV show/ know that the cover is a random colour/ saw it in the window months ago etc). 
Management are pretty incompetent, and have no care for the lower staff .will show favouritism 
violent/ unstable/abusive customers wont be banned if they spend money in the store. been threatened multiple times by customers with no support from management/ told just to put up with it.
Staff and inter-store "competition" becomes toxic quickly.
Being promoted to Senior happens at 2 years service but there is no extra training involved, you are not shown how to do the extra things they demand of seniors, they just expect you to know it. 

Seems like a dream job but don’t let yourself be fooled, it’s just retail. 
I had a previous job in retail where I always overachieved in performance reviews and then at Waterstones was always told I was doing great. Time comes for performance review and apparently I’m under achieving. This was thrown on me with no prior warning and everything they said I was not doing, I was doing. Seems like the management have a style where they want you to always be on edge and jumping through hoops. This all came from managers who were never on the shop floor either so not sure how they could come to this judgement. 
I received minimal training and no induction booklet that other new booksellers got. Training seemed to work where you just hoped someone was nearby to help when a problem arose. They also make you train new staff when you’ve only been there a couple of months yourself. 
Long hours, minimum wage, little to no appreciation for anything you do. 
Despite all this, my colleagues are lovely as are most customers. It’s great being able to discuss books with other book lovers. The 50% discount is fab too. 
I think with waterstones the thing to remember is that at the end of the day it’s just a retail job and really isn’t as great as people think. If you like books and need a job, go for it and apply but it’s not going to be the dream that you might think.


This job isn't for everyone. 

Unless you absolutely love literature, books, and coffee, you might be disappointed with the low wage, workload (depending on other mitigating factors) and communication from on high.

Sometimes the bad parts of working for Waterstones are outweighed by that strong passion for books, and those in the upper echelons are all too aware of that.

In my personal experience, the management was mostly awful, aside from one or two of them. When I did have a manager working above me, they were mostly lovely, thoughtful and like-minded. But some questionable hiring choices meant two incredibly incompetent managers left in my short time.

The pay is dreadful, this is being addressed currently. See recent news stories, petitions, and author protests if you want more on that. Although, there is scope to move up if you want to be in the company for a long time. You can go on to senior bookseller (after a year of service I believe), lead bookseller (for all intents and purposes an assistant manager), expert bookseller (someone who knows a lot about a specific area and are renumerated for that expertise), manager, cluster leader, and so on.

I couldn't wait to start working in a bookshop, a dream job in a way. 
I applied for a permanent position but never got it - my contract just kept on being renewed every three months, so I couldn't join a union or even say anything about any unhappiness I had, temporary staff had no rights. Very much a "if you don't like it, leave" attitude. 
Management at this branch was all over the place, passive aggressive, and very demanding of staff. There was no flexibility offered to its staff, but staff had to be 100% flexible to the company. As I have found out from friends who have worked across retail, this seems to be very common. A lot of my fellow Booksellers felt undervalued, extremely stressed out, and often cried on their way home from work. 
If there is one thing to be said about the management, is that they hired lovely Booksellers. The camaraderie among us was amazing.
I have since met other people who worked at smaller Waterstones branches, and by the sound of things, had a much nicer time than I did.

I only did one week of work experience here as I was required to do by my school. normally I was given a rota of jobs I would be doing and people I would be working with for those jobs, this was completely ignored. on one day I was meant to spend my morning with one lady , however she only arrived that afternoon and my morning had been spent standing around with no instruction. The staff were unwelcoming, preferring to talk to themselves and talking down to me when I was unable to do something I hadn't been shown how to do, with muttered salty language or when I was unable to hear though I had explained I was hard of hearing, having at one point required a hearing aid. Management was unhelpful preferring to talk instead about her boyfriend than improving my work experience. the hardest part of the job was finding something to do, the most enjoyable part of the job was the activities I got to do, helping customers was rewarding and sorting through books was entertaining.

Though it was only school organized work experience, Waterstones was a wonderful introduction to work, the staff were friendly and informative and helped me to learn the necessary skills to function as a part of the team. 
I was taught how to use the computers and the store book search function so that I could help customers looking for books and I was taught about the store room which held the books and I was showed where to put them to stock the shelves.
The hardest part of the job was probably alphabetising the books in an efficient and timely manner, but I quickly got the hang of it. 
The most enjoyable part of the job was helping the customers out, as it was a book shop, every day I was meeting a wide variety of people looking for a wide variety of books, it was wonderful and interesting and I loved helping people look for books and giving them advice on books they might like. 
As it was work experience I did not get paid so I cannot give any information on the quality of wages etc.

Not the dream job you might think. The shops apart from the really big branches are chronically understaffed because the company don't want to hire anyone. Expect to be working alone running a whole shop while the one other person in that day is on lunch or unpacking a delivery. If they call in sick you can expect to be pressured into working on your own for hours until the company sends someone to cover. They are rubbish if you want to book holiday - even months in advance you can be told no. The owner thinks that working in a bookshop is benefit enough in itself, but it absolutely is not. There will be loads of things that need doing on top of serving customers, so don't think it's a relaxed atmosphere. You will also have to hardsell set new books to the customers every month, and if you don't have huge success with this it will block any chance of progression. Loads of staff are quitting because things only seem to getting worse and it's a horrible environment.

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