Constantly understaffed - we'd love to hire new people in the portrait studio but we are not allowed to get more hours to hire anyone. If my boss goes over on hours she gets yelled at. We would be allowed more hours if we made more business, but we can not make more business because we first need to hire more people! This is the exact same problem that happens in every department. This entails a certain amount of stress every day because there are at least 4 hrs where I am alone in my department and I have to deal with multiple customers (I can take a 30 second bathroom break, come back and see five people in line; four for passports and my next sitting. By myself, it would take 10 minutes at the least to get four pairs of PPs done, that means my sitting is now ten minutes behind. We're SUPPOSED to book every twenty minutes, which is outrageous because I have to take the pictures then stand at a computer while the customer goes "DUHHH" because they don't know what shot they want. It doesn't make any sense). The occasional dissatisfied customer is inevitable, but I always try to do my best regardless. I usually forego one 15minute break a day.

Lately the store manager has been checking us out to see if we are 'busy' enough, if he ever tried working in this dept he would know we are usually rushing our bums off trying to give the store as much business as we can handle.

Do not be surprised if you are hired, they "guarantee" you a certain amount of hours per wk, and within months cut your hours down to less than half. There is no guarantee. Do not expect to climb the ladder unless you have worked there for +20 years, or someone unexpectedly quits. When you are a fulltime employee, they have the right to transfer you to any store in the city's location (Winnipeg) as they see fit, regardless of where you live (I know a woman who lived two minutes from her store of 25 yrs only to have to transfer to one that was almost an hour's drive away). Employee benefits are minimal; they gave us 10% discount cards, we have basic help with the union, but that's about it. I was off for 2 months with a broken arm and my discount card was deactivated.

In essence, the only real issues are with how the business is governed. The store I work in has a really friendly group of permanent staff that are always helpful and always great with customers. I see the true success of the store shining through them - definitely not through you-know-who that guy on all the PC commercials - look at all the other store commercials and see how they focus on the "friendly employee". But all we get is a dude in glasses who doesn't know what he's talking about. http://www.youtube.com/user/CBC22minutes#p/a/u/1/5nQYzu63f4M