AT&T STORE, GLENDALE

It was noticeably slow in the store when I came in for an interview. In fact, I was the only "customer" there. There were two retail staff and 1 manager, and all of them looked bored. Jeff, the retail store manager came to me asked what can he help me for. He looked like he was just checking something on his computer desk before he came to me. He agreed to a quick sit down interview for my project, as long as it is not voice recorded.

Being a big corporate franchise, AT&T has a well thought out payroll and scheduling system. They use a POS system called RQ4. In contrast to Chowking, AT&T Store is a cell phone retail store that has a very different management approach. Jeff emphasized that his utmost priority in terms of scheduling is that no one ever goes to overtime. It is an incompetency on his part to mismanage the budget by overpaying an employee/s. Jeff claims he is never understaffed since they never experience accommodating a high-volume of customers.

The schedule is always released and announced a month ahead. Though their schedule is a bit more rigid, they are not the typical 9 -5 working office hours. The staff still rotates 2 shifts a day and work on weekends, which means employees eventually will request day-offs. Employees are then easily covered or replaced due to the ease of the RQ4 system.