Winemark Reviews

A regional manger that can only be described as none other than a bully, rules with fear and this (in my opinion) is why no staff question this regionals actions. Only interested in tasting wines and if none are sold staff are threatened with disciplinary action(even if your are selling more expensive products), I have personally witnessed staff buying tasting wines out of their own pockets to avoid this. This regional would also talk about other staff in different shops while also passing around confidential stories about other members of staff, which is totally unacceptable, unfortunately the staff won't question this due to fear of this regionals vindictive and vicious attacks. This regional would also belittle you infront of regular customers and staff to whom you have tried to build a working relationship with. If anyone questions this regional then she will try her hardest to push you out of the company

You are expected to meet targets that have no basis in reality. Every employee is judged by how high their "average transaction value" is (total value of sales you put through the till divided by number of transactions) which would maybe be appropriate in something like car sales but is utterly meaningless in booze retail. It is also in my opinion unethical to try to force more alcohol on people than they want. Last year we were also given a written guide on selling Christmas hampers (this is about as innovative as Winemark gets) and it instructed us to suggest tobacco products to customers to try to get the price up. The store I worked in was small and in a not very well off area but we were expected to sell as many bottles of £15-£30 wine every weekend as stores in places like Groomsport or Holywood and routinely threatened with disciplinary action for not doing so. Disciplining people is all this company knows. I heard from people in nearby stores who had been disciplined for having stubble and for being seen standing with their hands in their pockets. Senior management despite having no interest in what their employees go through on a daily basis liked to pop into stores regularly to nitpick. CCTV was used extensively to spy on employees. Dwindling sales were blamed on employees in stores just trying to do their jobs rather than the endless ridiculous decisions being made at the top of the company due to senior management only being concerned with exercising their egos rather than making business decisions based on reality. People are routinely bullied out of their jobs or fired on ridiculous technicalities if certain people in senior management take a dislike to them. If you stand up for yourself and are identified as having a brain then you will find yourself on the receiving end of this very quickly. If you actually rely on the job rather than it just being for a bit of extra cash then I would strongly recommend joining a union like Usdaw. They decided to sell Lottery scratch cards in all their stores (quite how tacky plastic lottery kiosks fitted in with their "premium wine merchant" image they constantly banged on about is beyond me) and we were expected to come in earlier to set it up for the day. This took around 15 minutes and was in addition to the 10 minutes or so you were already expected to work for free before opening the store. As I say if you need a few quid while studying or whatnot then Winemark might be tolerable for a while but they are a thoroughly rotten company to work for and I would look pretty much anywhere else first as proper retail places will be happy with you as an employee so long as you are reliable and have a good way with people. Also as others have mentioned, alcohol retail leads to a lot of unpleasant encounters with drunk people and the company gives employees absolutely no support in this regard.