Pros
At first, being involved and working with bicycles was great. As time went on things changed.
Cons
Everything. Pay is terrible and when concerns are raised they get laughed off. One colleague received under £2.50 an hour for a month. Granted this was an error but what an error to make! If I didn't care about having a job I thought I might enjoy and find stimulating and I saw it only as a payslip I would push trollies at tesco, where I would receive close to or more than a 25% increase in my current hourly rate. Training is non-existent. I am a self-tought bike mechanic (although that is not my job title this is how I am used by my store manager) and if I didn't seek out and learn in my free time I would know little more about bikes than when I started. Undervalued bike hut staff. We are the most stressed and hard-working members of staff. This is not reflected in how we are treated at Halfords. Both in pay and expectations. We are in a sector which I would call 'skilled labour' we need a lot of specialist knowledge and practical competence in order to do our jobs properly (which some of us do not have hence the many returned bikes and high number of complaints) this is not recognised by management or head office. Personally I am sick and tired of being the only member of staff left who has any bicycle knowledge and every question from customers being re-directed towards me. My colleagues and even my superiors are often nothing more than middle men who pass questions between me and the customer because they are unable to answer the questions themselves. Something I see as bewildering especially when these people are managers of cycle departments who have been in their roles for longer than I have been employed. Breaks. We were told that we had been granted better lunch break guidelines. In reality our breaks we're cut by at least a third in most cases. In the colleague handbook we are allowed up to an hour and a half on a long shift. In reality you will rarely see 45 minutes. I often work without a lunch break through no choice of my own. Organisation. Store managers seem more concerned with keeping the back room tidy and keeping out of trouble with their seniors rather than helping customers and meeting expectations. On many occasions I have been assigned to clean the stock room when there are too many customer orders scheduled to leave the store the same day. Bullying. This may not apply to all stores, however I can say that my store manager uses threats, intimidation and bullying tactics in order to get what he wants from his staff. I have also heard him make personal remarks about members of staff as regards their intelligence, physical appearance and aptitude. This dors not make you want to work for this man. Management at my store seem unable to assign appropriate roles to appropriate people. Our actual bike mechanic has had no formal bike training, the members of staff more suited to his role have been passed over because they do not take overtime or bend over backwards for management. The bikehut manger under the store manager has no more bicycle knowledge than the average person on the street and yet is assigned to run a bike retail store and repair workshop. Our store manager also saw it fit to remove every cycling enthusiast from the cycle department and assign them to audio and auto parts. A wise decision in his own mind but absolutely ridiculous and misguided to anybody else's I am sure. These staff have since left as a result of the management. Opportunities. Me and two other staff members were promised formal training as bike mechanics on or interviews, three and four years on respectively none of us received any training and as I am the last remaining member of staff out of these three I do not hope to. Instead I am seeking employment elsewhere. Fair treatment. In my first or second year at Halfords my colleague was made cycle mechanic and was given a pay increase to go with the new role. I was trying for the same job but was told that I would not be afforded the same increase in pay, despite having the same responsibilities and expertise. This is my experience of working for Halfords.