delivery driver

sales associate

sales manager

assistant sales manager

handler

Ashley Canada - The Dufresne Group

I'm gonna give you the TLDR; if you wonder if you should take a job with this company, dont.

I was hired very VERY quickly and I should have taken that as a sign to begin with. There are MANY things wrong with the company and its constantly compounding. There is a lack of communication not only within the building, but from store to store or distribution to store. They dress up duties in general jargon, making it easy to manipulate what you "should" be doing, while not allowing you to do others.

For non-sales staff, they didn't even GET training. Warehouse personnel - unless you work in a distribution center - are expected to work ALONE and do the duties of not only janitorial staff but warehouse tasks as well as wall repairs and maintenance which should be handled by professionals.

Training is non-interactive and boring; it's all videos and reading and nothing really practical, or needs to be "on site" training yet no one knows what they are doing. Some of the subjects covered either no longer exist, outdated or so dumbed down to the point of thinking the company is questioning your sentience. Management micro-manage everything both in-store and off-site. Basically, if you aren't a sales person or a manager, your opinions and value to the company are lackluster and a nuisance more than anything.

A "typical" day depends on your position. For warehouse personnel, you are expected to clean all major traffic areas, off-load the truck, change promotional signage and price tags Warehouse personnel with then prepare any and all transfers to go on the truck by wrapping them in plastic, foam, cardboard ect to prevent damage. When the warehouse person isn't doing that, they are likely moving furniture around the store. This may include very large, heavy, and awkward pieces. It could be a dresser and mirror, a chest, power recliners, sofas, loveseats, bedroom pieces, mattresses, bedding, dining room and what not. As there are no other warehouse personnel at the location, asking for "help" is required but not likely received in a meaningful way. Sales and Managers are either busy, no one is physically capable of aiding or people just don't offer. Older people, people with past injuries all make it nearly impossible to perform any duties by oneself. 

Everything is a front for getting you to work more for less and you'll enjoy it, otherwise they will replace you. Management, while present, is constantly "adjusting". People barely know who reports to who, or there are multiple people you report to for different things. Everything is communicated via email, namely because 20 people are going to ask you about the same thing, even though you've communicated it prior. The managers seem to not respect time, setting up meetings and double booking for meetings with associates. If you get a customer wanting to "speak to the manager", you are basically told to handle it yourself.


Do not apply here to this company. Do not pass go. Do not collect a pay cheque and definitely value your time and effort, cause this company WONT

The Good:
-The immediate management, that being the assistant manager and manager were both terrific. 
-The staff is friendly and fun to spend 8 hours a day with. 
-Ashley makes a good mid range product which you can easily be proud to sell.
- The pay structure is good,  giving you a base salary of X dollars. Anything commissions you produce exceeding X dollars is paid to you. You are guaranteed X dollars so you will not starve during slow periods.


Things to Consider :
A - This is commission driven sales, and commissions arent given until your sale is shipped. 
B- The management will have your back most of the time, but particularly troublesome customers will get what they want eventually (even if they're wrong), usually at the cost of your commission. This happens more often than not, but it's not a regular occurrence.
C- If you cost the company more than your commission covers, they will lay you off during the slow season. This is true even if you have a warehouse of stuff waiting to get delivered (see point A) 
    - additionally; if the products on back order (no fault of yours) it still could affect your employment.
D - In the Atrium (where this ashley is located) there are 2 other stores, all owned by the same people.  Ashley only carries Ashley products, but World wide next door carries a diverse range, including Ashley. This makes competing with them difficult.
   - additionally; Ashley does not carry appliances or electronics. 


Dont consider working here if you are thin skinned. Ive worked a number of sales jobs and I will say customers are a bit more standoffish on average. Remember, furniture shoppers go to many stores and deal with many salespeople. It's never personal. You're just probably the 8th sales person today.




Summary- 
You need to be passionate about the product you're selling and engage with the customers. The customers here are a particular breed, and demographic. I was successful in insurance sales, but not as much here. 

If you have a passion for interior decorating, furniture and things like that, you can make good money here.

The customers are generally good people, but I found them more stand offish on average here. Again, this is usually the case with customers who've been shopping furniture all day. You're probably the 8th sales person and they're sick of seeing sales people.

If you're patient, thick skinned and have a passion for home decorating, or at the very least an interest. Ashley might be a good fit for you.

The Staff is terrific, and I cannot praise The management I had enough.

The job on it's own was fairly standard, but the way they treat you, along with the work they have you do and the pay they give you for all the work you do, is not worth it as a good place to work at. 

They have good people there (or had, when i was there) but now it's so corporate and vicious that the environment is so toxic and a true pain in heart to stay at. 

They tell you often how your not fast if a certain task takes realistically longer, than what they expect, such as decorating a section of the store in 30 minutes, when it actually takes longer to do. they'd rather have you just put things together, rather than make things look actually presentable with the attention to detail you'd need for a task like that. instead it doesn't matter. screw it, just get on with a display and forget about selling a product. as long as it sort of looks ok, following a floorplan that makes no sense and a list of how the displays should look like, that don't make the items look good.

All this along with, if your working at the warehouse, your not just in the warehouse, your constructing all of the furniture, making the stands for the displays, painting the walls, doing logistics, doing janitor duties fairly often (which means your cleaning toilets and collecting/throwing out garbage from every garbage can in the location), and moving furniture everywhere. 

If you do happen to work in the warehouse,  you should expect it to be small and not hold that much space for the kinds of products and deliveries that you will be expecting every few times a week.

It's a vicious cycle of people telling you to do something midway of doing some other task and chipping away at work that needs to be done, but will eventually not matter a 2 weeks later, all while being told your not doing your job or being fast enough to get that knee jerk decision from the higher ups, done. the long term, doesn't matter. they only want the short term.

If you care about customers, care about the work you do, care about supporting your colleagues as the front man in a warehouse and care about growing in your career, DO NOT work here. the only value you'll get is a few skills here and there that you can put in your resume like being a janitor or logistic tech. but that's about it. Your better off finding work somewhere else. 

i only gave this place 2 stars because you can get some decent skills from this job. but it's not worth it for the way they'd treat you as a warehouse material handler.

My time at Ashley Furniture Home Store, spanning from January to March, was marked by a mix of positive and negative experiences. On the positive side, I received excellent support from my colleagues and the store manager, and the employee benefits and facilities were satisfactory.

However, the promises of lucrative earnings were far from reality. Despite hearing about the potential to earn over a million dollars annually, the truth was starkly different. Only a select few employees achieve such high earnings consistently. To earn decent commissions, sacrificing personal time to resolve customer service and delivery issues was necessary, as the company lacked sufficient budget and support for these crucial departments.

The job title of "sales professional" felt misleading, as employees often felt micromanaged and restricted, resembling high school graduates doing volunteer work. There was constant pressure to collect customer information, regardless of establishing rapport, and expressing concerns to management resulted in disciplinary actions.

Moreover, the compensation structure was unjust. Employees were paid minimum wage, and failing to meet a certain commission threshold led to deductions from future earnings, creating a cycle of indebtedness to the company.

Adding to the challenges was the burdensome training regimen. Sessions lasting one to three hours on different days of the week covered the same topics repeatedly. HR representatives delivered the same information repeatedly, leaving employees exhausted and annoyed. These training sessions, while essential for professional development, proved counterproductive as employees were unable to attend to customers during training hours, resulting in lost sales opportunities.

In summary, while the supportive environment and decent benefits at Ashley Furniture Home Store are notable, the unrealistic earnings claims, micromanagement, unfair compensation structure, and exhausting training regimen overshadow any positives. Prospective employees should approach with caution, considering the significant drawbacks of the job.

Started off ok, other than I had 4 days of training which was not even close to being enough. I was destined to fail from the get go. In the beginning, store I worked at had no store manager in place, the person I took over from left things an absolute mess, plus I had no senior manager in place for  guidance. There was no immediate help within. I reached out multiple times for help which was unanswered. The expectations were extremely high, often left with multiple tasks to complete with not enough time to complete them. I was going in early and staying late just to attempt to get ahead. But often times you’re asked to stop what you’re doing to complete a task that seemed ridiculous for the amount of traffic the store got. Furniture is no emergency. Head office people were rude and when I encountered one in my early days, she blamed me for something I didn’t even do! Rather than welcome me to the company and explain the issue, she was accusatory and rude! I was firm in my response which I later found out I was considered “rude”. I refuse to be walked on regardless of who they are! When I finally got a senior manager, she did very little to support me, responding only with “we’ll help get you through it”. She was young and acted like she knew it all. Our personalities did not gel, that’s why I’m sure she treated me the way she did. I did not fit into her mould or the company’s for that matter. I have education, skills and talent and know how to put things together, but was told countless times to change this and change that, was never right. Store staff did support me and let me know things looked great. She gave very little positive feedback, which made being there even worse. I’d get reprimanded for following the plan! The furniture is high priced and quite frankly, was garbage. Oftentimes receiving items damaged which you had to jump through hoops to get rectified.  Overall, the experience was very deflating, stressful and not worth the time or the pay!

I have worked in retail before and I would not recommend anyone this job. First thing if you are new sales person definetely look elsewhere. The comission structure is done in a really shady way, you don't know the cost on anything without a manager looking it up so you can't properly calculate the comission amount. They have high and low margain comission which starts at 2% for low margain and 4% for high margain for 27k then it goes to 2.25/4.25 to 34k basically to the max which is 5/7 at 69k every 2 weeks not monthly. You can get bonuses but, they set them so high it's unobtainable. They force you to selling mattresses and will fire you if you don't hit their mattress sales. If you don't hit a certain amount they will fire you, also you can't discount anything in the store more then 5% and they have this way of showing the price tags in financing basically 30% more if you finance 60 months or 30% less if you pay cash super weird and hard to understand. You can't help customers after the sale everything goes through their stupid process and likely they won't be helped. The deliveries are always messed up and you lose sales because of it all the time.

The worst of all every comissioned sales person has to be paid minimum wage, they get around this by paying you minimum wage then the next paycheque if you make more they will take it out of your next paycheque. My store is one of the busiest in canada and has some amazing sales people like top 15 in canada and they make 65-75k the rest of the store makes maybe 40-50k a year and these are exceptional sales people that make the top amount. 

This company is great at scamming the customer and messing with it's employees and not backing their product they do exceptionally well. Also you have to have a stupid headset that they are screaming in all the time to update your scoreboard (tracking ups) which is absolutetly wonderful.

If you are thinking to work here, stop and read this. If you think you have bad time in life and you seriously need to do something, go for it untill you find something better.
It's the worst store to work for. The management is dumb, asks sales reps to post good reviews on Google for the store. They can go any level to hit their target, BUT you won't get anything iifthey achieve the target.theybho . the wages are so less and competent that you will barely survive. It's kind of authoritarian management. they will ask you to walk all across the store even if the front door  is working. the system here is if you don't make commission  once and make second time they will take the previous month's commission . If you want to inquire about your salary statement or anything, managers have no clue , they guide you to another sales rep. it's like as you have joined you owe company some money. one manager thought he was some celeb and acts like he is in some kind of movie Other  basically does nothing and sits . there also a selling sales manager who makes all fishy numbers. The selling sales manager does awesome sales even when there is no one in the store . The heights is they charge 2.50$. in each paycheck for coffee , but but the coffee machine is mostly broken.
the favoritism is at such level that if you are not the favorite, you don't even exist. Managers are mostly busy in gossiping and flirting with one of the admin lady. They don't like to move or see , closing a sale takes more time actually choosing the product. Everyone has their own attitude and ego. the only good thing about working is the co workers. they are just awesome (not all).

A typical day at work consists of moving product around the store and/or receiving a truck full of new product to unpack, tag, and then place on the floor per the manager's instructions.

I've learned how to repair *some* furniture, as well as how to perform general janitorial duties. However the warehouse-specific duties are very similar to my previous employment so regarding that aspect of the job I haven't really learned anything new.

The management is torn between operations/administration and sales and because of this, there is often miscommunication with regards to how to do things. Sales managers often make decisions in the spirit of sales which cause the operations/administration side of the business to have to fix things or take on unnecessary work.

The workplace, although encouraged to embody a team oriented environment, often feels divided the same way management is - operations vs sales. There are often rules being bent/broken/created out of thin air which causes tension between the two factions of the business.

The hardest part of the job is doing my job to the best of my ability while often being told to do conflicting things from different areas of management. 

The most enjoyable part of my job is working with my department. The atmosphere is often light and fun yet efficient, and we rarely are unable to complete a day's worth of tasks.

I've finally decided to open up about my experience at Ashley as what started so positive could end so ugly. I came over to Ashley in May of 2017 and right away the management on all levels from store manager to the president of the company welcomed me with open arms. The staff were great, easy to get along with and were extremely helpful in developing me. I had a pretty successful year as I hit my goal the store gave me for the remaining part of 2017. Hit my goals every month under a great manager who for some reason never got the same respect back from his Sales Management team when he wasnt there. (whole different story) Then the company did some things that Destroyed the Winnipeg East location. My manager was transferred and they brought in a individual who by far in the worst manager I've ever came across. She single handily destroyed Winnipeg East. We went from 8 staff to 13!! It wasn't easy with 8 people nevermind 5 more but she didn't care, she's all about her Bonus*** I can sit here and rant but Ashley Upper management need to get rid of this woman. Since my relationship ended with Ashley, there's only 1 that's right 1 person still at that store I worked with. 16 people have come and gone since July 17. This is a beautiful store with a great administration team and great upper management, just to bad that they can't see what's going on.

likely the worst job I ever had. No training, no support and terrible management. Started off great, but with no store manager in place, no senior manager early on and a mess left by previous manager, the chance for success were slim to none. Work life balance is non existent, I’d start early and leave late most days and still not get everything done! And at several times, you were asked to stop what you were doing so you could rush and do something else ASAP and upload pictures. It’s furniture! To me, there doesn’t need to be the added stress and tasks that are meaningless.  My first encounter with someone at head office was less than friendly! I was sent a nasty email and within a few minutes, a follow up phone call. Not once was I welcomed to the company, only just grilled on something I didn’t even do! She was rude and I was firm right back. Come to find out later that I was coined as “rude”. But I refused to be disrespected which I guess is wrong. My frequent requests for help came unanswered and once I had a senior manager, the response was “don’t worry, we’ll help you get thru it”. Which never happened. Questions I asked, I never got a concise or proper answer, always found out once it was too late. Certainly not a leader in my opinion!  Nothing was done to help and I was left to feel like I didn’t matter to the company. Sad really. If you choose to work here, I wish you the best of luck. Worked with some nice people in store, but that was about it.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Delivery driver 35 salaries reported	$22.08 per hour
Sales associate 77 salaries reported	$67,000 per year
Sales manager 5 salaries reported	$69,200 per year
Assistant sales manager 1 salary reported	$67,000 per year
Handler 14 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour

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