I worked at Zellers in high school and a couple years of university.
It was a fine job, I guess. Much better than fast food.
There were a lot of things that bothered me about the way the store was run. Not the store management, but the direction from "head office". A lot of peeves are probably common to many retail jobs.
The biggest thing is that as employees, our number one job was to get people to sign up for the HBC credit card. That was the only thing keeping the store afloat - the 28.8% interest rate charged to your customers who overextended themselves. A lot of items the store would lose money selling, with the hopes that people will get dinged with interest charges. I think I recall that only two Zellers stores in Calgary actually turned a profit through sales. The credit card business made up the difference.
I'm not an economist, but I sure got the feeling it was only a matter of time before the chain closed up shop if that is the business model. Wal-Mart is usually cheaper. I don't think a Canadian company can compete with that. What Zellers should have done was work on improving the image of the store, so it approaches what a Target store is in the states. Or maybe HBC was just holding off changing the brand, waiting for the inevitable purchase.
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