Meyer 1 Executive Summary I think Tyran Wright, front end manager at the Lehi, UT Cabela s, told me everything I needed to know by one simple sentence, Retail is it s own beast, you know what your getting into. Retail management is very different than any other job, not only do you have to keep employees happy, but the customers as well. It is your responsibility to keep everyone on track and give them what they need to keep customers satisfied. Retail management teams spend a lot of time trying to keep everything running smoothly. Scott Johns, the store manager for the Lehi, UT Cabela s, said, Even at home on time off I am always checking my emails and receiving calls. They are the last thing I look at before going to bed at night and the first thing I check in the morning. Retail management isn t a normal eight to five job, you have to be willing to work any day at any time, and even when you are not at work you still could get a call or email that you must respond to. Even though it is thought to be a simple job, sitting in an office while people on are the sales floor making money, it is a lot more complicated than that. As a manager you have to keep the balance between customer s satisfaction and employee s satisfaction while at the same time still meeting the expectation and goals sent down from the corporate office. Identifying Subjects Instead of just choosing one person to go interview I wanted to get different points of view, from people in different levels of retail management. Since I ve started at Cabela s the management team has had an open door policies, meaning I
Meyer 2 could go to them with any questions or problems I might have. Even though this wasn t a work matter I went to them anyway and they were more than willing to help. I talked to everyone face to face and found a day that would work for all of them that I could come in and do the interviews one after another. The first person I chose was Tyran Wright. She is the front- end manager at the Lehi, UT Cabela s. She s been in retail for fourteen years and in retail management for three years. I chose Tyran because she is fairly new to management and I thought would be able to give me a good idea of what I could expect when I first moved into a management position. Also she is a department manager, which is the lowest position in Cabela s management team. I next chose Steve Barton. He is the Senior Operations Manager at the Lehi, UT Cabela s. He s been in retail for eleven years and in retail management for nine years. Steve is an incredibly smart man and I knew I could learn a lot from him. He s been in management for a while and is a senior manager, which is the middle of the management team of a Cabela s store. I thought Steve could give me insight about the job after being in the field for some time. My finale choice was Scott Johns. Scott is the store manager of the Lehi, UT Cabela s. I knew Scott and had talked to him a little, but I was excited to be able to sit down and pick his brain. He s been in retail and retail management for 22 years and has reached the highest position you can in a single store, his next step would be District manager. Also I think the dream for any manager would eventually be able to run your own store and Scott could let me know what it takes to do so.
Meyer 3 What I Learned I learned a lot from this experience. I thought I knew the answers I would receive for each question before starting the interview, but I was wrong on all of them. The question I was most surprised with the answers was, What do you hate about your job? I thought it would be easy for them to pick out something they hated. However for the question everyone took a long time to try to think of something and all of them said there really wasn t any thing. Scott made it clear to me by telling me, I don t hate anything about my job. If I did I wouldn t be doing it. On the other side however everyone couldn t stop naming reasons why they love their jobs. The biggest one that stood out is how much all three said they love the people they work with, which is the biggest reason why I love my job now and enjoy going to work everyday. The thing I thought was the strangest was on the topic of education. When I asked what education they would recommend to me, all of them said a bachelors in business would be the best degree to get. However none of them had one, but Steve did add, Any degree would be good though, they just show you are willing to put in the time to learn something. I think this is a change in our society as a whole, before you could get a job right out of high school, but now a college degree is required by jobs. During the interviews I realized all the managers focused on one thing in their job the most, the happiness of their employees. Scott said, Happy outfitters
Meyer 4 perform better. If you keep people happy everything else will come. All the managers stressed honesty and integrity as the most important of Cabela s Core Values, these two values are the base for the great work environment Cabela s has. All the managers have open door policies to be able to come talk to them whenever you need to. Tyran also said, I would never ask someone to do something I would not do. A good manager is able to communicate honestly and effectively to their employee s and keep an enjoyable work environment. Conclusion I really enjoyed this assignment. Before doing this assignment I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career, I had some ideas but nothing I was passionate about. After choosing retail management and going through the interviews it helped me figure out that this is a career I am very interested in. While going through the questions I realized my managers answers were very similar to how I would answer the questions. Their personalities were close to my personality; they were all driven, hard workers who enjoy interacting with people. I am more interested now about going into retail management than any other career field before. This assignment also helped me get started in the process of moving up at my job. I learned what I could do now to help me move up, both at my job and in school. Also the most important thing all the people I interviewed said to move up was to make relationships and let people know you want to move up. This project helped me start this social network by letting all three managers know I want to move up in the future.
Meyer 5 What I Would Change If I did this assignment again I would only do a few things different. The first thing I would do is interview more people in management. If I had interviewed more managers at Cabela s I could have seen how they think and what exactly they do. This would give me a bigger perspective into what it takes to be a manager. I would also like to interview managers at other stores, besides just Cabela s. Finding people outside of Cabela s would give me the opportunity to see how other managers think in their own companies. I only found out what and how managers in the Cabela s company think and operate, if I were to go to other companies I m sure they would do things differently. The other thing I would change is the questions I asked. I thought I had really good questions, but I kept thinking of new questions to ask. Driving home from doing the interviews I thought of at least three more, but I think this was a good thing. I became so interested in this field I kept of wanting to find out more about the field. I don t think I could ever get all the answers I want, because I need to learn some things on my own when I start in the field.