Every business has employees that are dedicated to customer service but when the ratio of front line staff out numbers production and management staff at a 5:1 or higher ratio then there are some serious drawbacks in how the company maintains its staff.

For instance Walmart America’s largest employer with over 1 million employees has earned a reputation as being one of the worst places to work. Their turnover of employees is over 100% which means every year they fire or people quit as fast as they can hire them. Although Walmart may be singled out as the worst most other retail and service oriented business are just the same.

So what is the root cause of the problem?

Unfortunately these businesses do not value quality workers. The number of people applying for employment is so high that the company feels if they pay minimum wage and do not cover benifits the employees will leave and the cost to the company is less then the amount they would have paid for a dedicated staff member.

In the case of health care benefits the plans that are offered are usually only affordable to management. Walmart ran a television commercial stating that approximately 100,000 of their employees were covered by health care plans. If you figure more then 1 million employees work for walmart you can quickly see that the one in ten ratio applies. This is because even the minimal plans cost about 35% of a front line workers pay with HMO plans costing upto 60% of a minimum wage earners pay which leaves nothing left for rent, food and gasoline.

Now again we are talking mostly about Walmart but every other retailer out there is exactly the same with very few exceptions.

If for some reason you feel that you would like to work in retail you must understand that this is a job and not a career. Often retail establishments will pay a portion of college tuition and if you are interested in getting a business related degree they may pay for some of your classes. If you need a job when you are out of work they are often  hiring even in a slow economy because of the high turnover rate.

But if you want to become a part of management then you can not expect to work your way up without some serious hardship. The key is to be hired as a management trainee. If within 6 months you can start training for management then you know you have a future if you decide to keep working longer then a year and have not been asked or provided the opportunity to join management training then you should think about moving on. If you have not been asked it is probably that they don’t see you in a management level job with their company and this could be for many reasons.

So, the pitfalls of working for a retailer whether it be a mainly merchandise store like walmart or a large grocery chain like albertsons or a restaurant chain like apple bees can be seen as proportional to the ratio of management to front line staff and the overall turnover rates in staff.

Although there is opportunity for advancement you must realize that for every manager there are 10 employees and the social mentality of the workplace is unacceptable for more then a short period of time.