ZEHRA K BOZAI.

Zehra K Bozai
English 102
12, Oct 2009.



I interviewed shift supervisor of the Sally beauty supplies located atLincoln and McCormick. I stayyed with her for an hour, she told me about her experience working as a supervisor..............


AN INTERVIEW WITH A STORE MANAGER.

I went to the SALLY BEAUTY SUPPLIES store located at McCormick and Lincoln Ave. There I met Rita, the shift supervisor of the store. As soon as I entered the store I saw a young lady standing behind the counter in front of a cash register. She said hello to me, and with a smiling face asked, “Can I help you?” I said, “No thanks I am just looking around. If I need your help I’ll ask you.” Then I started looking at the different merchandise in the store. The store was full of beauty items located throughout three aisles. It was not a huge store, but all the merchandise was arranged in a way that it looked neat and clean. I spent fifteen minutes looking around the different kinds of merchandise in the store. I have been a Sally customer for the last seven years, and I mostly buy my beauty stuff there.
After spending fifteen minutes walking around the store, I returned to the front to ask the shift supervisor a few things about the store and her job. When I approached her, she was dealing with a Korean customer. He was a middle aged man of about fifty years who could not even speak a word of English. The shift supervisor said his bill as thirty dollars, but he gave her forty dollars. When she tried to return his extra ten dollars, he thought she was asking for more money and tried to give her an additional twenty dollars. She said, “Thank you. You are okay,” and the man left with a smiling face.
One of the interview questions I asked Rita was about how long she had been working at Sally’s. She said she had started as a sales associate when she was a seventeen-year-old high school graduate. At that time it was hard for her to continue her job because her manager was very strict and made her work hard. Her manager was also kind of rude. Rita also explained how she continued working because she was fond of shopping and needed money. Luckily after some time her strict manager got transferred to a different location and that made her job easier and she continued working at Sally.
Rita worked as a sales associate for three years and then she got an out-of-state job offer for an opening in Arizona as a “Key holder” position in Sally’s. She moved there and stayed there for a year and then moved back to this location where she has been working as a shift supervisor for the last three years. Rita enjoys working at the McCormick and Lincoln location because it is close to her home. She has two people working under her and her responsibilities include keeping track of everything that happens during her shift and telling sales associates to take care of customers. If something is missing from the store, Rita is supposed to tell her manager right away. Also, if an employee is not working properly or behaves rudely towards a customer, then she is supposed to inform her manager right away.
Rita said working at Sally’s is a tough job because different cultures of customers who speak different languages visit the store on a daily basis. She said you have to be patient with customers, and there is a store policy that says the customer is away right. Sally’s has a sixty-day returned policy if customers are not satisfied with the merchandise. Rita was born and raised in the United States. She is basically Assyrian, and speaks five different languages including Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, English, and Assyrian. Her knowledge of different languages helps her deal more easily with different customers.
Rita also works a part-time job as a hairdresser in one of the spas in Downtown Chicago. Her duties are to supervise the sale associates working with her. Every year Rita takes 25-50 hours of continuing education classes a year to renew her beauty license. She said she is making good money at Sally’s and has no plan of leaving that job. However, in the future, Rita may like to own her own spa.