I was hired to be a manager of a shoe store chain that specializes in shoes that look like kids air Jordan’s but are cheaper Nike knockoffs. During the interview the district manager told me I didn’t have to worry about competing with stores that sell Jordan’s because this chain’s clientele is specifically people with less money. Also, I should brush up on working with immigrant populations. I was told that credit card sign-up was incidental, and I really shouldn’t pay too much mind.
Well, 8 weeks into work, at least two district managers in the Midwest started pushing for all of their stores to sign up as many credit cards as possible. They were pushing for 10 a week if possible. Every single day, there was a mass email among stores where people were supposed to post when their store sells a credit card, and at the top of the email, one of the 2 district managers said he needed ALL stores off the zero list. Additionally the key metrics changed to include credit cards that had 30% variable APR.
Well among all of the emails, the DM posted charts of all the stores and their CC sales. Being a data-whore, I started cross referencing the list of sales to the poverty rates of the corresponding city.
Out of 20ish datapoints, only 4 (including a college town) were outliers of my theory:
All of the cities that were at least 30-50% (or more) over the states total poverty rate just happened to have sold 10-30 credit cards. Additionally, all of the cities that had 0 CCs happened to be the ones below the state’s poverty rate.
I have a bunch of data and stuff, but it’s all semi-organized and transferable.
I honestly quit mainly because of this. I AM NOT INNATELY A SOCIOPATH. I refuse to push poor people and immigrants into further debt.
Oh, the company in question? They had record profits last year, so this year they decided to focus on marketing instead of their employees.
(I knew a long serving manager making $15 per hour compared to my $25)
If you’re wondering about how nice knock off official Air Jordans are, don’t bother. They raised the price on all kids sneakers by $10, making the knockoff $75. Supposedly all prices are determined by an algorithm, which makes sense given how blatant it was in padding the “discount” on Doc Martens in January during a sale on all boots.