I was a hardlines ASM (until July 1st of this year) and can vouch for the immense pressure placed on stores to meet credit goals.
I spent countless hours on these useless district wide conference calls whenever our store was deficient in credit. It was the same old thing over and over: Coach your associates. Put them on a PMP if they don't get a certain amount. All of us on the call expressed fake enthusiasm just to appease the higher ups, making overconfident commitments like 50 apps on a slow Tuesday.
I'll never forget when some other manager brought up that a single cashier obtained 500+ applications in a month in his store. I was in disbelief. I checked on that particular store's metrics and sure enough, there it was. That is not right at all. I wondered if that store manager cared about the almost certain possibility of fraud. No one cared and there probably wasn't any kind of investigation because the apps were rolling in. In fact everyone cheered on. If I had an associate getting that many in my store I would have looked long and hard as to what was going on. I'm sorry, I put ethics and the law above achieving high numbers, I would have termed that associate for the slightest hint of fraud with no hesitation.
Having no SSN was a roadblock for my store (being in an area with a lot of undocumented immigrants) but that wasn't a valid excuse. The company wants the credit applications to come in so badly that customers are asked for an IRS tax ID number if they don't have a SSN. Who carries around their taxes? Are they that desperate?
For those of you that don't know, the reason why the company is so big on credit is due to the fact that the company gets a $18 incentive from Citibank for each application. It's easy money. Same goes for PA's, although I imagine Sears is losing some $$ in this as I've heard some horror stories regarding how often every day products break and fail. All of the expenses due to the service calls, parts and product replacements must surpass the income they get from the agreements.
I'm not so sure why the company is big on Shop Your Way...most people who are a part of it expect too many freebies and incentives. They are definitely losing money on SYWR.
All I know is that I am glad to be far, far away from Sears. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and it's only getting worse. I was tired of being a proxy for Hoffman Estates and their failed agenda. That said, I'm loving my new job!