- This topic has 31 replies, 18 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 11 months ago by
.
- Posts
The suits at Ladbrokes have now decided in their wisdom that the shop staff should be out in the shop encouraging customers to play on the machines, bet on the special offers etc.
Now at Ladbrokes the staff go for dinner at the busiest part of the day when racing starts and in the evening have only one member of staff on – recently in my local shop someone broke the door after losing money on the roulette game. There’s no way in hell bookmakers should be manned by only one person. Seems that numbers behind the counter is far from being a priority.They’ve also gone mad with the offers – money back as a free bet if your horse finishes second by a neck or less on the flat, length or less for jumps. And now the " Lock In " where they boost the price of a selected horse for about 15 minutes or until £20,000 has been staked across the country.
Cheap gimmicks when their main problem is shortage of staff and poor early prices – unless there is a massive gamble on a horse, their early prices are invariable at least a point shorter than the first live show.
One of the shop managers i spoke to is convinced they’ll be bought or go under
Near to me a Paddy Power has just opened and that means there is a Hills, Corals (newly opened too) and a Ladbrokes within a 25 yards distance.
They are all fighting for an ever decreasing spend and can’t see that sort of business being sustained.
Didn’t they offer money back or vouchers on all losing bets if Dawn Approach won the 2000 Guineas, or am I dreaming. Their website is awful and too cluttered.
I always drift back to good old Paddy Powers, so much clearer and user friendly.
Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...There’s no way in hell bookmakers should be manned by only one person. Seems that numbers behind the counter is far from being a priority.
I have taken a great deal of interest in the way bookmakers treat their staff over the last couple of years (since I started dating a girl employed in a betting shop) and I’m not too impressed by the demands placed on shop staff.
Many shop staff work on their own ("single man", in the bookies’ lingo) for several hours per day. With Corals, Hills and Paddy Power, this tends to be in the morning, while Ladbrokes seem to have staff on their own in the evening. As well as taking bets and then translating them onto the system, staff are expected to make tea and coffee, keep the shop tidy and intercept any potentially underage customers, all while mingling with customers on the shop floor.
As if this wasn’t enough with which to contend, Paddy Power run their "Happy Hour" (all bets are best odds guaranteed) between noon and 1pm, with cashiers generally not starting until 13:10. So shop managers have a queue of customers who want prices on all of their Lucky 63s, plus others waiting to be paid their FOBT tickets, all during the peak lunch-time period and whilst working on their own- and then staff get sacked for not noticing a teenager entering the shop.
Utterly ridiculous.
Is cleaning the Gentlemen’s Lavatory on the remit of Ladbrokes shop staff nowadays?
Back in the day when they took a view and laid a bet no one seemed to bother and no one seemed to care
Ah, those smoky, smelly, shitty dives of youth and Ladbrokes emporia were generally the s s s iest of all
On appointment of new CEO Richard Glynn in 2010 one hapless analysts predicted "With a new CEO, a machines announcement and some strong hires, there is an emerging story at Ladbrokes beyond simply being cheap,"
The CEO identified a few key areas where Ladbrokes needs to improve in order to close the gap on competitors such as William Hill who seem to perform significantly better in recent rimes.
"These include a focus on the customer, improving the ‘e’ performance, the brand effectiveness and enhancing the technology background of the group," noted Glynn.
In 2013, Richard Glynn "earned" a £2.4 million bonus on top of his normal salary and bonuses which are not connected to the company’s performance.
A shop manager would have to work for 120 years to earn what the CEO gets in bonus alone in just one year.
If the shop manager makes the slightest slip up he/ she is sacked. If the single manned shop is robbed at night and the staff beaten up, knifed, raped or shot they go onto sick pay until they are fit again and then get sacked and the cheaper replacement kept on.
The CEO has met none of his professed targets but Ladbrokes shareholder are robbed of several £M in bogus payments to self serving executives.If the CEO is sacked for non performance he can immediately retire and live on reinvested bonuses and pay-offs with a six figure pension to follow.
You cannot run a modern economy on this madness.
There’s no way in hell bookmakers should be manned by only one person. Seems that numbers behind the counter is far from being a priority.
I have taken a great deal of interest in the way bookmakers treat their staff over the last couple of years (since I started dating a girl employed in a betting shop) and I’m not too impressed by the demands placed on shop staff.
Many shop staff work on their own ("single man", in the bookies’ lingo) for several hours per day. With Corals, Hills and Paddy Power, this tends to be in the morning, while Ladbrokes seem to have staff on their own in the evening. As well as taking bets and then translating them onto the system, staff are expected to make tea and coffee, keep the shop tidy and intercept any potentially underage customers, all while mingling with customers on the shop floor.
As if this wasn’t enough with which to contend, Paddy Power run their "Happy Hour" (all bets are best odds guaranteed) between noon and 1pm, with cashiers generally not starting until 13:10. So shop managers have a queue of customers who want prices on all of their Lucky 63s, plus others waiting to be paid their FOBT tickets, all during the peak lunch-time period and whilst working on their own- and then staff get sacked for not noticing a teenager entering the shop.
Utterly ridiculous.
It is.
They have now been asked to spy on competitors shops during the day.
They have now been asked to spy on competitors shops during the day.
The worst thing is that Ladbrokes are perceived to be falling behind in terms of customer service, yet their policy on staffing is no different from that of their rivals: have a manager or assistant manager on their own, with a cashier only during peak periods. How having such skeletal staffing is meant to improve customer service, I have no idea. As robert99 implies in his post, surely the firms out to be spending more on frontline staff than on completely needless and unjustified executive bonuses.
The only reason why bookmakers don’t have three members of staff all day, every day, is because of corporate greed. Still, what’s new?
Greedy bookmakers update:
Corals expect a manager or deputy manager to open a shop and single man until 1pm, at which point another member of staff comes in. You have two workers until four o’clock. The person who opened the shop then goes home and the other is left to single man until 18:30, at which point a cashier comes in. So there is one member of staff on their own from four until half six. Makes sense, especially as the evening meetings overlap with the afternoon ones at this time of year.
Even better is Paddy Power’s new scheme, "Operation Panther". Shop managers are being asked to visit rival betting shops, pose as normal customers and target big-spending FOBT customers. The latter group are to be offered Paddy Power’s VIP gold cards (a bit like Ladbrokes’ Odds-On cards, but limited to machine players) and- wait for it- free carbonated drinks if they defect to Paddy Power. Already, several managers have been either threatened with physical violence or actually hit.
A member of staff in Ladbrokes’ Morden branch was stabbed to death yesterday. Absolutely tragic and awful.
Maybe this will wake up bookmakers up into manning their shops with more than one member of staff, as much for safety as customer service. I was thinking of working in a bookmakers as a part-time job after university, but this thread and other research has totally dissuaded me!
As a follow on form your views on the single manning of Ladbrokes
in Morden Yesterday 25th May 2013, the manager was stabbed to death as a direct consequence of single manning a number of factors allow me to blame wholeheartedly and sad hearted.
If another member of staff was there the crime may not have taken place as the perp may have thought twice,
secondly the injuries may not have taken the life if another member of staff was there and able to call for assistance.
SO WHEN THE CEO TAKES HOME HIS MILLIONS IN BONUSES.
I hope he does not get the blood of the father of 2 little children and a disabled wife on the £50 notes as he counts.As someone who was with Coral for two years, you have to realise these bookmakers care very little about their staff; they don’t need to. Easy job, lots of applications and an endless supply of people wanting to work for them. Simple economics of supply and demand. Since starting, cleaner had been sacked, had to work on your own, and peddle the glories of the machines. Pretty soul-destroying for someone who loves the game. I was given a strong dressing down for encouraging and enthusing about horse racing.
I started working in the bookies in 84 and back then most of the staff would have been interested in Horse Racing ( to the point of obsession in many cases). You had to learn to settle to be a Manager, but in the 30 years since the shops have changed immeasurably. With EPOS there is no need to be able to understand anything about betting and the shops are now reliant on machines to make a living.
Ladbrokes senior staff all used to be people who had worked their way through from the shops, but that had all changed by the time I left in 1998. Marketing men and Human Resource guru’s had taken over.
I used to work with the guy who was murdered yesterday and he was a lovely, gentle fella. RIP.I was given a strong dressing down for encouraging and enthusing about horse racing.
That’s a pretty sad reflection of how horse racing is seen by the major high street bookmaking chains. You do get the strong impression that horse racing is seen by them as no more than a necessary evil.
I do think a major bookie could go bust and the fav must be Gala-Coral. Moody’s rate them B3 and their net debt is around £2.4B.
The murder in London is tragic and personally think that Ladbrokes should compensate the family.
Single manning is a disgrace.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.