I used to work at portrait innovations and wanted you all to be aware that the company does not care about you or it's employees at all. It's all about the money. They want to get the most people in and out as possible, as fast as they can - thinking that will make them more money. (Johnny Grosso, the owner's son, runs the company. He is in his middle twenties - if that tells you anything.) Over Christmas we worked our butts off going 12 hours days with only a 15 minute break to run in the back and try to take a couple bites of pizza that was ordered because we couldn't have breaks. (ILLEGAL!) Its not really the manager's fault though, the regional manager was forcing him to double book appointments. None of us had ever worked a Christmas season before so we were in over our heads. By lunchtime my eyes would be bloodshot and I would get migranes every weekend. One girl went to the doctor and had several stomach problems from the stress. It might not have been so stressful if we didn't have to keep unattainably high sales averages. Because of the $9.95 special, we all got letters for Christmas stating if we could not get our averages up within a month (none of us did though they were all within $10 of what they should have been at the time), they were "letting us go." And they did. Look at the economy... people do not have money to spend on a ton of pictures right now. And to be honest... the $9.95 gives most people enough as it is. Speaking of honesty, they want us to rush the customers through the selling process so you don't know whats going on and trick you into spending more money than you want. Several managers from other stores tried to "train" me to do this, but I didn't think it was right. There was one that would even add extra sheets into the customers cart if they weren't paying attention. All that said, they do take good pictures and I think it is an awesome value, and if the pics aren't the greatest... you might have had someone that is new - they go through employees like crazy! They fired one guy because he updated his resume on monster.com and they took it as he was seeking other employment, or someone was getting married and told to keep quiet about moving after the wedding because they would immediatly get rid of her too. Before they got rid of us, they would have the manager come in on his days off to do interviews for our positions. Many of them were high schoolers, not even 18 yet - we all were college students and graduates who had something related to photography as a career goal. They also made us sign an agreement that we could not work at a photography place for 2 years after leaving, and who knows what else it said - keep in mind there were a lot of photography majors working there... hmm, how is that going to work? Oh well. There is so much more I could say, but with this information you all can make your own decisions as to wether or not you want to do business with a company like that. I would not. Feel free to pass this on, I am from studio #76 in Indiana.
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