This is a wonderful story. A management clusterfudge all the way.
I'm confused by him saying that you don't get commissions until hitting a threshold that he "barely" hit once, and then a paragraph later he talks about someone returning phones that got him a $40 commission (so he now loses that commission).
It is actually likely as bad as you'd imagine. Think about how you could rationalize paying minimum wage, but then docking the pay. Give up? Read the comment by `pud in another thread a couple months back:
The shorter seems to be that they were always on commision, with a default of minimum wage. Should a return occur, the commision would be removed, even if that dropped them below minimum wage.
EDIT: Note further in the thread that a Canadian worker always got minimum wage. So it's possible the sleaze varied by region.
In countries with working legal systems, minimum wage means what it says, so removing the commission to drop pay below minimum wage levels would be illegal, and likely to be enforced.
I think that they got a sales commission for everything sold after a threshold, but they always got a commission for mobile phones in particular (likely through the carrier).
That's an amazing story. I had no idea how screwed up Radio Shack's management was. I knew they didn't have much business sense, but this is required reading.
http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy...
It's one of the funniest/most heartbreaking articles I have ever read, but also explains a lot about RadioShack's slow spiraling collapse.