I’m not in the US and the financial situation is different here (fortunately).
I can, however, tell you that the company I used to work until late last year for was turning a very healthy profit, but was still cutting wages budgets, reducing expenses, and “encouraging” people to leave or retire as part of a concerted effort to meet their profit forecasts- in other words, to satisfy shareholders.
There are plenty of companies who are doing that, but it has nothing to do with why “we’re in this current financial fuckup”.
I briefly worked in commissioned sales (for Kinney Shoes) back in the late 1980s, and I got the impression even then that the concept of commissioned sales staff was on the way out if for no other reason than that the general buying public didn’t like it. The general impression I got is that many/most people automatically assume that a commissioned salesperson is a liar who will say/promise anything to make a sale. I suspect this was the reputation of car salesmen tainting all commissioned salespersons.
A specific example: A woman came in with her young son. Her son wanted a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors, which had recently become “cool” again. She didn’t want to pay the Converse price, so she brought him into Kinney Shoes where we sold a virtually identical (in both appearance and quality) shoe. She told me what size he wore, but I measured the kid’s feet anyway as I was required to do (and hey, kid’s feet grow quickly). Then, because I was well-trained and knew my product, and I knew that that particular shoe model ran bigger than the labeled size, I brought out a pair of shoes that were marked a half-size smaller than what I had measured. I explained the particulars of the model to the woman, put the shoes on the kid (who agreed they fit perfectly) and went through the whole multi-step process of verifying that the shoes were a proper fit. The kid was happy with the shoes (he was old enough to be able to tell that shoes were comfortable but young enough that he didn’t care that they didn’t say “Converse” on them), and I was satisfied that they were a good fit. And I knew that the shoes marked with his “correct” size would be too big. But the mother, because she “knew” her kid’s shoe size and apparently knew my product better than I did, refused to buy them. She explicitly said, “I know you want to make a sale, but I know what size shoe my son wears. Those are too small.” She left the store with her obviously disappointed son in tow.
Kinney got killed by that cheap, vinyl shoe emporium known as Volume Shoes, where people could just pick their shoes off the shelf and have a trained register monkey ring them up. (Which is not to fault Volume’s employees. Their store, a few doors down from ours in the mall, was managed by an Hispanic man. One day a Mexican migrant worker, who spoke no English, came into his store looking for a pair of work boots. This manager, knowing that his own store’s “work boots” were completely unsuitable for actually working long hours in an orchard, brought his customer to our store and sold him some of ours.)
I’d argue it’s ane element of it. (Well, that and the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the US, too.)
If you don’t mind my saying, if I’m reading the second sentence correctly (that is, you brought out only one pair that was 1/2 size smaller) I have no doubt that the mother thought you only had the smaller size, and were trying to pawn it off as acceptable. You should definitely have brought out the size she told you she wanted, as well as the size you thought would fit best, and the size you measured (if different than the other two).
Why are you providing an Armchair Criticism of a passing event over 20 years ago, which has merely been presented here as an example of the sort of things salespeople have to put up with? 
It’s not like Mr. Rik is going to slap his head and say “Oh, silly me! Now I now how to prevent similar incidents from occuring again!” I’d daresay he’s either worked it out for himself (being a clever chap) or- seeing as he’s no longer a shoe salesman- it’s irrelevant.
Best Buy was at the forefront of that.
When they had commissioned salespeople, people would feel that their experience was too high pressure and would walk out before the salesperson could close the deal.
They made their sales staff hourly, their prices went down, their sales went up, and they became the biggest of the big box consumer electronics retailers - and have consistently given a lot of that credit to getting rid of commissions.
The best of their salespeople didn’t really mind - at least not long term - since the growth the change enabled let them to move into management positions in a rapidly growing company - their current CEO and soon to be new CEO both started out as commissioned salesguys in the store.
Sears is in a different point in their lifecycle. They didn’t adapt quickly to changes (they still HAVE commission appliance salespeople?!) and are frankly in survival mode. astro’s friend would better serve herself by finding a different job - probably a different industry. Sears is never going to pay what it did, IF it survives.
The fiancee and I were in a Rooms to Go outlet store yesterday and were approached by eight salespeople in 25 minutes. Eight! In a building where all of them could see all the other ones coming up to us, I might add.
We walked out instead of buying the couch we really liked.
Reminds me of when I was working retail sales on commish. I sold computers and it was feast or famine. Of course when the feast (holidays) came, extra sales staff were hired to “help out”. Also any large sales had to go to corporate sales. I lost out on selling 10 Laserjet 4s since I was ordered to turn it over to corporate.
Indeed. But to clarify a bit, my anecdote was a condensed version of events, since I’m conscious of the fact that I can go on and on at times 
I did indeed bring out more than one size (standard procedure), in addition to clearly explaining the issues with the particular shoe model. The “correctly” sized shoes were clearly way too big, both in my opinion and the kid’s opinion. But Mom wasn’t having it.