Jose Ramirez

Courtney Forte

English

Date February 7

Dicks Activity System

I work part time at Dicks Sporting Goods, a sporting store that sells and provides sporting needs

for multiple athletes and sports. There are over 850 store locations in the US making it the largest

Sporting Goods store in America. Whenever anyone needs a new glove, golf putter, or soccer cleats, it is

more than likely they are going to a Dicks Sporting Goods store. In saying that, working there keeps one

busy as there are many things that need to be done and dealt with. We try to help every customer with

any questions or items they are looking for. We get hundreds of customers per day and to get to all of

them we have many systems and resources to help us.

When any Dicks employee walks in the store, they usually immediately go to the office in the

back. If they are working an opening shift, they wait till the opening manager unlocks the front door and

go to the office. From there, they clock in using their employee numbers. They then proceed to grab

their nametag, a walkie-talk, a PDT scanner, and if needed keys for their respected department. Most

departments just make sure everything is organized and put in place before customers start walking

through the store. Sometimes our manager gives us a task to complete either sweeping or vacuuming to

putting new product on the shelves.

The walkie-talk, PDT scanner, and name tag make doing our job easier than we could do it

without them. Communication is key at Dicks Sporting Goods since some of the employees only work in

one department while some can work in multiple. Those who work in only one department may get

questions from a customer about another department which they do not know about. If that happens,
they can use the walkie-talk to ask another employee in that department to help them. Our cashiers can

let a department know if any customers are heading to them ahead of time to prepare them for

whatever the customer needs, to make the process more efficient. The PDT scanner we have is a phone-

like tool we use to get the locations, price, and amount of any product we have. It even tells us what

other of our stores carry a product. If an employee is working in footwear, a PDT scanner will be their

best friend as it tells them where any shoe is amid the hundreds of shoe boxes we carry. The PDT

scanner tells you who is going to work that day or the next and can tell you who was working before

you. It is an essential multi-tool we use at Dicks Sporting Goods. Department keys are necessary since

we use them to unlock expensive items, we keep locked up in case a customer wants to buy them. They

also unlock fitting rooms which are used multiple times a day at the store.

The big boss of the Dicks Sporting Goods I work at is the store manager. She is there 90% of the

time and is always making sure the store looks great. After her is the assistant store manager, then the

manager, then the key holders who can open and close the store. Followed by them are the Team leads

and the employees. There is a Team lead for each department and other things needed to be done in

store. There is footwear, sporting gear, golf, lodge, and apparel team lead but there are also team leads

for shipment from store who focus on finding items that were ordered and packaging them to be

shipped. Most employees look up to team leads to see if anything needs to be done in their department

unless the store manager tells them to do something.

As stated, at Dicks Sporting Goods we have multiple departments. The ones that customers can

see are footwear, golf, sporting gear, lodge, and apparel. Since I have been working in footwear recently

that is the department I will be talking about. The footwear is in the back of the store, right in front of

where we keep all our shoes. That makes it easier to grab shoes for customers without them waiting for

too long. We have barcodes in all the display shoes, so when a customer asks to try on a shoe, we scan
the barcode with our PDT scanner. In doing so, our PDT scanner will give us what available sizes we have

and where they will be located. The location is useful to have since we have hundreds of shoes in

multiple sizes. We will grab the shoe the customer asked for and allow them to try it on. From there we

will answer any questions they have about the shoe or grab them another if wanted. Whenever we do

not have any customers on the floor, we sweep the footwear deck, fix, or replace any display shoes, and

rearrange the back where we keep our shoes. We arrange them by size and style, so it makes it easier

for us to grab it when time comes.

As stated earlier, at Dicks Sporting Goods they sell, what the name implies, sport items. In sports

gear, we sell soccer cleats, baseball bats and helmets, lacrosse sticks, and balls for all these sports. In

golf, we sell anything golf related. In footwear, we sell shoes for running and casual wear, as well as

baseball, softball, basketball, wrestling, and track sport cleats. In fitness we have gym equipment and

weight, as well as supplements. That is only some of the items we sell, we sell many other miscellaneous

items and accessories. Our objective is to make sports inclusive and accessible to all people who want to

be athletes. We put out athlete first and do whatever possible to help them achieve their goal.

Resources

https://www.statista.com/statistics/205746/number-of-dicks-sporting-goods-stores-in-the-us-since-

2005/

https://mission-statement.com/dicks-sporting-goods/#:~:text=Dicks%20Sporting%20Goods%20vision

%20statement,Serve%20and%20inspire