VIDEO: Belk’s Holiday Helpers

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – The holiday season is right around the corner and Belk in Columbus is ready in full force.

The store’s seasonal workers started working back in October to prepare for the busy upcoming shopping season.

When it’s the holiday season, the amount of Belk customers triple at the Columbus store and their staff nearly doubles to keep up with the shoppers.

“They are needed to help us stock. They are needed to help us straighten. They are needed to help us sale. They are needed to bring more revenue back into this store,” says Belk Cosmetic and Men’s Sale Manager, Deborah Phinisey.

The store hires anywhere from thirty to forty-five extra workers and look for somebody who is energetic and committed to the job.

“It’s very competitive because what happens, if you are a seasonal worker, you want to do the best job you can do because you want to end up having a permanent position at the end of the season,” says Phinisey.

The holiday workers work three to four days a week and help work those extra hours stores have around this time of year.

“We basically put them in between shifts and they have to work the shifts, like between that full-time and part-time help that we already have, so they are those people that help us in between and at night, in the mornings, in the middle of the day. They help us cover lunches,” says Phinisey.

“We’re going to open on Thanksgiving at 4 p.m. and stay open until 1 a.m., so we’ll probably get here around three, and then we’ll probably be here until about two in the morning, and they’ll split that up in between people, but it will be crazy,” says Belk seasonal worker, Hannah Baird.

It’s an atmosphere Baird says she loves.

This is the college student’s second holiday season to work at Belk.

She says the extra money and relieving stress from the full-time staff makes it all worth working the seasonal job.

“Most of the permanent workers are more focused on their sales because they have to reach sales goals and stuff like that, but the seasonal workers come in and they’re more helpful with like, folding and helping reorganize the store, so that we keep everything straight and keep everything organized, so that it’s easier for our customers to shop around and find everything that they need,” says Baird.

Phinisey says usually about ten of the seasonal workers end up becoming permanent at Belk.