the Cost of Temporary Retail Employees

We hired 2 employees to work at our bookstore for 2 weeks. We paid them each $400 a week for around 40 hours per week. We also offered them a discount on their books. I'm not sure how much that cost us but the books were still sold for more than cost.

Our bookstore is near a college campus and sells textbooks. During the first 2 weeks of classes we end up being completely slammed and don't sleep at all. We decided last year, as our business had become more stable and picked up, to just go ahead and hire 2 students to help out with the rush. They worked hard and were very comfortable with the customers. We just had them work the registers as they are the easiest things to train on. That freed up our regular employees to restock and help out customers who were looking for books. The only downside was that I wish we'd hired them for 3 weeks. After the rush was over there was a lot more work to be done, cleaning up and getting most of the textbooks off the shelf.

I think it's definitely worth paying a bit of money to hire people to help out in your busy times. Try to figure out how long you'll need them and plan accordingly.