Bath & Body Works reviews

Oh, where to begin? Bath and Body Works looks and feels like a fun enough place to work... At first. The managers are excited to tell you about the hours you'll work and the great gratis (free samples) you'll get by working in the store. Think of this time as the honeymoon, because it all goes downhill from here. You will not get to go on breaks. According to our manual, we as employees were entitled to a 15 minute break for every 4+ hours worked, and a 30 minute meal break for 6+ hours worked. You'll likely get your break if you work 6+ hours, but you'll only get your meal break. If you work anything less than six hours, forget about it! It was nothing for me to spend an entire five hour shift at the cash wrap without a chance to sit down or even a change from cash wrap to sales floor. Dull, dull, dull. The training you get is pretty much trial by fire. You get sat down for a training video, and then get thrown onto the floor to make some sales. The sales strategy places a heavy focus on demoing lotion and sprays on the customers. Our daily motto was always something along the lines of "Every customer gets a demo!", which is a ridiculous expectation. Not only did there tend to be only one person working front of the store during the off season to begin with, but not every person wants to have lotion squirted on their hands! Myself included! Holiday shifts were terrible. You WILL be expected to work a 12 hour shift on Thanksgiving/Black Friday. Burnout for employees was terrible around Christmas. It was super frustrating to watch the employees who worked the hardest get pushed to their limits while the holiday help were given jobs that amounted to making sure people waited quietly in line and knew where the end of the line was. Meals aren't provided by the company, either: Food during peak sale days (such as Black Friday or the dreaded $8 candle event) were always potlucks, where the company would send fliers telling us about all the exciting food we, the employees, could bring for ourselves. Awesome. Hope you like a Thanksgiving meal of chips and dip, brownies, and cold little smokies. More on holiday work: If you work a closing shift, don't expect to leave the store before around 2 am. Which is absolutely awesome when you're already worked an eight hour shift that day, before the additional four hours of closing duties. Hope you don't work an opening shift the next day! And if so, well, "It's retail; Get used to it!" As one of my managers kindly snapped at me. Stores have recently moved to what we've been assured isn't a commission model, but reads exactly like commission model on paper. Lastly: Call-in shifts. An awesome system where the store MIGHT need you so you need to be available to call them an hour before your shift starts to see if they need you or not. And if they don't know then, they might tell you to call again in ANOTHER hour. Just in case the store gets busy. Want to plan your weekends? Better ask off in advance. Call-in shifts don't allow you to plan for anything but work. Bottom line? After working here for three years, and only making barely above $8 an hour, I don't get paid enough for this.

1. No training- luckily I had experience working with the same POS system so I was able to catch on again, but there were times it was only me in the front of the store handling customers, driving sales and handling the cash register 2. The women I worked with were pretty terrible- I overheard them several times talking badly about new seasonal employees...During my first few days I went up to everyone and introduced myself but out of 10 people only 1 person introduced themselves back. It was clear they had no intention of getting to know or even learning the names of the people they were working with. I worked with one older woman who was consistently talking poorly about all the non-white customers we got. As a woman of color, this made me SO uncomfortable, but since she had been working there for 5 years and was friends with the manager I didn't feel comfortable to speak up or say anything 3. HORRIBLE hours. When I began working I was really pleased because I thought the manager was really taking my school schedule into account when making the schedule. As a college senior, school for me did come first and I liked how she made sure that I wasn't working late so that I could go home and study. But then the semester was winding down and the holiday season was approaching so I thought I would get some more hours...WRONG. My black friday experience was AWFUL! My shift was 4am-9am, and again 2:30pm-11pm. I arrived at 4 and worked until 8, with my final hour being cut. I didn't really care too much since I knew I had a long shift in the afternoon. I came back at 2:30, donuts in hand after buying some for my co-workers, and my manager marched up to me and (very rudely) asked what I was doing there. I was confused and told her I was supposed to be back at 2:30 for my next shift...she said that the schedule did not say that. I immediately walked over to the schedule and saw it said 2:30-11. She looked at me, and goes "you can go home, we actually don't need you." So not only did I barely sleep, I hauled myself back to the mall on Black friday, found parking in the middle of no where, brought donuts and you tell me to go home?? She did not apologize at all and just said that she meant to call me to tell me not to come but she forgot... I was so upset that immediately after leaving I called another store that had previously called to interview me (that I declined because I already was hired by bath and body works) 4. I understand that bath and body works is really sales oriented, but I felt like I was constantly getting cheated out of getting sales I made attributed to me. There were several times I helped a customer out and sent her to the register, only to watch my manager and other employees write down their names as the sales associate that helped them, even when the customer specified that I had helped them out. Then the manager has the nerve to tell me I need to push harder for sales because I'm not getting any? I'm not exactly sure how this is fair... Overall I had such a bad experience. I mainly feel stupid for even taking the job when I had so many other interview offers that I declined because I had already received an offer from bath and body works.