Bath & Body Works reviews

NOT COMPETITIVE WITH PAY - do your research and know what you are worth. CULTURE IS SHIFTING - and not in a good way - too many great people have left and with that talent level is shifting....people are smart but very cut-throat, its turning into Victoria's Secret. LACK OF EMPATHY - most senior leaders are like robots - they don't care about anything but the bottom line - and if you get in there way you are out. It's one thing to be a leader in the industry, but another to treat people like slaves - whether they are in stores or in the home office. Sometimes they forget what it is like to be in a store or at the bottom, and have such high expectations it is unrealistic. Oh - and that work/life balance you want? Nope - looks elsewhere - there is no down time, regardless of which department you are in.

This is gonna be lengthy - I'm going to break it down into sections below (please read in detail if considering leaving BBW) *Most SM's that are hired externally for this company don't last a year with the company - let alone 5. Most quit because of the unrealistic and impossible expectations. It has nothing to do with people not wanting to work hard (most of them anyway I'm sure). 80% of new SM's leave the company within two years (that's not a person issue but a company issue - BE AWARE). *Payroll - Ok I worked in a higher volume location and got less payroll hours per week than some other locations that did less money. When I asked about it I was basically told too bad you don't need it. With that said I would regularly be given between 16-19 hours of payroll per day (monday-thursday). This would mean the SM or ASM was usually alone in the building between 9a-- 1-3pm (mind you the busiest part of the day for most stores is around noon soooo you'd be by yourself). While it could be difficult trying to ring out and help around 40 customers an hour you could do it. Another part of the payroll problem was that weekly I was given around 165-180 hours to work with. (Low volume stores only get 137). With that 180 I was expected to schedule two 40 hours managers (80) - 2 supervisors (64) and two top sellers (40) - that's 184 hours right there. Although I was expected to schedule all managers 40 - not 32 and top sellers have to get 20 hours a week - so you see the problem. Scheduling around the payroll was a nightmare. Also So you really only only have enough hours for 6 employees all week (4 managers and 2 top sellers). But you have to carry a staff of about 30-40 to support the huge floorsets that you do once a month. So what do you tell that other 24-34 - you'll only get 6-12 hours a month and they'll be overnight shifts. Yea right - you had a few that were loyal and stayed on but you constantly had to hire new people and retrain them on floorsets (and there wasn't payroll to do that. *Sales plans - ok there are two different stores that fall into these categories so keep that in mind. Remodels and regular stores. A stores first year after a remodel is impossible! You will be planned up 30-80% over LY EVERY DAY. And guess what you will not have the traffic to make that sales plan ever (most normal stores are planned up between 4-10% to LY). So every day you'll have to explain to your DM why you didn't make sales plan (despite conversion and average dollar being up to LY and traffic being down ---- traffic is not an excuse or reason. You can be doing the best in conversion growth, ADS growth and phone and email capture and it won't matter. You're not making sales plan - I need you to fix it. You'll find out you needed an 88% conversion with a 36 average dollar to make the sales plan you were given (pretty much impossible) and it's like well you didn't hit your goal that's why you didn't make plan. Sales plan is more normal and less stressful in non remodel stores though. *Shipment - you get this 4-6 times a week depending on the time of the year. You're given a window of 2 hours where you could get shipment. Some stores get a window 8a-10a some in the afternoon 12-2 and some in the evening I'm sure - my store got it at 12-2.....now remember that payroll issue - managers would be by themselves 9 times out of 10 during this shipment window. So obviously you shouldn't leave the sales floor (people could steal customers not being helped) but you have to to go into the back to let shipment in. The policy is that a manager is always back there with the shipment delivery driver until he's finished (this could take 30 minutes - 2 hours depending on how much shipment was brought) - well obviously you're by yourself sooooo conundrum right - you basically have to break a policy (either leaving the sales floor unattended or the driver). When you bring this up to your DM they just ignore you and don't want to hear about it. Always you get hours to process shipment - but small stores don't that have to process shipment with the little hours they are already given. *Individual Sales - the company measures and puts a lot of pressure on individual sales goals and your results will be used in your year end review. Managers are expected to have second highest sales behind top sellers (makes sense right). But when you only have managers and top sellers working there's no one else to bring the average down - it's an impossible system. Again every needs to work a good amount of selling hours (again with payroll constraints this can be difficult). While my store particularly didn't struggle with this - some did, really no fault of their own. You will get beat down about your selling results and everyone else's in your store on a daily basis ....it will break you down. *Work life balance - non-existent. The expectation is that every manager gets one weekend off a month, PTO etc.... How this works is based a lot on your DM - I had 3 different ones in my time with the company (which is another issue). For the most part they all strived for a work life balance. Let's be real though - there was always something - high volume weekend, certain sales promotion or a floorset. So you may end up with 4 weekends off a year. Christmas is hell - and not in a fun way. You will be expected to work 50-60 hours a week. I slept in hotels and would leave at 2am sometimes just to be back at 7am. The company would have you switch 2-4 tables every night during the holidays and this would cause teams to be there late - because you have associates who don't work all year but are expected to operate at 100% come holiday despite never working. IF you make sales plan during Christmas you get a nice bonus - but guess what you'll work just as hard - miss sales plan not get bonus. *Coupon policy - This would cause me to pull my hair out. BBW would send coupons to customers in the mail and email. Some customers wouldn't get mail or email coupons (some would get one or the other, some would get both, some would get none). Customers would see other coupons and want you to honor them. BBW tells you always take care of the customer. But you're also told not to abuse the coupon policy - that they're watching. The company has fired TONS of people for coupon abuse (granted I think most of those people would take coupons from the trash and then reuse them themselves which is why). BUT it does make it scary to do your job. I never really wanted to override things to help my customers because I was always afraid that I would get in trouble for it. But the company does nothing to rectify customers not getting coupons. Email coupons were easy to help customers with - but the paper ones - I would get yelled at about that on a daily basis. Nothing I could do without getting fired for reusing paper coupons - so I would just tell customers sorry and sign them up again. *100% guarantee - the company lets customers return anything they don't like. I would get 4-5 year old lotions coming back, candles that were burned down to the bottom and other products that we haven't had in forever. But we have to take them back/ exchange - would lose so much money weekly because of this.