Upper management is deplorable. Turnover rate is extremely high. Very little helpful communication provided to stores.
Unprofessionalism ran rampant in my district. Our district manager would repeatedly call out people by name on weekly conference calls and discuss everything that they did wrong that week. He talked down to myself and the store manager and never offered any positive feedback, despite the fact that we constantly made goal and brought our store back to life after the horrible staff that was there before us.
Hours were cut back as much as possible. We were generally running on 2 employees a day, one opening and one closing with no overlap in between. This means no meal or bathroom breaks since we couldn't leave the floor unattended, but we would still be clocked out for our state mandated breaks even though we couldn't take them.
The bonus program started off generous, but was then modified to make it nearly impossible to reach the level needed to obtain a payout.
Raises were given once yearly after a terrible review process. I was reviewed by my store manager, received a nearly flawless grade, and then was awarded a 4 cent hourly raise by corporate.
On top of the corporate culture being so negative, the customers that came into our store were the grumpiest bunch I've ever met. Nothing was good enough for them. We would try our best to help them, but when we're not sent full size runs of shoes and when shoes made in different countries all fit differently, there wasn't that much that we could do. To make matters worse, the customers could then fill out a survey on the bottom of our receipts and since the employees couldn't make shoes appear out of thin air, we'd get terrible ratings for things that were out of our control.
Shipments were inconsistent and incomplete. I'd often receive shoes without pairs or just one shoe of a certain style. How am I supposed to display one shoe on the floor to sell?
I could go on really. This was honestly the most unprofessional and uncoordinated company I've ever worked for and it made me flee the retail world and never want to look back.
